and the expected gradations by which the elegances of thought and diction are disclosed to us in a foreign idiom, will not invalidate the observation; for the pleasure derived from this kind of reading is different in nature as well as in degree from the former. The perusal of a poem in a strange tongue is an effort of spontaneous study-a strong and healthful exercise of mind, memory, and reflection; whereas a poem in our own ought to be a solace from severer tasks, and almost a passive recreation of the heart or the fancy.

It is due to Spenser to give the model of this exquisite but intricate stanza from his own great work, and I take the first that occurs in the "Faerie Queene."

"Lo I, the man whose muse whilome did maske,

As time her taught, in lowly shepheards' weeds,
Are now enforst, a farre unfitter taske,

For trumpets sterne to change mine oaten reeds,
And sing of knights' and ladies' gentle deeds;
Whose praises, having slept in silence long,
Me, all-too-mean, the sacred muse areeds

To blazon broade among her learned throng;

Fierce wars and faithful loves shall moralize my song."

Faerie Queene, book i. canto i.

A few words more concerning the sonnet. There is not a popular one in the English language: there are hundreds in the Italian. Whence comes this disparity? Many of the best sonnets of our greatest authors-Shakspeare, Spenser, Milton, Gray, Cowper, and Wordsworth-are exceedingly unequal in their texture, obscure in their verbiage, and lumbering in the motion of their verse. The Italian ones remarkably contrast with these; being distinguished, even above other poetic compositions, in that most delicate, voluble, and melodious tongue, by exquisite finish in respect to diction, clear development of the one fine thought which they enclose, and the musical succession of cadences carried through to the last

syllable of the fourteen lines,-lines so admirably arranged that the place of each in the tune (if we may so speak) can be almost knows by the ear as well as by the correspondence of rhyme and connexion of sentiment. The sonnet, therefore, has been unworthily depreciated in England, because it has been imperfectly exhibited by English writers; partly from the difficulty of furnishing relays of rhyme to meet at the appointed stations, and partly from the Procrustean model, on exact attention to which the perfection of the sonnet depends.

If it be asked, Why should a sonnet be confined to fourteen lines rather than any other number? I know not that the question can be better answered than by asking another,-Why should the height of a Corinthian column be ten diameters? The cestus of Venus must be of some particular length, both to fit and to adorn the person of the goddess: a handbreadth taken away would have left it scanty, and a hand-breadth superadded would have made it redundant. The quota of lines, and the arrangement of rhymes and pauses, already established in the regular sonnet, have been deemed, after the experience of five centuries, incapable of improvement by extension or reduction; while the form itself has been proved to be the most convenient and graceful that ever was invented for disclosing, embellishing, and encompassing the noblest or the loveliest, the gayest or the gravest idea, that genius, in its happiest moments of rapture or of melancholy, could inspire. The employment of this form by the finest Italian poets, for expressing, with pathos and power irresistible, their selectest and purest conceptions, is an argument of fact against all speculative objections, in favour of the intrinsic excellence and unparalleled perfection of the sonnet.

Our contemporary Mr. Wordsworth (whatever may have been done before him) has redeemed the English language from the opprobrium of not admit

ting the legitimate sonnet in its severest, as well as its most elegant, construction. The following, though according to the strictest precedents, and therefore the least agreeable to unaccustomed ears, is full of deep harmony, strong sentiment, and chastised, yet impassioned, feeling. The Tyrolese, amid their Alpine fastnesses, are represented as returning this lofty answer to the insulting demand of unconditional surrender to French invaders. If their own mountains had spoken, they could not have replied more majestically :

"The land we, from our fathers, had in trust,
And to our children will transmit, or die;

This is our maxim, this our piety;

And God and Nature say that it is just:

That which we would perform in arms we must!
We read the dictate in the infant's eye,

In the wife's smile; and in the placid sky,
And at our feet, amid the silent dust

Of them that were before us. Sing aloud

OLD SONGS-the precious music of the heart!
Give, herds and flocks, your voices to the wind,
While we go forth, a self-devoted crowd,
With weapons in the fearless hand, to' assert
Our virtue, and to vindicate mankind."

