because as some particular number is necessary, and that particular number must be a small one, it may as well be fourteen as any other number. When no reason can be adduced against a thing, Custom is a sufficient reason for it. Perhaps, if the Sonnet were comprised in less than fourteen lines, it would become a serious Epigram; if it extended to more, it would encroach on the province of the Elegy. Poems, in which no lonely feeling is developed, are not Sonnets because the Author has chosen to write them in fourteen lines they should rather be entitled Odes, or Songs, or Inscriptions. The greater part of Warton's Sonnets are severe and masterly likenesses of the style of the Greek επιγραμματα.

In a Sonnet then we require a developement of some lonely feeling, by whatever cause it may have been excited; but those Sonnets appear to me the most exquisite, in which moral Sentiments, Affections, or Feelings, are deduced from, and associated with, the Scenery of Nature. Such compositions generate a kind of thought highly favourable to delicacy of character. They create a sweet and indissoluble union between the intellectual and the material world. Easily remembered from their briefness, and interesting alike to the eye and the affections, these are the poems which we can "lay up in our heart, and our soul," and repeat them "when we walk by the way, and when we lie down, and when we rise up". Hence,

the Sonnets of BowLES derive their marked superiority over all other Sonnets; hence they domesticate with the heart, and become, as it were, a part of our identity.

Respecting the metre of a Sonnet, the Writer should consult his own convenience.-Rhymes, many or few, or no rhymes at all-whatever the chastity of his ear may prefer, whatever the rapid expression of his feelings will permit ; — all these things are left at his own disposal. A sameness in the final sound of its words is the great and grievous defect of the Italian language. That rule therefore, which the Italians have established, of exactly four different sounds in the Sonnet, seems to have arisen from their wish to have as many, not from any dread of finding more. But surely it is ridiculous to make the defect of a foreign language a reason for our not availing ourselves of one of the marked excellencies of our own. "The Sonnet (says Preston) will ever be cultivated by those who write on tender pathetic subjects. It is peculiarly adapted to the state of a man violently agitated by a real passion, and wanting composure and vigor of mind to methodize his thought. It is fitted to express a momentary burst of passion," &c. Now, if there be one species of composition more difficult and artificial than another, it is an English Sonnet on the Italian Model. Adapted to the agitations of a real passion! Express momentary bursts

of feeling in it! I should sooner expect to write pathetic Axes or pour forth Extempore Eggs and Altars! But the best confutation of such idle rules is to be found in the Sonnets of those who have observed them, in their inverted sentences, their quaint phrases, and incongruous mixture of obsolete and Spenserian words: and when, at last, the thing is toiled and hammered into fit shape, it is in general-racked and tortured Prose rather than any thing resembling Poetry.

The Sonnet has been ever a favorite species of composition with me; but I am conscious that I have not succeeded in it. From a large number I have retained such only as seemed not beneath mediocrity. Whatever more is said of them, ponamus lucro.

SONNET I.

My heart has thank'd thee, BOWLES! for those soft

strains

Whose sadness soothes me, like the murmuring

Of wild bees in the snnny showers of spring!

For hence not callous to the mourner's pains
Thro' Youth's gay prime and thornless paths I went :

Aud when the darker day of life began,

And I did roam, a thought-bewilder'd man!

Their mild and manliest melancholy lent

A mingled charm, which oft the pang consign'd
To slumber, tho' the big tear it renew'd:

Bidding such strange mysterious pleasure brood
Over the wavy and tumultuous mind,

As made the soul enamour'd of her woe :

No common praise, dear Bard! to thee I owe !

SONNET II.

On a DISCOVERY made TOO LATE.

Thou bleedest, my poor HEART! and thy distress
Reas'ning I ponder with a scornful smile

And probe thy sore wound sternly, tho' the while Swoln be mine eye and dim with heaviness.

Why didst thou listen to Hope's whisper bland?
Or list'ning, why forget the healing tale,

When Jealousy with fev'rish fancies pale
Jarr'd thy fine fibres with a maniac's hand?
Faint was that HOPE, and rayless!-Yet 'twas fair

And sooth'd with many a dream the hour of rest:
Thou shouldst have lov'd it most, when most opprest.

And nurs'd it with an agony of Care,

E'vn as a Mother her sweet infant heir,

That wan and sickly droops upon her breast!