The most celebrated among the later Pindaric Odes formed on similar principles are Gray’s odes The Progress of Poesy (Poets, x. 218) and The Bard (ib. 220). References to other odes are given in Metrik, ii, § 527.
In dramatic poetry M. Arnold attempted to imitate the structure of the different parts of the Chorus of Greek tragedy in his fragment Antigone (p. 211), and more strictly in his tragedyMerope (p. 350). It would lead us too far, however, to give a detailed description of the strophic forms occurring there.
With regard to other lyrical pieces in masques and operas (also of an unequal-membered strophic structure) and with regard to cantata-stanzas and other stanzas differing among themselves, in other poems which cannot be further discussed here, we must refer the reader to §§ 528–31 of our larger work.
CHAPTER IX
THE SONNET
§ 306. Origin of the English Sonnet. In early Provençal and French poetry certain lyric poems are found which were called Son, sometimes Sonet, although they had neither a fixed extent, nor a regulated form. But the Sonnet[197] in its exact structure was introduced into French, Spanish, and English poetry from Italian, and as a rule on the model, or at least under the influence, of Petrarch’s sonnets. In English literature, however, the sonnet in part had a more independent development than it had in other countries, and followed its Italian model at first only in the number and nature of the verses used in it. Generally speaking, the Italian and the English sonnet can be defined as a short poem, complete in itself, consisting of fourteen five-foot (or eleven-syllabled) iambic lines, in which a single theme, a thought or series of thoughts, is treated and brought to a conclusion. In the rhyme-arrangement and the structure of the poem, however, the English sonnet, as a rule, deviates greatly from its Italian model, and the examples in which its strict form is followed are comparatively rare.
§ 307. The Italian Sonnet consists of two parts distinguished from each other by difference of rhymes, each of the parts having its own continuous system of rhymes. The first part is formed of two quatrains (basi), i.e. stanzas of four lines; the second of two terzetti (volte), stanzas of three lines. The two quatrains have only two, the terzetti two or three rhymes.
The usual rhyme-arrangement in the quatrains is a b b a a b b a, more rarely a b b a b a a b (rima chiusa). There are, however, also sonnets with alternate rhymes, a b a b a b a b or a b a b b a b a (rima alternata); but the combination of the two kinds of rhyme, a b a b b a a b or a b b a a b a b (rima mista), was unusual. In the second part, consisting of six lines, the order of rhymes is not so definitely fixed. When only two rhymes are used, which the old metrists, as Quadrio (1695–1756), the Italian critic and historian of literature, regarded as the only legitimate method, the usual sequence is c d c d c d (crossed rhymes, rima alternata). This form occurs 112 times in those of Petrarch’s[198] sonnets which have only two rhymes in the last part, their number being 124; in the remaining twelve sonnets the rhyme-system is either c d d c d c or c d d d c c. In the second part of Petrarch’s sonnets three rhymes are commoner than two. In most cases we have the formula c d e c d e, which occurs in 123 sonnets, while the scheme c d e d c e is met with only in 78 sonnets. The three chief forms, then, of Petrarch’s sonnet may be given with Tomlinson[199] as built on the following models:
a b b a a b b a c d e c d e, a b b a a b b a c d c d c d,
a b b a a b b a c d e d c e.