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John Forster.

218-CCCCXXXII. This sonnet, the only one published, but not, I understand, the only one written, by the late Mr. Forster, bears date 'March, 1848,' and forms the Dedication of The Life and Adventures of Oliver Goldsmith (1848), as the title of his biography ran originally. Hence the epithet 'adventurous' in 1. 8.

Arthur Hugh Clough.

219-CCCCXXXIII. One of a set of poems under the motto, 'Blank Misgivings of a Creature moving about in Worlds not realised.' Given from Ambarvalia: Poems by Thomas Burbidge and Arthur H. Clough: 1849. In all subsequent English impressions of Clough's poems the three last lines of this sonnet are printed, not as a question, but as a statement, thus:

'It is enough to walk as best we may,

To walk, and, sighing, dream of that blest day
When ill we cannot quell shall be no more.'

Charles Kingsley.

CCCCXXXIV. From the collected edition of his Poems; including The Saint's Tragedy, Andromeda, Songs, Ballads, &c.: 1878.

William Caldwell Roscoe.

220-CCCCXXXVI. Dated 'Richmond, 1852.'

221—CCCCXXXVII. The pre-eminently perfect workmanship and beauty of this sonnet suggest the remark-otherwise hardly necessary, I presume—that these exquisite productions had not the advantage of their author's final revision. Had he lived to finish the studies in sonnet-form contained in Mr. Hutton's memorial volumes, my selection from his sonnets would have been much less limited. Not a few of these studies possess the mournful interest and value of unfinished masterpieces. I select two examples (Poems and Essays, i, 75):

A WET AUTUMN.

Behold the melancholy season's wane!

Oppressed with clouds and with the rainy days,
And the great promise of that lavish gain
All shattered, which his shining youth did raise,

In misty fields the dripping harvest-grain
Hangs its dank head; the sorrowing reaper stays
From day to day his sickling, chiding in vain
His unused sunshine and unwise delays.
Thus when I see this bright youth aged in tears,
With bitter drops I wash my wasting prime,

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William Caldwell Roscoe.

And sadly see mine own unharvested years
In the unprofited past their dark hours wave,
And the great visions of my early time
Wax fainter, and my face grows to the grave.
Hafodunos, 1847.

(Ibid., i, 83):

M. S.

Like morning, or the early buds in spring,
Or voice of children laughing in dark streets,
Or that quick leap with which the spirit greets
The old revisited mountains-some such thing
She seemed in her bright home. Joy and Delight
And full-eyed Innocence with folded wing
Sat in her face; and from her happy smiling
Clear air she shook, like star-lit summer night.
What needed pain to purge a spirit so pure?
Like fire it came,-what less than fire can be
The cleansing Spirit of God? Oh, happy she,
Able with holy patience to endure!

Her joy made peace, and those bright ores of nature
Subdued to purest gold of piety.

Hafodunos, 1852.

221-CCCCXXXVIII. Dated 1852.'

222-CCCCXXXIX. Dated 'Bryn Rhedyn, 1854.'

CCCCXL. This pathetic sonnet forms the epilogue to the author's Violenzia, a very noble tragedy published anonymously in 1851, of which his biographer, writing nearly ten years later, said with perfect truth that, excepting Kingsley's Saint's Tragedy, no drama which had appeared since the publication of Shelley's Cenci was worthy to be compared to it in power and beauty. L. 5. while: 'white' (1851 and 1860). I trust it may be regarded simply as an error of judgment if I have erred in acting on the belief that the poet's alteration of while to 'white' in the margin of his proof-sheet (which I have had the opportunity of examining) was unintentional. 220-222-CCCCXXXV-CCCCXL. From Poems and Essays by the late William Caldwell Roscoe. Edited, with a Prefatory Memoir, by his Brother-in-Law, Richard Holt Hutton: 1860.

James Brummond Burns.

223-CCCCXLI. Written at Hastings, in the autumn of 1860. From Memoir and Remains of the Rev. James D. Burns, M.A., of Hampstead. By the late Rev. James Hamilton, D.D.; 1869.

Sydney Dobell,

CCCCXLII. This profoundly impressive sonnet-3rd in a group of

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five titled as below-is at an obvious disadvantage isolated from its fellows, especially the 1st and 2nd of the group, which are therefore subjoined (Poetical Works, ii, 354):

TO 1862.

(IN PROSPECT OF WAR WITH AMERICA.)

I.

Oh worst of years, by what signs shall we know
So dire an advent? Let thy New-Year's-day
Be night. At the east gate let the sun lay
His crown: as thro' a temple hung with woe
Unkinged by mortal sorrow let him go
Down the black noon, whose wan astrology
Peoples the skyey windows with dismay,
To that dark charnel in the west where lo!
The mobled Moon! For so, at the dread van
Of wars like ours, the great humanity

In things not human should be wrought and wrung
Into our sight, and creatures without tongue

By the dumb passion of a visible cry

Confess the coming agony of Man.

2.

Even now, this spring in winter, like some young
Fair Babe of Empire, ere his birth-bells ring,
Shewn to the people by a hoary King,

Stirs me with omens. What fine shock hath sprung

The fairy mines of buried life among

The clods? Above spring's flow'rs a bird of spring

Makes February of the winds that sing

Yule-chants: while March, thro' Christmas brows, rime-hung,

Looks violets and on yon grave-like knoll

A girlish season sheds her April soul.

