mentioned by contemporary poets and satirists plainly shows the esteem in which he was held, and that esteem was not limited to his own time or country. Dante, as has already been mentioned, places him above all other troubadours, and moreover has paid him the practical compliment of imitating one of his favourite metres, viz. the sestina, or sextain, above referred

to.

Dante's example was followed by Petrarch, and it is no doubt through their means that the sestina reached this country. Sir Philip Sidney, one of the earliest representatives of the sonnet, is, as far as I am aware, responsible for the introduction of the sestina, of which there are several specimens in his works. He even improved on his models by writing what he calls a "dizain" (showing the principle of the sestina applied to stanzas of ten instead of six lines), also a double sestina, the difficulties of the achievement being of course considerably increased in this manner. Drummond of Hawthornden, as has already been indicated, is another early writer of sestinas, which he also modifies according to his own taste. After him the sestina seems to have sunk into neglect until the modern foreign revival, when it was restored to its old honours by Mr. Swinburne, and more recently still by Mr. E. W. Gosse. A form of poetry which has attracted so many writers in so many countries-for in France and Germany also it is naturalised— cannot be altogether without merits, and therefore well deserves our passing attention.

The sestina is a dangerous experiment, on which only poets of the first rank should venture. It is a mantrap well adapted to keep irresponsible intruders from the garden of poetry. Only in the first stanza is the poet

a free agent; after that he is held by his own selection as in a vice: he has signed his bond, and by that he must abide. To speak without metaphor, the sestina is founded on the principle of what the French call bouts rimés, or given rhymes, with the difference, however, that the poet is permitted in the first stanza to select his own rhymes, or rather ends of verse, which he has to repeat in all the subsequent stanzas according to a certain scheme. There are, as the name indicates, six lines to a stanza and six stanzas to a poem, not counting the tornada or envoi of three lines, in which all the six verse-ends of the preceding stanzas have to occur. To illustrate the order in which the repetition of the rhymes takes place, it will be advisable to quote at least two stanzas from what is most likely the first sestina in the English language. It is named "Agelastus' Sestine," and occurs in the Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia, by Sir Philip Sidney:—

"Since wayling is a bud of causefull sorrow, Since sorrow is the follower of ill-fortune, Since no ill-fortune equals publike damage; Now Prince's loss hath made our damage publike

Sorrow pay we to thee the rights of Nature, And inward grief seal up with outward wayling.

"Why should we spare our voice from endlesse wayling

Who iustly make our hearts the seate of

sorrow

In such a case, where it appears that Nature Doth add her force unto the sting of Fortune!

Choosing, alas, this our theatre publike Where they would leave trophees of cruell damage."

The ends of the lines are, the reader will perceive, identical in the two stanzas, but their sequence is of course entirely different. On comparison we find that

Fortune, the second

fourth

Damage, the third Publike, the fourth Nature, the fifth Wayling, the sixth

No. 253.-VOL. XLIII.

E

And this formula expresses exactly the relation of each stanza in the sestina to its predecessor, of the third to the second, of the fourth to the third, of the fifth to the fourth, and of the sixth to the fifth. The reader therefore has here a complete receipt for composing a sestina, to which he has only to add the slight ingredient of genius to make it a beautiful poem. That ingredient is by no means wanting in some of the English specimens. Mr. Swinburne has written some lovely sestinas, both in English and French, the latter I have no doubt being by far the finest and most melodious examples in that language. Unfortunately, however, I cannot but add that he has looked for his model, not in the works of Dante or the troubadours, but in some more modern source. The lines in the original sestina do, as the reader will have observed, not rhyme with each other in the same stanza. They have to wait for their consonance till the next following stanza, and in this continual playing at hide-and-seek of the rhyme-words the charm of the sestina-the "humour of it"-consists. By matching them in each stanza, and thus making that stanza a whole in itself, you destroy the principle of reciprocity and interdependence, which is in this case simply indispensable. This course, however, has been followed by Mr. Swinburne, and not by him alone. Many years ago M. de Gramont, a learned French poet, published a sestina of this kind in the Revue Parisienne, edited by Balzac, who turned critic for the nonce, and expounded to his readers the beauties of the ancient form and of its modern adaptation. Théodore de Banville, in his Petit Traité de la Poésie Française,

quotes De Gramont's poem, and adds that this particular treatment of the sestina is borrowed from Petrarch, proving in that manner that he has never read that poet. There was, however, another and a very good precedent of whose existence neither Balzac nor de Banville ever dreamt. This is none other than our friend Drummond of Hawthornden, who has left us a very pretty sextain with rhyming verse-ends. One stanza at least may be quoted by way of illustration:—

“The heaven doth not contain so many stars, So many leaves not prostrate lie in woods, When autumn's old and Boreas sounds his

wars,

So many waves have not the ocean floods, As my rent heart hath torments all the night

And heart-spent sighs when Phoebus brings the light.

