BOOKS.

MORE SONNETS.* Mn. T. Herm G&INE'S selection differs from those we have recently had occasion to notice, by including both dead and living writers in the same volume, and by an attempt to classify the sonnets under the heads Shakespearian, Miltonic, and Modern, a distinction explained and defended in a very elaborate preface. On the whole, however, it is, we think, a less satis- factory selection than any of them, partly because, in the effort to be distinctive, Mr. Hall Caine often selects inferior sonnets to those given us by his predecessors, and partly because the theoretical distinctions of structure which he wishes to illustrate, are often shadowy, and lead us a wild-goose chase after unsub- stantial fancies in which we lose sight of the poetical substance. Especially is the selection often unsatisfactory in regard to the sonnets published now for the first time,—(or said to be so, for we observe that Mr. Hall Caine is not always quite accurate in this; for instance, he marks as two hitherto unpublished sonnets, two by Mr. H. C. Irwin, called " A Day's Ride, a Life's

• Sonnets of 77irce Centuries. A Selection, including many Examples hithertc. unpublished. Edited by T. Hall Caine. London : Elliot Stook.

Analogy," which appeared in these columns some months ago).* Mr. Hall Caine, in trying to give his selection some of the attractions of novelty, has not unfrequently printed very poor sonnets indeed,—for example, the two thoroughly unworthy and screamy ones on Carlyle's Reminiscences, by Mr. S win- barne, in which that true, but utterly unbridled poet grossly ex- aggerates the worst characteristics of the book he not unjustly condemns, and repeats, in a much aggravated form, on Mr. Car- lyle, that offence of which Mr. Carlyle, or at least the editor who published what he wrote without the proper editorial excisions, had committed on Carlyle's own friends. Nor can we usually admire Mr. Hall Caine's discrimination He gives us what seem to us the three poorest sonnets Matthew Arnold has ever written as the only specimens of the sonnets of that moat delightful poet, and ignores altogether the magnificent- sonnets on Sophocles, on Shakespeare, on the Duke of Welling- ton. Of the sonnets taken from Wordsworth, we should have pat only half-a-dozen, at most, in the first rank ; and of those from Hartley Coleridge, we should have chosen only two, and pat a great number of those not selected far before the rest. Again, the single one taken from David Gray gives no adequate conception at all of the exquisite beauty of that poet's sonnets.

As regards Mr. Hall Caine's theory of the structure of Shakespearian, Miltonic, and Modern sonnets, we can only say that we find it one very difficult to verify in the sonnets which he gives as examples of his theory, and that even where his description appears to apply, the knowledge that it does apply seems to add nothing to the beauty of the sonnets in question. Hear, for example, what Mr. Hall Caine says of the Shake- speare sonnet :—

" Let us, therefore, set ourselves to consider what constitutes the function the Shakspearean sonnet fulfils. The thing that first strikes us is that the thought, as a whole, is of the nature of an applied sym- bol. Then we see that it does not in the English, as in the Italian form, fall asunder like the acorn into unequal parts of a perfect organism, bat is sustained without break until it reaches a point at which a personal appropriation needs to be made. Finally, we per- ceive that the ultimate application (which was also the primary pur- pose) consolidates the thought, and gives it a separate and unified entity. We obtain a fall view of this by careful analysis of any representative example. Let us examine the intellectual, emotional, and metrical structure of the sonnet on lust :- ' The expense of spirit in a mote of shame

Is Inst in action ; and till action. lust Is perjured, murderous, bloody, full of blame,

Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust ; Boittedreanowsotnerobdnt despiseda n

,;tr,:irglilA,

Past reason Istielg, as a swallowed bait

On purpose laid to make the taker mad : Mad in pursuit, and in possession so ; Had, having, and in quest to hare, extreme ; A bliss in proof, and proved, a very woe ; Before, a joy proposed ; behind, a dream. All this the world well knows ; yet none knows well To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.'

First seizing the representative points of a noble idea, Shakespeare in this sonnet goes on from line to line, begetting thought out of thought, kindling image out of image; yet the whole gravitates about a central scheme, and the meaning is all inwoven. Here there is no distinct plotting of thought, no systematic placing of proportionated ideas, no-building-up to definite point other than that indicated at the outset. Where, at the ninth line, the thought appears to take a fresh departure such as is nearly always observable in sonnets by Tetrarch, it is really doing no more than evolve a now aspect out of the old one. Clearly, there is no other form of verse that could have been made to serve so well the uses herein compassed."

Well, but take another of Shakespeare's sonnets, and one of the finest :—

" No longer mourn for me when I am dead

Than you shall hear the surly sullen bell Give warning to the world that I am fled From this vile world, with vilest worms to dwell : Nay, if you read this line, remember not The hand that writ it ; for I love you so That I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot, If thinking on me then should make you woe.

