neurotic hypersensitiveness of Borg. He is able, by means of his science and his calm understanding of nature, to establish contacts with the lower classes, to inspire their sympathy and confidence, as Borg never could. But he did not know the people so well as Axel Borg, simply because he believed that he could understand them, and they, him, whereas Borg knew this to be impossible. For fundamentally the means of touching "the people" were as much a mystery to Bazarov as they were to Borg; the latter recognized this fact, the former did not, or would not. Once Bazarov asked a peasant his views about life. They talked; Bazarov banteringly, as usual, for he seemed always to banter, with life, with fate, with death itself, unable to take anything seriously enough to change his tone. After he had gone, the peasant said to his companion, we just chattered a bit; his tongue was itching to talk. Everybody knows how it is-he's a gentleman; can he understand anything?"

66

Both Strindberg and Turgeniev, with sound sociological and psychological insight, were convinced that between the aristocrat and the masses there was only mutual misunderstanding, and that nothing else was possible.

Axel Borg's artistic nature and aesthetic pleasures gave a tone of softness even to his hard life that was entirely lacking in Bazarov's, whose philosophy was a hard, cynical denial of the joys of life. To him they counted no more than the suffering; for all was vanity. This hardness was accentuated by the utter lack of sentimentality in his makeup, as evidenced by his casual, though kindly and indulgent attitude toward his parents, by his cutting sarcasm, and by his almost brutal contempt for the small souls about him-Pavel Kirsanoff, Madame Kukshin, Sitnikoff, et al. And yet, in spite of this hardness, there was a romantic yearning in his soul, a great melancholy yearning for the unattainable. He forgot himself once so far as to say to Arkady:

"The space I occupy is small, so tiny in comparison with the surrounding expanse, where I am not, and where no one cares

about me, and the portion of time which I shall manage to live through is so insignificant in comparison with eternity."

Although his life was hard and unlovely, such is Fate's irony that in his death, Bazarov, who was stricken in the pursuit of that science which he served, achieved the greatness for which he had longed, the beauty that he had never before experienced. There is something awe-inspiring in this master's candid recognition that he was being overcome by the most powerful master of all, life. There was something heroie in the admission which he makes, with a slight tinge of bitterness, "I am not necessary to Russia And who is? A shoemaker is necessary, a tailor is necessary, so is a butcher."

This awful beauty, which pervades his death scene, comes from the courage, the clarity, the unregretfulness with which he views his approaching end. Even in the face of death itself he retains his bantering tone, as if to say that this also is unworthy of serious consideration. Having paid his dying respects to his parents and to Madame Odintsov, he adds cynically, but not bitterly; rather with a lofty philosophical cynicism, a cynicism tempered with melancholy:

"Behold what a disgusting spectacle, the worm is half crushed, yet it bristles up. And you see, I thought also: I would yet accomplish many deeds; I shall not die-not I! there's the ȧim,

for I am a giant! And now the gaint's whole problem is to die decorously, although no one cares about that. . .

And then his last sublime words, "Breathe upon the expiring lamp, and let it be extinguished.

It is with the note sounded in Bazarov's dying words: "A shoemaker is necessary, a tailor is necessary, so is a butcher." that Turgeniev ends this book. He was convinced that even the greatest of souls, even his giant, Bazarov, could find no place in the world, indeed, had no place in the world. He concluded that the intellectualist is not needed in society so long as the healthy breeding-stocks go on living, breeding, doing and dying. But we can not help feeling with Strind

berg that, although these great souls found no haven on earth, yet has the intellectual a definite mission, a place which he must fill, and which he alone can fill. Though sorrow be his lot today, the time will come when to have greater knowledge will mean greater happiness for men. The intellectualist today is but the Pioneer:

"I'm going alone,

Though Hell forfend,
By a way of my own

To the bitter end.'
He gnawed a bone

And snarled, 'My friend,
You'll soon get there,

You'll soon get there.'

"But whether or no,

The world is round;

And he still must go

Through depths profound,

O'er heights of snow,

On virgin ground

To find a grave,

To find a grave."

-Davidson, John, "The Pioneer."

THE EARLIEST SONNET

BY ERNEST HATCH WILKINS

The earliest extant sonnet is-very possibly-this one:

Molti amadori la lor malatia

portano in core, che 'm vista nom pare;

Ed io nom posso si celar la mia

ch' ella nom pala per lo mio penare;

Però che son sotto altrui segnoria,
nè di meve non ò neiente a fare,
Se non quanto madonna mia voria,
ch' ella mi pote morte e vita dare.
Su'è lo core, e suo sono tutto quanto,
e chi non à comsiglio da suo core,
non vive imfra la gente como deve.
Cad io nom sono mio nè più nè tanto,

se non quanto madonna è de mi fore,
ed un poco di spirito ch'è 'n meve.1

In other words:

Many a lover beareth his distress

Withing his heart, away from others' sight;
Yet can I not conceal my bitterness

So that my look shall not reveal my plight.
Another holdeth me in her duress,

And over mine own self I have no might
Save as my lady deigns to acquiesce,

Who giveth life and death as of her right.
Hers is my heart, hers am I all in all;

And he that hath no counsel of his heart
Liveth in gentle company but ill.

Nor am I verily in life at all

Save though my lady, from myself apart,

And the mere breath that bideth in me still.

I quote from the excellent edition of The Poetry of Giacomo da Lentino by E. F. Langley, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1915. The poem quoted appears on p. 69.

That mere breath was spent six centuries and more ago; the lady dwells in humble oblivion among the dames of yester-year; the lover, by virtue of his sighing, remains still verily in life. He did not merely sigh-for he was the Imperial Notary Giacomo da Lentino, courtier to Frederick the Second, and governor, for a time, of the Sicilian fortress of Carsiliato. But he is memorable for other service: he was the leader of the first group of Italian poets; and he was, in all probability, the inventor of the sonnet.

There are extant twenty-five sonnets which are attributed on good grounds to Giacomo, and six others written by members of his poetic circle. Three of these are by an unknown Abbot of Tivoli, one is by an unknown Monaldo d'Aquino, one is by the imperial falconer Jacopo Mostacci, and one is by the chancellor Pier della Vigna-so soon to fall to the weird forest by the Phlegethon. These thirty-one poems constitute the group of the earliest extant sonnets. And there is good reason to think that no sonnets had been written by any earlier poets.

The fact that twenty-five of the thirty-one are attributed to Giacomo, and the fact that Giacomo is known on other grounds to have been greatly interested in metrical experiment, combine with certain other circumstances to indicate that he was indeed the inventor of the sonnet.

All of the thirty-one sonnets, like the one quoted above, consist of fourteen hendecasyllabic lines; and all are divided into octave and sestet. The octave rhymes in every case ABABABAB, and was regarded rather as a series of four distichs than as a pair of quatrains. The original rhymescheme of the sestet was probably CDECDE, as in the sonnet quoted above, but the scheme CDCDCD appears in several of the poems.

Which of the thirty-one sonnets has most claim to be thought the oldest-the first of that well nigh infinite series. that has echoed in so many tongues through the succeeding generations? No certain answer can be given, but the inter