Ah is this day that strains the exquisite

Strung sense to finer fibres of delight

An aimless sport of Time? Or do its show'rs

Smiles, birds and blooms betray the heart of conscious Pow'rs?

From this 2nd I have taken the liberty of borrowing a word as a title for the sonnet in the text.

224-225-CCCCXLIII-CCCCXLV. Sonnets on the War.

By Alexander

Smith, and by the author of 'Balder' and 'The Roman:' 1855. 223-225-CCCCXLII-CCCCXLVI. From the posthumous collection of his Poetical Works, with Introductory Notice and Memoir by John Nichol, M.A. Oxon. LL.D., 2 vols., 1875.

Out of several beautiful tributes that have been paid in verse to Dobell's memory, I select the following sonnet by his friend Professor Blackie, which appeared in The Scotsman newspaper (issue of 15th September, 1874) shortly after the poet's death.

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Sydney Bobell.

TO THE MEMORY OF SYDNEY DOBEll.

And thou, too, gone! one more bright soul away
To swell the mighty sleepers 'neath the sod;
One less to honour and to love, and say,

Who lives with thee doth live half-way to God.

My chaste-souled Sydney! thou wert carved too fine
For coarse observance of the general eye;

But who might look into thy soul's fair shrine
Saw bright gods there, and felt their presence nigh.
O! if we owe warm thanks to Heaven, 'tis when
In the slow progress of the struggling years
Our touch is blest to feel the pulse of men
Who walk in light and love above their peers
White-robed, and forward point with guiding hand,
Breathing a heaven around them where they stand!
John Stuart Blackie.

Mortimer Collins.

226-CCCCXLVII. From his Summer Songs: 1860.

The writer on the Sonnet repeatedly quoted above makes the remark (Dublin Review, Jan., 1877, p. 179): 'We believe we are correct in stating that no sonnet has ever graced the pages of our witty contemporary Punch;' and he adds in a foot-note: "The spell has at last been broken. Mr. Punch, we learn, has at length joined the rank of sonneteers. His first essay in this line, we believe, appears in the number for June 17th, 1876, three "Sonnets for the Sex," strictly regular and Petrarchan in form.' This, as a friend points out to me, is not strictly accurate. A sonnet, the germ of the charming triad named-in which it was not difficult to detect the deft hand of Mortimer Collins (see his Letters, &c., 1877, ii, 190)—had appeared in that journal as far back as December, 1846. See Punch, vol. xi, p. 237.

Julian Fane.

The Hon. Julian Fane's sonnets are close and masterly imitations of Shakspeare's, which, his biographer Lord Lytton informs us, 'he loved and studied, till he became saturated with the spirit of them.' I subjoin an example of Fane's sonnet-work, written before he had abandoned the Petrarcan for the Shakspearian method. Lord Lytton (Memoir, p. 45) questions 'if it be possible to select from the boyish versification of any man whose name is not recorded amongst those of acknowledged poets, a specimen of verse more chastened in expression, or more carefully completed in form.' (Poems, Second Edition, with additional Poems, 1852, p. 27):

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TO A CANARY-BIRD,

TRAINED TO DRAW SEED AND WATER FROM A GLASS-WELL
SUSPENDED TO ITS CAGE.

Thou should'st be carolling thy Maker's praise,
Poor bird! now fetter'd, and here set to draw,
With graceless toil of beak and added claw,
The meagre food that scarce thy want allays!
And this to gratify the gloating gaze
Of fools, who value Nature not a straw,
But know to prize the infraction of her law
And hard perversion of her creature's ways!
Thee the wild woods await, in leaves attired,
Where notes of liquid utterance should engage
Thy bill, that now with pain scant forage earns ;
So art thou like that bard who, God-inspired

To charm the world with song, was set to gauge
Beer-barrels for his bread-half-famish'd Burns!

226-CCCCXLVIII. The 3rd of a series of four sonnets dated Vienna.
227-CCCCXLIX. The Ist of a series of six dated London.

CCCCL. The last of a series of six dated Vienna. 228-CCCCLI. It will be observed that this sonnet contains only thirteen lines.

CCCCLI-CCCCLII. Dated London. A melancholy interest attaches to these two beautiful tributes of filial love, from their having been written by the poet during the agony of mortal illness. 'On the evening of the 12th of March, 1870,' writes Lord Lytton (p. 291), 'his physical suffering was excessive. The following day was the birthday of his mother. That day had never yet dawned upon a deeper sorrow than it now reawakened in the soul of her he loved so well. For the first time in all the long course of their tender intercourse she could not look forward to that accustomed and treasured tribute of dedicated song wherewith her son had never yet failed to honour the advent of this day. Yet she found what she dared not, could not, anticipate. There lay upon her table, when she rose on that saddest of all her birthday anniversaries, a letter in the old beloved hand-writing; which, with a few simple utterances of devoted affection, contained the two following sonnets. They are the last words ever written by Julian Fane. But this golden chain of votive verse into which from his earliest years he had woven, with religious devotion, the annual record of a lifelong affection, was not broken till life itself had left the hand that wrought it.' 226-228-CCCCXLVIII-CCCCLII. From Julian Fane. A Memoir. Robert Lytton: 1871.

Alexander Smith.

By

229-CCCCLIV. With the modern sonnet compare the following piece of