He had great parts, had improved these by travelling, was by much the most shining person of all our young nobility, &c. ---Bishop Burnet on Lord T.'s being chosen Plenipo. to the States, in 1709.

LORD BOLINGBROKE.

The gay statesman was changed into a philosopher equal to any of the sages of antiquity. Lord Orrery.

Even a difference of opinion upon a political subject would provoke, and prove him no practical philosopher at least. Chesterfield.

He adorned whatever subject he either spoke or wrote apon, by the most splendid eloquence, &c.

Chest.

His letters on the Spirit of Patriotism, &c. contain little more than common-place declamation. His Patriot Prince is no better than a mere school declamation, &c. Ruffhead. The wisdom of Socrates, the dignity and ease of Pliny, and the wit of Horace, appeared in all his writings.

Lord Orrery.

A judicious person will easily unmask the political charlatan, and detect his pretended erudition and veracity. Walpole.

It is not to be wondered that his Lordship should harbour such a pitiful resentment, when his character is considered; which was vain, arrogant, and vindictive.

Ruffhead on his calumniating Pope when dead.

He had noble and generous sentiments.

Chest.

He had an infinite fund of various and almost universal

knowledge.

Chest.

His learning cannot be said to have been any other than superficial.

In his youth he had been intemperate.

Tindal.

Tind.

His youth was distinguished by all the tumult and storm of pleasures, in which he licentiously triumphed, disdaining all

decorum. His fine imagination was often heated and exhausted with his body in celebrating and deifying the prostitute of the night, and his convivial joys were pushed to all the extravagancy of frantic bacchanals.

Chest. He resided at Battersea, where he was visited like a sainted shrine. Smollett.

INVENTION.

THERE is a sapient remark which has been lately made, that the moderns have no merit in the invention of printing,* be. cause the ancients had led the way by their seals and other stamps. The fact has been long noticed, and its tendency to introduce printing remarked.

But the merit consists in the application, after the art had been dormant in these, its elements, for so many ages.†

There is the Mercury with his winged hat, and his winged sandals, prefixed to the Remarques of Vaugelas; the same Mercury with the same symbols had existed more than two thousand years before. There was merit in the application generally to a grammatical essay, or any hermeneutic work. But the thought is much more refined and ingenious when with the title, legola‡, the same figure untying his sandals, and taking off his winged hat, is allegorically applied to denote the analysis of those abbreviated words, conjunctions, &c. by which speech is expedited.

See Notes on Athenæus, in Vol. VI, p. 274.

† Archelaus Physicus, the preceptor of Socrates, touched on moral discipline, before his pupil,, " sed ita emendavit, adauxit, et ampliavit Socrates, ut τῳ αυξήσαι εις το ευρειν ὑπεληφθη, inventoris famam reportaret." Preface to Plato. Cantab. 1673. Editor.

Frontispiece to Part I. of Tooke's Diversions of Purley.

AUSONIANUS

ON THE STRUCTURE OF THE SONNET.

THE

HE legitimate sonnet is divided by the Italians into two quadernarj, called basi, and two terzetti, called volte.

As the word quatrain, derived from the French, signifies, at least in English, a stanza of four verses rhyming alternately; it will be necessary to adopt some other word to express the quadernario; i. e. where the first, fourth, fifth, and eighth, and the second, third, sixth, and seventh lines rhyme together. Having already in our language the word quaternary, evidently derived, as well as quadernario, from quaternarius, Latin; I have thought it proper to use it, in the following remarks, in this more definite sense; particularly as it signifies only the number four; is seldom used; and has not been already appropriated to any precise and individual idea.

A distinction somewhat similar to that between a quatrain. and a quaternary, I propose to make between a triplet and a tiercet. The former means three lines rhyming together; on the latter, derived from terset, French, evidently borrowed from the very word terzetto, I wish to bestow the same signification as the Italian word.

The first rude idea of the sonnet was originally borrowed from the Provençal poets; which was afterwards brought to perfection by Guittone d'Arezzo. The arrangement of the rhymes has varied in some degree at different periods, and even the number of lines has undergone some change; but at present they may be considered as fixed. This may principally be ascribed to Petrarch; though he has in one or two instances deviated from the present regular form.

I believe the quadernarj `were called basi, and the terzetti' volte, for this reason: in the quadernarj was contained the' base, groundwork, or subject of the poem; and in the ter zetti, the turn, point, or ingenious deduction. This opinion is corroborated from the circumstance that almost all the poets agree in the necessity of condensing the substance (il buono)

of the sonnet in the quaternaries. But though others of inferior rank thought that the following tiercets might be less attended to, Petrarch and Costanzo invariably bestowed the utmost attention on this part, and more especially on the close.

Mazzoni, in his Defence of Dante, imagines that the sonnet is taken from the Greek ode. That the first quaternary cor. responds with the strophe, the second with the antistrophe, and the tiercets with the epode. This perhaps is more inge nious than true.

It cannot be supposed, however, but that the inventor, or improver of it, was regulated by certain principles: and these principles I shall hereafter endeavour to develope; but shall first attempt to correct an error or two, into which some of our critics and poets have fallen with respect to this poem.

A sonneteer is considered as a term of reproach, synonymous with rhymer, or scribbler of verses. Doctor Johnson considers the sonnet as "not very suitable to the English language;" and to prove this, he selects one of Milton's worst as a specimen, Though Milton brought blank verse to its ut. most perfection, rhyme was not fully perfected till the days of Dryden and Pope. Milton's compositions, therefore, ought not to be considered as the only criteria of the powers of our language in this respect; not but that his first sonnet on the Nightingale is extremely beautiful. Pope has taught us that the different musical pauses of which the couplet is susceptible, added to the change of corresponding terminations, produce a sufficient variety in rhyme, without having recourse to the interweaving of one line with another, which blank verse requires; and which, indeed, is one of its greatest beauties.

But the character of rhyme and blank verse is so different, that what is melody in the one, is monotony in the other. The sonnet, of all poems, requires the highest finish, the most perfect polish. They, therefore, who have followed Milton, in giving it the freedom, and at the same time the harshness of

blank verse, though they still profess to write rhyme, shew themselves completely ignorant of its real nature.

The Italians look upon the sonnet as the most beautiful and most difficult of all the minor poems.

Menzini

says,

"Questo breve Poema altrui propone
Apollo stesso, come Lidia pietra

Da porre i grand' ingegni al paragone."

They compare it to a diamond, that is rendered but of little value by the slightest speck, though it would hardly be distin guished in any other precious stone.

One of our poets, considering, I suppose, that the essence of this poem consists in the number of its lines, has favoured us with a literary novelty---sonnets in blank verse. Others, and that the greatest number, have presented us with three quatrains, concluding with a couplet, under the like denomination. But of these writers, the former gives us as little idea of a real sonnet, as the musician, who plays the second by him. self, gives us of a duet; and the other may be compared to one who plays the first part without the aid of his companion. In the former case, musical intervals may be discovered, and in the latter a degree of melody; but the harmony can never be enjoyed, unless both performers execute their parts together.

Indeed, as though their genius disdained all controul, not a few of our poets, with equal ignorance, have written irregular odes, and called them Pindaric. But if Pindar had any irregularity, it was in his unexpected and daring transitions; for the structure of his odes was almost as regular even as the sonnet.

To return then to the consideration of the principles upon which this elegant little poem may be supposed to be constructed.

[To be concluded in another Number.]