He spoke not to Gertrudis of his betrothal to the princess, which was known only to themselves; and he trusted on his return from France, to be able to release himself with her consent, failing to obtain which, he determined to break his vow of betrothal, which was drawn from him rather than given, by the insidious princess, and when he was ignorant of the true state of his own heart."

Here several of the knights spoke, and delivered their opinions upon the conduct of Count Alarcos in this instance; the English and German knights, as well as the Sieur Linant, censuring and condemning it, while the Roman, Venetian and Spanish knights were for excusing him, on the two-fold ground of the artfulness of the princess, and his inexperience. The Scottish knight, whose name was Sir Roy Bruce, being silent, was asked for his opinion, when he replied, that as he was at that present in the same dilemma with regard to two maidens, as Count Alarcos, he could not give his opinion till he himself had decided how to act, as his love went not with his vow. The English knight therefore said haughtily, that a gentleman would keep his oath, let what betide- that a knight's vow is a knight's life!"

Sir Roy Bruce rose angrily at these words, which he took to himself, and a hot quarrel had well nigh come of it, but for the interference of the other knights; and Sir Henry Percie having disclaimed allusion in his speech to the Scottish knight, peace was restored again, and the matter passed. Sieur Linant then continued his story of Count Alarcos, as follows:

"Not many weeks passed, ere this knight of two betrothals, having fulfilled his mission into France, returned, spending a day at the castle of his ladye-love, and fixing upon the day for the bridal, for which ceremony he was to return immediately after seeing the king and surrendering his mission. On his arrival at court, king Ferdinand graciously received him. The princess was present, and instead of receiving from him a smile of love and lealty of troth, he seemed not to notice her presence, being, as it were, so much absorbed with his business with the king. After the audience, she privately sent for him, but he excused himself with the plea of fatigue, and she became alarmed for the fate of her love.

"This comes of riding to Paris," she said, with mingled grief and anger. "He hath there seen some maiden who hath made him play me false, I fear."

For three days he came not near her, fearing to see her. The third day he had private audience of the king, and told him of his love for the lady Gertrudis, and his wish to take her to wife. The king listened well pleased, and not suspecting how the matter stood between the Count and his daughter, the prin- || he gave his consent, congratulating him

cess,

upon his good fortune, and inviting him and his bride to court. Having obtained the royal permission, Count Alarcos sent a page, and solicited an interview with the princess, with the design of asking a release from his engagement. Angry at his marked neglect of her for three days, the princess refused to see him, thinking that his message implied repentance and a desire of atonement, and so determining to punish him. But soon she rued that refusal, for the same evening she was told that Count Alarcos had left the court for the castle of the Vicompte de Roquebetyn. The king entered her boudoir, and found her pacing it, her cheeks bathed in tears of grief and anger.

"How is this, daughter Beatriz?" he asked with surprise.

Too proud to confess her love for one who cared not for it, the princess was silent.

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Well, whate'er hath made thee weep, I have news will make thee merry," said the king. "We are to have a brave bridal." "A bridal, sire?"

"A brave knight and a sweet maiden are to be soon mated, and are to grace our court. I'faith, when he getteth his fair wife, he will break less Moors' heads for a twelvemonth, I'll warrant me," said king Ferdinand, laughing.

"Who meanest thou, father?" gasped the princess, half-suspecting, yet not daring to believe all her fears suggested.

"Our cousin, the gallant Count of Alarcos, who, it seems, on his way Franceward, was driven for shelter to the castle of Vicompte de Roquebetyn, whose lovely daughter, not satisfied with the protection her father's roof gave his person, took herself charge of his heart, and I' faith, it seems would not surrender it when he left, and so he journeyed to France without it. He hath to day asked my assent to his marriage, and I have

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Not given it—by the cross!" exclaimed the princess Beatriz, with eyes of fire.

"I have, and he hath ridden away with a brave company of knights, and a gallant retinue, to bring his bride."

