I had spoken of Keats’s sonnet beginning
To one who has been long in city pent,
with its exquisite last lines —
E’en like the passage of an angel’s tear
That falls through the clear ether silently,
reminding one of a less spiritual figure —
Kings like a golden jewel
Down a golden stair.
After his bantering me, as of old he had done, on the use of long and crabbed words, I hinted that he was in honour bound to agree at least with my disparaging judgment upon Tetrachordon, if only because of the use of words that would “have made Quintillian stare.”
I further instanced —
“Harry whose tuneful and well-measured song;” and
“Lawrence, of virtuous father virtuous son,”
as examples of Milton at his weakest as a sonnet-writer. He replied:
I am sorry I must still differ somewhat from you about
Milton’s sonnets. I think the one on Tetrachordon a very
vigorous affair indeed. The one to Mr. H. Lawes I am half
disposed to give you, but not altogether — its close is
sweet. As to Lawrence, it is curious that my sister was
only the other day expressing to me a special relish for
this sonnet, and I do think it very fresh and wholesomely
relishing myself. It is an awful fact that sun, moon, or
candlelight once looked down on the human portent of Dr.
Johnson and Mrs. Hannah More convened in solemn conclave
above the outspread sonnets of Milton, with a meritorious
and considerate resolve of finding out for him “why they
were so bad.” This is so stupendous a warning, that perhaps
it may even incline one to find some of them better than
they are.
Coming to Coleridge, I must confess at once that I never
meet in any collection with the sonnet on Schiller’s
Robbers without heading it at once with the words
“unconscionably bad.” The habit has been a life-long one.
That you mention beginning— “Sweet mercy,” etc., I have
looked for in the only Coleridge I have by me (my brother’s
cheap edition, for all the faults of which he is not at
all answerable), and do not find it there, nor have I it in
mind.
To pass to Keats. The ed. of 1868 contains no sonnet on the
Elgin Marbles. Is it in a later edition? Of course that on
Chapman’s Homer is supreme. It ought to be preceded {*} in
all editions by the one To Homer,
“Standing aloof in giant ignorance,” etc.
which contains perhaps the greatest single line in Keats:
“There is a budding morrow in midnight.”
* I pointed out that it was written later than the one on
Chapman’s Homer (notwithstanding its first line) and
therefore should follow after it, not go before.
Other special favourites with me are— “Why did I laugh to-
night?”—” As Hermes once,”— “Time’s sea hath been,” and
the one On the Flower and, Leaf.
It is odd that several of these best ones seem to have been
early work, and rejected by Keats in his lifetime, while
some of those he printed are absolutely sorry drafts.
I had admired Coleridge’s sonnet on Schiller’s Robbers for
the perhaps minor excellence of bringing vividly before the
mind the scenes it describes. If the sonnet is
unconscionably bad so perhaps is the play, the beautiful
scene of the setting sun notwithstanding. Eventually,
however, I abandoned my belligerent position as to Milton’s
sonnets: the army of authorities I found ranged against the
modest earth-works within which I had entrenched myself must
of itself have made me quail. My utmost contention had been
that Milton wrote the most impassioned sonnet (Avenge, O
Lord), the two most nobly pathetic sonnets (When I
consider and Methought I saw), and one of the poorest
sonnets (Harry, whose tuneful, etc.) in English poetry.
At this time (September 1880) Mr. J. Ashcroft Noble
published an essay on The Sonnet in England in The
Contemporary Review, and relating thereto Rossetti wrote:
I have just been reading Mr. Noble’s article on the sonnet.
As regards my own share in it, I can only say that it greets
me with a gratifying ray of generous recognition. It is all
the more pleasant to me as finding a place in the very
Review which years ago opened its pages to a pseudonymous
attack on my poems and on myself. I see a passage in the
article which seems meant to indicate the want of such a
work on the sonnet as you are wishing to supply. I only
trust that you may do so, and that Mr. Noble may find a
field for continued poetic criticism. I am very proud to
think that, after my small and solitary book has been a good
many years published and several years out of print, it yet
meets with such ardent upholding by young and sincere men.
With the verdicts given throughout the article, I generally
sympathise, but not with the unqualified homage to
Wordsworth. A reticence almost invariably present is fatal
in my eyes to the highest pretensions on behalf of his
sonnets. Reticence is but a poor sort of muse, nor is
tentativeness (so often to be traced in his work) a good
accompaniment in music. Take the sonnet on Toussaint
L’Ouverture (in my opinion his noblest, and very noble
indeed) and study (from Main’s note) the lame and fumbling
changes made in various editions of the early lines, which
remain lame in the end. Far worse than this, study the
relation of the closing lines of his famous sonnet The
World is too much with us, etc., to a passage in Spenser,
and say whether plagiarism was ever more impudent or
manifest (again I derive from Main’s excellent exposition of
the point), and then consider whether a bard was likely to
do this once and yet not to do it often. Primary vital
impulse was surely not fully developed in his muse.
