e seen that in the reign of Henry VIII. Wyatt and Surrey
introduced into England from Italy the type of lyrical verse known as
the sonnet. This is the most artificial of lyrics, because its rules
prescribe a length of exactly fourteen lines and a definite internal
structure.

The sonnet was especially popular with Elizabethan poets. In the last
ten years of the sixteenth century, more than two thousand sonnets
were written. Even Shakespeare served a poetic apprenticeship by
writing many sonnets as well as semi-lyrical poems, like _Venus and
Adonis_.

We should, however, remember that the sonnet is only one type of the
varied lyric expression of the age. Many Elizabethan song books show
that lyrics were set to music and used on the most varied occasions.
There were songs for weddings, funerals, dances, banquets,--songs for
the tinkers, the barbers, and other workmen. If modern readers chance
to pick up an Elizabethan novel, like Thomas Lodge's _Rosalynde_
(1590), they are surprised to find that prose will not suffice for the
lover, who must "evaporate" into song like this:--

"Love in my bosom like a bee,
Doth suck his sweet.
Now with his wings he plays with me,
Now with his feet."

There are large numbers of Elizabethan lyrics apparently as
spontaneous and unfettered as the song of the lark. The seeming
artlessness of much of this verse should not blind us to the fact that
an unusual number of poets had really studied the art of song.

Love Lyrics.--The subject of the Elizabethan sonnets is usually
love. Sir Philip Sidney wrote many love sonnets, the best of which is
the one beginning:--

"With how sad steps. O Moon, thou climb'st the Skies!"

Edmund Spencer composed fifty-eight sonnets in one year to chronicle
his varied emotions as a lover. We may find among Shakespeare's 154
sonnets some of the greatest love lyrics in the language, such, for
instance, as CXVI., containing the lines:--

"Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds";

or, as XVIII.:--

"Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease bath all too short a date.
* * * * *
But thy eternal summer shall not fade."

Sonnets came to be used in much the same way as a modern love letter
or valentine. In the latter part of Elizabeth's reign, sonnets were
even