all, it is the material and workmanship, more than the exterior form of architecture, which tell for permanence in poems as in buildings. It has been inferred by good scholars that Shakespeare did not closely study contemporary Italian literature, and probably never visited Italy. The sestina rima used in his long poems is apparently his only debt in that direction as regards forms of stanza. As for the Petrarcan sonnet, it was not yet popular in England. That the sonnets were written in his younger days, and published after his retirement from the stage, is well known. Some of them are addressed apparently to a lady with whom he was enamored, but others, as the sonnets indicate, were soliloquies, and others still were addressed to a male friend. The example of Shakespeare has been the great cause of what popularity this form of sonnet retains. It may be that he knew and admired the form of the Petrarcan sonnet; yet it is not strange that, writing as voluminously as he did, and addicted to the use of simple stanzas, as shown in his poems and songs, he should have chosen the "English" form in which to write his hundred and a half of sonnets. It would have been strange, under the circumstances, had he done otherwise. And now, as we have subjected the Petrarcan system of rhymes to the test of music, one can, if he cares to, give a distinct note to each of the rhymes in an "English" sonnet. But the result would be most flat and monotonous, one, two, one, two; three, four, three, four; five six, five six, seven, seven! The sonnet that we quote next is so pertinent to the foregoing remarks that one cannot empha size them better than by including it. It would seem almost as if Shakespeare had prevision of how the Petrarcan sonnet would vindicate its superiority over the vehicle he chose, and in this sonnet had written his own excuse! The italics are his own. SONNET XXXII. If thou survive my well-contented day, When that churl Death my bones with dust shalt cover, And shalt by fortune once more re-survey These poor rude lines of thy deceased lover, O then vouchsafe me but this loving thought! To march in ranks of better equipage: But since he died, and poets better prove, Theirs for their style I'll read, his for his love. And, true enough, whatever the merits of their "style" or form, this uneven but collectively magnificent series of sonnets continues to be read for their rare revelation of love! Shakespeare makes still another apology in sonnet LXXVI. : Why is my verse so barren of new pride ? Why, with the time, do I not glance aside To new-found methods and to compounds strange? And yet what glorious poetry has been written by Shakespeare in this form, as for instance this sonnet! FULL many a glorious morning have I seen Flatter the mountain tops with sovereign eye, With ugly rack on his celestial face, With all triumphant splendor on my brow; Yet him for this my love no whit disdaineth ; Who that is familiar with the natural picture in the first four lines can forget this sonnet? But there are four pictures in it, the morning in its glory, the day in its clouded gloom, the poet's life in the glory of youthful feeling, and his after life stained with the inevitable impact of misfortune, sorrow, and sin; while all are bound together by the thought that love can see the lovable through the sinful, and that man must inevitably be "stained" just as the sun must be clouded. Indeed, the poet would excuse man in the example of the mighty "heavenly sun." So much has been said because it is the editor's favorite of all Shakespeare's sonnets, and yet it bears in the Hunt-Lee collection of sonnets this absurd caption: 66 HE LAMENTS THAT THE COUNTENANCE OF SOME GREAT AND WORTHY PATRON SEEMS TO BE DIVERTED FROM HIM." It is curious how Hunt, who calls the sonnet "loftily beautiful," could put on it so clumsy and mistaken a title. Rather let the sonnet stand without title, for it requires a title as long as the sonnet the sonnet itself - fitly to entitle it! Room must be made for another of his great sonnets which is "true love " in a nutshell. TRUE LOVE. LET me not to the marriage of true minds Or bends with the remover to remove. Oh no; it is an ever fixèd mark, That looks on tempests and is never shaken: It is the star to every wandering bark, Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken. Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks Within his bending sickle's compass come; Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, I never writ, nor no man ever loved. It would be pleasant to quote such wholly charming sonnets as Nos. CII. and CVI., but other though lesser sonneteers press for a hearing. Space must be granted to quote the subtle sonnet which is the masterpiece of Michael Drayton, (1563-1631): LOVE'S LAST WORD. SINCE there's no help, come let us kiss and part, Nay I have done, you get no more of me; And I am glad, yea, glad with all my heart, That thus so cleanly I myself can free; - Shake hands forever cancel all our vows And when we meet at any time again, Be it not seen in either of our brows That we one jot of former love retain. Now at the last gasp of Love's latest breath, eyes, While he was no mean poet, the above is doubtless one of the best poems that Drayton wrote. Rare Ben Jonson, Shakespeare's boon companion, had to write a sonnet of remonstrance before the king, Charles I., would grant the tierce of sack which was one of the perquisites of wearing the laurel of court poet. He wrote other sonnets, also, of which two are Petrarcan in model. Donne, of a quaint and sober piety, the friend of Jonson, follows the legitimate style in twenty-five sonnets, the finest being the one on Death. Samuel Daniel (1562-1619) has a fine sonnet on Sleep, beginning, "Care-charmer Sleep, son of the sable Night." Overlooking less notable sonneteers, we find William Drummond, of Hawthornden (15851649), born, living, and dying in his manor-house; his life an ideal for a man of letters. He uses the pure Italian model so well, and with so much of its native elegance of thought and form, that two examples must be given. If any lines are stronger than others, perhaps the seventh and twelfth will attract special notice in this, his characteristic and beautiful |