EDMUND SPENSER. Continued. and a couplet, the quatrains being linked together with a line out of each. "This form of sonnet never became popular. The It is surely not so happy as that of the Italian sonnet. rhyme seems at once less responsive and always interfering; and the music has no longer its major and minor divisions." SIR WALTER Page 19. A higher strain of compliment cannot well be conceived than this which raises your idea even of that which it disparages in the comparison, and makes you feel that nothing could have torn the writer from his idolatrous enthusiasm for Petrarch and his Laura's tomb, but Spenser's magic verses and diviner Fairy Queen-the one lifted above mortality, the other brought from the skies!"-Hazlitt. "The sonnet is of the least artistical order as to construction, consisting only of the three elegiac quatrains and a couplet, and it has the fault of monotonous assonance in the rhymes; yet it flows with such nerve and will, and is so dashing and sounding in the rest of its modulation, that no impression remains upon the mind but that of triumphant force.”—Leigh Hunt. "This sonnet is the first amongst the commendatory poems prefixed to the original edition of The Fairy Queen. As original in conception as it is grand in execution, it is about the finest compliment which was ever paid by poet to poet, such as it became Raleigh to indite and Spenser to receive. Yet it labours under a serious defect. The great poets of the past lose no whit of their glory because later poets are found worthy to share it. Petrarch in his lesser and Homer in his greater sphere are just as illustrious since Spenser appeared as before."-Archbishop Trench. HENRY CONSTABLE. Pp. 20-23. Like other of the Elizabethan sonnetteers, Constable celebrated the beauty of Lady Rich and puns upon her name; he praises also with much warmth Sir P. Sidney's sister, the Countess of Pembroke, and his wife, afterwards Countess of Essex. Constable was a Roman Catholic, and was banished for political intrigues by the government of Elizabeth. An edition of "Diana: The Praises of his Mistres in certaine sweete Sonnets," was published in 1597, and his "ambrosiac Muse" received the praises of Ben Jonson. Constable's love sonnets, although disfigured, as will be seen from the four selected, by the conceits of the age, are not without melody and genuine feeling, and we cannot agree with the late Mr. Robert Bell that they are "infinitely inferior" to those of Surrey and Wyatt; but the "Spirituell Sonnettes," with which he is credited, are well-nigh contemptible. Those written by his contemporary, Barnaby Barnes (born about 1569), are of greater merit and deserve recognition for profound devotional feeling. His sonnets may be termed collects in verse. Contrition, adoration, gratitude, faith-in short the highest Christian virtues are exhibited in these devout poems, but the "Divine Centurie of Spirituall Sonnets," describe the inner life of a religious man, and the sentiment expressed in them is more to be commended than the poetry. A similar criticism must be passed on the "Sundry Sonnets of Christian Passions (more than three hundred in number), written about the same period by Henry Lok, which have been carefully reproduced of late by the Rev. Alexander B. Grosart. The weary toil of reading these pious but monotonous effusions is for the poetical student labour well-nigh thrown away. Not a single flash of genius lights up the gloomy pathway. The writer exhibits a command of language and an ease of versification remarkable for the period, but his dullness is invincible, binding him hand and foot, HENRY CONSTABLE. Continued. and leaving him in ignorance of his fetters. There is doubtless genuine sincerity in these poems, but we cannot detect in them the bird-like snatches of real singing for which Mr. Grosart gives them credit. The editor has been unable to find one sonnet, out of the large number written by Barnes and Lok that is adapted to a collection like this. WILLIAM Pp. 24-52. "There is extant a small volume of miscellaneous poems in which Shakespeare expresses his own feelings in his own person. It is not difficult to conceive that the editor, George Steevens, should have been insensible to the beauties of one portion of that volume, the Sonnets, though in no part of the writings of this poet is found, in an equal compass, a greater number of exquisite feelings felicitously expressed."- Wordsworth. "These Sonnets, like the Venus and Adonis, and the Rape of Lucrece, are characterised by boundless fertility and laboured condensation of thought, with perfection of sweetness in rhythm and metre."-Coleridge. "Notwithstanding the frequent beauties of these Sonnets . . . it is impossible not to wish that Shakespeare had never written them. There is a weakness and folly, in all excessive and misplaced affection which is not redeemed by the touches of nobler sentiments which abound in this long series of sonnets."Hallam. "A poet's story differs from a narrative in being in itself a creation. It brings its own facts with it. What we have to ask is not the true life of Laura, but how far Petrarch has truly drawn the life of love. So with the Sonnets. Their dates, objects, and circumstances of publication belong only to the prose of the matter. These history must be looked for within. And when we study this, we can hardly understand, we cannot WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. Continued. enter into the strange series of feelings which they paint; we cannot understand how our great and gentle Shakespeare could have submitted himself to such passions; we have hardly courage to think that he really endured them. Yet reality appears stamped on the Sonnets, not less forcibly than the mythical character upon the autobiography of Dante's early days. It would seem as if he who had formed or fathomed the hearts of the beings whom he called into life with a power beyond that of all other men, had intended here to reveal to us the depths of his own, in a drama more tragic than the madness of Lear, or the agonies of Othello... There is after all nothing more remarkable or fascinating in English poetry than these personal revelations of the mind of our greatest poet. We read them again and again, and find each time some new proof of his almost superhuman insight into human nature of his unrivalled mastery over all the tones of love."-F. T. Palgrave. Shakespeare's "Divine Sonnets" open, as all students know, a wide and difficult discussion. These poems have bewildered some of our greatest writers; they have called forth some of the most grotesque opinions ever uttered on a matter of literary criticism; they have exercised the infinite ingenuity of commentators, and they have led to inferences with regard to the poet's personal character which will not readily be admitted by those who believe as much in Shakespeare's moral greatness as in his transcendent genius. A German critic regards the Sonnets as allegorical; a recent writer treats them as a burlesque on Mistress sonnetting ;" another maintains that the two Loves of sonnet 144, are the Celibate Church and the Reformed Church, while an American critic asserts that these poems are hermetic writings, and that the passion uttered in them is expressed for the Divine Being. "Beauty's Rose," mentioned in the first sonnet, is the spirit of humanity, and the "Master 66 WILLIAM Continued. "In Mistress" of the poet's passion, addressed in the twentieth, means |