Part 13 (1/2)

ENGLISH SONNET'S

PRESENT AND PAST, WITH--ETC.,

would be a good t.i.tle. I think I prefer _Present and Past_, or _of the P. and P.,_ to _New and Old_ for your purpose; but I own I am partly influenced by the fact that I have settled to call my own vol. _Poems New and Old_, and don't want it to get staled; but I really do think the other at least as good for your purpose--perhaps more dignified.

Again, in reply to a proposal of my own, he wrote:

I think _Sonnets of the Century_ an excellent idea and t.i.tle. I must say a ma.s.s of Wordsworth over again, like Main's, is a little disheartening,--still the _best_ selection from him is what one wants. There is some book called _A Century of Sonnets_, but this, I suppose, would not matter....

I think sometimes of your sonnet-book, and have formed certain views. I really would not in your place include old work at all: it would be but a scanty gathering, and I feel certain that what is really in requisition is a supplement to Main, containing living writers (printed and un-printed) put together under their authors' names (not separately) and rare gleanings from those more recently dead.

I fear I did not attach importance to this decision, for I now knew my correspondent too well to rely upon his being entirely in the same mind for long. Hence I was not surprised to receive the following a day or two later:

I lately had a conversation with Watts about your sonnet- book, and find his views to be somewhat different from what I had expressed, and I may add I think now he is right. He says there should be a very careful selection of the elder sonnets and of everything up to present century. I think he is right.

The fact is, that almost from the first I had taken a view similar to Mr. Watts's as to the design of my book, and had determined to call the anthology by the t.i.tle it now bears. On one occasion, however, I acted rather without judgment in sending Rossetti a synopsis of certain critical tests formulated by Mr. Watts in a letter of great power and value.

In the letter in question Mr. Watts seemed to be setting himself to confute some extremely ill-considered remarks made in a certain quarter upon the structure of the sonnet, where (following Macaulay) the critic says that there exists no good reason for requiring that even the conventional limit as to length should be observed, and that the only use in art of the legitimate model is to ”supply a poet with something to do when his invention fails.” I confess to having felt no little amazement that one so devoid of a perception of the true function of the sonnet should have been considered a proper person to introduce a great sonnet-writer; and Mr. Watts (who, however, made no mention of the writer) clearly demonstrated that the true sonnet has the foundation of its structure in a fixed metrical law, and hence, that as it is impossible (as Keats found out for himself) to improve upon the accepted form, that model--known as the Petrarchian--should, with little or no variation, be worked upon. Rossetti took fire, however, from a mistaken notion that Mr. Watts's canons, as given in the letter in question, and merely reported by me, were much more inflexible than they really proved.

Sonnets of mine _could not appear_ in any book which contained such rigid rules as to rhyme, as are contained in Watts's letter. I neither follow them, nor agree with them as regards the English language. Every sonnet-writer should show full capability of conforming to them in many instances, but never to deviate from them in English must pinion both thought and diction, and, (mastery once proved) a series gains rather than loses by such varieties as do not lessen the only absolute aim--that of beauty. The English sonnet too much tampered with becomes a sort of b.a.s.t.a.r.d madrigal. Too much, invariably restricted, it degenerates into a s.h.i.+bboleth.

Dante's sonnets (in reply to your question--not as part of the above point) vary in arrangement. I never for a moment thought of following in my book the rhymes of each individual sonnet.

If sonnets of mine remain admissible, I should prefer printing the two _On Ca.s.sandra to The Monochord_ and _Wine of Circe_.

I would not be too anxious, were I you, about anything in choice of sonnets except the brains and the music.

Again he wrote:

I talked to Watts about his letter. He seems to agree with me as to advisable variation of form in preference to trans.m.u.ting valuable thought. It would not be afc all found that my best sonnets are always in the mere form which I think the best. The question with me is regulated by what I have to say. But in truth, if I have a distinction as a sonnet-writer, it is that I never admit a sonnet which is not fully on the level of every other.... Again, as to this blessed question, though no one ever took more pleasure in continually using the form I prefer when not interfering with thought, to insist on it would after a certain point be ruin to common sense.

As to what you say of _The One Hope_--it is fully equal to the very best of my sonnets, or I should not have wound up the series with it. But the fact is, what is peculiar chiefly in the series is, that scarcely one is worse than any other. You have much too great a habit of speaking of a special octave, sestette, or line. Conception, my boy, _fundamental brainwork_, that is what makes the difference in all art. Work your metal as much as you like, but first take care that it is gold and worth working. A Shakspearean sonnet is better than the most perfect in form, because Shakspeare wrote it.

As for Drayton, of course his one incomparable sonnet is the _Love-Parting_. That is almost the best in the language, if not quite. I think I have now answered queries, and it is late. Good-night!

Rossetti had somewhat mistaken the scope of the letter referred to, and when he came to know exactly what was intended, I found him in warm agreement with the views therein taken. I have said at an earlier stage that Rossetti's instinct for what was good in poetry was unfailing, whatever the value of his opinions on critical principles, and hence I felt naturally anxious to have the benefit of his views on certain of the elder writers. He said:

I am sorry I am no adept in elder sonnet literature. Many of Donne's are remarkable--no doubt you glean some. None of Shakspeare's is more indispensable than the wondrous one on _Last_ (129). Hartley Coleridge's finest is

”If I have sinned in act, I may repent.”

There is a fine one by Isaac Williams, evidently on the death of a worldly man, and he wrote other good ones. To return to the old, I think Stillingfleet's _To Williamson_ very fine....

I would like to send you a list of my special favourites among Shakspeare's sonnets--viz.:--

15, 27, 29, 30, 36, 44, 45, 49, 50, 52, 55, 56, 59, 61, 62, 64, 65, 66, 68, 71, 73, 76, 77, 90, 93, 94, 97, 98, 99, 102, 107, 110, 116, 117, 119, 120, 123, 129, 135, 136, 138, 144, 145.

I made the selection long ago, and of course love them in varying degrees.