A few months ago the pages of The Writer contained some interesting suggestions as to the advisability of a uniform indentation for sonnets when printed; the writer favoring a New York method, which would bring out even the first, fifth, ninth, and twelfth lines, setting all the other lines an equal space to the right of these. I give a quatrain for example:—

"The early star, soft mirrored in the stream,
Dim vistas of the dewy forest-road,
Yea, even the solemn, high-walled glen, abode
Of mortal dust long quit of deed and dream."

The writer's chief argument for this style was, I believe, that it was used by a good printing house, and also made a neat appearance on the page; but the question at once occurred to me, What is indentation in verse for? Is it not a guide to the eye, to enhance the proper recurrence of the rhyme (and in the ode to show as well rhythm)? If we are to have a mere arbitrary arrangement of the sonnet, why not the same in a poem of regular or inverted quatrains, or of the Persian quatrain, which is now always given in this form:—

"I sometimes think that never blows so red
The rose as where some buried CÆsar bled;
That every flower the fragrant garden wears
Dropped in her lap from some once lovely head."

Or imagine an Édition de luxe of Gray's "Elegy" with every stanza printed in this style:—

"Let not Ambition mock their useful toil,
Their homely joys, their destiny obscure;
Nor Grandeur hear, with a disdainful smile,
The short and simple annals of the poor."

I could not take much pleasure in a book of sonnets where each page was thus stiffly arranged, but should greatly prefer the indenting of lines according to rhyme, the first, fourth, fifth, and eighth to be in line, and the second, third, sixth, and seventh to be set somewhat to the right of these; should there come, however, a Shakespearian sonnet to be provided for,—lines rhyming alternately,—or any of those monstrosities of fourteen lines, which have no regularity of rhyme, let the lines then be brought to a uniform indentation, and the reader disentangle the plan of the verse as best he may.

In editing copy or reading proof for a poet, I always follow the author's preference, if indicated, or if copy submitted is consistent; but having the matter to determine, I would first look to see if the sonnets were generally regular; and second, if the sextet (the last six lines) followed the Italian or the best accepted English forms: this done, it is easy to determine upon a style,—which would be the one adopted at the present time by the best English and American printers (as far as recent books of both countries give any clue), as follows:—

"What we miscall our life is Memory:
We walk upon a narrow path between
Two gulfs—what is to be, and what has been,
Led by a guide whose name is Destiny;
Beyond is sightless gloom and mystery,
From whose unfathomable depths we glean
Chaotic hopes and terrors, dimly-seen
Reflections of a past reality.
"Behind, pursuing through the twilight haze,
The phantom people of the past appear;
Hope, happiness and sorrow, fruitless strife,
And all the loved and lost of other days;
They crowd upon us closer year by year,
Till we as phantoms haunt some other life."

The octet, in the regular form of a sonnet, should stand as above; if the sextet varies, but is not too irregular, vary the indentation of the latter, as—

... "the great World-builder has designed
The wondrous plans which Nature's works disclose.
A child who scans the philosophic page
Of some profoundly meditative sage
May see familiar phrases,—then he knows
That his own simple thoughts and childish lore
Are part of the great scholar's mental store."

Should the sextet read as given below, instead of trying to follow the seemingly hap-hazard rhymes with the setting in or out of lines, it would be better to print the first eight lines uniformly even and the sextet at the end to correspond with them:—

"Then human Grief found out her human heart,
And she was fain to go where pain is dumb;
So thou wert welcome, Angel dread to see,
And she fares onward with thee, willingly,
To dwell where no man loves, no lovers part,—
Thus Grief that is makes welcome Death to come."

In like manner, let any irregularity of the eight lines settle the question of indentation, even though the latter portion of the sonnet should happen to be according to the best forms.

There are many other questions of style and appearance in getting up a collection of sonnets, a few of which may be referred to here. A little English book which I have at hand has the best of all the recent work in that line, and even runs back, in some cases, fifty years; from a literary point of view, it is unexcelled. But look at a few of the mechanical defects: it is printed as a very small 18mo.—all the long lines of the sonnets with a word or two "turned down," as the printers say. It is a "red-line" book, which means a large enclosed white space above and below the sonnet, and very little margin on each side. It has running titles standing in a lonesome way at the head of each page, and a folio in the page corner instead of being centred at the foot of each sonnet; and, to make a bad matter worse, each of these running titles has a rule beneath it, making the separation more obvious. These are only a few of the defects. Not the less displeasing to me is another book of sonnets, printed in octavo form. Not that one objects to a large margin, but the duodecimo, it seems to me, is much the best size and shape of volume for the proper display upon a printed page of this miniature poem, and a handsome old-style or Elzevir letter is the fittest type, instead of the sombre modern cut, so often used.

F.D. Stickney.
Cambridge, Mass.