THOMAS RUSSELL. Continued. gratified by those who are contented to place themselves and sing at their feet, than by others whose only ambition is to have a chair of their own."-Rev. H. F. Cary. The Rev. Thomas Russell was a friend of Walter Birch, who is himself best known to the present generation as the friend of Walter Savage Landor. In the Simonidea, Landor notices this sonnet as 66 a poem on Philoctetes by a Mr. Russell, which would authorise him to join the shades of Sophocles and Euripides." Robert Landor states that Russell left only two sonnets, and died of a broken heart. This is a mistake. Russell left sixteen or seventeen original sonnets, and also translated several from the German, Italian, and Portuguese. He was a Fellow of New College, Oxford, and died at Bristol, of a broken heart possibly, but according to his biographer, of a more frequent cause of death-consumption. The sonnet on Philoctetes is by far the finest of his poems, and there is nothing in the remaining sonnets, which were published at Oxford in 1789, to justify Southey's youthful eulogy of the author, whom he terms "the best English sonnet-writer." WILLIAM WORDS- Pp. 94-119. "The sonnets (with the exception of the Ecclesiastical series) bear witness more directly, perhaps, than any of Mr. Wordsworth's other writings to a principle which he has asserted of poetical, as strongly as Lord Bacon of physical philosophy-the principle that the Muse is to be the servant and interpreter of Nature. Some fact, transaction, or natural object, gives birth to almost every one of them. He does not search his mind for subjects; he goes forth into the world and they present themselves. His mind lies open to nature with an ever wakeful susceptibility, and an impulse from without will send it far into the regions of thought; but it seldom goes to work upon itself WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. Continued. The sonnets have not, like many of the other poems, peculiarities of manner which whilst they charm one reader will baulk another; they are highly finished compositions, distinguished, as regards the diction, only by an aptitude which can hardly fail to be approved, whatever may be the particular taste of the reader; and they are at the same time so varied in subject and sentiment, that specimens might be adduced from them of almost every kind of serious poetry to which the sonnet can lend itself."-Sir Henry Taylor. Wordsworth, the greatest of modern poets, is perhaps the greatest of English sonnet writers. Not only has he composed a larger number of sonnets than any other of our poets, he has also written more that are of first-rate excellence. There is no intensity of passion in Wordsworth's sonnets; and herein he differs from Shakespeare, and from Mrs. Browning for whose sonnets the reader may feel an enthusiastic admiration that Wordsworth's thoughtful and calm verse rarely excites; neither has he attained the "dignified simplicity" which marks the sonnets of Milton; but for purity of language, for variety and strength of thought, for the curiosa felicitas of poetical diction, for the exquisite skill with which he associates the emotions of the mind and the aspects of nature, we know of no sonnet writer who can take precedence of Wordsworth. In his larger poems his language is sometimes slovenly, and occasionally, as Sir Walter Scott said, he chooses to crawl on all-fours; but this is rarely the case in the sonnets, and though he wrote upwards of four hundred, there are few, save those on the Punishment of Death and some of those called Ecclesiastical (for neither argument nor dogma find a fitting place in verse) that we could willingly part with. Wordsworth's belief that the language of the common people may be used as the language of poetry was totally inoperative when he composed a sonnet. He wrote at such WILLIAM Continued. JOSEPH BLANCO WHITE. Page 123. times in the best diction he could command, and the language like the thought is that of a great master. The sonnets embrace almost every theme, except the one to which this branch of the poetical art has been usually dedicated. Some of the noblest are consecrated to liberty, some describe with incomparable felicity the personal feelings of the writer; some might be termed simply descriptive, were it not that even these are raised above the rank of descriptive poetry by the pure and lofty imagination of the poet. The light that never was on sea or land pervades the humblest of these pieces, and throughout them there is inculcated a cheerful, because divine, philosophy. From such a store-house of poetical wealth it is difficult to draw samples, and no