: I. THE Professor was enjoying his vacation hugely. He was lying lazily at full length in the shade of an oak, his head resting on an armful of newly-mown hay, his knees towering aloft like miniature mountain-peaks, his eyes following the vagrant smoke from his cigar as it curled waywardly among the fluttering leaves, and his mind half-dreamily noting, through the openings in the branches overhead, the glintings of the white clouds that sailed silently across the blue sky. Whether it was from an innate love of mischief, or at the instigation of a certain nameless personage whose title figures largely in our common-law forms of criminal indictment, or because I was prompted by the sight of the bow so thoroughly unstrung, I will not take upon me to say; but certain it is, I yielded to the impulse to dart at the prone student the question, "What is your idea of a sonnet?" "My dear boy," he replied, sleepily, but without hesitation, "has it ever occurred to your matter-of-fact mind that a fool can ask a question that will gravel the wisest philosopher? Now, don't let your angry passions rise, as saith the divine Watts," he added, in answer to a quick flush on my cheeks; "my question is only the inoffensive statement of a general proposition, and is far from being an assertion either that you are a fool or that I am a wise man. Doubtless, if the truth were told, neither of us is quite the one or the other. But your query, thrown at me like a stone into a quiet pool, has stirred the ripples of my memory, and I am reminded how often I have been made to lower the sail of my professorial dignity by the unexpected chance question of some smug-faced freshman, and of the fact that for all such questions there is no answer like a figure of speech. Metaphor, my lad, is your true definer, at once handy and illuminating." "But," I interjected, "I do not see that you are making any headway. I asked you a very simple question; and, instead of answering it, you are treating me to a wandering harangue on the easiest method for a lazy or ignorant professor to dodge an inconvenient question. Remember, old fellow, that, if I am six weeks your junior, I am not a freshman, nor is this fine old oak your drowsy class-room." "Cultivate the virtue of patience, my dear boy," he replied, with imperturbable unhaste, as he emitted a cloud of smoke and watched its graceful vagaries for a moment or two in leisurely silence. "Perhaps I may be searching my mind for an answer, or I may be manoeuvring for time to frame a more fit one than I could find there on call.” "Why then not be candid, you virtuous hypocrite, and admit your ignorance frankly, instead of beating the bush about nothing?" "Nay, young man, now you are insolent," he resumed, in the same unruffled tone. "Have you not yet learned to make haste slowly, and that wisdom does not pour down knowledge from above as the clouds let down the rain, but that it is to be delved for patiently and with hard toil, at the cost of flinty hands and mayhap of skinned knuckles? But now to the point. Edmund Spenser knew how to press metaphor into service as a definer. On a time some troublesome fellow like Metaphor as a Definer. 9 yourself must have addressed him somewhat after this fash ion: 'Sage and serious Spenser! what is your idea of a steeple?' And what do you suppose was the great poet's reply? Did he, do you think, follow the prosaic dictionary method and reply, like a wise parrot, 'A steeple is the turret of a church, ending in a point-a spire? Nothing of the kind; but, instead, he most felicitously christened them 'neighbours to the skie.' That is the way in which genius transmutes the common clay and stubble of prose into the gold of poesy, and makes it current for all time. So likewise Ben Jonson, instead of indolently defining bell-ringing to be the act of causing a bell to give forth sound by means of a clapper, by a beautiful figure crystallized it for all after-ages as the 'poetry of steeples!"" "That is all very fine, old fellow," I interrupted; "but what has all this rigmarole to do with my question, which I am afraid will be lost sight of in the dust of words you are so diligently kicking up?" "If you were able to see as far into a millstone as you think you can, my juvenile friend, you would perceive that all the while I have been coming steadily and surely to the point. You ask me, 'What is your idea of a sonnet?' Now, if I were an animated lexicon, I might reply that a sonnet is a form of verse which consists of fourteen lines of ten or eleven syllables, arranged for the most part in two quatrains and two tercets, or in three quatrains and one tercet, the rhyme being adjusted by a particular but not invariable rule. But like my illustrious predecessors, 'gentle Spenser' and 'rare Ben Jonson,' I decline such cheap pedantry, and answer, the sonnet is the DIAMOND of literature.' "So! that is the prodigious metaphor for which you have been cudgelling your brain all this while. Excuse me if I say it is a flagrant attempt to dodge my question, under a faint show of authority. It is no answer—it is an evasion; and as a figure, is as little to the point as one employed on a time at an experience meeting, by a good Methodist of whom I have heard. He was telling how great a sinner he had been before he was converted: 'I was an awful sinner,' he said—‘a great sinner; I was the chief among ten thousand, and the one altogether lovely."" "Ha, ha! my boy," he laughed, rubbing his hands gleefully, "that is a clever anecdote, a very clever anecdote, and capitally told, but it is not as felicitous in its application as it might be; for you must admit that my metaphorical definition has none of the delicious blundering or of the exquisite inaptitude which give such a fine flavor to the confession of your Methodist friend." True for you, most venerable proser; I freely admit that there is little enough in your pet definition that is either delicious or exquisite; but, nevertheless, I insist that it cannot be beaten for blundering inaptitude." "Laddie, you are uncivil, and seem to be in the mood to 'get the itch on purpose to be scratched,' as they say in Scotland. And I might scratch you to some purpose if I were so minded; but how is it possible to be guilty of deliberate cruelty to even the most insignificant of God's creatures, here, in the midst of the tranquil loveliness of his creation. Nay, like the kindhearted old veteran in Tristram Shandy, I too can say, in the plenitude of my benevolence, 'Go, poor devil, the world is wide. enough for both of us.' Seriously though, I have other high authority for resorting to a figure to define a sonnet, and I greatly doubt if it is possible to be defined in any other way so accurately, or with such multiplied and multiplying variety The Sonnet defined by Wordsworth. 11 of meaning and illustration. Why, my dear fellow, Wordsworth-sober, russet-clad, plain of speech, and yet withal eminently poetic-rings all the changes nearly of which figures of speech are capable, when he undertakes to describe the office. and power, and the rank in poetry of the sonnet. In his unequalled sonnet on 'The Sonnet' he defines it as a key, a lute, a pipe (not of brier-wood or meerschaum, I would have you understand), a myrtle leaf, a lamp, a thing, and, last of all, a trumpet. Hear the grand tribute by the Seer of Rydal to this noble form of verse, and mark how the rapidly changing figures chase each other through his sonorous lines. Here, amidst this sylvan beauty, that would have delighted the old bard's heart, listen to his theme: "Scorn not the Sonnet; Critic, you have frowned, It cheered mild Spenser, called from Faery Land Fell round the path of Milton, in his hand "After hearing "I give it up, professor!" I exclaimed. Wordsworth call the sonnet a Thing, with a mystery-inspiring capital letter, too; especially while yet under the overpowering influence of the grand echoes of the dying swell of the Trumpet with which he closes his magnificent eulogy to the |