For the Southern Literary Messenger.
The following lines were found, written in a "delicate bird-quill
hand," on a blank leaf on the Petrarch of one, among the prettiest of
my fair cousins. The authoress perhaps caught a certain quaintness of
expression from the strained verses of the Italian lover; but the idea
I am inclined to believe original, notwithstanding the assertion "This
was stolen from Boccacio," with which the lines are capped. Stevens,
the Puck of commentators, asks "What has truth or nature to do with
sonnets?" and Byron echoes the question. There may be some truth in
this, though the opinion of the first sprung from hatred towards
Malone, and that of the latter from chagrin at his own want of success.
If the proper characteristic of the sonnet be an artificial quaintness,
my cousin has succeeded admirably,--which I presume Mr. White will have
too much gallantry to deny.