Sonnets And Canzonets

“Scorn not the sonnet,” said Wordsworth, and then gave us at least fifty noble reasons why we should not,—for so many at least of his innumerable sonnets are above languor and indifference, and all of them above contempt. Milton was more self-restrained than Wordsworth, and wrote fewer sonnets, every one of which is a treasure, either for beauty of verse, nobility of thought, happy portraiture of persons, or quaint and savage humor,—like that on “Tetrachordon,” and the elongated sonnet in which he denounces the Presbyterians, and tells them to their face, “New Presbyter is but old Priest writ large.” Shakespeare unlocked his heart with sonnets in another key than Milton’s,—less conformed to the model of the Italian sonnet, but more in keeping with English verse, of which Shakespeare had the entire range.