SELECTIONS OF SONNETS.* MR. WADDINGTON'S selection from the Sonnets of

"the Poets of the Past" is the third of the kind we have had within the last few years. First, there was, in 1873, Mr. Dennis's ad- mirable little selection, of which we have just received the second edition ; then came, in 1880, Mr. David Main's mag- nificent quarto (also published in an octavo form), containing between 400 and 500 sonnets, and hardly omitting a dozen that any lover of poetry would miss, except, of course, those by writers still living. Lastly, we have this dainty little selection by Mr. Waddington, who has already given us a selection from the sonnets of living writers, which he now supplements by a selection from poets who are no longer with us. We can hardly advantageously compare this selection with Mr. Main's, which was intended to be exhaustive, and contained more than double the number of Mr. Waddington's. But we may compare it with Mr. Dennis's, the number of which is very near in- deed to that of Mr. Waddington's, though the latter collector has, of course, had the advantage of the labours of his prede- cessor,—an advantage of which he has very properly availed him-

• 1. English Sonnets by Poets of the Past. Edited by Samuel Waddington. London : George Bell and Sons.

2. English Sonnets and Literature. Kilted by John Dennis. 2nd Edition. London : C. Regan Pant and Co.

self, as he has adopted some of the titles suggested by Mr. Dennis, which are not used, so far as we know, in any other selection. The chief difference between the two is this, that Mr. Wadding- ton has endeavoured to represent a large number of poets,— about seventy-five distinct poets, we believe, being put under contribution for these 216 sonnets,—while Mr. Dennis has given us a more adequate representation of the greater sonnet-writers, by choosing from them more freely, having given us De sonnets from only fifty-three distinct sources. It does not do to dog- matise too much as to the discretion shown in such matters.

The present writer has often found that a poem which had taken no hold upon his own mind till his attention was caught by the point of view which the same poem presented to another, has become afterwards a great favourite.

And so much depends on the capacity for seizing the right point of view, that a prudent man will hesitate very much in deciding that any poem which a man of good taste has selected, is unworthy of an anthology like these. For instance, Mr. Waddington, who seems to us in his notes to reflect too often indirectly on the taste of his predecessor by specially assailing a sonnet which that predecessor had chosen, makes the following attack on a certainly rather grandiose and windy sonnet of Coleridge's, the sonnet written after reading Schiller's Robbers. "Perhaps the very worst of all his sonnets,—and he wrote, if we remember rightly, about twenty-live,—is that "To the Author of The Robbers,' of which Wordsworth very justly ob- served that it was too much of a rant for his taste.' " And no doubt the sonnet is fairly open to such a criticism. Here it is, as Mr. Dennis has given it :-

"7'o THE AUTDOR 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 screamed, and all her goblin rout Diminished shrunk from the more withering scene ! Ah ! Bard, tremendous in sublimity !

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 ecstasy !"

But if we are to have any respect to the personal and biographic significance of a poem iu such a selection as this, we should cer- tainly desire to have carefully preserved for us this reflection in Coleridge's nature of the "Sturm and Drang " passion of the pre-revolutionary period. Coleridge, no doubt, unlike Words- worth, passed through a very gusty spring-time. Many of his early poems represented a mere wish for an intellec- tual excitement which he could not feel, and this, perhaps, may account for the opium-eating of his later years. Iu this sonnet, the excessive exultation of youth in the capacity for getting excited, is expressed with a good deal of power ; and though it may well be "too much of a rant" for a mature taste, it delineates, with no little effectiveness, that premature rapture in the anticipation of strong emotion not yet felt, which so often marks the dawning of real power, both in nations and in indi- viduals. Taken in connection with the tranquil and musing sonnet of Coleridge's next quoted by Mr. Denuis,—that to the "River Otter,"—and the noble one on " Fancy in Nubibus " (quoted by both the selectors), it seems to us singularly well chosen to give some conception of the nature of a very great poet whose sonnets were by no means the best, or nearly the best, of his poems. On the whole, we prefer Mr. Dennis's three Coleridgian sonnets, as expressions of the poet and man, to Mr. Waddington's four, though we quite admit that in the " Fare- well to Love," which Mr. Dennis does not give us, Mr. Waddington embodies a fine bit of self-portraiture :-

" FAREWELL TO LovE.

Farewell, sweet Love ! yet blame you not my truth : More fondly ne'er did mother eye her child

Than I your form. Yours were my hopes of youth.

And as you shaped my thoughts, I sighed or smiled.

While most were wooing wealth, or gaily swerving

To pleasure's secret haunts, and some apart Stood strong in pride, self-conscious of deserving, To you I gave my whole, weak, wishing hear:.

And when I met the maid that realised Your fair creations, and had won her kindness,

Say but for her if aught on earth I prized !

Your dream alone I dreamt, and caught your blindness.

0 grief !—but farewell Love ! I will go play me

With thoughts that please me less, and less betray me."

Mr. Waddington attacks, or seems to attack, his prelece ,sor again, in his note on the sonnets taken from Charles Lamb, from whom Mr. Dennis has selected but one sonnet, a sonnet which is, we think, far the most characteristic of Lamb that he could have selected, the one on "Leisure" :— " LEISURE.

