(For though you are still young, and I am now indeed old, having outlived the period usually assigned to the age of man, yet, to say nothing of graver reasons, friendship, you know, may exist in its most companionable form between juniors and their elders, when founded on the love of such never-fading things as the beauties of nature and the books which they have inspired,) you gratified me extremely, when you asked for some remarks from my pen on the subject of the class of poems from which you meditated a selection. The interest which with a zeal so generous you take in the Transatlantic welfare of my writings would alone be as sufficient as it ought to be to set me gladly to the task; but you considered, I have no doubt, (for I have learnt to detect your artifices in such matters,) that the subject would be one that I should like for its own sake also; and when you concluded your request with mentioning the names of the distinguished persons who agree with you in thinking that the remarks would be welcome to the American public, the measure of my satisfaction was "full measure, pressed down, and running over." It may be thought by some persons who do not happen to be conversant with the particular form of verse denominated the SONNET, that, while making extracts from poets, we might have done better than confine ourselves to a species of composition not yet associated in the general mind with the idea of anything very marked or characteristic; but it will not be difficult to show, that the Sonnet, while admitting of a greater and happier levity than those who think lightest of it imagine, is in reality connected with some of the most thoughtful, some of the most affecting, and some of the grandest events of the most exalted men. "Scorn not the Sonnet," says one of its most dignified masters: "Scorn not the Sonnet. Critic, you have frowned, It cheered mild Spenser, called from Fairy-land |