SONNET

(It. so net to.) In Poetry, a short com- | position of fourteen or fifteen lines, dec a or endecasyl-! labic, rhymed according to an intricate but not always precisely similar arrangement. It is the oldest form m which the Italian language was used; but was, at a still earlier period, employed, although not commonly, by the Proven gal poets. In Italy, Dante and the Tuscan poets his contemporaries brought the sonnet into public est i-; mation, about the beginning of the 14th century; but by them it was invariably employed as the vehicle of thoughts wrapped in very obscure language, and probably of a symbolical nature, though generally, in their outward signification, breathing the spirit of romantic and chivalrous love. By Petrarch, in the course of the same century, the sonnet was carried to perfection in point of form and polish; although applied by him, as it had been by his predece ors, almost exclusively to the subject of his figurative and mystical pa ion. Since the time of Petrarch the sonnet has been a favourite form of composition in Italy, especially for the purposes of occasional poetry. In France it has had little succe ; or rather the French sonnet is a different poem, le regular in its construction than the Italian, In Germany and England the comparative poverty in rhymes of their respective languages has rendered it unusual; but Milton has given to it a dignity peculiarly his own, together with much of the melody and tenderne which characterize his Italian models. The proper sonnet is divided into two quatrains, with four lines ^nd two rhymes each, and two terzines, each with three lines and a single rhyme. Pieces of a similar metrical structure in octo-syllabic lines are termed by the Italians Anacreontic sonnets. It is some-, times said that there is " hardly an educated Italian who | has not composed a sonnet." I SOPHIST. {Gr. iro<pi(rT'/is; hox a trixfo;, wise.) A! Greek word, originally signifying a person of talent and accomplishments. It was afterwards restricted to a bad sense, and applied to a cla of men who arose in Greece in the fifth century B.C., and taught the youth in the principal cities various arts and acquirements for hire. It has hence come to be the general designation of all such as cultivate any branch of science or philosophy with a view to outward advantages, carele of the truth of what they advance, except in so far as it may contribute to those purposes. The first Greek who a umed the name of Sophist was Prot agoras, a native of Abdera, who flourished about the year 440 B.C., and obtained nume- | rous pupils and auditors, especially in Athens. Of those who followed the same occupation the most celebrated were Hippias of Elis, Gorgias of Leontium, Prodicus of Ceos, and Euthydemus of Chios, with his brother Dioj nysiodorus. None of the writings of these men have survived; but we have abundant notices in the writings of their contemporaries, especially Plato, Xenophon, and Aris toph anes, of the nature and tendency of the doctrines and principles which they communicated to the youth of Greece. Of the truth of these accounts the Grecian history of the latter part of the fifth century furnishes us with a melancholy testimony. It is, indeed, to the changes which had begun to take place in the internal and external relations of the Greek states, that the prevalence and succe of the Sophists are mainly to be attributed. The changes in the distribution of property which these revolutions rendered nece ary excited the pa ions and gave scope to the energies of the young and enterprising; at the same time that the political alterations tended to shake men's confidence in those moral principles which among the Greeks were intimately: bound up with their civil institutions. We accordingly find the leading feature of the sophistic doctrine to be a dislike to every thing fixed and nece ary, in ethics as well as philosophy. Prescription was represented as the sole source of moral distinctions, which must consequently vary with the character and institutions of the \ people. The useful was held to be the only mark by which one opinion could be distinguished from another. An absolute standard of truth is as absurd a notion in spe-; culation as an absolute standard of morals in practice: that only is true which seems so to the individual, and just as long as it so seems. " Man is the measure of all things." These and similar doctrines they maintained with great subtlety and acutene , and found numerous disciples among those who were well prepared for the admi ion of tenets which swept away at once all the remnants of those prejudices which might still interpose a barrier between their pa ions and their gratification. Considered as a link in the chain of philosophical development, the 1131 SORTES HOMERICiE. Sophists were doubtle the involuntary cause of the greater depth and soundne of the subsequent Grecian philosophy. The succe which they had found in demolishing the systems of their predece ors proved the nece ity of laying the foundations of human knowledge deeper than heretofore had been done; and it is thus to the Sophists that we may attribute the more critical and cautious spirit which distinguishes the doctrines of Plato and Aristotle from those of Her a clit us or Par me nides. ( See Ritter, Hist, of Ancient Philosophy, book vi.; Mem.de I' Ac. deslriscr. vol. xiii. xxxii.; £d. Review, vol. xxxiv.) SOPORIFICS. {Lat. sopor, sleep.) Medicines which induce sleep. [s. 1144]