Whether Mr. Swinburne in his treatment of the sestina has followed Drummond or Gramont, or has acted independently of either, certain it is that by introducing the rhyme into the single stanzas he has sacrificed structural consistency to beauty of sound. The only modern poet who, as far as I am aware, has written a correct sestina after the manner of Arnaut Daniel is Mr. E. W. Gosse, who in his recent volume (New Poems, Kegan Paul) has given welcome proof that mastery of foreign form may coexist with simple and genuine English feeling. To his sestina the honour of a quotation in full is justly due.

“In fair Provence, the land of lute and rose, Arnaut, great master of the lore of love, First wrought sestines to win his lady's heart,

For she was deaf when simpler staves he sang,

And for her sake he broke the bonds of rhyme,

And in this subtler measure hid his woe.

We have hitherto considered the three important verseforms which English poetry owes to Italy, the ottava-rima, the sonnet, and the sestina; for the latter also, although of Provençal origin, came to us, as we have seen, through the medium of Italian genius. To make this essay complete, it would now be incumbent on me to speak of the metrical acquisitions we owe to the mediaval poets of northern France, the trouvères. Fortunately it is necessary to put the reader's patience to so severe a test. The Triolet, the

un

Rondeau and Rondel, the Chant Royal, and whatever their names may be, have been written about so much of late, that any one interested in the subject may easily inform himself of all that is needful. There is, for example -to mention only the most accessible sources the very excellent Petit Traité of Théodore de Banville already referred to, and, still more handy, an able article in the Cornhill Magazine, which contains in a concise form the

substance of the French book, with the addition of some English examples. The short essay, "On Some Foreign Forms of Verse," by Mr. Austin Dobson (himself an adept), printed in Mr. Davenport Adams's collection of Latter Day Lyrics, will also be found useful.

The grace and neatness of these dainty metres I am the last to deny. They are useful also as a practical lesson of the value of strict form. Even an irregular sonnet, as we have seen, may be a fine poem; but every one will admit that a halting rondel or virelai is simply an abomination. Moreover, Villon and others have shown that even for the reception of pathos and sentiment these forms are by no means unadapted. It is further agreeable to mention that our English poets have not been surpassed by their French rivals as regards both the accuracy and the consummate skill with which the metrical resources placed at their disposal have been turned to account. Such a poem as the following triolet, by Mr. Robert Bridges, is perfect of its kind. Note especially the subtle nuance which gives a slightly different meaning to each occurrence of the refrain:

"When first we met we did not guess

That Love would prove so hard a master;
Of more than common friendliness
When first we met we did not guess.
Who could fortell this sore distress,
This irretrievable disaster,

When first we met? We did not guess
That Love would prove so hard a master."

And this is by no means a solitary instance of skill.. The names of some of

the best of our younger pcets, Arthur O'Shaughnessy, John Payne, E. W. Gosse, T. Marzials, Andrew Lang, Austin Dobson, and Miss Mary Robinson immediately suggest themselves in this connection. These and others may claim to be the worthy successors of Charles d'Orleans who, centuries ago, beguiled the weary hours of his English captivity with rondels and rondeaux full of tender sweetness. Scarcely less quaint than the broken English of the French prince is the Scotch rondel in which Mr. Lang celebrates the good old-fashioned game of golf (XXII. Ballades in Blue China; Kegan Paul, 1880).

