"the gentle Shakspeare."* It will be recollected that he retired to Stratford, to pass the evening of his days. We quote the following sonnet, which appears to refer to that period, partly for the fine amplification it contains of a well-known phrase in Macbeth, and chiefly for the surpassing beauty of the images illustrative of a poet's silent old age; we challenge the poetry of the world against that one line :

"That time of year thou may'st in me behold,
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou seest the twilight of such day,

As after sunset fadeth in the west,

Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou seest the glowing of such fire,
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire,

Consumed with that which it was nourish'd by.

This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long."

One other instance may be cited by way of refutation of the charge of insipidity brought against the sonnet. When Milton addressed the grave appeal of patriotism to his cotemporaries, Cromwell, and Fairfax, and Vane, he chose this form. When he invoked a higher power, it was the sonnet by which he uttered the prayer, "Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered hosts," a note so fearful and so loud, that we can almost fancy it echoing over the valleys in which the bones of the martyrs lay covered with snow. And when, at last, no longer able to resist the belief that he had been labouring for an unworthy age, that he had been prompting to freedom a race that was sluggish and sensual, it was in the sonnet that he expressed his solemn resignation. It was a fitting close for his eventful career. The storm that had risen on the meridian of his life had slowly

* Of all the epithets that are attached to the name of Shakspeare, there are but two or three that are to be tolerated. You can scarcely, by means of any term, add to the conception of genius, which is suggested by the single word "Shakspeare." The phrase, "the gentle Shakspeare," deserves to be a favourite one, because it teaches a truth of deep moral interest-it tells of the blessed union of genius and gentleness, that there is a natural alliance between the highest powers of intellect and tenderest emotions of the heart. There might, perhaps, be no other objection than the appearance of quaintness to his sharing Hooker's epithet, "the judicious Shakspeare," as indicating those faculties which combined with imagination are found only in poets of the first order. Mr. Coleridge applied to Shakspeare the expression "the myriad-minded," ang mugurous, having reclaimed it from a Greek monk, by whom it had been used in reference to a patriarch of Constantinople. As to most other epithets for him, they are as tinkling cymbals.

abated, and while the fragments of it were yet strewn on every side, and the thunders of his controversial voice were echoing in the distant sky, there broke forth at sunset a placid gleam of that light which had beamed upon his youth. His sight extinguished, a hostile dynasty restored, "Darkness before and Danger's voice behind," he bowed his head with the unsoured cheerfulness of his early days. In that spirit we find him in the sonnets communing with a few chosen friends and with his God. To appreciate Milton's sonnets fully, we should refresh our recollections of some of his prose writings; we should recall the fierce indignation, and the bitter scorn, hurled against Salmasius; we should recur to the closing passages of his tract of " Reformation in England"-the most awful imprecation ever uttered by the voice of man, save when it has been prophetic of the vengeance of the Almighty. Then let either of the sonnets addressed to Cyriac Skinner be read.

"Cyriac, this three years day these eyes, though clear,
To outward view, of blemish or of spot,
Bereft of light their seeing have forgot,
Nor to their idle orbs doth sight appear
Of sun, or moon, or star throughout the year,
Or man or woman. Yet I argue not

Against Heav'n's hand or will, nor bate a jot
Of heart or hope; but still bear up and steer
Right onward. What supports me, dost thou ask?
The conscience, friend, to have lost them overply'd
In liberty's defence, my noble task,

Of which all Europe talks from side to side.

This thought might lead me through the world's vain mask
Content though blind, had I no better guide."

Can it be that the torrent which before leaped so madly and so loudly from rock to rock, has passed into this gentle current! How full, how tranquil, is its flow!

Spenser's sonnets are of secondary merit: inferior to his other minor poems, they are unimpassioned productions, of a character which seems to be suggested by the title "Amoretti," prefixed to them. The poet who, as a sonnet-writer, has gained a place by the side of Shakspeare and Milton, is Wordsworth. And when it is considered that all of these have given to the world works of a more enlarged form and of the highest order of poems, it would seem that the sonnet was used as a kind of private tablet to preserve the detached and passing thoughts which must ever be rising in the ceaseless fountain of a great poet's heart. It is the record of

"the sessions of sweet silent thought,"

to borrow from a sonnet of Shakspeare one of those exquisite phrases, which fell so naturally and so gracefully from his tongue, and which justify us in saying, (not irreverently we

trust,) that he spake as never man spake. Let no one look upon the little poem with a hasty superciliousness. We have shown that it has been the retreat of poetic genius of the first rankan oratory for those who have worthily ministered in the solemnities of cathedral service.

The sonnets of Mr. Wordsworth would richly deserve a separate examination. He, more than any other poet, has shown its adaptation to a very great variety of subject and of feeling. If there were none other in the language, there would be reason enough to claim the sonnet as a form of poetry completely naturalized into English literature. The public is at last rendering him justice; the sound of the war that was waged against him has died away. It is his singularly happy fortune, in which his early admirers especially sympathize, to witness the beginning of the maturity of his fame. It will be completed by the reputation of his sonnets, which will probably be the last of his works to gain very general favour. For this reason, we have quoted from them freely, and if the reader desire the eloquence, the pathos and the philosophy of poetry, with all its harmonies, we commend him to the several collections of sonnets among the poems of Wordsworth.