I will venture to say that I wish my sister’s sonnet work
had met with what I consider the justice due to it. Besides
the unsurpassed quality (in my opinion) of her best sonnets,
my sister has proved her poetic importance by solid and
noble inventive work of many kinds, which I should be proud
indeed to reckon among my life’s claims.
I have a great weakness myself for many of Tennyson-Turner’s
sonnets, though of course what Mr. Noble says of them is in
the main true, and he has certainly quoted the very finest
one, which has a more fervent appeal for me than I could
easily derive from Wordsworth in almost any case.
Will you give my thanks to Mr. Noble for his frank and
outspoken praise?
Let me hear of your doings and intentions.
Ever sincerely yours.
Three names notably omitted in the article are those of Dobell, W. B. Scott, and Swinburne.
The allusion in the foregoing letter to the work on the Sonnet which I was aiming to supply, bears reference to the anthology subsequently published under the title of Sonnets of Three Centuries. My first idea was simply to write a survey of the art and history of the sonnet, printing only such examples as might be embrac
ed by my critical comments. Rossetti’s generous sympathy was warmly engaged in this enterprise.
It would really warm me up much [he writes] to know of
your editing a sonnet book You would have my best
cooperation as to suggesting examples, but I certainly think
that English sonnets (original and exceptionally translated
ones, the latter only perhaps) should be the sole scheme.
Curiously enough, some one wrote me the other day as to a
projected series of living sonneteers (other collections
being only of those preceding our time). I have half
committed myself to contributing, but not altogether as yet.
The name of the projector, S. Waddington, is new to me, and
I don’t know who is to publish.... Really you ought to do
the sonnet-book you aspire to do. I know but of one London
critic (Theodore Watts) whom I should consider the leading
man for such a purpose, and I have tried to incite him to it
so often that I know now he won’t do it; but I have always
meant a complete series in which the dead poets must, of
course, predominate. As to a series of the living only, I
told you of a Mr. Waddington who seems engaged on such a
supplementary scheme. What his gifts for it may be I know
not, but I suppose he knows it is in requisition. However,
there need not be but one such if you felt your hand in for
it. His view happens to be also (as you suggest) about 160
sonnets. In reply to your query, I certainly think there
must be 20 living writers (male and female — my sister a
leader, I consider) who have written good sonnets such as
would afford an interesting and representative selection,
though assuredly not such as would all take the rank of
classics by any means. The number of sonnets now extant,
written by poets who did not exist as such a dozen years
ago, I believe to be almost infinite, and in sufficiently
numerous instances good, however derivative. One younger
poet among them, Philip Marston, has written many sonnets
which yield to few or none by any poet whatever; but he has
printed such a large number in the aggregate, and so unequal
one with the other, that the great ones are not to be found
by opening at random. “How are they (the poets) to be
approached?—” you innocently ask. Ye heavens! how does the
cat’s-meat-man approach Grimalkin? — and what is that
relation in life when compared to the rapport established
between the living bard and the fellow-creature who is
disposed to cater to his caterwauling appetite for
publicity? However, to be serious, I must at least exonerate
the bard, I am sure, from any desire to appropriate an
“interest in the proceeds.” There are some, I feel certain,
to whom the collector might say with a wink, “What are you
going to stand?”
I do not myself think that a collection of sonnets inserted at intervals in an essay is a good form for the purpose. Such a book is from one chief point a book of instantaneous reference, — it would only, perhaps, be read through once in a lifetime. For this purpose a well-indexed current series is best, with any desirable essay prefixed and notes affixed.... I once conceived of a series, to be entitled,
THE ENGLISH CASTALY: A QUINTESSENCE: BEING A COLLECTION OF ALL THAT IS BEST IN ALL ENGLISH POETS, EXCEPTING WORKS OF GREAT LENGTH.
I still think this a good idea, but, of course, it would be an extensive undertaking.
Later on, he wrote:
I have thought of a title for your book. What think you of
this?
A SONNET SEQUENCE FROM ELDER TO MODERN WORK, WITH FIFTY HITHERTO UNPRINTED SONNETS BY LIVING WRITERS.
That would not be amiss. Tell me if you think of using the
title A Sonnet Sequence, as otherwise I might use it in
the House of Life.... What do you think of this
alternative title:
THE ENGLISH SONNET MUSE FROM ELIZABETH’S REIGN TO VICTORIA’S.