student of Wordsworth can gain an adequate idea of his genius as a sonnet writer from the poems we have selected. All that can be said is, that the twenty-six sonnets comprised in this volume rank with the best he produced. There are none better than these, there are many that are nearly, or perhaps quite, as good. S. T. Coleridge declared that this sonnet was the finest and most grandly conceived in our language; "at least," he added, "it is only in Milton and in Wordsworth that I remember any rival." Leigh Hunt's opinion is equally favourable. "In point of thought," he writes, "the sonnet stands supreme, perhaps above all in any language." Mr. Forster in an interesting account of Blanco White (Walter Savage Landor, A Biography, Vol. ii., p. 517) observes, "Perhaps he will be remembered longest for the extraordinary intellectual achievement of having so mastered our language, sometime after he had passed middle life, as to have made it thoroughly his own. He literally recast his mind in an English mould; after a few years never thought but in English; wrote an admirable English style, strong and simple; and is the author of an English sonnet, called “ "Night JOSEPH BLANCO. WHITE. Continued. and Death," of surpassing beauty of expression and subtlety as well as grandeur of thought.” ROBERT SOUTHEY. Page 124. Southey, illustrious in so many ways, and deserving, perhaps, even as a poet, more fame than he has won, judged rightly in saying that very few of his sonnets are of any merit.. When he adds, "That upon Winter," is, "perhaps the only thoroughly good one," it is evident that he estimated it too highly. It will be safer to say that it is the best Southey has written. LORD THURLOW. Page 127. FELICIA D. "A sonnet of stately and thoughtful beauty, one which no anthology of English Sonnets ought henceforward ever to omit." -Archbishop Trench. In spite of this high eulogium, it is not without some hesitation that the editor has given to this sonnet a place in his selection. The thought expressed is doubtless worthy of commemoration, and the conclusion is admirable; but some of the lines, as for example, the ninth and tenth, are meanly prosaic. It has been well said "the sonnet is a little thing, therefore a little thing serves to ruin it.” The personal charm exercised by Mrs. Hemans is acknowledged by everyone who knew her. She was a lovely woman in misPp. 140--142. fortune, a woman, too, of high culture, of refined sentiment, and of great natural ability. The facility with which she transmitted her feelings into graceful verse was extraordinary, and many of her short poems, thanks in a measure to the music which preserves them alive, are known to the present generation. Probably a number of her lyrics will always be popular with a certain class of readers, and some of them deserve general admiration; FELICIA D. HARTLEY COLERIDGE. Pp.151-160. but the writer's more pretentious works are already well nigh forgotten. Wordsworth said, finely, that language or style was the incarnation of thought, and that it was unphilosophical to call it the dress. But in the case of Mrs. Hemans the thought is so frequently unsubstantial that such a term cannot be applied to it. We have the dress, elegant and tasteful enough sometimes, but with very little beneath it. Mrs. Hemans produced a large number of sonnets, chiefly of the illegitimate order. The "Sabbath Sonnet," the last she wrote, was composed a few days before her death. "The influence of Wordsworth's peculiar genius is more discernible in the productions of Hartley Coleridge than that of his father, more especially in the sonnets which I venture to think may sustain a comparison with those of the elder writer. Their port is indeed less majestic, they have less dignity of purpose, and, particularly in combination, are less weighty in effect; but, taken as single compositions, they are not less graceful, or less fraught with meaning; they possess a softer, if not a deeper, pathos; they have at least as easy a flow and as perfect an arrangement. . Indeed, if I am not wholly . mistaken, there will be found among these sonnets models of composition comparable to those of the greatest masters."Rev. Derwent Coleridge. This is just criticism. If Hartley Coleridge retains a permanent place amongst our poets, it will be as a writer of sonnets. His genius is unquestionable, but his power is not great, and sweetness and tenderness are more evident in his poems than strength. Within the narrow limits of the sonnet, however, he is never weak, never careless, and the passionate emotion which has prompted many of these pieces is accompanied by a perfect mastery of form. |