URNING from the Italian and English sonnet-writers and their productions to the poets of America who have contributed something to the same department of verse, we feel as though we were about to pass out of a region of the most abundant and delicate bloom into a field comparatively barren and uninviting.

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The same causes which have hitherto prevented the appearance in this country of any truly great poem poem like the masterpieces of English imagination, expressing the culture, the knowledge, the matured genius of a great nation-have operated to prevent also the cultivation of the legitimate sonnet. For the requisitions of the drama, nay, even of the epic itself, are not proportionably greater as I think the former part of this work has proved than the requisitions of this "little. poem of fourteen lines." A perfect sonnet cannot often be dashed off "át a heat," but demanding the nicest polish, and considerable patience in its composition, the majority of our poets, influenced by the eager, restless

spirit of their age, neglect it altogether, to embody their conceptions in more obvious and popular forms.

Unwilling to trust to the remote awards of posterity, tinged with the materialism, and sharing the intense unrest of his people, the American poet has seldom, like Coleridge, looked upon his art as "its own exceeding great reward," nor has he been content to live and work as a poet only. Even where no constraining necessity exists, we find him in the ranks of some practical profession, devoting, in all probability, the best portion of his energies to labors which unfit him for the pursuit of the highest purposes of his art.

It is not thus with the painter and sculptor: why should it be with the poet? If he be poor, - and alas! genius and poverty, married ages ago, seem, notwithstanding their conjugal incompatibility to have no chance of a divorce, the reason is plain enough; but what if he be rich, or possessed of a competence? Would it not be wiser in one thus circumstanced, feeling the “divine impulsion" within him, to labor serenely and with singleness of aim in his vocation, disregarding the transient fashions of his time, and slowly building up unto perfection poems with the pith of immortality in them.

Had this been done, we might not now have been destitute of THE great American poem, whatever its metrical form, concerning which so many prophecies have been ventured upon, and so much premature enthusiasm expended.

At all events, our literature would have been richer in poetry of a much higher stamp than that which at present distinguishes it. I feel assured that the Sonnet especially would have been amply and beautifully represented;

that anybody undertaking the task which now employs me, instead of experiencing a sentiment akin to mortification, as he compares the sonnets by his countrymen not few in numbers, but careless in structure, and often commonplace in thought and design with the masterly performances of this kind which adorn the literature of England and the Continent, would, on the contrary, have had every reason to be proud of the national achievements in an admirable and unique branch of art.

As it is, the American poet, under the conditions implied, circumscribed in his efforts, and democratic in his principles, has been satisfied with the production of verses which, for the most part, are easily written and quite as easily read. He addresses the masses, not a

select circle of scholars, the audience coveted by Milton, "fit, though few." The complex in thought and rhythm he has had apparently neither the leisure nor the inclination to cultivate. True, since the advent of Edgar A. Poe, whose influence on the poetry of the country was marked and peculiar, a taste for labored eccentricities of metrical mechanism has repeatedly displayed itself; but it has been confined to a host of imitators, the poetasters of gazettes and magazines.

The architectural eccentricities of Poe's system of versification it was not difficult to copy; and we have, in consequence, during the last decade, been tormented by legions of illegitimate "Ravens," and been invited to enter so prodigious a number of "Haunted Palaces," that they may really be said to compose a municipality of their own, governed by a genius of grotesque diablerie.

Perhaps a better mode could not be found of bringing certain classes of the literary public to a clear perception

of what is the true and beautiful in poetic art, than by calling them to the candid study of such sonnets as those of Wordsworth in English, and of George H. Boker in American literature.

While the ear, if moderately correct, would be charmed by their rhythmical harmony, the pleasure derived from them, instead of evaporating in a sensuous delight, would be intensified by the communication of those " grave thoughts, great thoughts," which are seldom more striking and effective than when delivered through the medium of a sonnet worthy the name.

My business, however, is not to regret that the legitimate sonnet has been neglected amongst us, nor yet to suggest a remedy for depraved literary taste, but to give as detailed a narrative of the earliest appearance and of the progress of the sonnet in America as my scanty materials will allow.

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The first American sonnet was written cise date I have no means of ascertaining — by David Humphreys, LL. D., who was born at Denby, Connecticut, in 1753. He ranks among our Revolutionary heroes, and was educated at Yale College, with Barlow, Dwight, Trumbull, and others of historical fame.

Griswold, in the "Poets and Poetry of America," informs us that, soon after being graduated, in 1771, he joined the army under General Parsons, with the rank of captain. He was for several years attached to the staff of Putnam, and in 1780 was appointed aid to General Washington. He continued in the military family of the Commander-in-Chief until the close of the war, when he went abroad with Franklin, Adams, and Jefferson, as one of the commissioners appointed to negotiate treaties of commerce with foreign powers.