RECOLLECTIONS OF DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI

By T. Hall Caine

Roberts Brothers - 1883

PREFACE. 

One day towards the close of 1881 Rossetti, who was then very ill, saidto me:

"How well I remember the beginning of our correspondence, and how littledid I think it would lead to such relations between us as have ensued! Iwas at the time very solitary and depressed from various causes, andthe letters of so young and ardent a well-wisher, though unknown to mepersonally, brought solace. "

"Yours, " I said, "were very valuable to me. "

"Mine to you were among the largest bodies of literary letters I everwrote, others being often letters of personal interest. "

"And so admirable in themselves, " I added, "and so free from thediscussion of any but literary subjects that many of them would bear tobe printed exactly as you penned them. "

"That, " he said, "will be for you some day to decide. "

This was the first hint of any intention upon my part of publishing theletters he had written to me; indeed, this was the first moment at whichI had conceived the idea of doing so. Nothing further on the subject wassaid down to the morning of the Thursday preceding the Sunday on whichhe died, when we talked together for the last time on subjects ofgeneral interest, --subsequent interviews being concerned wholly withsolicitous inquiries upon my part, in common with other anxious friends, as to the nature of his sufferings, and the briefest answers from him. 

"How long have we been friends?" he said. 

I replied, between three and four years from my first corresponding withhim. 

"And how long did we correspond?"

"Three years, nearly. "

"What numbers of my letters you must possess! They may perhaps even yetbe useful to you. "

From this moment I regarded the publication of his letters as in somesort a trust; and though I must have withheld them for some years if Ihad consulted my own wishes simply, I yielded to the necessity that theyshould be published at once, rather than run any risk of their not beenpublished at all. 

What I have just said will account for the circumstance that I, theyoungest and latest of Rossetti's friends, should be the first to seemto stand towards him in the relation of a biographer. I say _seem_ tostand, for this is not a biography. It was always known to be Rossetti'swish that if at any moment after his death it should appear that thestory of his life required to be written, the one friend who during manyof his later years knew him most intimately, and to whom he unlocked themost sacred secrets of his heart, Mr. Theodore Watts, should write it, unless indeed it were undertaken by his brother William. But thoughI know that whenever Mr. Watts sets pen to paper in pursuance ofsuch purpose, and in fulfilment of such charge, he will afford us arecognisable portrait of the man, vivified by picturesque illustration, the like of which few other writers could compass, I also know fromwhat Rossetti often told me of his friend's immersion in all kinds andvarieties of life, that years (perhaps many years) may elapse beforesuch a biography is given to the world. My own book is, I trust, exactlywhat it purports to be: a volume of Recollections, interwoven withletters and criticism, and preceded by such a summary of the leadingfacts in Rossetti's life as seems necessary for the elucidation ofsubsequent records. I have drawn Rossetti precisely as I found him ineach stage of our friendship, exhibiting his many contradictions ofcharacter, extenuating nothing, and, I need hardly add, setting downnaught in malice. Up to this moment I have never inquired of myselfwhether to those who have known little or nothing of Rossettihitherto, mine will seem to be on the whole favourable or unfavourableportraiture; but I have trusted my admiration of the poet and affectionfor the friend to penetrate with kindly and appreciative feeling everycomment I have had to offer. I was attracted to Rossetti in the firstcase by ardent love of his genius, and retained to him ultimately bylove of the man. As I have said in the course of these Recollections, it was largely his unhappiness that held me, with others, as by a spell, and only too sadly in this particular did he in his last year realisehis own picture of Dante at Verona:

 Yet of the twofold life he led In chainless thought and fettered will Some glimpses reach us, --somewhat still Of the steep stairs and bitter bread, -- Of the soul's quest whose stern avow For years had made him haggard now. 

I am sensible of the difficulty and delicacy of the task I haveundertaken, involving, as it does, many interests and issues; and inevery reference to surviving relatives as well as to other persons nowliving, with whom Rossetti was in any way allied, I have exercised inall friendliness the best judgment at my command. 

Clement's Inn, October 1882. 

 *** It has not been thought necessary to attach dates to the letters printed in this volume, for not only would the difficulty of doing so be great, owing to the fact that Rossetti rarely dated his letters, but the utility of dates in such a case would be doubtful, because the substance of what is said is often quite impersonal, and, where otherwise, is almost independent of the time of production. It may be sufficient to say that the letters were written in the years 1879, 1880, and 1881. 

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I. 

Gabriele Rossetti--Boyhood--The pre-Raphaelite Movement--EarlyManhood--The Blessed Damozel--Jenny--Sister Helen--The Translations--TheHouse of Life--The Germ--Oxford and Cambridge Magazine--BlackfriarsBridge--Married Life

CHAPTER II. 

Chelsea--Chloral--Dante's Dream--Recovery of the Poems--Poems--TheContemporary Controversy--Mr. Theodore Watts--Rose Mary--TheWhite Ship--The King's Tragedy--Poetic Continuations--CloudConfines--Journalistic Slanders

CHAPTER III. 

Early Intercourse--Poetic Impulses--Beginning of Correspondence--EarlyLetters

CHAPTER IV. 

Inedited Poems--Inedited Ballads--Additions to Sister Helen--Handand Soul--St. Agnes of Intercession--Catholic Opinion--Rossetti'sCatholicism--Cloud Confines--The Portrait

CHAPTER V. 

Coleridge--Wordsworth--Lamb and Coleridge--Charles Wells--Keats--LeighHunt and Keats--Keats's Sister

CHAPTER VI. 

Chatterton--Oliver Madox Brown--Gilchrist's Blake--George Gilfillan--OldPeriodicals--A Rustic Poet--Art and Politics--Letters in Biography

CHAPTER VII. 

Cheyne Walk--The House--First Meeting--Rossetti's Personality--HisReading--The Painter's Craft--Mr. Ruskin--Rossetti's Sensitiveness--HisGarden--His Library

CHAPTER VIII. 

English Sonnets--Sonnet Structure--Shakspeare's Sonnets--Wells'sSonnet--Charles Whitehead--Ebenezer Jones--Mr. W. M. Rossetti--A NewSonnet--Mr. W. Davies--Canon Dixon--Miss Christina Rossetti--The Bride'sPrelude--The Supernatural in Poetry

CHAPTER IX. 

Last Days--Vale of St John--In the Lake Country--Return toLondon--London--Birchington

RECOLLECTIONS OF DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI

CHAPTER I. 

Dante Gabriel Rossetti was the eldest son of Gabriele Rossetti andFrances Polidori, daughter of Alfieri's secretary, and sister of theyoung physician who travelled with Lord Byron. Gabriele Rossetti was anative of Yasto, in the district of the Abruzzi, kingdom of Naples. He was a patriotic poet of very considerable distinction; and, as apolitician, took a part in extorting from Ferdinand I. The Constitutionof 1820. After the failure of the Neapolitan insurrection, owing tothe treachery of the King (who asked leave of absence on a pretextof ill-health, and returned with an overwhelming Austrian army), theinsurrectionists were compelled to fly. Some of them fell victims;others lay long in concealment. Rossetti was one of the latter; and, while he was in hiding, Sir Graham Moore, the English admiral, was lyingwith an English fleet in the bay. The wife of the admiral had long beena warm admirer of the patriotic hymns of Rossetti, and, when she learnedhis danger, she prevailed with her husband to make efforts to save him. Sir Graham thereupon set out with another English officer to the placeof concealment, habited the poet in an English uniform, placed himbetween them in a carriage, and put him aboard a ship that sailed nextday to Malta, where he obtained the friendship of the governor, JohnHookham Frere, by whose agency valuable introductions were procured, andultimately Rossetti established himself in England. Arrived in Londonabout 1823, he lived a cheerful life as an exile, though deprived of theadvantages of his Italian reputation. He married in 1826, and his eldestson was born May 12, 1828, in Charlotte Street, Portland Place, London. He was appointed Professor of Italian at King's College, and died in1854. His house was for years the constant resort of Italian refugees;and the son used to say that it was from observation of these visitorsof his father that he depicted the principal personage of his _LastConfession_. He did not live to see the returning glories of his countryor the consummation we have witnessed of that great movement foundedupon the principles for which he fought and suffered. His presentposition in Italy as a poet and patriot is a high one, a medal havingbeen struck in his honour. An effort is even now afoot to erect a statueto him in his native place, and one of the last occasions upon whichthe son put pen to paper was when trying to make a reminiscent roughportrait for the use of the sculptor. Gabriele Rossetti spent his lastyears in the study of Dante, and his works on the subject are unique, exhibiting a peculiar view of Dante's conception of Beatrice, whichhe believed to be purely ideal, and employed solely for purposes ofspeculative and political disquisition. Something of this interpretationwas fixed undoubtedly upon the personage by Dante himself in his laterwritings, but whether the change were the result of a maturer and morecomplicated state of thought, and whether the real and ideal charactersof Beatrice may not be compatible, are questions which the poetic mindwill not consider it possible to decide. Coleridge, no doubt, took afair view of Rossetti's theory when he said: "Rossetti's view of Dante'smeaning is in great part just, but he has pushed it beyond all bounds ofcommon sense. How could a poet--and such a poet as Dante--have writtenthe details of the allegory as conjectured by Rossetti? The boundariesbetween his allegory and his pure picturesque are plain enough, I think, at first reading. " It was, doubtless, due to his devotion to studies ofthe Florentine that Gabriele Rossetti named after him his eldest son. 

Dante Gabriel Rossetti, whose full baptismal name was Gabriel CharlesDante, was educated principally at King's College School, London, andthere attained to a moderate proficiency in the ordinary classicalschool-learning, besides a knowledge of French, which throughout life hespoke well. He learned at home some rudimentary German; Italian he hadacquired at a very early age. There has always been some playful mentionof certain tragedies and translations upon which he exercised himselffrom the ages of five to fifteen years; but it is hardly necessaryto say that he himself never attached value to these efforts of hisprecocity; he even displayed, occasionally, a little irritation uponhearing them spoken of as remarkable youthful achievements. 

One of these productions of his adolescence, Sir Hugh the Heron, hasbeen so frequently alluded to, that it seems necessary to tell the storyof it, as the author himself, in conversation, was accustomed to do. Atabout twelve years of age, the young poet wrote a scrap of a poem underthis title, and then cast it aside. His grandfather, Polidori, had seenthe fragment, however, and had conceived a much higher opinion ofits merits than even the natural vanity of the young author himselfpermitted him to entertain. It had then become one of the grandfather'samusements to set up an amateur printing-press in his own house, andoccupy his leisure in publishing little volumes of original verse forsemi-public circulation. He urged his grandson to finish the poemin question, promising it, in a completed state, the dignity anddistinction of type. Prompted by hope of this hitherto unexpectedreward, Rossetti--then thirteen to fourteen years of age--finishedthe juvenile epic, and some bound copies of it got abroad. No more wasthought of the matter, and in due time the little bard had forgottenthat he had ever done it. But when a genuine distinction had been earnedby poetry that was in no way immature, Rossetti discovered, bythe gratuitous revelation of a friend, that a copy of the youthfulproduction--privately printed and never published--was actually in thelibrary of the British Museum. Amazed, and indeed appalled as he was bythis disclosure, he was powerless to remedy the evil, which he foresawwould some day lead to the poem being unearthed to his injury, andprinted as a part of his work. The utmost he could do to avertthe threatened mischief he did, and this was to make an entry in acommonplace-book which he kept for such uses, explaining the origin andhistory of the poem, and expressing a conviction that it seemed to himto be remarkable only from its entire paucity of even ordinary poeticpromise. But while this was indubitably a just estimate of these boyishefforts, it is no doubt true, as we shall presently see, that Rossetti'sgenius matured itself early in life. 

