§ 311. Meanwhile, another interesting form had been introduced, perhaps by the Scottish poet, Alex. Montgomerie,[201] which was subsequently chiefly used by Spenser. When about seventeen Spenser had translated the sonnets of the French poet, Du Bellay, in blank verse, and thereby created the rhymeless form of the sonnet, which, however, although not unknown in French poetry, was not further cultivated. About twenty years later he re-wrote the same sonnets in the form introduced by Surrey. Some years after he wrote a series of sonnets, called Amoretti, in that peculiar and very fine form which, although perhaps invented by Montgomerie, now bears Spenser’s name. The three quatrains in this form of the sonnet are connected by concatenatio, the final verse of each quatrain rhyming with the first line of the next, while the closing couplet stands separate. The scheme of this form, then, a b a b b c b c c d c d e e; it found, however, but few imitators (cf. Metrik, ii, §§ 542, 543, 559, note 1).
The various forms of Drummond of Hawthornden’s sonnets had also no influence on the further development of this kind of poetry and therefore need not be discussed here. It may suffice to say that he partly imitated the strict Italian form, partly modified it; and that he also used earlier English transformations and invented some new forms (cf. Metrik, ii, §§ 547, 548)
§ 312. A new and important period in the history of sonnet writing, although it was only of short duration, began with Milton. Not a single one of his eighteen English and five Italian sonnets is composed on the model of those by Surrey and Shakespeare or in any other genuine English form. He invariably used the Italian rhyme-arrangement a b b a a b b a in the quatrains, combined with the strict Italian order in the terzetti: c d c d c d, c d d c d c, c d e c d e, c d c e e d, c d e d c e; only in one English and in three Italian sonnets we find the less correct Italian form with the final rhyming couplet on the schemes c d d c e e, c d c d e e.
One chief rule, however, of the Italian sonnet, viz. the logical separation of the two main parts by a break in the sense, is observed by Milton only in about half the number of his sonnets; and the above-mentioned relationship of the single parts of the sonnet to each other according to the strict Italian rule (cf. pp. [372–3] and Metrik, ii, § 533, pp. 839–40) is hardly ever met with in Milton. He therefore imitated the Italian sonnet only in its form, and paid no regard to the relationship of its single parts or to the distribution of the contents through the quatrains and terzets. In this respect he kept to the monostrophic structure of the specifically English form of the sonnet, consisting, as a rule, of one continuous train of thought.
Milton also introduced into English poetry the playful variety of the so-called tail-sonnet on the Italian model (Sonetti codati), a sonnet, extended by six anisometrical verses, with the scheme a b b a a b b a c d e d e c5 c3 f f5 f3 g g5 (cf. Metrik, ii, § 549), which, however, did not attract many imitators (Milton, ii. 481–2).
After Milton sonnet-writing was discontinued for about a century. The poets of the Restoration period and of the first half of the eighteenth century (Cowley, Waller, Dryden, Pope, Gay, Akenside, Young, Thomson, Goldsmith, Johnson, and others) did not write a single sonnet, and seem to have despised this form of poetry (cf. Metrik, ii, § 550)
§ 313. When sonnet-writing was revived in the second half of the eighteenth century by T. Edwards, who composed some fifty sonnets, by Gray, by Benjamin Stillingfleet, T. Warton, and others of less importance, as well as by Charlotte Smith, Helen M. Williams, Anna Seward, the male poets preferred the strict Italian form, while the poetesses, with the exception of Miss Seward, adopted that of Surrey and Shakespeare (cf. Metrik, ii, § 551).
Not long afterwards another very popular and prolific sonnet-writer, William Lisle Bowles, followed in some of his sonnets the strict Italian model (cf. Metrik, ii, § 552), but also wrote sonnets (towards the end of the eighteenth century) on a scheme that had previously been used by Drummond, viz. a b b a c d d c e f f e g g, this formula representing a transition form from the Italian to Surrey’s sonnet, with enclosing rhymes in the quatrains instead of crossed rhymes (cf. Metrik, ii, § 546, p. 860).
Bowles’s example induced S. T. Coleridge to write his sonnets, which in part combined in the quatrains enclosing and crossed rhyme (a b b a c d c d e f e f g g or a b a b c d d c e f f e f e; cf. Metrik, ii, § 553).
Similar, even more arbitrary forms and rhyme-arrangements, the terzetti being sometimes placed at the beginning (e.g. No. 13, a a b c c b d e d e f e f e) of the poem, occur in Southey’s sonnets, which, fine as they sometimes are in thought, have in their form hardly any resemblance to the original Italian model except that they contain fourteen lines. They had, however, like those of Drummond, no further influence, and therefore need not be discussed here (cf. Metrik, ii, § 554)