portion of the sonnet
should happen to be according to the best forms.

There are many other questions of style and appearance in getting up a
collection of sonnets, a few of which may be referred to here. A little
English book which I have at hand has the best of all the recent work in
that line, and even runs back, in some cases, fifty years; from a
literary point of view, it is unexcelled. But look at a few of the
mechanical defects: it is printed as a very small 18mo.--all the long
lines of the sonnets with a word or two "turned down," as the printers
say. It is a "red-line" book, which means a large enclosed white space
above and below the sonnet, and very little margin on each side. It has
running titles standing in a lonesome way at the head of each page, and
a folio in the page corner instead of being centred at the foot of each
sonnet; and, to make a bad matter worse, each of these running titles
has a rule beneath it, making the separation more obvious. These are
only a few of the defects. Not the less displeasing to me is another
book of sonnets, printed in octavo form. Not that one objects to a large
margin, but the duodecimo, it seems to me, is much the best size and
shape of volume for the proper display upon a printed page of this
miniature poem, and a handsome old-style or Elzevir letter is the
fittest type, instead of the sombre modern cut, so often used.

_F. D. Stickney._

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.

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