Whilst still a child, his love of literature exhibited itself, and astory is told of a disaster occurring to him, when rather less than nineyears of age, which affords amusing proof of the ardour of his poeticnature. Upon going with his brother and sisters to the house of hisgrandfather, where as children they occupied themselves with sportsappropriate to their years, he proposed to improvise a part of a scenefrom _Othello_, and cast himself for the principal _rôle_. The sceneselected was the closing one of the play, and began with the speechdelivered to Lodovico, Montano, and Gratiano, when they are about totake Othello prisoner. Rossetti used to say that he delivered the linesin a frenzy of boyish excitement, and coming to the words--

 Set you down this: And say, besides, --that in Aleppo once, Where a malignant and a turban'd Turk Beat a Venetian, and traduced the state, I took by the throat the circumcised dog, And smote him--thus!--

he snatched up an iron chisel, that lay somewhere at hand, and, to theconsternation of his companions, smote himself with all his might on thechest, inflicting a wound from which he bled and fainted. 

He is described by those who remember him, at this period, as a boy ofa gentle and affectionate nature, albeit prone to outbursts ofmasterfulness. The earliest existent portraits represent a comely youth, having redundant auburn hair curling all round the head, and eyes andforehead of extraordinary beauty. It is said that he was brave andmanly of temperament, courageous as to personal suffering, eminentlysolicitous of the welfare of others, and kind and considerate to*suchas he had claims upon. This is no doubt true portraiture, but it mustbe stated (however open to explanation, on grounds of laudableself-depreciation), that it is not the picture which he himself usedto paint of his character as a boy. He often described himself as beingdestitute of personal courage when at school, as shrinking from theamusements of schoolfellows, and fearful of their quarrels; not whollywithout generous impulses, but, in the main, selfish of nature andreclusive in habit of life. He was certainly free from the meaninglessaffectation--for such it too frequently is--of representing hisschool-days as the happiest of his life. If, after so much undervaluingof himself, it were possible to trust his estimate of his youthfulcharacter, he would have had you believe that school was to him a placeof semi-purgatorial probation, --which nothing but love of his mother, and desire to meet her wishes, prevented him, as an irreclaimableantischoliast, from obstinately renouncing at a time when he had learnedlittle Latin, and less Greek. 

Having from childhood shown a propensity towards painting, the stronginclination was fostered by his parents, and art was looked upon as hisfuture profession. Upon leaving school about 1843, he studied first atan art academy near Bedford Square, and afterwards at the Eoyal AcademyAntique School, never, however, going to the Eoyal Academy Life School. He appears to have been an assiduous student. In after life when hishabit of late rising had become a stock subject of banter among hisintimate friends, he would tell with unwonted pride how in earlier yearshe used to rise at six A. M. Once a week in order to attend a life-classheld before breakfast. On such occasions he was accustomed, he wouldsay, to purchase a buttered roll and cup of coffee at some stall at astreet corner, so as not to dislocate domestic arrangements by requiringthe servants to get up in the middle of the night. He left the Academyabout 1848 or 1849, and in the latter year exhibited his pictureentitled the _Girlhood of Mary Virgin_. This painting is an admirableexample of his early art, before the Gothicism of the early Italianpainters became his quest. Better known to the public than the pictureis the sonnet written upon it, containing the beautiful lines--

 An angel-watered lily, that near God Grows and is quiet. 

While Rossetti was still under age he associated with J. E. Millais, Holman Hunt, Thomas Woolner, James Collinson, F. G. Stephens, and hisbrother, W. M. Rossetti, in the movement called pre-Raphaelite. At thebeginning of his career he recognised, in common with his associates, that the contemporary classicism had run to seed, and that, beyond aneffort after perfection of _technique_, the art of the period was allbut devoid of purpose, of thought, imagination, or spirituality. At sucha moment it was matter for little surprise that ardent young intellectsshould go back for inspiration to the Gothicism of Giotto and the earlypainters. There, at least, lay feeling, aim, aspiration, such as didnot concern itself primarily with any question of whether a subject werepainted well or ill, if only it were first of all a subject at all--asubject involving manipulative excellence, perhaps, but feeling andinvention certainly. This, then, stated briefly, was the meaning ofpre-Raphaelitism. The name (as shall hereafter appear) was subsequentlygiven to the movement more than half in jest. It has sometimes beenstated that Mr. Ruskin was an initiator, but this is not strictly thecase. The company of young painters and writers are said to have beenignorant of Mr. Ruskin's writings when they began their revolt againstthe current classicism. It is a fact however, that, after perhaps acouple of years, Mr. Ruskin came to the rescue of the little brotherhood(then much maligned) by writing in their defence a letter in the_Times_. It is easy to make too much of these early endeavours ofa company of young men, exceptionally gifted though the reformersundoubtedly were, and inspired by an ennobling enthusiasm. In lateryears Rossetti was not the most prominent of those who kept thesebeginnings of a movement constantly in view; indeed, it is hardly rashto say that there were moments when he seemed almost to resent theintrusion of them upon the maturity of aim and handling which, in commonwith his brother artists, he ultimately compassed. But it would be follynot to recognise the essential germs of a right aspiration which grewout of that interchange of feeling and opinion which, in its concreteshape, came to be termed pre-Raphaelitism. Rossetti is acknowledged tohave taken the most prominent part in the movement, supplying, it isalleged, much of the poetic impulse as well as knowledge of mediaevalart. He occupied himself in these and following years mainly in themaking of designs for pictures--the most important of them being_Dante's Dream, Hamlet and Ophelia, Cassandra, Lucretia Borgia, Giottopainting Dante's Portrait, The First Anniversary of the Death ofBeatrice Mary Magdalene at the Door of Simon the Pharisee, The Deathof Lady Macbeth, Desdemona's Death-song_ and a great subject entitled_Found_, designed and begun at twenty-five, but left incomplete atdeath. 

All this occurred between the years 1849-1856, but three years beforethe earlier of these dates Rossetti, as a painter, had come under aninfluence which he was never slow to acknowledge operated powerfullyon his art. In 1846, Mr. Ford Madox Brown exhibited designs in theWestminster competition, and his cartoons deeply impressed Rossetti Theyoung painter, then nineteen years of age, wrote to the elder one, hissenior by no more than seven years, begging to be permitted to become apupil. An intimacy sprang up between the two, and for a while Rossettiworked in Brown's studio; but though the friendship lasted throughoutlife the professional relationship soon terminated. The ardour of theyounger man led him into the-brotherhood just referred to, but Brownnever joined the pre-Raphaelites, mainly, it is said, from dislike ofcoterie tendencies. 

About 1856, Rossetti, with two or three other young painters, gratuitously undertook to paint designs on the walls of the UnionDebating Hall at Oxford, and about the time he was engaged upon thistask he made the acquaintance of Mr. William Morris, Mr. Burne Jones, and Mr. Swinburne, who were undergraduates at the University. Mr. Burne Jones was intended for a clerical career, but due to Rossett'sintercession Holy Orders were abandoned, to the great gain of Englishart. He has more than once generously allowed that he owed much toRossetti at the beginning of his career, find regarded him to the lastas leader of the movement with which his own name is now so eminentlyand distinctively associated. Together, and with the co-operation of Mr. William Morris and Canon Dixon, they started and carried on for about ayear a monthly periodical called _The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine_, of which Canon Dixon, as one of the projectors, shall presently tell thehistory. At a subsequent period Mr. Burne Jones and Rossetti, togetherwith Mr. Madox Brown and some three others, associated with Mr. Morrisin establishing, from the smallest of all possible beginnings, thetrading firm now so well known as Morris and Co. , and they remainedpartners in this enterprise down to the year 1874, when a dissolutiontook place, leaving the business in the hands of the gentlemanwhose name it bore, and whose energy had from the first been mainlyinstrumental in securing its success. 

It may be said that almost from the outset Rossetti viewed the publicexhibition of pictures as a distracting practice. Except the _Girlhoodof Mary Virgin_, the _Annunciation_ was almost the only picture heexhibited in London, though three or four water-colour drawings wereat an early period exhibited in Liverpool, and of these, by a curiouscoincidence, one was the first study for the _Dante's Dream_, whichwas purchased by the corporation of the city within a few months ofthe painter's death. To sum up all that remains at this stage to sayof Rossetti as a pictorial artist down to his thirtieth year, we maydescribe him (as he liked best to hear himself described) simply asa poetic painter. If he had a special method, it might be calleda distinct poetic abstraction, together with a choice of mediaevalsubject, and an effort after no less vivid rendering of nature than wasfound in other painters. With his early designs (the outcome of such aquest as has been indicated) there came, perchance, artistic cruditiesenough, but assuredly there came a great spirituality also. By and byRossetti perceived that he must make narrower the stream of his effortif he would have it flow deeper; and then, throughout many years, heperfected his technical methods by abandoning complex subject-designs, and confining himself to simple three-quarter-length pictures. Moreshall be said on this point in due course. Already, although unknownthrough the medium of the public picture-gallery, he was recognised asthe leader of a school of rising young artists whose eccentricities werefrequently a theme of discussion. He never invited publicity, yet he wasrapidly attaining to a prominent position among painters. 

His personal character in early manhood is described by friends as oneof peculiar manliness, geniality, and unselfishness. It is said that, onone occasion, he put aside important work of his own in order tospend several days in the studio of a friend, whose gifts were quiteinconsiderable compared with his, and whose prospects were all buthopeless, --helping forward certain pictures, which were backward, forforthcoming exhibition. Many similar acts of self-sacrifice are stillremembered with gratitude by those who were the recipients of them. Rossetti was king of his circle, and it must be said, that in all thatproperly constituted kingship, he took care to rule. There was thena certain determination of purpose which occasionally had the look ofarbitrariness, and sometimes, it is alleged, a disregard of opposingopinion which partook of tyranny: but where heart and not head were inquestion, he was assuredly the most urbane and amiable of monarchs. In matters of taste in art, or criticism in poetry, he would brook noopposition from any quarter; nor did he ever seem to be conscious of theunreasonableness of compelling his associates to swallow his opinionsas being absolute and final. This disposition to govern his circleco-existed, however, with the most lavish appreciation of every goodquality displayed by the members of it, and all the little uneasinessto which his absolutism may sometimes have given rise was much more thanremoved by constantly recurring acts of good-fellowship, --indeed it wasforgotten in the presence of them. 

