Some ‘Sentiments’ on Sonnets, with sundry Specimens.—Thanks to our ever-welcome correspondent, ‘T. W. P.’ for his pleasant, pertinent and improving sentiments on sonnets. Arriving at too late an hour for a place among our guests at the table d’ hôte, perhaps he will not object to sit at our humble side-table, and converse familiarly with the reader; since, as honest Sancho remarked of the Duke, ‘Wherever he sits, there will be the first place.’ Our friend has a fruitful theme. How many borrowed prose-passages have we seen, with their original brightness dimmed or deflected in a sorry sonnet! Nine in ten of our modern examples in this kind, when one comes to analyze them, will be found to consist of stolen ideas, combined with what Southey would call ‘bubble, and bladder, and tympany.’ But perpend the subjoined: ‘Ever since the fatal days of Petrarch and Guido Cavalianti, mankind have suffered more or less from the chronic infliction of Sonnets. With them indeed the complaint was constitutional, and came in the natural way; under so mild and gentle a form withal, that little danger was to be apprehended for Italian temperaments, except a degree of languor, general debility, and a disagreeable singing in the ears. It was only when it worked its way into English blood, that the virus assumed its most baneful character. Shakspeare, among other illustrious victims, was afflicted by it in his youth, but seems to have recovered during his residence in the metropolis. Possibly the favor of the royal hand might have proved more beneficial than that of the Earl of Southampton. Perhaps he was touched for it by Elizabeth, as Johnson was by Queen Anne for the scrofula. However that may be, we know very well that the disorder is now rooted among us, and that every week produces decided cases of Sonnets, sometimes so severe as to be intolerable. In this condition of the mental health of our country, since the evil cannot be cured, it were a work at once philanthropical and patriotic, so to modify it and regulate its attacks, that it may settle down into a moderate degree of annoyance, like the lighter afflictions of mild measles and mumps. We can always calculate upon the duration of each ‘fytte,’ as none ever exceeds the fourteenth spasm. When the just dozen-and-two convulsions are past, the danger is over, and the offensive matter may be removed by a newspaper, or discharged into some appropriate magazine. There is good reason for designating the complaint as a periodical one.
We intend, one of these days, provided our remarks attract sufficient attention, to publish a volume upon this subject. We have the materiel by us and about us; and as soon as we can make arrangements with Mr. Poh for a puff in the ‘North-American Review,’ or the ‘Southern Literary Messenger,’ we shall broach the affair to Mr. Fields, the enterprising publisher. We have moreover desired Mr. Whipple to write to his friend Mr. Macaulay in England, who will doubtless be proud to foster American letters by a hoist in the ‘Edinburgh.’ There is only one other thing absolutely requisite for the success of the book, and that is the appearance of this article in the Knickerbocker. Befriend me then with your fine taste, renowned Herr Diedrich! and give me room. I shall not dive deeply into the matter now; but for the good of my young countrymen, the labor of whose brains is incompatible with a fruitful development of whiskers, I wish to put forth a page of advice that may save them a world of fatigue. It is common with those who are far gone in this tuneful disorder to set up late o’ nights and tipple coffee. Under my new system, I will engage that they may retire to bed on mulled-punch nightly, at eleven, and yet effect all that they now perform with the greatest injury to their eyes and complexions. But pocas pallabras—enough of this preface: will not the thing speak for itself? There needs no farther introduction for these brief extracts from the aforesaid work:
THE EASIEST WAY OF DISCHARGING A SONNET.