In adverting to cotemporary poetry, we cannot suppress a regret that Coleridge-that other great light, but recently extinguished-did not, in the later periods of his life, revive his early attachment to the sonnet. In expressing this regret, we would not be understood as participating in the charge of inactivity, that has so inconsiderately been brought against him. Of that injustice we wash our hands, for we entertain too deep a gratitude for what he has done, and too firm conviction that few writers have contributed more to the thoughts of their fellow beings. Coleridge has been our friend-our companion, our guide, our own familiar friend. We could not lay upon the grass that grows on his grave the weight of the lightest complaint. We merely regret that in his old age he did not renew the series of his youthful sonnets, because his constitutional habits of reflection and his singular powers of versification pre-eminently qualified him for this form of poetry. We could readily point out many a passage in Mr. Coleridge's prose works, in which some noble thought is illuminated by a richly imaginative illustration, and which would need only the metrical arrangement to constitute a sonnet of the first order. His son, Mr. Hartley Coleridge, who has given proof that the genius of the family has not been buried in the father's grave, might find in such a process of transformation a task affectionate to the memory of his parent and worthy of his own powers.*

* If our voice could reach him, we would commend such passages as the following as suitable material for the sonnet: the fine comparison in

It is irksome, we are aware, to write from other men's suggestions, and the best efforts of mind are those which are purely self-evolved. The mere difficulty of any undertaking would be no obstacle to the intellect that could conceive a sonnet in all respects so adequate to its high theme as the following from the poems of Mr. Hartley Coleridge:

"TO SHAKSPEARE.

"The soul of man is larger than the sky,
Deeper than the ocean-or the abysmal dark
Of the unfathom'd centre. Like that ark,
Which in its sacred hold uplifted high,
O'er the drown'd hills, the human family,
And stock reserved of every living kind,
So, in the compass of the single mind,
The seeds and pregnant forms in essence lie,
That make all worlds. Great poet! 'twas thy art
To know thyself, and in thyself to be
Whate'er Love, Hate, Ambition, Destiny,

Or the firm fatal Purpose of the Heart,

Can make of Man. Yet thou wert still the same,
Serene of thought, unhurt by thy own flame."

In closing our enumeration of the capabilities of the sonnet, there is one other purpose to which it was equal. It could express the feelings of Charles Lamb. Why of Charles Lamb more than of any one else? Reader, if you ask that question, you have not yet learned the dear mystery of those two monosyllables, "Charles Lamb." But if you have been more fortunate, how much of the spirit of Elia will you not recognize in these two brief poems!

WORK.

"Who first invented Work, and bound the free
And holiday-rejoicing spirit down

To the ever-haunting importunity

Of business in the green fields, and the town

the Friend, "human experience, like the stern lights of a ship at sea, illumines only the path which we have passed over:"-or Coleridge's impassioned wish respecting the reception of his works, "Would to Heaven that the verdict to be passed on my labours depended on those who least needed them! The water lily, in the midst of waters, lifts up its broad leaves, and expands its petals at the first pattering of the shower, and rejoices in the rain with a quicker sympathy than the parched shrub in the sandy desert:"-or his bold conception respecting the design of miracles, in the Statesman's Manual: "It was only to overthrow the usurpation exercised in and through the senses, that the senses were miraculously appealed to. Reason and revelation are their own evidence. The natural sun is in this respect a symbol of the spiritual. Ere he is fully arisen, and while his glories are still under veil, he calls up the breeze to chase away the usurping vapours of the night season, and thus converts the air itself into the minister of its own purification: not, surely, in proof or elucidation of the light from heaven, but to prevent its interception."

To plough, loom, anvil, spade-and oh! most sad,
To that dry drudgery at the desk's dead wood ?—
Who but the being unblest, alien from good,
Sabbathless Satan! he who his unglad
Task ever plies 'mid rotary burnings,
That round and round incalculably reel-
For wrath divine hath made him like a wheel-
In that red realm from which are no returnings;
Where toiling, and turmoiling, ever and aye,
He, and his thoughts, keep pensive working day.
66 LEISURE.

"They talk of time, and of time's galling yoke,
That like a mill-stone on man's mind doth press,
Which only works and business can redress ;-
Of divine Leisure such foul lies are spoke,
Wounding her fair gifts with calumnious stroke.
But might I, fed with silent meditation,
Assoiled live from that fiend, Occupation-
Improbus labor, which hath my spirit broke-
I'd drink of time's rich cup, and never surfeit;
Fling in more days than went to make the gem
That crown'd the white top of Methusalem;
Yea, on my weak neck take, and never forfeit,
Like Atlas bearing up the dainty sky,

The heaven sweet burthen of eternity."

We have thus endeavoured, not very systematically, to vindi cate a neglected department of English poetry. We never engage in an investigation of the kind, involving a recurrence to the early periods of English literature, without feeling disposed, on closing it, to give way to a thanksgiving that "the lines have fallen to us in such pleasant places-that we have so goodly a heritage." To the student of poetry-we hope a distinction is drawn between such and many of the ordinary readers of poetry-we commend the sonnet as worthy of his regard and as one of the best tests of a cultivated taste.

The public taste for the sonnet is reviving, and it would not be a difficult task to give it a true tone. Let a selection be made from the sonnets of Shakspeare, Milton, Spenser, Sir Philip Sidney, and other of the earlier poets, and from those of Warton, Bowles, Wordsworth, Southey, Coleridge and others, illustrated with occasional critical notices. A volume might be formed, into which none but the best English sonnets should be admitted. Beside its intrinsic merit, such a book would possess much of the charm of novelty, and, what would distinguish it most favourably from all books of selections, each selection would be a complete and perfect poem in itself. We can scarcely imagine a more agreeable volume for the study or for the parlour table. We recommend the suggestion to some enterprising publisher, as one likely to be successful, and which would certainly render a service to the cause of English letters.