A photograph which exists of Rossetti at twenty-seven conveys the ideaof a nature rather austere and taciturn than genial and outspoken. Theface is long and the cheeks sunken, the whole figure being attenuatedand slightly stooping; the eyes have the inward look which belonged tothem in later life, but the mouth, which is free from the concealment ofmoustache or beard, is severe. The impression conveyed is of a powerfulintellect and ambitious nature at war with surroundings and not whollysatisfied with the results. It ought to be added that, at the period inquestion, health was uncertain with Rossetti: and this fact, added tothe circumstance of his being at the time in the very throes of thosedifficulties with his art which he was soon to surmount, must beunderstood to account for the austerity of his early portrait. Rossettiwas not in a distinct sense a humourist, but there came to him atintervals, in earlier manhood, those outbursts of volatility, which, toserious natures, act as safety-valves after prolonged tension of all thepowers of the mind. At such moments of levity he is described as almostboyish in recklessness, plunging into any madcap escapade that might beafoot with heedlessness of all consequences. Stories of misadventures, quips and quiddities of every kind, were then his delight, and of thesehe possessed a fund which no man knew better how to use. He would tella funny story with wonderful spirit and freshness of resource, alwaysleading up to the point with watchful care of the finest shades ofcovert suggestion or innuendo, and, when the climax was reached, neverdenying himself a hearty share in the universal laughter. One of hischoicest pleasures at a dinner or other such gathering was to improviserhymes on his friends, and of these the fun usually lay in theimprovisatore's audacious ascription of just those qualities which hissubject did not possess. Though far from devoid of worldly wisdom, andindeed possessed of not a little shrewdness in his dealings with hisbuyers (often exhibiting that rarest quality of the successful trader, the art of linking one transaction with another), he was sometimesamusingly deficient in what is known as common sense. In later life heused to tell with infinite zest a story of a blunder of earlier yearswhich might easily have led to serious if not fatal results. He hadbeen suffering from nervous exhaustion and had been ordered to take apreparation of nux vomica. The dose was to be taken three times daily:in the morning, at noon, and in the evening. One afternoon he was aboutto start out for the house of a friend with whom he had promised tolunch, when he remembered that he had not taken his first daily doseof medicine. He forthwith took it, and upon setting down the glass, reflected that the second dose was due, and so he took that also. Putting on his hat and preparing to sally forth he further reflectedthat before he could return the third dose ought in ordinary course tobe taken, and so without more deliberation he poured himself a finalportion and drank it off. He had thereupon scarcely turned himselfabout, when to his horror he discovered that his limbs were growingrigid and his jaw stiff. In the utmost agitation he tried to walk acrossthe studio and found himself almost incapable of the effort. His eyesseemed to leap out of their sockets and his sight grew dim. Appalledand in agony, he at length sprang up from the couch upon which he haddropped down a moment before, and fled out of the house. The violentaction speedily induced a copious perspiration, and this being by muchthe best thing that could have happened to him, carried off the poisonand so saved his life. He could never afterwards be induced to return tothe drug in question, and in the last year of his life was probably morefearfully aghast at seeing the present writer take a harmless dose of itthan he would have been at learning that 50 grains of chloral had beentaken. 

He had, in early manhood, the keenest relish of a funny prank, and onesuch he used to act over again in after life with the greatest vivacityof manner. Every one remembers the story told by Jefferson Hogg howShelley got rid of the old woman with the onion basket who took a placebeside him in a stage coach in Sussex, by seating himself on the floorand fixing a tearful, woful face upon his companion, addressing her inthrilling accents thus--

 For heaven's sake, let us sit upon the ground, And tell sad stories of the death of kings. 

Rossetti's frolic was akin to this, though the results were amusinglydifferent. It would appear that when in early years, Mr. William Morrisand Mr. Burne Jones occupied a studio together, they had a young servantmaid whose manners were perennially vivacious, whose good spirits nodisaster could damp, and whose pertness nothing could banish orcheck. Rossetti conceived the idea of frightening the girl out of hercomplacency, and calling one day on his friends, he affected the direstmadness, strutted ominously up to her and with the wildest glare of hiswild eyes, the firmest and fiercest setting of his lower lip, and beganin measured and resonant accents to recite the lines--

 Shall the hide of a fierce lion Be stretched on a couch of wood, For a daughter's foot to lie on, Stained with a father's blood?

The poet's response is a soft "Ah, no!" but the girl, ignorant of courseof this, and wholly undisturbed by the bloodthirsty tone of the questionaddressed to her, calmly fixed her eyes on the frenzied eyes before her, and answered with a swift light accent and rippling laugh, "It shallif you like, sir!" Rossetti's enjoyment of his discomfiture on thisoccasion seemed never to grow less. 

His life was twofold in intellectual effort, and of the directions inwhich his energy went out the artistic alone has thus far been dealtwith. It has been said that he early displayed talent for writing aswell as painting, and, in truth, the poems that he wrote in early youthare even more remarkable than the pictures that he painted. His poeticgenius developed rapidly after sixteen, and sprang at once to a singularand perfect maturity. It is difficult to say whether it will add to themarvel of mature achievement or deduct from the sense of reality ofpersonal experience, to make public the fact that _The Blessed Damozel_was written when the poet was no more than nineteen. That poem is acreation so pure and simple in the higher imagination, as to support thecontention that the author was electively related to Fra Angelico. Described briefly, it may be said to embody the meditations of abeautiful girl in Paradise, whose lover is in the same hour dreaming ofher on earth. How the poet lighted upon the conception shall be told byhimself in that portion of this book devoted to the writer's personalrecollections. 

_The Blessed Damozel_ is a conception dilated to such spiritualloveliness that it seems not to exist within things substantiallybeautiful, or yet by aid of images that coalesce out of the evolvingmemory of them, but outside of everything actual It is not merely thatthe dream itself is one of ideal purity; the wave of impulse is pure, and flows without taint of media that seem almost to know it not. Thelady says:--

 We two will lie i' the shadow of That living mystic tree Within whose secret growth the Dove Is sometimes felt to be, While every leaf that His plumes touch Saith His Name audibly. 

Here the love involved is so etherealised as scarcely to be calledhuman, save only on the part of the mortal dreamer, in whose yearningecstasy the ear thinks it recognises a more earthly note. The loverrejoins. --

 (Alas! We two, we two, thou say'st! Yea, one wast thou with me That once of old. But shall God lift To endless unity The soul whose likeness with thy soul Was but its love for thee?)

It is said of the few existent examples of the art of Giorgione that, around some central realisation of human passion gathers always alandscape which is not merely harmonised to it, but a part of it, sharing the joy or the anguish, lying silent to the breathlessadoration, or echoing the rapturous voice of the full pleasure of thosewho are beyond all height and depth more than it. Something of thispassive sympathy of environing objects comes out in the poem:

 Around her, lovers, newly met 'Mid deathless love's acclaims, Spoke evermore among themselves Their rapturous new names; And the souls mounting up to God Went by her like thin flames. 

 And still she bowed herself and stooped Out of the circling charm; Until her bosom must have made The bar she leaned on warm, And the lilies lay as if asleep Along her bended arm. 

The sense induced by such imagery is akin to that which comes of raptcontemplation of the deep em-blazonings of a fine stained window whenthe sun's warm gules glides off before the dim twilight. And this senseas of a thing existent, yet passing stealthily out of all sight away, the metre of the poem helps to foster. Other metres of Rossetti's havea strenuous reality, and rejoice in their self-assertiveness, and seem, almost, in their resonant strength, to tell themselves they are verygood; but this may almost be said to be a disembodied voice, thatlives only on the air, and, like the song of a bird, is gone before itsaccents have been caught. Of the four-and-twenty stanzas of the poem, none is more calmly musical than this:

 When round his head the aureole clings, And he is clothed in white, I 'll take his hand and go with him To the deep wells of light; We will step down as to a stream, And bathe there in God's sight. 

Perhaps Rossetti never did anything more beautiful and spiritual thanthis little work of his twentieth year; and more than once in later lifehe painted the beautiful lady who is the subject of it, with the lilieslying along her arm. 

A first draft of _Jenny_ was struck off when the poet was scarcely morethan a boy, and taken up again years afterwards, and almost entirelyre-written--the only notable passage of the early poem that now remainsbeing the passage on lust. It is best described in the simplest phrase, as a man's meditations on the life of a courtesan whom he has met at adancing-garden and accompanied home. While he sits on a couch, she liesat his feet with her head on his knee and sleeps. When the morning dawnshe rises, places cushions beneath her head, puts some gold amongher hair, and leaves her. It is wisest to hazard at the outset allunfavourable comment by the frankest statement of the story of thepoem. But the _motif_ of it is a much higher thing. _Jenny_ embodiesan entirely distinct phase of feeling, yet the poet's root impulseis therein the same as in the case of _The Blessed Damozel_. No twocreations could stand more widely apart as to outward features thanthe dream of the sainted maiden and the reality of the frail and fallengirl; yet the primary prompting and the ultimate outcome are the same. The ardent longing after ideal purity in womanhood, which in the onegave birth to a conception whereof the very sorrow is but excess ofjoy found expression in the other through a vivid presentment of thenameless misery of unwomanly dishonour:--

 Behold the lilies of the field, They toil not neither do they spin; (So doth the ancient text begin, -- Not of such rest as one of these Can share. ) Another rest and ease Along each summer-sated path From its new lord the garden hath, Than that whose spring in blessings ran Which praised the bounteous husbandman, Ere yet, in days of hankering breath, The lilies sickened unto death. 

It was indeed a daring thing the author proposed to himself to do, andassuredly no man could have essayed it who had not consciously unitedto an unfailing and unshrinking insight, a relativeness of mind such asright-hearted people might approve. To take a fallen woman, a cipher ofman's sum of lust, befouled with the shameful knowledge of the streets, yet young, delicate, "apparelled beyond parallel, " unblessed, with abeauty which, if copied by a Da Vinci's hand, might stand whole ageslong "for preachings of what God can do, " and then to endow such a onewith the sensitiveness of a poet's own mind, make her read afresh asthough by lightning, and in a dream, that story of the old pure days--

 Much older than any history That is written in any book, and lastly, to gather about her an overwhelming sense of infinite solacefor the wronged and lost, and of the retributive justice with whichman's transgressions will be visited--this is, indeed, to hazard allthings in the certainty of an upright purpose and true reward. 

 Shall no man hold his pride forewarn'd Till in the end, the Day of Days, At Judgment, one of his own race, As frail and lost as you, shall rise, -- His daughter with his mother's eyes!

Yet Rossetti made no treaty with puritanism, and in this respect his_Jenny_ has something in common with Hawthorne's _Scarlet Letter_--thanwhich nothing, perhaps, that is so pure, without being puritanical, has reached us even from the land that gave _Evangeline_ to the Englishtongue. The guilty love of Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale is neverfor an instant condoned, but, on the other hand, the rigorous severityof the old puritan community is not dwelt upon with favour. Relentlessremorse must spend itself upon the man before the whole measure of hismisery is full, and on the woman the brand of a public shame must beborne meekly to the end. But though no rancour is shown towards theaustere and blind morality which puts to open discharge the guiltymother whilst unconsciously nourishing the yet more guilty father, wesee the tenderness of a love that palliates the baseness of the amour, and the bitter depths of a penitence that cannot be complete until itcan no longer be concealed. And so with Jenny. She may have transientflashes of remorseful consciousness, such as reveal to her the tracklessleagues that separate what she was from what she is, but no effort ismade to hide the plain truth that she is a courtesan, skilled onlyin the lures and artifices peculiar to her shameful function. Noreformatory promptings fit her for a place at the footstool of thepuritan. Nothing tells of winter yet; on the other hand, no virulentdiatribes are cast forth against the society that shuts this woman out, as the puritan settlement turned its back on Hester Prynne. But wesee her and know her for what she is, a woman like unto other women:desecrated but akin. 

This dramatic quality of sitting half-passively above their creationsand of leaving their ethics to find their own channels (once assuredthat their impulses are pure), the poet and the romancer possess incommon. If there is a point of difference between their attitudes ofmind, it is where Rossetti seems to reserve his whole personal feelingfor the impeachment of lust;--

 Like a toad within a stone Seated while Time crumbles on; Which sits there since the earth was cursed For Man's transgression at the first; Which, living through all centuries, Not once has seen the sun arise; Whose life, to its cold circle charmed, The earth's whole summers have not warmed; Which always--whitherso the stone Be flung--sits there, deaf, blind, alone;-- Ay, and shall not be driven out Till that which shuts him round about Break at the very Master's stroke, And the dust thereof vanish as smoke, And the seed of Man vanish as dust:-- Even so within this world is Lust. 