0, if, I say, you look upon this verse, When I perhaps compounded am with clay, Do not so much as my poor name rehearse ; But let your love even with my life decay : Lest the wise world should look into your moan, And mock you with me after I am gone."

And now read over Mr. Hall Caine's description, and notice how ill it applies to this sonnet. In the first place, the thought, as a whole, is certainly not of the nature of " an applied symbol," —a statement, indeed, of the meaning of which we are not at all sure, while, so far as we can guess it, we should hesitate to admit it even of the sonnet quoted by Mr. Hall Caine himself. In this other sonnet assuredly the thought

'See Spectator, October 29th, 1'81,

is not symbolic at all. It is a simple wish that the person addressed may not make the poet's death a sub- ject of lasting grief. It does not " kindle image out of image," but simply explains that the poet's love is so great, that he would spare its object even the woe of grief for himself ; and then he concludes, not with an " ultimate application which consolidates the thought, and gives it a separate and unified entity," but, on the contrary, with one which rarifies it, and seems quite superfluously careful for the happiness of the imaginary survivor,—namely, the suggestion that the world might use the display of grief as a subject for mockery, if grief were shown..

We cannot imagine a description less applicable to this Shake- spearian sonnet than the one applied by Mr. Hall Caine to the whole class, and illustrated (rather feebly, we think), by the sonnet in the text.

Again, here is Mr. Hall Caine's description of the Miltonia sonnet, which he quotes from Sir Henry Taylor. Its peculiarity is said to consist " in the absence of point in the evolution of the idea, whose peculiar charm lay in its being thrown off like a rocket, breaking into light and falling in a soft shower of brightness." Elsewhere Mr. Hall Caine says :—" What remains to be tabulated as Milton's ultimate contribution is an arrangement of rhyme which, in the hands of a master, lends itself to a mighty sweep of music, an abandonment of all point and climax, an effort after singleness of effect." Well, we are not sure that any of these notes of the Miltonic sonnet, except "the abandonment of all point and climax," is at all definite; for instance, we should have said that many of Shakespeare's son- nets "lend themselves as much to a mighty sweep of music" as Milton's ; but we did think that we understood " the abandon- ment of all point and climax," to which point and climax, of course, the final Shakespearian couplet is subservient. But to our bewilderment, we find that Mr. Hall Caine classes all those of Hartley Coleridge's sonnets which he gives us, as sonnets of Miltonic structure, though some of them undoubtedly have a. very marked climax. Take this, for example :—

" Long time a and, and still a child, when years Had painted manhood on my cheek, was I ;

For yet I lived like one not born to die ; A thriftless prodigal of smiles and tears, No hope I needed, and I knew no fears.

But sleep, though sweet, is only sleep ; and waking; I waked to sleep no more ; at once o'ertaking The vanguard of my age, with all arrears Of duty on my back. Nor child, nor man, Nor youth, nor sage, I find my head is grey, For I have lost the race I never ran : A rathe December blights my lagging Hay ; And still I am a child, though I be old :

Time is my debtor for my years untold."

We should have thought it hard to find a sonnet more generally like in structure to most of Shakespeare's, and more marked by the striking climax of the last two lines.

And now take Mr. Hall Caine's description of the modern type of sonnet :—

" The characteristic excellence of the contemporary type is distinct from both of these. Its merit and promise of enduring popularity consist iu its being grounded in a fixed law of nature. The natural phenomenon it reproduces is the familiar one of the flow and ebb of a wave of the sea. The properties of the new model are illustrated in a sonnet by Mr. Theodore Watts,, in which scholastic definition is happily blended with poetic fervour.

'THE SONNET'S VOICE.

• YETHICAL LESSON BY THE SEA-SHORE.

You silvery billows breaking on the beach Full back in foam beneath the star-shine e'oar,

The while my rhymes are murmuring in your oar

A restless lore like that the billows teach ; For on these sonnet-waves my soul would reach From its own depths, and rest within you, dear,

As, through the billowy voices yearning hero Great Nature strives to find a human sysech.

A sonnet is a wave of melody :

From heaving waters of the impassioned soul A billow of tidal music one and whole Flows in the "octave" ; then returning free, Its ebbing surges in the " sestet " roll Back to the deeps of Life's tumultuous sex.'

Here it is seen that the sonnet-wave '—twofold in quality as wolf as movement—embraces flow and ebb of thought or sentiment, and flow and ebb of music. For the perfecting of a poem on this pat- tern the primary necessity, therefore, is that the thought chosen be such as falls naturally into unequal parts, each essential to each, and the one answering the other. The first and fundamental part shall have unity of sound no less than unity of emotion, while in the second part the sonnet shall assume a freedom of metrical move- ment analogous to the lawless ebb of a returning billow. The sonnet- writer who has capacity for this structure may be known by his choice of theme. Instinctively or consciously he alights on subjects that afford this flow and ebb of emotion. Nor does he fail to find in every impulse animating his muse something that corresponds with

the law of movement that governs the sea All this

seems to signalise a return to the Petrarchian pattern, but is never- theless indicative of a fuller development of the English model. The difference is radical. The Italian form demands two parts to the sonnet-thought, but they are as the two parts of an acorn ; the later English form requires also two sides to the sonnet-thought, bat they are as the two movements of a wave."