The princess was for a few minutes paralyzed with this intelligence of the false faith of her treacherous cousin. Her first impulse was to confess all to the king, and despatch horse in pursuit of the recreant knight. But her woman's pride came to her aid. The thought of her degradation was madness; yet she felt she must not make known the dishonor done her, unless she would experience the scorn of all the ladies of her court. would not have it known that the proud princess Beatriz, with all her royal rank and beauty, could not keep the heart she had chosen, but had been deserted for another, inferior in rank. The idea, too, of having it whispered, that she gave her love where it was not requited, was acutely mortifying to her.

She

These considerations, which flashed across her mind in an instant, at once governed her conduct, and without betraying her feelings further, she complained of being ill, and desired to be left alone. That night the deserted and slighted princess slept not for her rage, grief and shame. She had truly loved Count Alarcos, and to lose even the object of her affection was to her sufficiently painful. But to lose him under such humiliating circumstances, was not patiently to be borne. After a night of alternate suffering and plans of vengeance, she finally calmed herself, for she had come to her determination.

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Yes, let him marry-I will wait - let him marry! Then my revenge will be doublebarbed, and the wound deeper. He shall marry, and then, if he love her, will I have his punishment in my hands; and, by our lady, he shall be the instrument of his own misery and of my vengeance !"

Count Alarcos married. But fearing the vengeance of the princess, he delayed bringing his bride to court; and so for several months kept her close at her father's castle, where he lived with her perfectly happy. The princess at length artfully prevailed on the king to command the count to leave his castle with his wife, and take up his abode for the ensuing winter near the court. Count Alarcos obeyed. The beauty of his bride

was the theme of all tongues. None gave her so gracious a reception as the princess Beatriz, who, beneath an outside of forgiveness towards him, and attachment for his bride, concealed the most dangerous intentions. Wondering at her free forgiveness, the thoughtless count was, nevertheless, well pleased, and she managed to lull asleep in his bosom all suspicion. But, my idle romance hath consumed the evening, gentle knights, without coming to an end," said the Sieur de Linant;"if it hath sufficient interest, and you would fain learn the issue of the Count Alarcos's treachery to the princess Beatriz, and her revenge therefor, I will, with your consent, conclude the tale to-morrow night. I thank you for the courtesy and grace with which you have listened to me, fair sirs!"

The knights, one and all, expressed themselves greatly entertained with the story, and unanimously signified to Sieur de Linant their wish that he should, when next they pitched their camp, go on with it. They then retired within their spacious tent, the esquires laying themselves down by the outside; and soon all was still, save the ruiseñor singing to his mate on a neighboring tree; the sighing of the night breezes through the arches of the old Moorish tower, and the liquid gurgle of a brook that crept among the ruins.

finest poets this century has produced, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, Lamb and Leigh Hunt, we can point to but one true poet, who wrote good sonnets, almost worthy of Drummond-Thomas Warton. Warton was a man of elegant fancy and fine sensibility, but without any vigorous imagination or peculiar individuality. Yet Hazlitt, much to the surprise of his readers, says, that he cannot help preferring his sonnets to any in the language. Now, paralleled by Milton or Wordsworth, Warton is feeble; though he is forcible in comparison with Bowles. We annex his very best sonnet, as it reads to us; so much superior to the remainder, that it appears to have been the work of another hand.

Written in a blank leaf of Dugdale's Monasticon.

Deem not devoid of elegance, the sage,
By fancy's genuine feelings unbeguil'd,
Of painful pedantry the poring child,
Who turns, of these proud domes, th' historic page,
Now sunk by time and Henry's fiercer rage.
Thinks't thou the warbling muses never smil'd
On his lone hours? Ingenuous views engage
His thoughts, on themes, unclassic falsely styl'd,
Intent. While cloister'd piety displays
Her mouldering roll, the piercing eye explores
New manners, and the pomp of elder days,
Whence culls the pensive bard his pictur'd stores.
Nor rough, nor barren are the winding ways
Of hoar antiquity, but strown with flowers.