_Sister Helen_ was written somewhat later than _The Blessed Damozel_and the first draft of _Jenny_, and probably belonged to the poet'stwenty-fourth or twenty-fifth year. The ballad involves a story ofwitchcraft A girl has been first betrayed and then deserted by herlover; so, to revenge herself upon him and his newly-married bride, sheburns his waxen image three days over a fire, and during that time hedies in torment In _Sister Helen_ we touch the key-note of Rossetti'screative gift. Even the superstition which forms the basis of the balladowes something of its individual character to the invention and poeticbias of the poet. The popular superstitions of the Middle Ages wereusually of two kinds only. First, there were those that arose out of ajealous Catholicism, always glancing towards heresy; and next there werethose that laid their account neither with orthodoxy nor unbelief, andwere purely pagan. The former were the offspring of fanaticism; thelatter of an appeal to appetite or passion, or fancy, or perhapsintuitive reason directed blindly or unconsciously towards naturalphenomena. The superstition involved in _Sister Helen_ partakes whollyof neither character, but partly of both, with an added element ofdemonology. The groundwork is essentially catholic, the burden of theballad showing that the tragic event lies between Hell and Heaven:--

 (O Mother, Mary Mother, Three days to-day, between Hell and Heaven!)

But the superstructural overgrowth is totally undisturbed by anyanimosity against heresy, and is concerned only with a certain ultimatedemoniacal justice visiting the wrongdoer. Thus far the elemental tissueof the superstition has something in common with that of the Germansecret tribunal of the steel and cord; with this difference, however, that whereas the latter punishes in secret, even _as the deity_, theformer makes conscious compact with the powers of evil, that whateverjustice shall be administered upon the wicked shall first be purchasedby sacrifice of the good. Sister Helen may burn, alive, the body andsoul of her betrayer, but the dying knell that tells of the false soul'suntimely flight, tolls the loss of her own soul also:--

 "Ah! what white thing at the door has cross'd, Sister Helen? Ah! what is this that sighs in the frost!" "A soul that's lost as mine is lost, Little brother!" (O Mother, Mary Mother, Lost, lost, all lost, between Hell and Heaven!)

Here lies the divergence between the lines of this and other compactswith evil powers; this is the point of Rossetti's departure from thescheme that forms the underplot of Goethe's _Faust_, and of Marlowe's_Faustus_, and was intended to constitute the plan of Coleridge's_Michael Scott_. It has been well said that the theme of the Faust isthe consequence of a misology, or hatred of knowledge, resulting uponan original thirst for knowledge baffled. Faust never does from thebeginning love knowledge for itself, but he loves it for the means itaffords for the acquisition of power. This base purpose defeats itself;and when Faust finds that learning fails to yield him the domination hecraves, he hates and contemns it. Away, henceforth, with all pretence toknowledge! Then follows the compact, the articles to which are absoluteservility of the Devil on the one part, and complete possession of thesoul of Faust on the other. Faust is little better than a wizard fromthe first, for if knowledge had given him what he: sought, he had neverhad recourse to witchcraft! Helen, however, partakes in some sortof the triumphant nobility of an avenging deity who has cozened hellitself, and not in vain. In the whole majesty of her great wrong, sheloses the originally vulgar character of the witch. It is not as theconsequence of a poison-speck in her own heart that she has recourse tosorcery. She does not love witchery for its own sake; she loves it onlyas the retributive channel for the requital of a terrible offence. Itis throughout the last hour of her three-days' conflict, merely, that wesee her, but we know her then not more for the revengeful woman she isthan for the trustful maiden she has been. When she becomes conscious ofthe treason wrought against her, we feel that she suffers change. Inthe eyes of others we can see her, and in our vision of her she isbeautiful; but hers is the beauty of fair cheeks, from which the cankerfrets the soft tenderness of colour, the loveliness of golden hair thathas lost its radiance, the sweetness of eyes once dripping with thedews of the spirit, now pale, and cold, and lustreless. Very soon thewrongdoer shall reap the harvest of a twofold injury: this day anotherbride shall stand by his side. Is there, then, no way to wreak the justrevenge of a broken heart? _That_ suggests sorcery. Yes, the body andsoul of the false lover may melt as before a flame; but the price ofvengeance is horrible. Yet why? Has not love become devilish? Is notlife a curse? Then wherefore shrink? The resolute wronged woman mustgo through with it. And when the last hour comes, nature itself isportentous of the virulent ill. In the wind's wake, the moon fliesthrough a rack of night clouds. One after one the suppliants cravepardon for the distant dying lover, and last of these comes thethree-days' bride. 

In addition to the three great poems just traversed, Rossetti hadwritten, before the completion of his twenty-sixth year, _The Staffand Scrip, The Burden of Nineveh, Troy Town, Eden Bower_ and _The LastConfession_, as well as a fragment of _The Bride's Prelude_, to whichit will be necessary to return. But, with a single exception, thepoems just named may be said to exist beside the three that have beenanalysed, without being radically distinct from them, or touchinghigher or other levels, and hence it is not considered needful to dwellupon them at length. _The Last Confession_ covers another range offeeling, it is true, whereof it may be said that the nobler part isakin to that which finds expression in the pure and shattered love ofOthello; but it is a range of feeling less characteristical, perhapsless indigenous and appreciable. 

In the years 1845-49 inclusive, Rossetti made the larger part of histranslations (published in 1861) from the early Italian poets, andthough he afterwards spoke of them as having been the work of theleisure moments of many years, of their subsequent revision alone, perhaps, could this be altogether true. The _Vita Nuova_, together withthe many among Dante's _Lyrics_ and those of his contemporaries whichelucidate their personal intercourse; were translated, as well as agreat body of the sonnets of poets later than Dante. {*} This early andindirect apprenticeship to the sonnet, as a form of composition, ledto his becoming, in the end, perhaps the most perfect of Englishsonnet-writers. In youth, it was one of his pleasures to engage inexercises of sonnet-skill with his brother William and his sisterChristina, and, even then, he attained to such proficiency, in the meremechanism of sonnet structure, that he could sometimes dash off a sonnetin ten minutes--rivalling, in this particular, the impromptu productionsof Hartley Coleridge. It is hardly necessary to say that the poemsproduced, under such conditions of time and other tests, were rarely, if ever, adjudged worthy of publication, by the side of work to which hegave adequate deliberation. But several of the sonnets on pictures--as, for example, the fine one on a Venetian pastoral by Giorgione--and thepolitical sonnet, Miltonic in spirit, _On the Refusal of Aid betweenNations_, were written contemporaneously with the experimental sonnetsin question. 

 * Rossetti often remarked that he had intended to translate the sonnets of Michael Angelo, until he saw Mr. Symonds's translation, when he was so much impressed by its excellence that he forthwith abandoned the purpose. 

As _The House of Life_ was composed in great part at the period withwhich we are now dealing (though published in the complete sequencenearly twenty-five years later), it may be best to traverse it at thisstage. Though called a full series of sonnets, there is no intimationthat it is not fragmentary as to design; the title is an astronomical, not an architectural figure. The work is at once Shakspearean andDantesque. Whilst electively akin to the _Vita Nuova_, it is broaderin range, the life involved being life idealised in all phases. WhatRossetti's idea was of the mission of the sonnet, as associated withlife, and exhibiting a similitude of it, may best be learned from hisprefatory sonnet:--

 A Sonnet is a moment's monument, -- Memorial from the Soul's eternity To one dead deathless hour. Look that it be, Whether for lustral rite or dire portent, Of its own arduous fulness reverent: Carve it in ivory or in ebony, As Day or Night may rule; and let Time see Its flowering crest impearled and orient. A Sonnet is a coin; its face reveals The soul, --its converse, to what Power 'tis due:-- Whether for tribute to the august appeals Of Life, or dower in Love's high retinue, It serve; or 'mid the dark wharfs cavernous breath, In Charon's palm it pay the toll to Death. 

Rossetti's sonnets are of varied metrical structure; but theirintellectual structure is uniform, comprising in each case a flow andebb of thought within the limits of a single conception. In this latterrespect they have a character almost peculiar to themselves amongEnglish sonnets. Rossetti was not the first English writer whodeliberatively separated octave and sestet, but he was the first whoobeyed throughout a series of sonnets the canon of the contemporarystructure requiring that a sonnet shall present the twofold facet of asingle thought or emotion. This form of the sonnet Rossetti was at leastthe first among English writers entirely to achieve and perfectly torender. _The House of Life_ does not contain a sonnet which is not tosome degree informed by such an intellectual and musical wave; but thefollowing is an example more than usually emphatic:

 Even as a child, of sorrow that we give dead, but little in his heart can find, Since without need of thought to his clear mind Their turn it is to die and his to live:-- Even so the winged New Love smiles to receive Along his eddying plumes the auroral wind, Nor, forward glorying, casts one look behind Where night-rack shrouds the Old Love fugitive. 

 There is a change in every hour's recall, And the last cowslip in the fields we see On the same day with the first corn-poppy. Alas for hourly change! Alas for all The loves that from his hand proud youth lets fall, Even as the beads of a told rosary!

The distinguishing excellence of craftsmanship in Rossetti's sonnetswas early recognised; but the fertility of thought, and range of emotioncompassed by this part of his work constitute an excellence far higherthan any that belongs to perfection of form, rhythm, or metre. Mr. Palgrave has well said that a poet's story differs from a narrative inbeing in itself a creation; that it brings its own facts; that whatwe have to ask is not the true life of Laura, but how far Petrarch hastruly drawn the life of love. So with Rossetti's sonnets. They may ormay not be "occasional. " Many readers who enter with sympathy into theseries of feelings they present will doubtless insist upon regardingthem as autobiographical. Others, who think they see the stamp ofreality upon them, will perhaps accept them (as Hallam accepted theSonnets of Shakspeare) as witnesses of excessive affection, redeemedsometimes by touches of nobler sentiments--if affection, howeverexcessive, needs to be redeemed. Others again will receive them asartistic embodiments of ideal love upon which is placed the imprint of apassion as mythical as they believe to be attached to the autobiographyof Dante's early days. But the genesis and history of these sonnets(whether the emotion with which they are pervaded be actual or imagined)must be looked for within. Do they realise vividly Life representativein its many phases of love, joy, sorrow, and death? It must be concededthat _he House of Life_ touches many passions and depicts life inmost of its changeful aspects. It would afford an adequate test of itscomprehensiveness to note how rarely a mind in general sympathy with theauthor could come to its perusal without alighting upon something thatwould be in harmony with its mood. To traverse the work through itsaspiration and foreboding, joy, grief, remorse, despair, and finalresignation, would involve a task too long and difficult to be attemptedhere. Two sonnets only need be quoted as at once indicative of the rangeof thought and feeling covered, and of the sequent relation these poemsbear each to each. 

 By thine own tears thy song must tears beget, Singer! Magic mirror thou hast none Except thy manifest heart; and save thine own Anguish or ardour, else no amulet. 

 Cisterned in Pride, verse is the feathery jet Of soulless air-flung fountains; nay, more dry Than the Dead Sea for throats that thirst and sigh, That song o'er which no singer's lids grew wet. 

 The Song-god--He the Sun-god--is no slave Of thine: thy Hunter he, who for thy soul Fledges his shaft: to the august control Of thy skilled hand his quivered store he gave: But if thy lips' loud cry leap to his smart, The inspired record shall pierce thy brother's heart. 

This is not meant to convey the same idea as Shelley's "learn insuffering, " etc. , but merely that a poem must move the writer in itscomposition if it is to move the reader. 

With the following _The House of Life_ is made to close:

 When vain desire at last and vain regret Go hand in hand to death, and all is vain, What shall assuage the unforgotten pain And teach the unforgetful to forget?

 Shall Peace be still a sunk stream long unmet, -- Or may the soul at once in a green plain Stoop through the spray of some sweet life-fountain, And cull the dew-drenched flowering amulet?