I think Castalia much too euphuistic, and though I
shouldn’t like the book to be called simply still I have a
great prejudice against very florid titles for such
gatherings. Treasury has been sadly run upon.
I did not like Sonnet Sequence for such a collection, and relinquished the title; moreover, I had had from the first a clearly defined scheme in mind, carrying its own inevitable title, which was in due course adopted. I may here remark that I never resisted any idea of Rossetti’s at the moment of its inception, since resistance only led to a temporary outburst of self-assertion on his part. He was a man of so much impulse, — impulse often as violent as lawless — that to oppose him merely provoked anger to no good purpose, for as often as not the position at first adopted with so much pertinacity was afterwards silently abandoned, and your own aims quietly acquiesced in. On this subject of a title he wrote a further letter, which is interesting from more than one point of view:
I don’t like Garland at all C. Patmore collected a
Children’s Garland. I think
ENGLISH SONNET’S PRESENT AND PAST, WITH — ETC.,
would be a good title. I think I prefer Present and Past,
or of the P. and P., to New and Old for your purpose;
but I own I am partly influenced by the fact that I have
settled to call my own vol. Poems New and Old, and don’t
want it to get staled; but I really do think the other at
least as good for your purpose — perhaps more dignified.
Again, in reply to a proposal of my own, he wrote:
I think Sonnets of the Century an excellent idea and
title. I must say a mass of Wordsworth over again, like
Main’s, is a little disheartening, — still the best
selection from him is what one wants. There is some book
called A Century of Sonnets, but this, I suppose, would
not matter....
I think sometimes of your sonnet-book, and have formed
certain views. I really would not in your place include old
work at all: it would be but a scanty gathering, and I feel
certain that what is really in requisition is a supplement
to Main, containing living writers (printed and un-printed)
put together under their authors’ names (not separately) and
rare gleanings from those more recently dead.
I fear I did not attach importance to this decision, for I now knew my correspondent too well to rely upon his being entirely in the same mind for long. Hence I was not surprised to receive the following a day or two later:
I lately had a conversation with Watts about your sonnet-
book, and find his views to be somewhat different from what
I had expressed, and I may add I think now he is right. He
says there should be a very careful selection of the elder
sonnets and of everything up to present century. I think he
is right.
The fact is, that almost from the first I had taken a view similar to Mr. Watts’s as to the design of my book, and had determined to call the anthology by the title it now bears. On one occasion, however, I acted rather without judgment in sending Rossetti a synopsis of certain critical tests formulated by Mr. Watts in a letter of great power and value.
In the letter in question Mr. Watts seemed to be setting himself to confute some extremely ill-considered remarks made in a certain quarter upon the structure of the sonnet, where (following Macaulay) the critic says that there exists no good reason for requiring that even the
conventional limit as to length should be observed, and that the only use in art of the legitimate model is to “supply a poet with something to do when his invention fails.” I confess to having felt no little amazement that one so devoid of a perception of the true function of the sonnet should have been considered a proper person to introduce a great sonnet-writer; and Mr. Watts (who, however, made no mention of the writer) clearly demonstrated that the true sonnet has the foundation of its structure in a fixed metrical law, and hence, that as it is impossible (as Keats found out for himself) to improve upon the accepted form, that model — known as the Petrarchian — should, with little or no variation, be worked upon. Rossetti took fire, however, from a mistaken notion that Mr. Watts’s canons, as given in the letter in question, and merely reported by me, were much more inflexible than they really proved.
Sonnets of mine could not appear in any book which
contained such rigid rules as to rhyme, as are contained in
Watts’s letter. I neither follow them, nor agree with them
as regards the English language. Every sonnet-writer should
show full capability of conforming to them in many
instances, but never to deviate from them in English must
pinion both thought and diction, and, (mastery once proved)
a series gains rather than loses by such varieties as do not
lessen the only absolute aim — that of beauty. The English
sonnet too much tampered with becomes a sort of bastard
madrigal. Too much, invariably restricted, it degenerates
into a Shibboleth.
Dante’s sonnets (in reply to your question — not as part of
the above point) vary in arrangement. I never for a moment
thought of following in my book the rhymes of each
individual sonnet.
If sonnets of mine remain admissible, I should prefer
printing the two On Cassandra to The Monochord and Wine
of Circe.
I would not be too anxious, were I you, about anything in
choice of sonnets except the brains and the music.
Again he wrote:
I talked to Watts about his letter. He seems to agree with
me as to advisable variation of form in preference to
transmuting valuable thought. It would not be afc all found
Complete Poetical Works of Dante Gabriel Rossetti Page 73
