Among the Spaniards numerous have been the cultivators of Sonnet-Writing, and several

of their poets have attained great excellence in the composition of these beautiful and often spirited little pieces. That prolific versifier Lope de Vega, has written some hundred, though few are entitled to much celebrity. An elder bard, Garcilaso de la Vega, has a claim to superior notice, several of his sonnets being truly elegant and interesting; but none of the spanish poets, in this province of the muse, rival the efforts of Lupercio Leonardo de Argensola and his brother Bartolome. These very amiable relations lived in the sixteenth century, and their productions, though incorrect and inartificial in design, possess many a pleasing, many a brilliant and pathetic passage. Some of their sonnets have been well translated in a valuable monthly publication.* Two, by Lupercio, beautiful for their reflection and sentiment, can require no apology for their introduction into this essay.

By a gentleman in the Monthly Magazine, whose signature is T. Y. and to whom I am indebted for the motto to my second volume, as translated from the spanish of Francisco de Rioje.

I

The sun has chas'd away the early shower,
And now upon the mountain's clearer height,
Pours o'er the clouds, aslant, his growing light.
The husbandman, loathing the idle hour,

Starts from his rest, and to his daily toil,

Light-hearted man, goes forth; and patient now As the slow ox drags on the heavy plough, With the young harvest fills the reeking soil. Domestic love his due return awaits,

With the clean board bespread with country cates; And clust'ring round his knee his children press; His days are pleasant, and his nights secure.

Oh, cities! haunts of power and wretchedness. Who would your busy vanities endure.

II.

Content with what I am, the sounding names
Of glory tempt not me; nor is there ought
In glittering grandeur that provokes one wish
Beyond my peaceful state.

What tho' I boast
No trapping that the multitude adores
In common with the great; enough for me
That naked, like the mighty of the earth,
I came into the world, and that like them
I must descend into the grave, the house
For all appointed; for the space between,
What more of happiness have I to seek
Than that dear woman's love, whose truth I know,
And whose fond heart is satisfied with me?

The first among the poets of Great Britain. who attained to excellence in the formation of the sonnet was Drummond of Hawthornden; and it may, without hazard of contradiction, be asserted, that many of his pieces equal, if not excel, the more celebrated effusions of the Italian school. "If any poems," observes Mr. Pinkerton, "possess a very high degree of that exquisite doric delicacy which we so much admire in Comus, &c. those of Drummond do. Milton may often be traced in him; and he had certainly read and admired him. And if we had no Drummond, perhaps we should never have seen the delicacies of Comus, Lycidas, Il Penseroso, L'Allegro."* To the charms of simplicity in these little poems is frequently added that attractive tenderness in sentiment and expression which usually accompanies the man of genius, and which was in Drummond, from early disappointment in love, cherished with more than common enthusiasm.

Various have been the efforts since the time

of Drummond to excel in these nugæ dificiles, as they have been termed; Milton we have

* Ancient Scotish Poems, vol. i. p. 123.

already noticed. After his death a long chasm intervened in this department of poetry, but within the last forty years numerous cultivators of sonnet writing have sprung up. Among these we may mention with peculiar distinction, Charlotte Smith and Mr. Bowles.

As the singular arrangement, and frequent return of rhyme in the Italian sonnet, suit not well the genius of english poetry, the two authors last mentioned have in general, dismissed such restrictions, still, however, confining themselves to the number of fourteen lines, but assuming the elegiac measure. They have, on this plan, acquired for the sonnet greater sweetness and harmony of versification, and, as their subjects are usually of the plaintive kind, the tender tones of the elegy have happily been chosen, In unaffected elegance of style, and in that pleasing melancholy which irresistably steals upon and captivates the heart, they have excelled all other writers of the sonnet, and have shewn how erroneous are the opinions of those who deem this species of

composition beneath the attention of genius.*

The four sonnets which are appended to these observations, are merely introduced here in pursuance of the plan chalked out in the preface, and with no presumptuous idea of their challenging a comparison with the definition

of Lorenzo.

A

*Since these pages were given to the world Miss Seward has presented the public with a large and valuable collection of sonnets. great majority of these is composed after the Italian model, and this lady has certainly, in many instances, overcome the difficulties hitherto supposed inseparable from an imitation, in our language, of the peculiar laws of this poem. Several of her sonnets are entitled to the appellations of sublime, pathetic and pictoresque, and few are deficient, either in choice of diction, or harmony of versification.