 Ah! when the wan soul in that golden air Between the scriptured petals softly blown Peers breathless for the gift of grace unknown, -- Ah! let none other alien spell soe'er But only the one Hope's one name be there, -- Not less nor more, but even that word alone. 

A writer must needs be loath to part from this section of Rossett's workwithout naming some few sonnets that seem to be in all respects on alevel with those to which attention has been drawn. Of such, perhaps, the most conspicuous are:--_A Day of Love; Mid-Rapture; Her Gifts; TheDark Glass; True Woman; Without Her; Known in Vain; The Heart ofthe Night; The Landmark; Stillborn Love; Lost Days_. But it would bedifficult to formulate a critical opinion in support of the superiorityof almost any of these' sonnets over the others, --so balanced is theirmerit, so equal their appeal to the imagination and heart. Indeed, itwere scarcely rash to say that in the language (outside Shakspeare)there exists no single body of sonnets characterised by such sustainedexcellence of vision and presentment. It must have been strange enoughif the all but unexampled ardour and constancy with which Rossettipursued the art of the sonnet-writer had not resulted in absolutemastery. 

In 1850 _The Germ_ was started under the editorship of Mr. WilliamMichael Rossetti, and to the four issues, which were all that werepublished of this monthly magazine (designed to advocate the views ofthe pre-Raphaelite brotherhood), Rossetti contributed certain ofhis early poems--_The Blessed Damozel_ among the number. In 1856 hecontributed many of the same poems, together with others, to _The Oxfordand Cambridge Magazine_, of which Canon Dixon has kindly undertaken totell the history. He says:

My knowledge of Dante Gabriel Rossetti was begun in connection with _TheOxford and Cambridge Magazine_, a monthly periodical, which was startedin January 1856, and lasted a year. The projectors of this periodicalwere Mr. William Morris, Mr. Ed. Burne Jones, and myself. The editor wasMr. (now the Rev. ) William Fulford. Among the original contributors werethe late Mr. Wilfred Heeley of Cambridge, Mr. Faulkner, now Fellowof University College, Oxford, and Mr. Cormel Price. We were allundergraduates. The publishers of the magazine were the late firm ofBell and Daldy. We gradually associated with ourselves several othercontributors: above all, D. G. Rossetti. 

Of this undertaking the central notion was, I think, to advocate moralearnestness and purpose in literature, art, and society. It was foundedmuch on Mr. Ruskin's teaching: it sprang out of youthful impatience, andexhibited many signs of immaturity and ignorance: but perhaps it wasnot without value as a protest against some things. The pre-Raphaelitemovement was then in vigour: and this Magazine came to be considered asthe organ of those who accepted the ideas which were brought into artat that time; and, as in a manner, the successor of _The Germ_, a smallperiodical which had been published previously by the first beginnersof the movement. Rossetti, in many respects the most memorable of thepre-Raphaelites, became connected with our Magazine when it had beenin existence about six months: and he contributed to it several of thefinest of the poems that were afterwards collected in the former ofhis two volumes of poems: namely, _The Burden of Nineveh, The BlessedDamozel, and The Staff and Scrip_. I think that one of them, _TheBlessed Damozel_, had appeared previously in _The Germ_. All thesepoems, as they now stand in the author's volume, have been greatlyaltered from what they were in the Magazine: and, in being altered, notalways improved, at least in the verbal changes. The first of them, asublime meditation of peculiar metrical power, has been much altered, and in general happily, as to the arrangement of stanzas: but not alwaysso happily as to the words. It is, however, pleasing to notice that inthe alterations some touches of bitterness have been effaced. The secondof these pieces has been brought with great skill into regular form bytransposition: but again one repines to find several touches gone thatonce were there. The last of them, _The Staff and Scrip_, is, in myjudgment, the finest of all Rossetti's poems, and one of the mostglorious writings in the language. It exhibits in flawless perfectionthe gift that he had above all other writers, absolute beauty and pureaction. Here again it is not possible to see without regret some of theverbal alterations that have been made in the poem as it now stands, although the chief emendation, the omission of one stanza and theinsertion of another, adds clearness, and was all that was wanted tomake the poem perfect in structure. 

I saw Rossetti for the first time in his lodgings over BlackfriarsBridge. It was impossible not to be impressed with the freedom andkindness of his manner, not less than by his personal appearance. Hisfrank greeting, bold, but gentle glance, his whole presence, produced afeeling of confidence and pleasure. His voice had a great charm, bothin tone, and from the peculiar cadences that belonged to it I think thatthe leading features of his character struck me more at first thanthe characteristics of his genius; or rather, that my notion of thecharacter of the man was formed first, and was then applied to hisworks, and identified with them. The main features of his characterwere, in my apprehension, fearlessness, kindliness, a decision thatsometimes made him seem somewhat arbitrary, and condensation orconcentration. He was wonderfully self-reliant. These moral qualities, guiding an artistic temperament as exquisite as was ever bestowed onman, made him what he was, the greatest inventor of abstract beauty, both in form and colour, that this age, perhaps that the world, hasseen. They would also account for some peculiarities that must beadmitted in some of his works, want of nature, for instance. I heard himonce remark that it was "astonishing how much the least bit of naturehelped if one put it in;" which seemed like an acknowledgment that hemight have gone more to nature. Hence, however, his works always seemabstract, always seem to embody some kind of typical aim, and acquire asort of sacred character. 

I saw a good deal of Rossetti in London, and afterwards in Oxford, during the painting of the Union debating-room. In later years ourpersonal intercourse was broken off through distance; though I saw himoccasionally almost to the time of his lamented death, and we had somecorrespondence. My recollection of him is that of greatness, as might beexpected of one of the few who have been "illustrious in two arts, " andwho stands by himself and has earned an independent name in both. Hiswork was great: the man was greater. His conversation had a wonderfulease, precision, and felicity of expression. He produced thoughtsperfectly enunciated with a deliberate happiness that was indescribable, though it was always simple conversation, never haranguing ordeclamation. He was a natural leader because he was a natural teacher. When he chose to be interested in anything that was brought before him, no pains were too great for him to take. His advice was always givenwarmly and freely, and when he spoke of the works of others it wasalways in the most generous spirit of praise. It was in fact impossibleto have been more free from captiousness, jealousy, envy, or any otherform of pettiness than this truly noble man. The great painter who firsttook me to him said, "We shall see the greatest man in Europe. " I haveit on the same authority that Rossetti's aptitude for art was consideredamongst painters to be no less extraordinary than his imagination. Forexample, that he could take hold of the extremity of the brush, and beas certain of his touch as if it had been held in the usual way; that henever painted a picture without doing something in colour that hadnever been done before; and, in particular, that he had a command of thefeatures of the human face such as no other painter ever possessed. Ialso remember some observations by the same assuredly competent judge, to the effect that Rossetti might be set against the great paintersof the fifteenth century, as equal to them, though unlike them: thedifference being that while they represented the characters, whomthey painted, in their ordinary and unmoved mood, he represented hischaracters under emotion, and yet gave them wholly. It may be added, perhaps, that he had a lofty standard of beauty of his own invention, and that he both elevated and subjected all to beauty. Such a man wasnot likely to be ignorant of the great root of power in art, and Ionce saw him very indignant on hearing that he had been accused ofirreligion, or rather of not being a Christian. He asked with greatearnestness, "Do not my works testify to my Christianity?" I wish thatthese imperfect recollections may be of any avail to those who cherishthe memory of an extraordinary genius. 

Besides his contributions to _The Germ_, and to _The Oxford andCambridge Magazine_, Rossetti contributed _Sister Helen_, in 1853, to aGerman Annual. Beyond this he made little attempt to publish his poetry. He had written it for the love of writing, or in obedience to theinherent impulse compelling him to do so, but of actual hope ofachieving by virtue of it a place among English poets he seems tohave had none, or next to none. In later life he used to say that Mr. Browning's greatness and the splendour of Mr. Tennyson's merited renownseemed to him in those early years to render all attempt on his partto secure rank by their side as hopeless as presumptuous. This, heasserted, was the cause that operated to restrain him from publicationbetween 1853 and 1862, and after that (as will presently be seen), another and more serious obstacle than self-depreciation intervened. Butin putting aside all hope of the reward of poetic achievement, he didnot wholly banish the memory of the work he had done. He made two ormore copies of the most noticeable of the poems he had written, and sentthem to friends eminent in letters. To Leigh Hunt he sent _The BlessedDamozel_, and received in acknowledgment a letter full of appreciativecomment, and foretelling a brilliant future. His literary friends atthis time were Mr. Ruskin, Mr. And Mrs. Browning; he used to see Mr. Tennyson and Carlyle at intervals, and was in constant intercourse withthe younger writers, Mr. Swinburne and Mr. Morris, whose reputations hadthen to be made; Mr. Arnold, Sir Henry Taylor, Mr. Aubrey de Vere, Mr. E. Brough, Mr. J. Hannay, and Mr. Monckton Milnes (Lord Houghton), he met occasionally; Dobell he knew only by correspondence. Thoughunpublished, his poems were not unknown, for besides the semi-publicitythey obtained by circulation "among his private friends, " he was nothingloath to read or recite them at request, and by such means a few ofthem secured a celebrity akin in kind and almost equal in extent to thatenjoyed by Coleridge's _Christabel_ during the many years preceding1816 in which it lay in manuscript. Like Coleridge's poem in anotherimportant particular, certain of Rossetti's ballads, whilst stillunknown to the public, so far influenced contemporary poetry that whenthey did at length appear they had all the appearance to the uninitiatedof work imitated from contemporary models, instead of being, as in factthey were, the primary source of inspiration for writers whose nameswere earlier established. 

Towards the beginning of his artistic career Rossetti occupied a studio, with residential chambers, at Black-friars Bridge. The rooms overlookedthe river, and the tide rose almost to the walls of the house, which, with nearly all its old surroundings, has long disappeared. 

A story is told of Rossetti amidst these environments which aptlyillustrates almost every trait of his character: his impetuosity, and superstition especially. It was his daily habit to ransackold book-stalls, and carry off to his studio whatever treasures heunearthed, but when, upon further investigation, he found he had beendeceived as to the value of a book that at first looked promising, heusually revenged himself by throwing the volume through a window intothe river running below--a habit which he discovered (to his amusement, and occasionally to his distress), that his friends, Mr. Swinburneespecially, imitated from him and practised at his rooms on his behalf. On one occasion he discovered in some odd nook a volume long soughtfor, and having inscribed it with his name and address, he bore it offjoyfully to his chambers; but finding a few days later that in somerespects it disappointed his expectations, he flung it through thewindow, and banished all further thought of it. The tide had been at theflood when the book disappeared, and when it ebbed, the offending volumewas found by a little mud-lark imbedded in the refuse of the river. Theboy washed it and took it back to the address it contained, expecting tofind it eagerly reclaimed; but, impatient and angry at sight of what hethought he had destroyed, Rossetti snatched the book out of the muddyhand that proffered it and flung it again into the Thames, with ratherless than the courtesy which might have been looked for as the reward ofan act that was meant so well. But the haunting volume was not evenyet done with. Next morning, an old man of the riverside labourer classknocked at the door, bearing in his hands a small parcel rudely madeup in a piece of newspaper that was greasy enough to have previouslycontained his morning's breakfast. He had come from where he was workingbelow London Bridge: he had found something that might have been lostby Mr. Rossetti. It was the tormenting volume: the indestructible, unrelenting phantom that would not be laid! Rossetti now perceived thathigher agencies were at work: it was _not meant_ that he should get ridof the book: why should he contend against the inevitable? Reverentlyand with both hands he took the besoiled parcel from the brown palmof the labourer, placed half-a-crown there instead, and restored thefearful book to its place on his shelf. 

