The sonnet was a popular form of poetry during the Romantic period: William Wordsworth wrote 523, John Keats 67, Samuel Taylor Coleridge 48, and Percy Bysshe Shelley 18. But in the opinion of Lord Byron sonnets were “the most puling, petrifying, stupidly platonic compositions”,Clement Tyson Goode, Byron as Critic, Haskell House, 1964, p.100 at least as a vehicle for love poetry, and he wrote no more than five.
John Clare, whose early published poetry falls within this period, is a special case. Separate sections of sonnets appeared in all three of his published collections: 21 sonnets in Poems Descriptive of Rural Scenery (1820); 60 in The Village Minstrel (1821); and 86 in The Rural Muse (1835). Many more remained unpublished.Sara Lodge, "Contested Bounds: John Clare, John Keats, and the Sonnet", Studies in Romanticism 51.4 (2012), pp. 533-4
Variations of both the Petrarchan sonnet and the Shakespearean sonnet were employed by the Romantic poets in the wake of the late 18th century revivalists of the form, who had applied the sonnet to a wider variety of subjects than in previous centuries. Experiments in making the sonnet more expressive and more adaptable still, begun by the later Romantic poets, were continued after their time.
Background
The sonnet had been adopted into English poetry during Tudor times, notably by Sir Thomas Wyatt and Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, who took Petrarch as their model and translated or adapted several of his sonnets into English. The form was taken up by a host of other poets over the next century, for the most part composing long amatory sequences, although at the end of this period John Milton had demonstrated the sonnet’s adaptability to a much wider range of subject matter. After him, scarcely any sonnets were written until the form’s revival during the second half of the 18th century. For that generation, Milton's example was the one generally followed, although the long history of the Italian sonnet was not forgotten, especially among women writers. Charlotte Smith incorporated a few translations from Petrarch among her Elegiac Sonnets,Luca Manini, "Charlotte Smith and the voice of Petrarch", in British Romanticism and Italian Literature, Editions Rodopi, 2005, p.97 while Anna Seward's sonnet "Petrarch to Vaucluse" is an imitation written in the poet's name.The Poetical Works of Ann Seward, London 1810, vol.3, p.146
The age of sensibility
The period of literary transition between Augustan poetry and Romantic poetry has sometimes been described as the age of sensibility. During this time poets looked to the past for different literary models, subjects, and even diction. Personal feelings were emphasised, although these were often of a melancholy or sentimental cast.Northrop Frye, "Towards Defining an Age of Sensibility", ELH 23.2 (1956), The Johns Hopkins University Press, pp. 144-152 This was the period when the sonnet was rediscovered and developed, not only by younger men associated with the universities but also by an emerging generation of female writers, as an ideal vehicle for the lyrical expression of emotion. The revival was not without stylistic skirmishes, however. Charlotte Smith's doleful Elegiac Sonnets were dismissed by Anna Seward as "everlasting lamentables" and "hackneyed scraps of dismality".Claudia Thomas Kairoff, "Anna Seward and the Sonnet", ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts 1.1 (2011), p.1 Coleridge parodied the styles of various contemporary writers in three "Sonnets attempted in the[ir] manner" (published under the name of Nehemiah Higginbottom in 1797);The Poetical Register and Repository of Fugitive Poetry for 1803, pp. 246-8 and the youthful Byron addressed mocking quatrains "To the author of a sonnet beginning 'Sad is my verse, you say, and yet no tear'".The Works of Lord Byron, Wikisource
There was also disagreement over which form of the sonnet was the best model to follow. That chosen by Charlotte Smith and her followers was the Shakespearean sonnet. Anna Seward and Mary Robinson, on the other hand, championed the Petrarchan sonnet as the only 'legitimate' form.Feldman, Paula R.; Robinson, Daniel (1999). A Century of Sonnets: The Romantic-Era Revival, 1750–1850, OUP, 1999, pp.11-13 In the preface to her sequence Sappho and Phaon: in a series of legitimate sonnets (1796), Robinson denounced the undisciplined effusions filling the literary reviews as "non-descript ephemera from the heated brains of self-important poetasters".Mary Robinson, Sappho and Phaon: in a series of legitimate sonnets, with thoughts on poetical subjects, London 1796, p.10 Seward, on her side, appealed to the critical dictates of Boileau. His L'Art poétique (1674) had been translated by William Soame and published with John Dryden's revisions in 1683 as The Art of Poetry. There Apollo Musagetes, god of poetry, institutes strict measures for the writing of sonnets, forbidding any redundancy, in order to confound contemporary "Scriblers": A faultless Sonnet, finish’d thus, would be Worth tedious volumes of loose Poetry.The Art of Poetry, written in French by Sieur de Boileau, made English by Sir William Soame, Canto II, p.14
In her distillation of the same passage, Seward similarly recommends restraint and discipline over the "trite ideas thrown into loose verse" that illegitimately pass as poetry.Anna Seward, Sonnet XVI
Wordsworth's sonnet "Nuns fret not at their Convent’s narrow room"Poetry Foundation echoes the same reasoning. Written after the poet's adoption of the Miltonic form of the sonnet (based on Petrarch’s), it reasons that the form's restriction "no prison is", but instead a solace for those "who have felt the weight of too much liberty".Cambridge Companion to the Sonnet, CUP, 2011, pp.194-5] Wordsworth's earliest sonnet had been the lachrymose "On seeing Miss Helen Maria Williams Weep at a Tale of Distress" (1787).Text from the University of Pennsylvania Convinced now of the wider possibilities and subject matter of the Miltonic example, the poetic lead he gave after 1802 was "in many ways a deliberate erasure of the sonnet of Sensibility", setting the style for the new century.A Century of Sonnets, OUP, 1999, pp. 15-17
