September 29, 1917.
FOOTNOTES:
[A] See "Note on the History of the Sonnet in English Literature," below.
[B] Ascanio Condivi's "Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti."
NOTE ON THE HISTORY OF THE SONNET IN ENGLISH LITERATURE
Now that Italy holds such a brilliant place among our Allies during this the greatest war in the world's history—the war of chivalry (which is to say moral and spiritual right) against the arrogant might of the Prussian Octopus,—it is well to remember that it was from Italy the Sonnet first came into England. The word sonnet in fact, is from the Italian sonetto (literally "a little sound"), and the sonetto was originally a short poem recited or sung to the accompaniment of music, probably the lute or mandolin.
Whether its birth should be attributed to Italy or Sicily,—or to Provence, the cradle of troubadour poetry,—is a subject on which the learned may still indulge in pleasant controversies. But in Italy, towards the end of the thirteenth century, it had already become a favourite mode of expression; and some forty years later, in a manuscript treatise on the Poetica Volgare (written in 1332 by a Judge in Padua), sixteen different forms of sonnet were enumerated as then in current use.
But despite the continued vogue of the Sonnet, and its association with the names of such masters as Dante, Petrarch, Tasso and Michelangelo in Italy; Ronsard in France; Camoens in Portugal; Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth and Rossetti in England—to say nothing of a host of minor poets, who, though one star differeth from another in glory, yet constitute a brilliant galaxy—it is remarkable that even now the average non-literary reader when asked "What is a Sonnet?" seldom gives any more explicit reply than to say it is "a short poem limited to fourteen lines."
The rules for the structure of those fourteen lines, and the labour and patience entailed in producing a poem under these limitations, are not always realised even by those who enjoy the results of the poet's concentrated efforts. The more successful a sonnet, the more the reader is apt to accept its beauty as if it had grown by a natural process like a flower. This, perhaps, is the best compliment we could pay the poet; but if the poet is one who boldly essays a most difficult and complex form, in a language which for him is foreign, then we should pause a moment to consider what it is that he has set out to accomplish.
Taking the structure first (though for the poet the spirit and impetus of the central idea must of course come first)—a sonnet on the Italian (Petrarchan) model must consist of fourteen lines of ten syllables each, and must be composed of a major and minor system, i.e. an octave and a sestet.