And now we come to incidents in Rossetti's career of which it isnecessary to treat as briefly as tenderly. Among the models who sat tohim was Miss Elizabeth Eleanor Siddal, a young lady of great personalbeauty, in whom he discovered a natural genius for painting and anoticeable love of the higher poetic literature. He felt impelledto give her lessons, and she became as much his pupil as model. Herwater-colour drawings done under his tuition gave proof of a wonderfuleye for colour, and displayed a marked tendency to style. The subjects, too, were admirably composed and often exhibited unusual poetic feeling. It was very natural that such a connection between persons of kindredaspirations should lead to friendship and finally to love. 

Rossetti and Miss Siddal were married in 1860. They visited France andBelgium; and this journey, together with a similar one undertaken in thecompany of Mr. Holman Hunt in 1849, and again another in 1863, when hisbrother was his companion, and a short residence on the Continent whena boy, may be said to constitute almost the whole sum of Rossetti'stravelling. Very soon the lady's health began to fail, and she becamethe victim of neuralgia. To meet this dread enemy she resorted tolaudanum, taking it at first in small quantities, but eventually inexcess. Her spirits drooped, her art was laid aside, and much of thecheerfulness of home was lost to her. There was a child, but it wasstillborn, and not long after this disaster, it was found that Mrs. Rossetti had taken an overdose of her accustomed sleeping potion andwas lying dead in her bed. This was in 1862, and after two years only ofmarried life. The blow was a terrible one to Rossetti, who was the firstto discover what fate had reserved for him. It was some days before heseemed fully to realise the loss that had befallen him, and then hisgrief knew no bounds. The poems he had written, so far as they werepoems of love, were chiefly inspired by and addressed to her. At herrequest he had copied them into a little book presented to him for thepurpose, and on the day of the funeral he walked into the room wherethe body lay, and, unmindful of the presence of friends, he spoke tohis dead wife as though she heard, saying, as he held the book, that thewords it contained were written to her and for her, and she must takethem with her for they could not remain when she had gone. Then he putthe volume into the coffin between her cheek and beautiful hair, and itwas that day buried with her in Highgate Cemetery. 

CHAPTER II. 

It was long before Rossetti recovered from the shock of his wife'ssudden death. The loss sustained appeared to change the whole courseof his life. Previously he had been of a cheerful temperament, andaccustomed to go abroad at frequent intervals to visit friends; butafter this event he seemed to become for a time morose, and by naturereclusive. Not a great while afterwards he removed from BlackfriarsBridge, and after a temporary residence in Lincoln's Inn Fields, he tookup his abode in the house he occupied during the twenty remaining yearsof his life, at 16 Cheyne Walk, Chelsea. This home of Rossetti's shallbe fully described in subsequent personal recollections. It was calledTudor House when he became its tenant, from the tradition that ElizabethTudor had lived in it, and it is understood to be the same thatThackeray describes in _Esmond_ as the home of the old Countess ofChelsey. A large garden, which recently has been cut off for buildingpurposes, lay at the back, and, doubtless, it was as much due tothe attractions of this piece of pleasant ground, dotted over withlime-trees, and enclosed by a high wall, that Rossetti went so farafield, for at that period Chelsea was not the rallying ground ofartists and men of letters. He wished to live a life of retirement, andthought the possession of a garden in which he could take sufficientdaily exercise would enable him to do so. In leaving Blackfriarshe destroyed many things associated with his residence there, andcalculated to remind him of his life's great loss. He burnt a great bodyof letters, and among them were many valuable ones from almost allthe men and women then eminent in literature and art. His great griefnotwithstanding, upon settling at Chelsea he began almost insensibly tointerest himself in furnishing the house in a beautiful and novel style. Old oak then became for a time his passion, and in hunting it up herummaged the brokers' shops round London for miles, buying for trifleswhat would eventually (when the fashion he started grew to be general)have fetched large sums. Cabinets of all conceivable superannuateddesigns--so old in material or pattern that no one else would look atthem--were unearthed in obscure corners, bolstered up by a joiner, and consigned to their places in the new residence. Following old oak, Japanese furniture became Rossetti's quest, and following this came bluechina ware (of which he had perhaps the first fine collection made), and then ecclesiastical and other brasses, incense-burners, sacramentalcups, crucifixes, Indian spice boxes, mediaeval lamps, antique bronzes, and the like. In a few years he had filled his house with so muchcurious and beautiful furniture that there grew up a widespread desireto imitate his methods; and very soon artists, authors, and men offortune having no other occupation, were found rummaging, as he hadrummaged, for the neglected articles of the centuries gone by. What hedid was done, as he used to say, less from love of the things huntedfor, than from love of the pursuit, which, from its difficulty, gaverise to a pleasurable excitement. Thus did he grieve down his loss, andlittle did they think who afterwards followed the fashion he set them, and carried his passion for antique furniture to an excess at which hemust have laughed, that his' primary impulse was so far from a desire to"live up to his blue ware, " that it was more like an effort to live downto it. 

It was during the earlier years of his residence at Chelsea thatRossetti formed a habit of life which clung to him almost to the last, and did more than aught else to blight his happiness. What his intimatefriend has lately characterised in _The Daily News_ as that great curseof the literary and artistic temperament, insomnia, had been hangingabout him since the death of his wife, and was becoming each year moreand more alarming. He had tried opiates, but in sparing quantities, forhad he not the most serious cause to eschew them? Towards 1868 he heardof the then newly found drug chloral, which was accredited with all thevirtues and none of the vices of other known narcotics. Here then wasthe thing he wanted; this was the blessed discovery that was to savehim from days of weariness and nights of misery and tears. Eagerly heprocured it, took it nightly in single small doses of ten grains each, and from it he received pleasant and refreshing sleep. He made noconcealment of his habit; like Coleridge under similar conditions, hepreferred to talk of it. Not yet had he learned the sad truth, too soonto force itself upon him, that the fumes of this dreadful drug wouldone day wither up his hopes and joys in life: deluding him with ashort-lived surcease of pain only to impose a terrible legacy ofsuffering from which there was to be no respite. Had Rossetti beenmaster of the drug and not mastered by it, perhaps he might haveturned it to account at a critical juncture, and laid it aside when thenecessity to employ it had gradually been removed. But, alas! he gaveway little by little to the encroachments of an evil power with which, when once it had gained the ascendant, he fought down to his dying day asingle-handed and losing fight. 

It was not, however, for some years after he began the use of it thatchloral produced any sensible effects of an injurious kind, and meantimehe pursued as usual his avocation as a painter. Mention has been madeof the fact that Rossetti abandoned at an early age subject designs forthree-quarter-length figures. Of the latter, in the period of which weare now treating, he painted great numbers: among them, produced at thistime and later, were _Sibylla Palmifera and The Beloved_ (the propertyof Mr. George Rae), _La Pia and The Salutation of Beatrice_ (Mr. F. E. Leyland), _The Dying Beatrice_ (Lord Mount Temple), _Venus Astarte_(Mr. Fry), _Fiammetta_ (Mr. Turner), _Proserpina_ (Mr. Graham). Of theseworks, solidity may be said to be the prominent characteristic. Thedrapery of Rossetti's pictures is wonderfully powerful and solid; hiscolour may be said to be at times almost matchable with that of certainof the Venetian painters, though different in kind. He hated beyond mostthings the "varnishy" look of some modern work; and his own oil pictureshad so much of the manner of frescoes in their lustreless depth, thatthey were sometimes mistaken for water-colours, while, on the otherhand, his water-colours had often so much depth and brilliancy assometimes to be mistaken for oil. It is alleged in certain quartersthat Rossetti was deficient in some qualities of drawing, and this isno doubt a just allegation; but it is beyond question that no Englishpainter has ever been a greater master of the human face, which in hisworks (especially those painted in later years) acquires a splendidsolemnity and spiritual beauty and significance all but peculiar tohimself. It seems proper to say in such a connexion, that his successin this direction was always attributed by him to the fact that the mostmemorable of his faces were painted from a well-known friend. 

Only one of his early designs, the _Dante's Dream_, was ever painted byRossetti on a scale commensurate with its importance, and the solemnityand massive grandeur of that work leave only a feeling of regret that, whether from personal indisposition on the part of the painter or lackof adequate recognition on that of the public, the three or four otherfinest designs made in youth were never carried out. As the picture inquestion stands alone among Rossetti's pictorial works as a completedconception, it may be well to devote a few pages to a description of it. 

It is essential to an appreciation of _Dante's Dream_, that we shouldnot only fully understand the nature of the particular incident depictedin the picture, but also possess a general knowledge of the lives andrelations of the two principal personages concerned in it. What we know, to most purpose, of the early life and love of Dante, we learn from theautobiography which he entitled _La Vita Nuova_. Boccaccio, however, writing fifty years after the death of the great Florentine, affordsa more detailed statement than is furnished by Dante himself of thecircumstances of the poets first meeting with the lady he calledBeatrice. He says that it was the custom of citizens in Florence, whenthe time of spring came round, to form social gatherings in their ownquarters for purposes of merry-making; that in this way Folco Portinari, a citizen of mark, had collected his neighbours at his house upon thefirst of May, 1274, for pastime and rejoicing: that amongst those whocame to him was Alighiero Alighieri, father of Dante Alighieri, wholived within fifty yards; that it was common for children to accompanytheir parents at such merrymakings, and that Dante, then scarce nineyears old, was in the house on the day in question engaged in sports, appropriate to his years, with other children, amongst whom was a littledaughter of Folco Portinari, eight years old. The child is described asbeing, even at this period, in aspect extremely beautiful, and winningand graceful in her ways. Not to dwell upon these passages of childhood, it may be sufficient to say that the boy, young as he was, is saidto have then conceived so deep a passion for the child that maturerattachments proved powerless to efface it. Such was the origin of a lovethat grew from childlike tenderness to manly ardour, and, surviving allthe buffetings of an untoward fate, is known to us now and for alltime in a record of so much reality and purity, as seems to everyright-hearted nature to be equally the story of his personal attachmentas the history of a passion that in Florence, six centuries ago, for itsmortal put on immortality. 

The Portinari and Alighieri were immediate neighbours, yet it does notappear that the young Dante encountered the lady in any marked way untilnine years later, and then, in the first bloom of a gracious womanhood, she is described as affording him in the street a salutation of suchunspeakable courtesy that he left the place where for the instant he hadstood sorely abashed, as one intoxicated with a love that now at firstknew itself for what it was. The incidents of the attachment are few infacts; numerous only in emotions, and therein too uncertain and liableto change to be counted. In order not to disclose a passion, which otherreasons than those given by the poet may have tempted him to conceal, Dante affects an attachment to another lady of the city, and therumour of this brings about an estrangement with the real object of hisdesires, which reduces the poet to such an abject condition of mind, asfinally results in his laying aside all counterfeiting. Portinari, thefather, now dies, and witnessing the tenderness with which the beautifulBeatrice mourns him, Dante becomes affected with a painful infirmity, wherein his mind broods over his enfeebled body, and, perceiving howfrail a thing life is, even though health keep with it, his brain beginsto travail in many imaginings, and he says within himself, "Certainlyit must some time come to pass that the very gentle Beatrice will die. "Feeling bewildered, he closes his eyes, and, in a trance, he conceivesthat a friend comes to him, and says, "Hast thou not heard? She thatwas thine excellent lady has been taken out of life. " Then as he lookstowards Heaven in imagination, he beholds a multitude of angels who arereturning upwards, having before them an exceedingly white cloud; andthese angels are singing, and the words of their song are, "Osanna inexcelsis. " So strong is his imagining, that it seems to him that he goesto look upon the body where it has its abiding-place. 