LECTURE IV.

THE DICTION OF POETRY.

Alliterative English Verse.

ENGLISH Verse may be constructed according to three forms-alliterative, with rhyme, or simply metrical (blank, as it is called).

"Pierce Plowman's Vision," by William Langlande, who lived in the reigns of Edward III. and

Richard II., and published his poem about the year 1350, is the largest specimen of alliterative poetry bequeathed to us from remote times. This kind of versification is founded upon Icelandic and AngloSaxon models; and neither depends for its effect upon the quantity of the syllables, their number, their particular accent, nor yet their rhyming terminations, but consists in an artful repetition of the same sounds, at least three times in each distich. The lines, likewise, have a certain slipshod cadence, with a marked cesura about the middle of each; and, on the whole, they read much more like Greek or Roman measures than any others in our language. A brief sample will be found not altogether unagreeable to modern ears. Much of Chaucer, on account of his lame metres, is harder to be read than the following:

"Thus, robed in russet, I roamed about

All a summer-season, to seeke Do-wel,

And freyned* full oft, of folke that I mette,
If any wight wist where Do-wel was at inne ;t
And what man he might be, of many I asked;
Was never wight, as I went, that me wysh‡ could
Where this laddie lengedý lesse or more,
Till it befel on a Fryday two fryers I mette,
Maisters of the minours, men of greate wytte;
I halsed hem hendlye, as I had lerned,

And prayed hem for charitie, or they passed furthur,
If they knewe any courte or countrye as they went
Where that Do-wel dwelleth, do me to wytte, T

For they be men on this mould that most wide walke,
And knowe countries and courtes, and many kinne's places,
Both princes pallaces and poore mennes cotes,

And Do-wel and Do-evil, where they dwel both.

-'Amongst us,' quoth the minours, 'that man is dwellinge,

And ever hath, as I hope, and ever shall hereafter.'

"Contra,' quod I, as a clarke and cumsed to disputen,

And said him sotheley, Septies in die cadit Justus,'
'Seven sythes,'** said the Boke, 'synneth the rightfull,
And who so synneth, I say, doeth evil, as men thinketh,
And Do-wel and Do-evil may not dwell together;

*Inquired.
Saluted them kindly.

† Dwelt.

Tell.

To inform me.

Lived. ** Times.

Ergo, he is not alway among you fryers,

He is other whyle elsewhere, to wyshen the people.
'I shall say thee, my sonne,' said the fryer than,
'How seven sythes the sadde* man on a day synneth,
By a forvisne,'t quod the fryer, 'I shall the faire shewe.
-Let bryng a man in a bottet amid the brode water;
The winde and the water the botte wagging,◊
Make a man many a time to fall and to stande;
For, stande he never so stiffe, he stumbleth if he move;
And yet he is safe and sounde, and so him behoveth;
For if he arise the rather, and raght to the steer,

The winde would with the water the botte overthrow,
And then were his life lost through latches of himself."

Our elder poets often availed themselves of "apt alliteration's artful aid" (as Churchill significantly calls it), in their minor pieces :

"The life is long that lothsomely doth last,

The dolefull dayes draw slowly to their date;
The present panges and painfull plagues forepast,
Yielde griefe aye greene to stablish this estate."
Anonymous.

Shakspeare has many fine touches of this poetical seasoning, which, indeed, is seldom otherwise than pleasing, when unobtrusively thrown in. If the vowel i be pronounced in the substantive "wind” as it is in the verb "to wind," the effect of the double alliteration in the following line will be exceedingly impressive:

"The churlish chiding of the wintry wind.”

To show how subtle the charm of exquisite verse may be, let "wind" be pronounced with the usual flat i, and the "wintry wind" will be hardly endurable.

Later poets, even the most eminent, have not disdained to employ this petty artifice. Gray, one of the most fastidious of the tribe, was even fond of it.

* Sober.
Rocking the boat.

† A simile.

A boat.
By his own carelessness.