(WITH A CRITICAL NOTE.)

BY EGERTON WEBBE.

"And do you call this a sonnet, sir?" I hear some reader say, with his fingers resting on the twentieth line: "I hope I know what a sonnet is; why, sir, sonnet is the Greek for fourteen, to be sure; and your lines must always count just two over the dozen, or you make no sonnet of it; everybody knows this same."

Have patience, good reader, while I proceed to convict thee of impertinence. No man is so happy of an occasion of correcting others as he who has recently learnt something. Now, behold! I have recently learnt this,—that the Italian poets, when they want to be funny, and at the same time to sonnetteer, (new verb,) outrage the gentle proportions of Poetry's fairest daughter—her whose delicate form took captive the soul of Petrarch—by ignominiously affixing to her hinder parts that always unseemly appendage—a tail, which is no less a tail, and therefore no less disgraceful to her who wears it, for being called, in the more courtly language of those original conspirators, coda (from Latin cauda, observe;—see your dictionary.) This have I learnt, astonished reader, by poking into the Parnasso Italiano, as you may do, and there, beholding these prodigious baboon sonnets in full tail,—for verily they resemble not the true birth more than monkeys resemble men, and that is as much as to say they do resemble them—in such a manner as to make you laugh at the difference. But herein those Italian conspirators, who hatched the infernal plot, gained their end; they diverted their readers at the expense of poetical decency. Now, however, seeing that this second ("caudatus") species of the sonnet has a real and lively existence in the land that gave it birth; and seeing that we have freely imported from that land the other, the non-caudatus, species, (for I suppose all young ladies and gentlemen know to what country they are indebted for the fourteen-lined happiness,) it seems but fair that we should improve our national stock by bringing over the later breed, and applying it to the same uses as our neighbours.

The above is the first avowed specimen of the tailed sonnet, I believe, that has ever appeared in English; and I hope it may operate as a useful example to better poets, and induce them to clap tails continually to their sonnets, whenever they intend fun.[87] I say it is the first avowed specimen, because there exists one (unsuspected) among the poems of no less a man than John Milton, who found nothing admirable in any language but he quickly transplanted it. That most accomplished of modern poetical critics, Leigh Hunt, was the first who discovered the fact, and gave the alarm to Milton's editors; he showed very clearly that that short poem, "On the New Forcers of conscience under the Long Parliament," which is always published, ignorantly, among the miscellaneous pieces, is neither more nor less than a comic sonnet with the Italian tail to it. If the reader will take the trouble to look into his Milton, he will find that this poem down to the line,

"Your plots and packing worse than those of Trent,"

forms a regular fourteen-liner; then comes the little adjunct,—"That so the parliament,"—which, rhyming with the foregoing, gains the right of introducing a new couplet; then another, rhyming with that, and lending to a second supernumerary. In this manner the Italian poets link on couplet after couplet without end, and you may see some of their sonnets with tails stretching through several pages; nay, for aught I know, you might have a sonnet in two volumes octavo, without exceeding your licence. But it must always be constructed on the above plan, with links of a like thickness. By the bye, it is surprising that the late editors of Milton's poems—men professedly conversant with Italian literature—should still persist in placing this comic sonnet among the "miscellaneous pieces," after the error has been pointed out to them!

As for the question—why a tail should be ridiculous?—it seems to me one of considerable intricacy, and of the highest interest. Yes, Mr. Editor, why should tails be ridiculous? Coat-tails, pig-tails, all tails whatsoever, are found to touch us with a sense of the jocose; nay, your comet's tail itself is only a kind of terrific absurdity. I say, therefore, without fear of contradiction, that there subsists in this question a deep psychological truth, which demands the exploring hand of philosophy; and if no better man will take the hint,—why, Mr. Editor, I think I must myself present you, another time, with my ideas on this subject, handling the matter in the Aristotelian mode, and dividing my tails into heads.

With respect to the tail of a comic sonnet, it may be briefly remarked, that its comicality (of course I speak with reference to the Italian models) arises in a great measure from the stumbling of the little line, which always comes limping after the long one, as if something were forgotten to be said in it, which the little one thus breathlessly comes to adjoin; and then a succession of these quasi oversights makes us laugh, alternately at the seeming blunder and at the funny haste with which it is redressed. Or it is like an orator in his cups, speaking fairly enough his prepared speech; but then—encouraged by applause—spoiling all with drunken additions ex tempore.