A Sonnet (as before stated) consists of fourteen and no more spasms. They are calm, deliberate twinges, however, and upon a homœopathical principle, the great object should be to get over each one in the calmest possible manner; idem cum eodem. The thing cannot be treated too coolly, for its very essence is dull deliberation. The name sonnet is probably derived, through the Italian sonno, from the Latin word for sleep, in allusion to its lethargic quality. The best mode of encouraging the efflux of the peccant humor is for the patient to have a cigar in his mouth. The narcotic fumes of tobacco are highly favorable to its ejection. The first step then is the selection of rhymes. Fourteen of these in their proper order should be written perpendicularly on the right hand of a smooth sheet of white paper. When this is done, it is necessary to read them over, up and down, several times, until some general idea of a subject or a title suggests itself. Great care must be taken, in the selection of rhymes, to get as original ones as possible, and such as shall strike the eye. Still greater should be the precaution not to choose such incongruous rhymes as may not easily be welded together or amalgamated into one whole by the mercury of fancy. For instance, it would be well to avoid coupling such words as moon and spoon, breeze and cheese and sneeze; Jove and stove; hope and soap; all which it might be difficult to bring together harmoniously. Here the artist, the man of true science, will discover himself. Shelley affords a good choice of rhymes; chasm and spasm; rift and drift; ravine and savin, are useful conjunctions. If you have a ravine, it will be very easy to stick in a savin, but you must avoid a spavin, or your verse may halt for it. This we call being artistical. Benissimo! then. Having fixed upon your subject, all you have to do is to fill up the lines to match the ends, and this, in one evening’s practice, will become as easy, the same thing in fact, as the filling up of the blank form of an ordinary receipt.
But the most expeditious and surest way of procuring a good Sonnet is the Division of Labor System. This has often been unconsciously practised by modern poets, but it has never been explicitly set forth till now. Every body knows that even in the fabrication of so small a thing as a needle, the process is facilitated by dividing it among a number of hands; as to one the eye, to another the point, to one the grinding, to another the polishing. In the same way, to render a sonnet pointed and sharp, to polish it and insure it against cutting the thread of its argument, the work should be performed by two or more. Every sonnet, in short, ought to be a translation. I do not say a translation from the German or any other jargon, but a translation from English—from one man’s into another man’s English. It is absurd for one workman to do both rhyming and thinking. In this go-ahead age and country, that were a palpable waste of time. Take any ‘matter-ful’ author, cut out a juicy slice of his thought, and make that your material. Trim it, compress it, turn it and twist it upside down and inside out, vary it any way but the author’s own, and you will be likely to effect a speedy and wholesome operation. What a saving of time is here! Who will be silly enough to manufacture his own thinkings into verse when the world is so full of excellent stuff as yet unwrought in the great mine of letters? Let us not burn up our own native forests while we can fetch coals from Newcastle. What a pleasant prospect for readers too! A man may be sure then, that a sonnet shall contain a thought. He will not be gulled into experiments upon decent-looking, respectable dross and plausible inanity. He shall not dig hungrily for an idea, and be filled with volumes of wind. With the fourteenth pang his anxiety shall be over, and he shall drop asleep satisfied; tandem dormitum dimittitur.
Not to anticipate farther our forthcoming book, nor to forestall the critics in any more extracts, we shall lay before the reader two or three samples of work done according to this system. Carlyle has furnished our raw material. His pages are so full of poetry that little time need be expended in selecting a fit piece for working up. See now if these be not sonnets which Bowles might have been proud to claim. Each one is warranted to contain a thought; an hour or so would suffice for the completion of half a dozen such. Observe too, that little deviation is necessary from the original, the words falling naturally into both rhythm and rhyme. We commence with a few translations from Carlyle. The initial specimen is taken from Herr Teufelsdröckh’s remarks on Bonaparte. This is the passage:
‘The man (Napoleon) was a Divine Missionary, though unconscious of it, and preached through the cannon’s throat this great doctrine: La carrière ouverte aux talens; ‘The Tools to him that can handle them.’ ••• Madly enough he preached, it is true, as Enthusiasts and first Missionaries are wont, with imperfect utterance, amid much frothy rant, yet as articulately perhaps as the case admitted. Or call him, if you will, an American Backwoodsman, who had to fell unpenetrated forests, and battle with innumerable wolves, and did not entirely forbear strong liquor, rioting, and even theft; whom notwithstanding the peaceful Sower will follow, and as he cuts the boundless harvest, bless.’
Sartor Resartus: Book ii., Chap. viii.
SONNET I.—NAPOLEON.
Napoleon was a Missionary merely,