John Seely Hart

“ We noticed recently in a periodical paper a Sonnet introduced by the following paragraph:
“We have an utter, relentless, unmitigated dislike, aversion, horror, for those fourteen-lined effusions, called Sonnets. They remind us of a child struggling to walk in swaddling clothes. They are puny ideas on stilts. They have a central thought, which, like the centre of gravity, is never seen. The poor thing flounders about like a man running tied up in a sack. It is a puzzle for children of a larger growth. Like a glass thread, one wonders how it is spun, or how the apple got into the dumplings!” ”

“ So unconstrainedly do the poetic language and imagery arrange their metrical feet in the beautiful order of the Sonnet,—while the one luminous idea, like electricity, runs through the whole,—that the mind which can perceive, sees only the radiant thought, yet feels that a harmonious chain is its conductor. ”

“ We should like to have all who say they can enjoy natural, but not artistic music, visit an aviary in the season of song; when some fifty vocal throats—pitched on as many keys—are striving to drown one another’s tones: we never hear such a discord “of sweet sounds” from Nature’s undrilled troupe, without thinking, if it were possible for Art to harmonize the warblers’ voices together, what a tide of affluent melody would overpower the senses! ”