During what may be called the Hayley rage, when the author of the Triumphs of Temper was esteemed a great poet, (so barren was the vineyard of genial laborers,) a band of sonneteers arose, who have deservedly been forgotten. For of all imbecilities, to use a Carlyleism, that of writing weak poetry, is at once the most pitiable and the most reprehensible. The poetic offspring worthily begotten, thrives even amid the bleak freezings of Neglect: but a puny poem, like a puny child, rarely lives long, and only usurps the place of something better. We may speak thus, at the present time, of the attempts of Miss Seward and Charlotte Smith, since we have been treated to more delicate cates and fed on heavenly food. Later still, and nearer to our own time, we have instances of men of poetic taste, though utterly devoid of all poetic genius, who have failed signally in the sonnet, and who are only known from their general connection with literature. The Rev. W. Lisle Bowles is better known from Coleridge's early admiration of his sonnets, and from his stake in the Pope controversy, than from any one other reason. In the latter he failed to gain his cause, though he had the right side, and though Coleridge is said to have transcribed his sonnets forty times in the course of eighteen months, in order to make presents of them to his school-fellows; we can only account for it, by the fact that very inferior

authors have, sometimes, been more suggestive than their masters, and it may have been a mere vagary of a boy of genius. Coleridge's own sonnet, addressed to Bowles, is richly worth the whole of Bowles's sonnets put together. George Dyer, the friend of Lamb the antiquary, (whose character Lamb has so admirably depicted,) the historian of Cambridge, the scholar and gentle companion, will be known to posterity solely through the medium of his friend's original humor and delicious irony, which he so widely mistook. Leigh Hunt, though a graceful narrator, a charming essayist, and a lively critic; a friend of poets, and in other walks a pleasing poet himself, has yet been unable to do justice to his fine genius in the sonnet. His friend, C. Lamb, too, has done his best things in prose. But among the few sonnets left by the inimitable Elia, occur three perfect specimens - that on Cambridge, and those on Work, and Leisure.

Lamb's latest publisher, Moxon, has written some very tolerable sonnets — for a bookseller; though they are tainted with the general defect of feebleness. The Hon. R. Monckton Milnes, the parliamentary poet, may be ranked in the same category. Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Keats are the writers of the genuine sonnet, in this nineteenth century, and by far the best poets. The majestic tone and deep feeling of the first, the learned invention and universality of talent of the second, and the exuberant fancy of the third, can fitly be measured by none but the same standards that we apply to the old Elizabethan poets and to Milton.

Wordsworth is now confessedly the finest sonnet writer in the world, equalling in many sonnets, even the majesty, the tenderness and Attic grace of Milton in a few. Wordsworth's copiousness is remarkable, and at the same time his richness of thought and expression. A mechanical writer might turn out sonnets by the dozen, but of what sort of value, we would inquire. Wordsworth's are admirable, perfectly appropriate, and harmonious as the breathings of Apollo's flute. Occasionally, he blows a noble blast, as from a silver trumpet of surpassing power; but his favorite style may be likened to the music of a chamber-organ, though he can also make the massive pealing organ of the cathedral blow. His range is universal; moral, patriotic, tender, domestic. He is meditative, playful, familiar. We should be ashamed to quote specimens of Wordsworth, were he not really still a poet unknown to the mass, even of educated readers. There are ten times the copies of Byron, Moore, or Scott sold (at least) to where there is one of Wordsworth, who is worth all three.

Of the different series, we prefer the Miscellaneous Sonnets, and next to them, the sonnets dedicated to Liberty; the Ecclesias

tical sonnets are less interesting to the general reader, and written with less power, but they add a new and peculiar grace to the history of the British Church, and ought to be enshrined in the hearts of its members.

The following should form the guiding maxims of the patriot, and evince a noble sympathy with political liberty and individual greatness.

XIV.

Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour;
England hath need of thee; she is a fen
Of stagnant waters; altar, sword and pen,
Fireside, the heroic wreath of hall and bower,
Have forfeited their ancient English dower
Of inward happiness. We are selfish men;
Oh! raise us up, return to us again;
And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power.
Thy soul was like a star, and dwelt apart:
Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea,
Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free,
So didst thou travel on life's common way,
In cheerful godliness; and yet thy heart
The lowliest duties on herself did lay.