 The sun ceased, and the stars began to gather, And each wept at the other; And birds dropp'd at midflight out of the sky; And earth shook suddenly; And I was 'ware of one, hoarse and tired out, Who ask'd of me: 'Hast thou not heard it said-- Thy lady, she that was so fair, is dead?

 Then lifting up mine eyes, as the tears came, I saw the angels, like a rain of manna In a long flight flying back Heavenward, Having a little cloud in front of them, After the which they went, and said 'Hosanna;' And if they had said more, you should have heard. 

 Then Love said, 'Now shall all things be made clear: Come, and behold our lady where she lies These 'wildering phantasies Then carried me to see my lady dead. Even as I there was led, Her ladies with a veil were covering her; And with her was such very humbleness That she appeared to say, 'I am at peace. ' (Dante and his Circle. )

The trance proves to be a premonition of the event, for, shortly afterwriting the poem in which his imaginings find record, Dante says, "TheLord God of Justice called my most gracious lady unto Himself. "

It is with the incidents of the dream that Rossetti has dealt. Theprincipal personage in the picture is, of course, Dante himself. Of thepoet's face, two old and accredited witnesses remain to us--the portraitof Giotto and the mask supposed to be copied from a similar onetaken after death. Giotto's portrait represents Dante at the age oftwenty-seven. The face has a feminine delicacy of outline, yet isfull of manly beauty; strength and tenderness are seen blended in itslineaments. It might be that of a poet, a scholar, a courtier, or yet asoldier; and in Dante it is all combined. 

Such, as seen in Giotto, was the great Florentine when Beatrice beheldhim. The familiar mask represents that youthful beauty as somewhatsaddened by years of exile, by the accidents of an unequal fortune, andby the long brooding memory of his life's one, deep, irreparable loss. We see in it the warrior who served in the great battle of Campaldino:the mourner who sought refuge from grief in the action and danger of thewar waged by Florence upon Pisa: the magistrate whose justice proved hisruin: the exile who ate bitter bread when Florence banished the greatestof her sons. The mask is as full as the portrait of intellect andfeeling, of strength and character, but it lacks something of the earlysweetness and sensibility. Rossetti's portraiture retains the salientqualities of both portrait and mask. It represents Dante in histwenty-seventh year; the face gives hint of both poet and soldier, forbehind clear-cut features capable of strengthening into resolve andrigour lie whole depths of tenderest sympathy. The abstracted air, the self-centred look, the eyes that seem to see only what themind conceives and casts forward from itself; the slow, uncertain, half-reluctant gait, --these are profoundly true to the man and thedream. 

Of Beatrice, no such description is given either in the _Vita Nuova_ orthe _Commedia_ as could afford an artist a definite suggestion. Dante'slove was an idealised passion; it concerned itself with spiritualbeauty, whereof the emotions excited absorbed every merely physicalconsideration. The beauty of Beatrice in the _Vita Nuova_ is like aray of sunshine flooding a landscape--we see it only in the effect itproduces. All we know with certainty is that her hair was light, thather face was pale, and that her smile was one of thoughtful sweetness. These hints of a beautiful person Rossetti has wrought into a creationof such purity that, lovely as she is in death, as in life, we thinkless of her loveliness than of her loveableness. 

The personage of Love, who plays throughout the _Vita Nuova_ a mysticalpart is not the Pagan Love, but a youth and Christian Master, as Danteterms him, sometimes of severe and terrible aspect. He is represented inthe picture as clad in a flame-coloured garment (for it is in a mistof the colour of fire that he appears to the lover), and he wears thepilgrim's scallop-shell on his shoulder as emblem of that pilgrimage onearth which Love is. 

The chamber wherein the body of Beatrice has its abiding-place is, toDante's imaginings, a chamber of dreams. Visionary as the mind of thedreamer, it discloses at once all that goes forward within its ownnarrow compass, together with the desolate streets of the city ofFlorence, which, to his fancy, sits silent for his loss, and the longflight of angels above that bear away the little cloud, to which isgiven a vague semblance of the beatified Beatrice. As if just fallenback in sleep, the beautiful lady lies in death, her hands folded acrossher breast, and a glory of golden hair flowing over her shoulders. Withmeasured tread Dante approaches the couch led by the winged and scarletLove, but, as though fearful of so near and unaccustomed an approach, draws slowly backward on his half-raised foot, while the mystical emblemof his earthly passion stands droopingly between him the living, and hislady the dead, and takes the kiss that he himself might never have. Inlife they must needs be apart, but thus in death they are united, forthe hand of the pilgrim, who is the embodiment of his love, holds hishand even as the master's lips touch her lips. Two ladies of the chamberare covering her with a pall, and on the dreamer they fix sympatheticeyes. The floor is strewn with poppies--emblems equally of the sleep inwhich the lover walks, and of the sleep that is the sleep of death. The may-bloom in the pall, the apple-blossom in the hand of Love, theviolets and roses in the frieze of the alcove, symbolise purity andvirginity, the life that is cut off in its spring, the love that isconsummated in death before the coming of fruit. Suspended from the roofis a scroll, bearing the first words of the wail from the Lamentationsof Jeremiah, quoted by Dante himself:--"How doth the city sit solitary, that was full of people! How is she become as a widow, she that wasgreat among the nations!" In the ascending and descending staircase oneither iand fly doves of the same glowing colour as Love, and these areemblems of his presence in the house. Over all flickers the last beam ofa lamp which has burnt through the long night, and which the dawn of anew day sees die away--fit symbol of the life that has now taken flightwith the heavenly host, leaving behind it only the burnt-out socketwhere the live flame lived. 

Full of symbol as this picture is, it is furthermore permeated bya significance that is not occult. It bears witness to the possiblestrength of a passion that is so spiritual as to be without taint ofsense; and to a confident belief in an immortality wherein the utmostlimits of a blessedness not of this world may be compassed. Such arein this picture the simpler, yet deeper, symbols, that all who look mayread. Sir Noel Paton has written of this work:

I was so dumbfounded by the beauty of that great picture of Rosetti's, called _Dante's Dream_, that I was usable to give any expression to theemotions it excited--emotions such as I do not think any other picture, except the _Madonna di San Sisto_ at Dresden, ever stirred within me. The memory of such a picture is like the memory of sublime and perfectmusic; it makes any one who _fully_ feels it--_silent_. Fifty yearshence it will be named among the half-dozen supreme pictures of theworld. 

Rossetti had buried the only complete copy of his poems with his wife atHighgate, and for a time he had been able to put by the thought of them;but as one by one his friends, Mr. Morris, Mr. Swinburne, and others, attained to distinction as poets, he began to hanker after poeticreputation, and to reflect with pain and regret upon the hiddenfruits of his best effort. Rossetti--in all love of his memory beit spoken--was after all a frail mortal; of unstable character: ofvariable purpose: a creature of impulse and whim, and with a plentifullack of the backbone of volition. With less affection he would not haveburied his book; with more strength of will he had not done so; or, having done so, he had never wished to undo what he had done; or havingundone it, he would never have tormented himself with the memory of itas of a deed of sacrilege. But Rossetti had both affection enough todo it and weakness enough to have it undone. After an infinity ofself-communions he determined to have the grave opened, and the bookextracted. Endless were the preparations necessary before such a workcould be begun. Mr. Home Secretary Bruce had to be consulted. At lengthpreliminaries were complete, and one night, seven and a half years afterthe burial, a fire was built by the side of the grave, and then thecoffin was raised and opened. The body is described as perfect uponcoming to light. 

Whilst this painful work was being done the unhappy author of it wassitting alone and anxious, and full of self-reproaches at the house ofthe friend who had charge of it. He was relieved and thankful when toldthat all was over. The volume was not much the worse for the years ithad lain in the grave. Deficiencies were filled in from memory, themanuscript was put in the press, and in 1870 the reclaimed work wasissued under the simple title of _Poems_. 

The success of the book was almost without precedent; seven editionswere called for in rapid succession. It was reviewed with enthusiasm inmany quarters. Yet that was a period in which fresh poetry and new poetsarose, even as they now arise, with all the abundance and timelinessof poppies in autumn. It is probable enough that of the circumstancesattending the unexampled early success of this first volume onlythe remarkable fact is still remembered that, from a bookseller'sstandpoint, it ran a neck-and-neck race with Disraeli's _Lothair_ ata time when political romance was found universally appetising, andpoetry, as of old, a drug. But it will not be forgotten that certainsubsidiary circumstances were thought to have contributed to the formersuccess. Of these the most material was the reputation Rossetti hadalready achieved as a painter by methods which awakened curiosityas much as they aroused enthusiasm. The public mind became sensiblyaffected by the idea that the poems of the new poet were not to beregarded as the emanations of a single individual, but as the result ofa movement in which Rossetti had played one of the most prominent parts. Mr. F. Hueffer, in prefacing the Tauchnitz edition of the poems witha pleasant memoir, has comprehensively denominated that movementthe _renaissance of mediĉval feeling_, but at the outset itacquired popularly, for good or ill, the more rememberable name ofpre-Raphaelitism. What the shibboleth was of the originators of theschool that grew out of it concerned men but little to ascertain; andthis was a condition of indifference as to the logic of the movementwhich was occasioned partly by the known fact that the most popular ofits leaders, Mr. Millais, had long been shifting ground. It wasenough that the new sect had comprised dissenters from the creed onceestablished, that the catholic spirit of art which lived with thelives of Elmore, Goodall, and Stone was long dead, and that none of thecoteries for love of which the old faith, exemplified in the works ofmen such as these, had been put aside, possessed such an appeal forthe imagination as this, now that twenty years of fairly consistentendeavour had cleared away the cloud of obloquy that gathered about itwhen it began. And so it came to be thought that the poems of Rossettiwere to exhibit a new phase of this movement, involving kindred issues, and opening up afresh in the poetic domain the controversies which hadbeen waged and won in the pictorial. Much to this purpose was said atthe time to account for the success of a book whose popular qualitieswere I manifestly inconsiderable; and much to similar purposewill doubtless long be said by those who affect to believe that aconcatenation of circumstances did for Rossetti's earlier work a servicewhich could not attend his subsequent one. But the explanation wasinadequate, and had for its immediate outcome a charge of narrowed rangeof poetic sympathy with which Rossetti's admirers had not laid theiraccount. 

A renaissance of mediĉval feeling the movement in art assuredlyinvolved, but the essential part of it was another thing, of whichmediĉvalism was palpably independent. How it came to be considered thefundamental element is not difficult to show. In an eminent degreethe originators of the new school in painting were colourists, having, perhaps, in their effects, a certain affinity to the early Florentinemasters, and this accident of native gift had probably more to do indetermining the precise direction of the _intellectual_ sympathy thanany external agency. The art feeling which formed the foundation of themovement existed apart from it, or bore no closer relation to it thankinship of powers induced. When Rossetti's poetry came it was seen tobe animated by a choice of subject-matter akin to that which gaveindividual character to his painting, but this was because coevalefforts in two totally distinct arts must needs bear the familyresemblance, each to each, which belong to all the offspring of athoroughly harmonised mind. The poems and the pictures, however, had notmore in common than can be found in the early poems and early dramas ofShakspeare. Nay, not so much; for whereas in his poems Shakspeare wasconstantly evolving certain shades of feeling and begetting certainmovements of thought which were soon to find concrete and finalcollocation in the dramatic creations, in his pictures Rossetti wasfirst of all a dissenter from all prescribed canons of taste, whilst inhis poems he was in harmony with the catholic spirit which was as oldas Shakspeare himself, and found revival, after temporary eclipse, inColeridge, Shelley, Keats, and Tennyson. Choice of mediaeval theme wouldnot in itself have been enough to secure a reversal of popular feelingagainst work that contained no germs of the sensational; and hence wemust conclude that Mr. Swinburne accounted more satisfactorily for theinstant popularity of Rossetti's poetry when he claimed for it thoseinnate utmost qualities of beauty and strength which are alwaysthe first and last constituents of poetry that abides. Indeed thosequalities and none other, wholly independent of auxiliary aids, must nowas then go farthest to determine Rossetti's final place among poets. 

