SONNET SOPHIA. 



31..) 



sequently, sonatas were composed, in which the i 

 piano or harpsichord is accompanied by other instru- 

 ments; for instance, the violin or flute, horn, cla- 

 rionet. But these latter were also called trios. 

 The union, however, is not pleasing, as the tone of 

 the harpsichord is too weak, and the pianoforte 

 does not harmonize well with any other instrument. 

 The expression of the sonata is to be determined 

 by the character of the instrument a circumstance 

 which modern composers have not sufficiently ob- 

 served. In sonatas for several instruments, the 

 principal instrument is either only assisted (as is 

 the case, for instance, with many sonatas for the 

 pianoforte accompanied by the violoncello), or the 

 instruments alternate, so as to make the sonata a 

 dialogue of instruments. Formerly the sonata usu- 

 ally began with a lively passage, followed by an 

 andante or adagio; then came a minuet with a trio 

 (afterwards a scherzo) ; and lastly a rondo or pres- 

 to: instead of the second, third or last division, 

 variations are also made use of. The old arrange- 

 ment, however, is no longer adhered to, and sona- 

 tas are now written in two, three, or four divisions. 

 But still it is a complete musical piece, in which 

 the passages are connected by a common character. 

 An easy or short sonata is called sonatina. The 

 most distinguished composers of sonatas are Bach, 

 Haydn, Beethoven, dementi, Cramer, Hummel, 

 Weber, Moscheles, Kalkbrenner, Field. 



SONNET (Italian sonetto) ; a species of poetic 

 composition, consisting of fourteen lines of equal 

 length the most ancient form of Italian poetry. 

 It was used at an earlier period among the Pro- 

 venfals ; and, in the thirteenth century, count 

 Thibaut de Champagne mentions it as a species of 

 poetry universally used and known. A Prover^al 

 sonnet, written in 1321, and entirely conformable 

 to the rules for this species of poem, in which 

 William de Almarichi congratulates king Robert of 

 Naples, is to be found in Nostradamus, from whom 

 Crescembeni borrowed it in his Storia della volyar 

 Poesia (i. i.). In Italy, the sonnet was naturalized 

 about the middle of the thirteenth century, when 

 Italian poetry became imbued with the spirit of the 

 Provenfal. Fra Guittone, of Arezzo (died 1295), 

 the first Italian poet of note, was also the first who 

 gave to the sonnet, at least in Italy, that regular 

 form which Petrarca (died 1374") carried to perfec- 

 tion, and made a model. In France, the sonnet 

 was not cultivated after the extinction of the Pro- 

 vet^al poetry, until the sixteenth century ; but the 

 bouts rimes reduced it to a mere play on words. In 

 Germany, it first came into use in the first half of 

 the seventeenth century. It has been of late much 

 cultivated there, but is not adapted for the language, 

 on account of its poverty in rhymes. In fact, the 

 strict'rules of the rhyme often compel the poet to 

 accommodate the ideas to the expression, even in 

 languages which, like the Italian, have a great 

 number of rhymes for almost every final syllable; 

 and in German, in which many final syllables have 

 very few rhymes, there are many words which al- 

 most always are made to rhyme with certain others; 

 so that the occurrence of one of them in a sonnet 

 inevitably suggests to the reader what words are to 

 follow, so as to destroy the great pleasure of rhyme. 

 A sonnet may produce a good effect when the sub- 

 ject is well chosen, and naturally accommodates it- 

 self to .the divisions of the poem ; but it requires 

 much skill to make it pleasing ; and Petrarca him- 

 self sometimes becomes tame, from the constraints 

 lo which he is subjected. Gothe wrote but few 



and their subject is the difficulties of the form, and 

 the pleasure of overcoming them. The sonnet is 

 often attempted by persons who find it easier to 

 furnish rhymes than ideas ; and the number of in- 

 sipid sonnets in Italian and Spanish is immense. In 

 English, also, there is an abundance of them. The 

 most successful writers of English sonnets are, 

 Milton, Drummond of Hawthornden, Warton, and 

 Wordsworth. 



The sonnet properly consists of fourteen iambic 

 verses of eleven syllables, and is divided into two 

 chief parts: the first consists of two divisions, each 

 of four lines (quadernario, quadrain) ; the secont* 

 of two divisions of three lines each (terzina~). The 

 quadrains have two rhymes, each of which is re- 

 peated four times, and, according to the Italian 

 usage, either so that the first, fourth, fifth and 

 eighth verses rhyme, and, again, the verses between 

 them, the second, third, sixth, seventh- (rima cAzwsa); 

 or, which is rarer, the rhymes alternate (rima alter- 

 nata} ; or, what is still rarer, the first quadrain is 

 written in the first way, and the second in the se- 

 cond. In the two terzine there are either three 

 rhymes, each twice repeated, or two rhymes, thrice 

 repeated, in all positions. The Italians, who use 

 hardly any form for lyrical poetry but the sonnet 

 and canzone, have invented varieties of it, such as 

 the Anacreontic sonnets, with lines of eight sylla- 

 bles, and those with a coda. The sonnet generally 

 contains one principal idea, pursued through the 

 various antitheses of the different strophes, and 

 adorned with the charm of rhyme. 



SONNITES. See Sunnites. 



SONORA; one of the states of the Mexican 

 confederacy (see Mexico'), lying on the Pacific ocean, 

 on which it has a sea-coast of 900 miles, with 

 several good ports. It is generally hilly, a large 

 portion of it lying on the table land. It abounds 

 in mineral wealth : gold is found in washings and 

 mines, and the silver mines are rich and numerous. 

 The soil is also fertile. The capital of the state 

 is Arispe, with a population of 7GOO souls. Cinaloa 

 (9500), Sonora (6400), and Culiacan (10,800), are 

 among the principal towns. 



SOODRAS. See Hindoos. 



SOOT. See Lamp-Black, and Manure. 



SOPHI: a professor of Sufism. q. v. 



SOPHIA, CHURCH OF-ST. The foundation 

 of this magnificent temple in Constantinople was 

 laid in the sixth century, in the reign of Justinian ; 

 and the work was completed by Anthemius Tralles, 

 the most celebrated architect of his age, with the 

 aid of Isidorus of Miletus. Anthemius was the first 

 who undertook to erect a dome on four arcades : 

 he chose for this purpose the form of a Greek cross. 

 Twenty years after its dedication, in 558, the dome 

 was shattered by an earthquake. Another Isidorus, 

 nephew of the former, restored it, but raised it 

 twenty feet higher than before, giving it an ellipti- 

 cal instead of a spherical form. The curvature of 

 the dome is so slight, that the depth is equal to 

 only one sixth of the diameter, which is 115 feet ; 

 the crescent, which has supplanted the cross on the 

 centre, however, is 180 feet from the ground. This 

 flattened form of the dome has a fine effect ; and if 

 the architect attempted to imitate the arch of the 

 heavens, Dalaway pronounces the attempt more 

 happily accomplished in the mosque of St Sophia 

 than in St Peter's at Rome. The ceiling of the 

 dome over the twenty-four windows is ornamented 

 with mosaic work, in the form of small cubes, of a 

 vitreous substance, which Vitruvius calls smaltum. 