Had brought forth no such souls as we had then.
Perpetual emptiness! unceasing change!
No single volume paramount, no code,
No master spirit, no determined road;
But equally a want of books and men!

Of the Miscellaneous Sonnets, two-thirds
of which are pure gold, we quote only the
beautiful sonnet on the departure of Sir
Walter Scott from Abbotsford, for Naples.
A trouble, not of clouds, or weeping rain,
Nor of the setting sun's pathetic light
Engender'd, hangs o'er Eildon's triple height:
Spirits of power, assembled there, complain
For kindred power departing from their sight;
While Tweed, best pleased in chanting a blithe

strain,

Saddens his voice again, and yet again.

Lift up your hearts, ye mourners! for the might
Of the whole world's good wishes with him goes;
Blessings and prayers in nobler retinue
Than sceptred king or laurelled conqueror knows,
Follow this wondrous potentate. Be true
Ye winds of ocean, and the midland sea,
Wafting your charge to soft Parthenope!

Coleridge wrote but few sonnets, but they are among the most admirable of the fragments of his poetic genius. Most of them are political, celebrating some one of his favorite heroes, Burke, Priestley, Erskine, Sheridan, Kosciusko, Lafayette. The remainder are of a wholly personal nature, full either of early aspiration, or maturer despondency; cheerful and ardent, or instinct with a mild yet manly melancholy.

The

two, we extract, are typical of the different traits we have mentioned.

Here is that noble address,

To the Author of the Robbers. Schiller! that hour I would have wished to die, If through the shuddering midnight I had sent, From the dark dungeon of the tower time-rent, That fearful voice, a famished father's cry- Lest in some after moment, aught more mean Might stamp me mortal! A triumphant shout Black horror dreamed, and all her goblin rout Diminished shrunk from the more withering scene! Ah, bard! tremendous in simplicity! Could I behold thee in thy loftier mood Wandering at eve with finely-frenzied eye Beneath some vast old tempest-swinging wood! Awhile with mute awe gazing I would brood: Then weep aloud in a wild ecstacy.

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This in a different vein. It is in reply to a friend who asked, how I felt when the nurse first presented my infant to me." Charles! my slow heart was only sad, when first I scanned that face of feeble infancy: For dimly on my thoughtful spirit burst All I had been, and all my child might be! But when I saw it on its mother's arm, And hanging at her bosom (she the while Bent o'er its features with a tearful smile,) Then I was thrilled, and melted, and most warm Impressed a father's kiss and all beguiled Of dark remembrance and presageful fear, I seemed to see an angel form appear 'Twas even thine, beloved woman mild! So for the mother's sake the child was dear, And dearer was the mother for the child.

With Keats we close our very slight sketch of writers of the sonnet. A late article in Arcturus Magazine (Dec. 1841,) has done him true poetic justice. To this delicate appreciation of the young English Poet, as Hunt affectionately calls him, we can add nothing, but only contribute a hearty assent. The hour has come at last for Keats, that always comes to the true poet. A brother bard, (J. R. Lowell,) whose first volume contains passages and poems Keats would have been willing to acknowledge, and whose own delicate genius enables him to appreciate a cognate talent, has done honor to the English bard in stanzas, that put to the blush all prose criticisms. Poets should criticise each other, or rather be the most intelligent admirers of their respective talents. A critic is "of understanding all compact," and wants imagination, to relish the finest touches. "The words of Mercury are harsh after the songs of Apollo."

Mr. Lowell is further to be mentioned, as the only American poet (we know of,) who has written a number of good sonnets. Others have written single sonnets, or a few. Our finest poets, Bryant and Dana, have written none, so far as we remember. We will not so disparage Mr. Lowell, as to tell him his sonnets are first-rate of their kind. They are not; but they are good, and much beyond the average excellence of the majority of similar attempts.