Themes Politics Sonnets written on political themes towards the end of the 18th century arise as much from sensibility as from ideology. The six Shakespearean sonnets that Robert Southey devoted to the slave trade in 1794 are so many exercises in emotionalityThe Poetical Works of Robert Southey, London 1850, p.99 and earned their author the satirical address in the sixth number of the Anti-Jacobin Review beginning "Wearisome sonneteer, feeble and querulous".Poetry of the Anti-Jacobin, London, 1801, p.25 Coleridge assumes something of the same emotional tone in the series of "Sonnets on Eminent Characters" published in The Morning Chronicle between 1794-5. Also Shakespearean in form, they deploy the poetic diction of a bygone age in such terms as 'swart' and 'joyance'. On the other hand, Coleridge has learned from Milton's example how to transcend mere emotion and allow a public voice to emerge as he comments on contemporary issues.The Cambridge Companion to the Sonnet, CUP, 2011, p. 186, 192-3
Wordsworth's Miltonic manner of a few years later is announced in "London, 1802", where the spirit of the poet is appealed to as the necessary remedy to the race of "selfish men" of his time. The sonnet is written in the Petrarchan form and was subsequently collected among the "Poems Dedicated to National Independence and Liberty" written in response to events at home and abroad during the long series of Napoleonic Wars. In Wordsworth's eyes, Milton's "soul was like a star, and dwelt apart", independent of the corrupting pressures of the age. But in the eyes of the second generation of Romantic poets, Wordsworth had by their time succumbed to conservative pressures and his poem on Milton became the model for Shelley's own expression of regret at the poet's fall from grace in the sonnet "To Wordsworth" (1814–15): Thou wert as a lone star… Above the blind and battling multitude: In honoured poverty thy voice did weave Songs consecrate to truth and liberty, - Deserting these, thou leavest me to grieve.Stephen Regan, The Sonnet, OUP, 2019, pp.106-7
So repressive had the regime become just a few years later that Shelley's denunciatory "England in 1819" was unable to be published until 1839.The Sonnet, 2019, p.109 By this time, too, Byron had awoken to the possibilities of the sonnet as a channel for political comment and addressed one of his own "To George the Fourth", also in 1819.The Poetical Works of Lord Byron, London 1855, p.572 A little earlier, Keats had celebrated the return from prison of Leigh Hunt, a casualty of the libel laws, in a sonnet invoking "daring Milton" as one of Hunt's companions in custody.The Poetical Works of John Keats, London 1853, "Written on the day that Mr Leigh Hunt left prison", p.239 And in the international sphere, Keats was also to follow the example of Coleridge and Hunt in addressing a sonnet "To Kosciusko", the Polish freedom fighter, looking forward to the "happy day when some good spirit walks upon the earth" and Kosciusko's patriotic worth will be properly appreciated.H. W. GARROD, Keats, London, 1962, p.23
Nature In 1796, Coleridge had printed a pamphlet anthology of sonnets by himself and his contemporaries, designed to be bound into the fourth edition of the Sonnets with Other Poems of William Bowles. In the preface to this, Coleridge defined the sonnet as "a small poem in which some lonely feeling is developed…deduced from, and associated with, the scenery of nature," the object of which was to "create a sweet and indissoluble union between the intellectual and the material world".Stuart Curran, Poetic Form and British Romanticism, OUP, 1986, pp.34-7 These were sentiments he shared with Bowles himself, who described his own sonnets as "Poetic trifles from solitary rambles whilst chewing the cud of sweet and bitter fancy"; and partially echoed by Anna Seward, for whom "The legitimate sonnet generally consists of one thought, regularly pursued to the close".The Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Princeton University, 2001, p.1199
Celebration of natural scenery had been a constant in English poetry, but choosing a river as the focus within it suited the smaller scale of the sonnet.A Century of Sonnets 1999, p.9 At first there was an awkward transition from the conventions and diction of 18th century topographical poetry. Charlotte Smith's "To the River Arun" recalls the connection of "Otway's plaintive strain", "Collins' pow'rful shell", and the more recent example of William Hayley, with her subject.Charlotte Smith, Sonnet 30 William Bowles' sonnets on the Itchen"To the River Itchin, near Winton" and the Cherwell"The River Cherwell" bring him melancholy recollections of his personal past. Where such associations are absent, as in the sonnets "To the River Wenbeck" and "To the River Tweed", it is the consolatory power of nature, not altogether absent from the others, which is emphasised.William Lisle Bowles, Fourteen Sonnets, Elegiac and Descriptive: Written During a Tour, Bath and London, 1789, Sonnets 4-5 Regretful comparison between past and present had also characterized Thomas Warwick's own sonnet on the Cherwell. There, after invoking the distant towers of Oxford as seen from its banks, and his youthful pastimes there, his attention shifts to the temptations that now threaten his former innocence.Thomas Warwick, Abelard and Eloisa, an epistle, to which are prefixed Sonnets (1783), p.12 Thomas Warton's "To The River Lodon" likewise reflects on the lapse between youth and poetic maturity.Quoted on Bartleby.com In all of these, as suggested in the prefaces by Coleridge and others, the movement is from the initial observation in the octave to a clinching moral or personal reflection in the final lines of the sestet.