They talk of Time and of Time's galling yoke, That like a millstone 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 my spirits heti' broke— I'd drink of Time's rich cup, and never surfeit, Fling in more days than went to make the gem That crowned the white top of Methusalem ; Yea, on my weak neck take and never forfeit, Like Atlas bearing up the dainty sky, The heaven sweet burden of eternity."

On this sonnet, Mr. Waddington, who rejects it, writes, in com- paring it with one chosen by himself, called "Innocence,"—" It is less objectionable than his sonnet on Leisure,' with its c)mic ' white top of Methusalem,' and the dull, unpoetic lines,

"Which only works and business can redress,"

" Improbus Labor; which my spirits bath broke,"

where the effect of the lines criticised—which stand far apart in the original—is by no means fairly given. To us, this sonnet represents Lamb's gentle but rather slipshod muse most admirably, while the whole sonnet has just that hare-brained vivacity and humour about it which brought Lamb nearest to the true poetic mood, which he hardly ever quite reached. We deny entirely that either of the lines criticised is, in its context, lull or unpoetic. The former line is intended ironically, and says very aptly what it means. The second line has in it just the freakish kick-up of a horse, as he gets into his field out of the shafts, and is one of the best and most characteristic lines in the sonnet. Mr. Waddington's two first specimens from Lamb are marked by that simplesse, rather than simplicity, which Lamb affected when he did not give rein to his humour ; while the third, the one on the proper names of English girls, is a mere oddity, without any of the racy, personal humour of the one on " Leisure."

But to compare the two selections on higher ground :—Mr. Waddington gives us thirteen of Shakespeare's sonnets, and Mr. Dennis twenty-nine. Of course, the larger selection con- tains many exquisite sonnets which are necessarily omitted in the smaller,—amongst them the noble sonnet ending :-

" This thought is as a death, which cannot choose

But weep to have that which it fears to lose."

Still more do we regret the paucity of Mr. Waddington's selections from Wordsworth's sonnets, of which he gives us sixteen, while Mr. Dennis gives us twenty-six. Some sonnets which we deem amongst Wordsworth's noblest poems are given by neither of them ; for example, the sonnet beginning, " Such age, how beautiful," in which there is not a word which does not reflect the exquisite peace and delicacy of the picture, and again, the grand one named " Mutability," and the still more majestic one beginning, " Methought I saw the footsteps of a throne." And by so much as Mr. Dennis's selection makes more of Wordsworth's sonnets than Mr. Waddington's, by that much we prefer it. Where Mr. Waddington's selection differs from Mr. Dennis's, we usually concur with the latter. For example, Wordsworth's controversial sonnet against a poet who "must laugh by precept only, and shed tears by rule," is certainly far from worthy of a place amongst Wordsworth's sixteen best sonnets, while to omit from that number the magnificent sonnet on Toussaint l'Ouverture must surely have been a mere blunder of oversight. Again, we greatly prefer Mr. Dennis's selection from David Gray's exquisite sonnets, to Mr. Waddington's meagre, and not, in our opinion, happily chosen one. The truth is, we suspect, that Mr. Waddington's taste in poetry is very different from that which, with Mr. Dennis, we ourselves approve. His extravagant praise, for in- stance, of a sonnet by William Drummond of Hawthornden, on " Mary Magdalen,"—a most artificial, affected, and sensuous performance,—suggests how wide this difference roust be. Mr. Dennis's selection, on the other hand, from William Drummond's sonnets is a very fine one.

Mr. Waddington, no doubt, means the strong point of his selection to be the number of the poets whom he has included, of whom over twenty are not represented at all by Mr. Dennis. And here he has now and then, no doubt, done us a great service; the first selected from Burns is beautiful,—for the second we do not care,—Sir Aubrey de Vere's are both fine sonnets, and so is Alice Mary Blunt's ; but most of his new names do not add what we should hope to the volume. The sonnet, for instance, by Henry Francis Cary, is formal and conventional, and, to our minds, quite unworthy of a place in such a selection ; nor can we say we admire any one of the five by the Rev. Charles Strong at all sufficiently to have desired to see them placed amongst the 200 finest sonnets of our past literature. Then, again, he gives us but one by a most lovely poet, John Clare, who has written other sonnets, con- tained in Mr. Dennis's selection, more beautiful even than the beautiful one Mr. Waddington has preserved ; and while we are grateful for the first of George Eliot's, which is a gem, we regret that the second one, which is utterly spoiled by its last pretentiously enigmatic line, should have been retained,—like a jewel with a bad flaw in it,—in any anthology. Why, by the way, has neither selector, nor even Mr. Main in his much larger collection, given us Shelley's most characteristic and im- posing sonnet, " Lift not the painted veil which those who live call life " ?

On the whole, if we had to choose between the two smaller selections, we should choose Mr. Dennis's, as representing the finer taste, as well as expressing more characteristically the power of English literature in this department of poetry. Mr. Waddington's, nevertheless, is a most dainty volume, full of telling sonnets, and we might fairly assure the lover of poetry that "both would be best."