Structure & Surprise

January 26th.–I wish I could here write down all that Wordsworth has said about the Sonnet lately, or record here the fine fourteen lines of Milton’s ” Paradise Lost,” which he says are a perfect sonnet without rhyme, and essentially one in unity of thought. Wordsworth does not approve of uniformly closing the second quatrain with a full stop, and of giving a turn to the thought in the terzines. This is the Italian mode; Milton lets the thought run over. He has used both forms indifferently. I prefer the Italian form. Wordsworth does not approve of closing the sonnet with a couplet, and he holds it to be absolutely a vice to have a sharp turning at the end with an epigrammatic point. He does not, therefore, quite approve of the termination of Cowper’s ” Sonnet to Romney,”–

” Nor couldst thou sorrow see

While I was Hayley’s guest and sat to thee.”

–Henry Crabb Robinson, Diary, Reminiscences, and Correspondence of Henry Crabb Robinson (223).