simply a short poem limited to the exposition of a single idea, sentiment, or emotion." The next step was to confine its form; fourteen lines became the fixed length of the sonnet. Lastly, these lines were required to be combined according to certain definite rules.

Our English sonnets, therefore, are of different kinds. Mr. Caine ranges under the first class sonnets like those of Shakspere. This form is by no means that of the strict Italian Sonnets; "it does not . . . as in the Italian form, fall asunder like the acorn into unequal parts of a perfect organism, but is sustained without break until it reaches a point at which a personal appropriation needs to be made." That is, we have the symbol and then mostly in the concluding couplet — the application. The Shaksperian form is thus:

ababcdcdefefgg,

that is, three quatrains with alternate rime, followed by a couplet.

Different is the form in the noble sonnets of Milton. The rimes follow Petrarch's rule of four different vowelsounds, and the whole is divided into two unequal parts, the octave and sestette. The scheme is thus:

abbaabbal cdcdcd,

though the sestette can be differently arranged. Still, even here it is merely the form that is Italian. The progress of the idea is English. The sense flows on without break from the octave into the sestette; whereas the Italian sonnet was required at the end of the octave to have a complete change in the idea.

Much closer to the Italian model is the sonnet as

written by more recent poets. The excellence

of

Shakspere's sonnet as critics esteem it, is the climax to which it rises by means of the closing couplet. Milton's sonnet has been compared to a rocket rapidly thrown off, then "breaking into light and falling in a soft shower of brightness." The later school, however, aim to write sonnets that shall reproduce the rise and fall of a billow, or its flowing and ebbing. The idea and the verse rise together in the octave, and in the sestette fall back again. The rime-order is Italian. For these three kinds of sonnet, let the reader study a good specimen of each, and compare the relative advantages, say Shakspere's When to the sessions of sweet silent thought (Sonnet 30); Milton On the Late Massacre in Piedmont (Avenge, O Lord); and Keats On first looking into Chapman's Homer. Wordsworth's sonnets sway between the two last kinds : cf. his Westminster Bridge with the sonnet beginning The world is too much with us.

§ 3. FRENCH FORMS.

Of late, considerable effort has been put forth to introduce into our English verse-system the forms known to French poetry (cf. p. 55) as Rondel, Rondeau, Triolet, Villanelle, Ballade, and Chant Royal. "The first three," says Mr. Gosse, "are habitually used for joyous or gay thought, and lie most within the province of jeu d'esprit and epigram; the last three are usually wedded to serious or stately expression, and almost demand a vein of pathos." So far, these forms are not naturalized as English measures; but they are practised to a considerable extent. It requires an immense talent to write them with that ease and grace which they always

demand; the slightest trace of effort ruins them. We have space for but one example, -a Triolet by Austin Dobson:

"I intended an ode

And it turned into triolets,
It began à la mode:

I intended an ode,

But Rose crossed the road

With a bunch of fresh violets;

I intended an ode,

And it turned into triolets."

The

The

The Rondel and Rondeau are also light measures. latter has thirteen verses and only two rimes. Villanelle has also only two rimes, and is written in stanzas continued at pleasure (or as one's rimes last), and made up of three verses each, with a couplet at the end. The Ballade and the Chant Royal are much more complicated. The details of construction of all these forms, with examples, can be found in Mr. Gosse's article on Foreign Forms of Verse in the Cornhill Magazine for July, 1877. There are also examples in Adams' collection of Latter-Day Lyrics; and Mr. Swinburne has recently published A Century of Roundels. The ingenuity, however, which is required for the construction of these stanzas makes it doubtful that they will ever voice the higher moods of poetry. The great lyric poets, like Goethe, do their best work in simple forms of verse, in that " popular tone" nearest to the heart of singer as well as hearer.

INDEX.