But, admitting all this and more, it cannot be said that the gain to be derived from trifles of this kind amounts to much. The stanzas of the troubadours, and of the great Italian poets, are organically developed; they are as rich and as varied as the musical ideas from which originally they were inseparable. The canzoniere of Dante, or Petrarch, or Boccaccio, reveal metrical ideas which in the hands of a modern poet might be still further developed and hear rich fruit. But no such development is possible where not rhythms but words are repeated, and where the principle from which it is derived is as monotonous as that prevailing in all the poems we are now speaking of. For it is easy to see, although M. de Banville and his disciples fail to see it, that the triolet, the rondeau, the rondel, and even the much-venerated Chant Royal, are but variations of one and the same metrical theme, namely, the refrain. The refrain, that is the repetition of

the same verse at the end of cach stanza, is of great importance in mediæval French poetry, which owes some of its sweetest and simplest effects to it. In the late Middle Ages, when the poetry, of France and the world generally had lost much of its raciness and freshness, artificialities began to take the place of inspiration; for it must be remembered that the verse-forms so popular in the time of Villon were unknown to the genuine trouvères. The later poets soon discovered the resources of the refrain, and turned it to further account with much ingenuity. It will indeed be seen on closer investigation that in all these late French forms the repetition of a word or words, or entire lines, is a sine quâ non. There is besides this, also, a certain rule as to the length of the stanza, the sequence of the rhymes, and so forth; but all that is more or less incidental. The essential and permanent principle remains the refrain, that is, the repetition of certain words in certain parts of the stanza according to a given scheme. Now such a repetition may in certain circumstances be of excellent effect; but it may also prove a very serious impediment, and one for which there is no real organic necessity. In other words, the verse-forms we are speaking of are little more than playthings, which only the genius of certain poets has been able to lift to the sphere of serious literature. They rank at best with the sestina, certainly not with the sonnet, the ottava-rima, or the beautiful stanzas which some of the troubadours have left us.

F. HUEFFER.

53

CHAPTER XLII.

AFTER these events an interval of great quiet occurred at Markham. Paul went to town, where he was understood to be reading for the bar, like most other young men, or preparing for a public office-opinions being divided as to which it was. Naturally Sir William Markham's son found no difficulty in getting any opening into life which the mania of examination permitted. Indeed there were friends of his father's very anxious to get him into parliament, and "push him on" into the higher branches of the public service; but he had not yet sufficiently recovered from the rending and tearing of the past to make this possible. He was inseparable from one of his Oxford comrades, a young fellow whom nobody knew, a young Croesus, the son of some City man, who had judiciously died and left him, unencumbered by any vulgar relations, with an immense fortune. It already began to be said by people who saw the young men together, that no doubt Lady Markham would be wise enough to secure this fine fortune for Alice; but at present, of course, in the first blackness of their mourning, nothing could be definitely arranged on this subject. Paul lived in London, at first moodily enough, reserting the great harm that had been done him, but afterwards not so badly on the whole. He had lost a great deal certainly, but not anything that takes the comfort out of actual life. He was as well lodged, and had his wants as comfortably supplied as if he had been Sir Paul Markham. Hard as his reverses had been upon him, they had not plunged him into privations, and indeed it is possible that young Paul in a public office would have as much real enjoyment

of his life as any landed baronet or county magnate, perhaps more; but then for Paul, if he wanted to "settle," for Paul married and middle-aged, the case would be very different; unless indeed he married money, which he showed very little inclination to do.

Her

Spears sailed in the end of October with his younger daughters, Janet having first been married with much solemnity to her master at the shop, who gave her a very gorgeous house, with more gilding about it than any house in the neighbourhood, and dressed her so that she was a sight to see. father never pretended to understand the history of the tie which had been formed, he could not tell how, and broken in the same mysterious way. He had a vague consciousness that he ought to have done or said something in the matter, but how was he to do it? And all is well that ends well. Before the emigrants sailed, Fairfax appeared suddenly and renewed his anxious desire to take those shares in the undertaking which Spears had not permitted Paul to retain. Fairfax protested that it was as a speculation he did it, and that nowhere could he find a better way of investing his money. And though Spears was only half deceived, he was at the same time, in spite of himself, elated by this profession of confidence, which restored the amour-propre which had been so deeply wounded, and at the same time restored himself, as the controller of so large an amount of capital, to his right place ainong the adventurers. He would not have accepted a farthing from Paul, but from that easy-going fellow Fairfax all seemed so natural! Whatever happened he would not mind; but there could be little doubt that the estimate thus formed was entirely true.