Milton learned the sonnet direct from the Italian, and wrote five in that language. While following the Italian rime-schemes, however, he was not careful to observe any division between octave and sestet. Like Donne, he turned the sonnet to other subjects than that of love, or—in Landor's words—
"He caught the sonnet from the dainty hand
Of Love, who cried to lose it, and he gave
The notes to Glory."
(To Lamartine.)
Compare, also, Wordsworth's saying that in Milton's hand
"The Thing became a trumpet, whence he blew
Soul-animating strains—alas, too few!"
Besides the eighteen English sonnets in regular form, Milton wrote a "tailed," or "caudated," sonnet, following an Italian fashion,—"On the New Forcers of Conscience under the Long Parliament." "He intended it," says Masson, "to be what may be called an Anti-Presbyterian and Pro-Toleration Sonnet; but by going beyond fourteen lines, converted it into what the Italians called a 'sonnet with a tail.'" (Globe ed., p. 440.) The "tail" rimes cfffgg.
Deem not devoid of elegance the sage,
By Fancy's genuine feelings unbeguiled,
Of painful pedantry the poring child,
Who turns, of these proud domes, th' historic page,
Now sunk by Time, and Henry's fiercer rage.
Think'st thou the warbling Muses never smiled
On his lone hours? Ingenuous views engage
His thoughts, on themes, unclassic falsely styled,
Intent. While cloistered Piety displays
Her mouldering roll, the piercing eye explores
New manners, and the pomp of elder days,
Whence culls the pensive bard his pictured stores.
Nor rough nor barren are the winding ways
Of hoar Antiquity, but strown with flowers.
(Thomas Warton: In a Blank Leaf of Dugdale's 'Monasticon.' ab. 1775.)
After Milton, the sonnet fell into disuse for a century. "Walsh," says Mr. Gosse, "is the author of the only sonnet written in English between Milton's, in 1658, and Warton's, about 1750." (Ward's English Poets, vol. iii. p. 7.) See, however, that of Gray on West, written in 1742, quoted p. [295], below. To the Warton brothers, pioneers in so many ways of the romantic revival, chief credit is given for the revival of the sonnet in the eighteenth century. Other sonneteers of the period were William Mason, Thomas Edwards, Benjamin Stillingfleet, and Thomas Russell (see Seccombe's Age of Johnson, pp. 254, 255, and Beers's English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century, pp. 160, 161).