Now, we should say that though this description applies to the

rather affected sonnet of Mr. Watts, which is given to Ma- -trate it, it is a blunder to speak of any of the finest sonnets of this class as concluding with the ebb of the wave. On the con- trary, take any of the finest of them, and they swell to a higher level in the concluding six lines than they had reached in the first eight. Take, for instance, the noble sonnet of Cardinal New- 171E01'8 on " Substance and Shadow," and notice that "shadow " comes first and then "substance," whereas, if the close repre- sented an ebbing wave, we should have "substance" first, and then " shadow :"— " They do but grope in learning's pedant round

Who on the fantasies of sense bestow An idol substance, bidding ns bow low Before those shades of being which are found, Stirring or still, on man's brief trial-ground; As if such shapes and modes, which come and go, Had aught of Truth or Life in their poor show, To sway or judge, and skill to sain or wound.

Son of immortal seed, high-destined man !

Snow thy dread gift,—a creature, yet a cause Each mind is its own centre, and it draws Home to itself, and moulds in its thought's span, All outward things, the vassals of its will, Aided by Heaven, by earth unthwarted still."

Or consider Keats's magnificent sonnet, "On Looking into Chap- man's Homer," in which the first eight lines are mere prelude, to the strain of the last six; or again, Blanco White's cele- brated sonnet, in which. the level rises steadily to the grand close. We venture to say that in not one of the finest sonnets of any author do the last six lines really represent an ebbing wave. They do represent that in Wordsworth's sonnet " On the Extinction of the Venetian Republic," and that is why we think it one of his less powerful efforts ; but then, in reading of the extinction of anything great, unless the poet wishes to express the very anguish of desolation, you expect to have your mind soothed, rather than exalted. But the reason we insist that in every fine sonnet, even of what Mr. Hall Caine calls the 4' contemporary structure," the last six lines represent not an ebbing, but a rising wave, is that thereby the modern sonnet at its best is approximated to the Shakespearian sonnet, and even to many of the sonnets of "Miltonic struc- ture," all the best of which, as we have seen in the case of Hartley Coleridge's fine sonnet, reach a climax at the close. Hence, in our belief, Mr. Hall Caine's classification does not really hold at all. All fine sonnets, to whichever of the three classes they belong, rise towards the close, and reach their highest point as they conclude. Here, for instance, is a very fine sonnet, classed as of " contemporary structure," by Mr. Aubrey de Vere, on the uniting influence of a common enjoyment of great natural scenes :— " For we the mighty mountain plains have trod,

Both in the glow of sunset and sunrise ; And lighted by the moon of southern skies !

The snow-white torrent of the thundering flood We two have watched together. In'the wood We two have felt the warm tears dim our eyes While zephyrs softer than an infant's sighs Ruffled the light air of our solitude !

0 Earth, maternal Earth, and thou, 0 Heaven, And Night first-born, who now, e'en now, dost waken The host of stars, thy conatellated train !

Tell me if those can ever be forgiven, Those abject, who together have partaken

These Sacraments of Nature—and in vain P"

And here is a still finer one, by the same author, which is classed as of "Miltonic structure," on the right mode of meet- ing affliction :-

" Count each affliction, whether light or grave,

God's messenger sent down to thee ; do thou With courtesy receive him ; rise and bow And, ere his shadow pass thy threshold, crave Permission first his heavenly feet to lave ; Then lay before bim all thou haat ; allow No cloud of passion to usurp tby brow, Or mar thy hospitality; no wave Of mortal tumult to obliterate

The soul's marmoreal calmness : Grief should be

Like joy, majestic, equable, sedate ;

Confirming, cleansing, raising, making free;

Strong to consume small troubles ; to commend Great thoughts, grave thoughts, thoughts lasting to the end."

And now we would ask what is the essential difference of structure between these two, except only this,—that in the former the rise to a higher level takes place with the beginning of the ninth line, while in the latter the change of note commences in the middle of the tenth line, with " Grief should be." That, and that alone, is the essential difference of structure, if we reckon by the movement of the thought, and not by the mere arrangement of the lines. The noblest sonnets always follow the same law of rising in level as they near the complete development of their thought. • Mr. Hall Caine's book is interesting, and contains some fine sonnets which are missing in the other collections ; but it will not supersede Mr. Dennis's, or Mr. David Main's, or Mr. Waddington's. It will be welcomed by the collector of sonnets for a few good sonnets and some interesting remarks. But it is, as a selection of perfect sonnets, inferior, we think, to all the selections which have preceded it; and its theory seems to us fanciful and unsound.