Such as is here described was the first reception given to Rossetti'svolume of poetry; but at the close of 1871, there arose out of it along and acrimonious controversy. It seems necessary to allude to thispainful matter, because it involved serious issues; but an effort alikeafter brevity and impartiality of comment shall be observed in what issaid of it. In October of the year mentioned, an article entitled _TheFleshly School of Poetry_, and signed "Thomas Maitland, " appearedin _The Contemporary Review_. {*} It consisted in the main of animpeachment of Rossetti's poetry on the ground of sensuality, though itembraced a broad denunciation of the sensual tendencies of the age inart, music, poetry, the drama, and social life generally. Sensuality wasregarded as the phenomenon of the age. "It lies, " said the writer, "onthe drawing-room table, shamelessly naked and dangerously fair. It ispart of the pretty poem which the belle of the season reads, and itbreathes away the pureness of her soul like the poisoned breath ofthe girl in Hawthorne's tale. It covers the shelves of the greatOxford-Street librarian, lurking in the covers of three-volume novels. It is on the French booksellers' counters, authenticated by thesignature of the author of the _Visite de Noces_. It is here, there, and everywhere, in art, literature, life, just as surely as it is inthe _Fleurs de Mal_, the Marquis de Sade's _Justine_, or the _Monk_ ofLewis. It appeals to all tastes, to all dispositions, to all ages. Ifthe querulous man of letters has his Baudelaire, the pimpled clerk hashis _Day's Doings_, and the dissipated artisan his _Day and Night. _"When the writer set himself to inquire into the source of this socialcancer, he refused to believe that English society was honeycombed androtten. He accounted for the portentous symptoms that appalled him byattributing the evil to a fringe of real English society, chiefly, ifnot altogether, resident in London: "a sort of demi-monde, not composed, like that other in France, of simple courtesans, but of men and women ofindolent habits and aesthetic tastes, artists, literary persons, novelwriters, actors, men of genius and men of talent, butterflies andgadflies of the human kind, leading a lazy existence from hand tomouth. " It was to this Bohemian fringe of society that the writerattributed the "gross and vulgar conceptions of life which areformulated into certain products of art, literature, and criticism. "Dealing with only one form of the social phenomenon, with sensualism sofar as it appeared to affect contemporary poetry, the writer proceededwith a literary retrospect intended to show that the fair dawn ofour English poetry in Chaucer and the Elizabethan dramatists had beenoverclouded by a portentous darkness, a darkness "vaporous, " "miasmic, "coming from a "fever-cloud generated first in Italy and then blownwestward, " sucking up on its way "all that was most unwholesome from thesoil of France. "

 * In this summary, the pamphlet reprint has been followed in preference to the original article as it appeared in the Review. 

Just previously to and contemporaneously with the rise of Dante, therehad flourished a legion of poets of greater or less ability, but allmore or less characterised by affectation, foolishness, and moralblindness: singers of the falsetto school, with ballads to theirmistress's eyebrow, sonnets to their lady's lute, and general songs of afiddlestick; peevish men for the most part, as is the way of all fleshlyand affected beings; men so ignorant of human subjects and materialsas to be driven in their sheer bankruptcy of mind to raise Hope, Love, Fear, Rage (everything but Charity) into human entities, and totreat the body and upholstery of a dollish woman as if, in itself, itconstituted a whole universe. 

After tracing the effect of the "moral poison" here seen in itsinception through English poetry from Surrey and Wyat to Cowley, thewriter recognised a "tranquil gleam of honest English light" in Cowper, who "spread the seeds of new life" soon to re-appear in Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey, Lamb, and Scott. In his opinion the "Italian diseasewould now have died out altogether, " but for a "fresh importation of theobnoxious matter from France. "

At this stage came a denunciation of the representation of "abnormaltypes of diseased lust and lustful disease" as seen in CharlesBaudelaire's _Fleurs de Mal_, with the conclusion that out of "thehideousness of _Femmes Damnées_" came certain English poems. "This, "said the writer, "is our double misfortune--to have a nuisance, and tohave it at second-hand. We might have been more tolerant to an uncleanthing if it had been in some sense a product of the soil" All that ishere summarised, however, was but preparatory to the real object of thearticle, which was to assail Rossetti's new volume. 

The poems were traversed in detail, with but little (and that the mostgrudging) admission of their power and beauty, and the very sharpestaccentuation of their less spiritual qualities. Since the publicationof the article in question, events have taken such a turn that it is nolonger either necessary or wise to quote the strictures contained in it, however they might be fenced by juster views. The gravamen of the chargeagainst Rossetti, Mr. Swinburne, and Mr. Morris alike--setting asideall particular accusations, however serious--was that they had "boundthemselves into a solemn league and covenant to extol fleshliness asthe distinct and supreme end of poetic and pictorial art; to aver thatpoetic expression is greater than poetic thought, and by inference thatthe body is greater than the soul, and sound superior to sense. "

Such, then, is a synopsis of the hostile article of which the nucleusappeared in _The Contemporary Review_, and it were little less thanchildish to say that events so important as the publication of thearticle and subsequent pamphlet, and the controversy that arose outof them, should, from their unpleasantness and futility, from the badpassions provoked by them, or yet from the regret that followed afterthem, be passed over in sorrow and silence. For good or ill, what waswritten on both sides will remain. It has stood and will stand. Sooneror later the story of this literary quarrel will be told in detail andin cold blood, and perhaps with less than sufficient knowledge of eitherof the parties concerned in it, or sympathy with their aims. No betterfate, one might think, could befall it than to be dealt with, howeverbriefly, by a writer whose affections were warmly engaged on one side, while his convictions and bias of nature forced him to recognise thejustice of the other--stripped, of course, of the cruelties with whichliterary error but too obviously enshrouded it. 

Whatever the effect produced upon the public mind by the articlein question (and there seems little reason to think it was at allmaterial), the effect upon two of the writers attacked was certainlymore than commensurate with the assault. Mr. Morris wisely attemptedno reply to the few words of adverse criticism in which his name wasspecifically involved; but Mr. Swinburne retorted upon his adversarywith the torrents of invective of which he has a measureless command. Rossetti's course was different. Greatly concerned at the bitterness, as well as startled by the unexpectedness of the attack, he wrote in thefirst moments of indignation a full and point-for-point rejoinder, andthis he printed in the form of a pamphlet, and had a great number struckoff; but with constitutional irresolution (wisely restraining him inthis case), he destroyed every copy, and contented himself with writinga temperate letter on the subject to _The Athenĉum_, December 16, 1871. He said:

A sonnet, entitled _Nuptial Sleep_, is quoted and abused at page 338of the Review, and is there dwelt upon as a "whole poem, " describing"merely animal sensations. " It is no more a whole poem in reality thanis any single stanza of any poem throughout the book. The poem, writtenchiefly in sonnets, and of which this is one sonnet-stanza, is entitled_The House of Life_; and even in my first published instalment of thewhole work (as contained in the volume under notice), ample evidenceis included that no such passing phase of description as the one headed_Nuptial Sleep_ could possibly be put forward by the author of _TheHouse of Life_ as his own representative view of the subject of love. In proof of this I will direct attention (among the love-sonnets of thispoem), to Nos. 2, 8, 11, 17, 28, and more especially 13. [Here _LoveSweetness_ is printed. ] Any reader may bring any artistic charge hepleases against the above sonnet; but one charge it would be impossibleto maintain against the writer of the series in which it occurs, andthat is, the wish on his part to assert that the body is greater thanthe soul. For here all the passionate and just delights of the body aredeclared--somewhat figuratively, it is true, but unmistakeably--to beas naught if not ennobled by the concurrence of the soul at all times. Moreover, nearly one half of this series of sonnets has nothing to dowith love, but treats of quite other life-influences. I would defy anyone to couple with fair quotation of sonnets 29, 30, 31, 39, 40, 43, orothers, the slander that their author was not impressed, like all otherthinking men, with the responsibilities and higher mysteries of life;while sonnets 35, 36, and 37, entitled _The Choice_, sum up the generalview taken in a manner only to be evaded by conscious insincerity. Thusmuch for _The House of Life_, of which the sonnet _Nuptial Sleep_ is onestanza, embodying, for its small constituent share, a beauty of naturaluniversal function, only to be reprobated in art if dwelt on (as I haveshown that it is not here), to the exclusion of those other highestthings of which it is the harmonious concomitant. 

It had become known that the article in the _Review_ was not the workof the unknown Thomas Maitland, whose name it bore, and on this headRossetti wrote:

Here a critical organ, professedly adopting the principle of opensignature, would seem, in reality, to assert (by silent practice, however, not by annunciation) that if the anonymous in criticismwas--as itself originally indicated--but an early caterpillar stage, the nominate too is found to be no better than a homely transitionalchrysalis, and that the ultimate butterfly form for a critic wholikes to sport in sunlight, and yet elude the grasp, is after all thepseudonymous. 

It transpired, in subsequent correspondence (of which there was morethan enough), that the actual writer was Mr. Robert Buchanan, thena young author who had risen into distinction as a poet, and who wasconsequently suspected, by the writers and disciples of the Rossettischool, of being actuated much more by feelings of rivalry thanby desire for the public good. Mr. Buchanan's reply to the seriousaccusation of having assailed a brother-poet pseudonymously was that thefalse signature was affixed to the article without his knowledge, "in order that the criticism might rest upon its own merits, and gainnothing from the name of the real writer. "

It was an unpleasant controversy, and what remains as an impartialsynopsis of it appears to be this: that there was actually manifestin the poetry of certain writers a tendency to deviate from wholesomereticence, and that this dangerous tendency came to us from France, where deep-seated unhealthy passion so gave shape to the glorificationof gross forms of animalism as to excite alarm that what had begun withthe hideousness of _Femmes Damnées_ would not even end there; finally, that the unpleasant truth demanded to be spoken--by whomsoever hadcourage enough to utter it--that to deify mere lust was an offence andan outrage. So much for the justice on Mr. Buchanan's side; with themistaken criticism linking the writers of Dante's time with Frenchwriters of the time of Baudelaire it is hardly necessary to deal. On theother hand, it must be said that the sum-total of all the Englishpoetry written in imitation of the worst forms of this French excess wasprobably less than one hundred lines; that what was really reprehensiblein the English imitation of the poetry of the French School was, therefore, too inconsiderable to justify a wholesale charge against itof an endeavour to raise the banner of a black ambition whose only aimwas to ruin society; that Rossetti, who was made to bear the bruntof attack, was a man who never by direct avowal, or yet by inference, displayed the faintest conceivable sympathy with the French excesses inquestion, and who never wrote a line inspired by unwholesome passion. As the pith of Mr. Buchanan's accusation of 1871 lay here, and as Mr. Buchanan has, since then, very manfully withdrawn it, {*} we need hardlygo further; but, as more recent articles in prominent places, _The Edinburgh Review, The British Quarterly Review, and again TheContemporary Review_, have repeated what was first said by him on thealleged unwholesomeness of Rossetti's poetic impulses, it may be as wellto admit frankly, and at once (for the subject will arise in the futureas frequently as this poetry is under discussion) that love of bodilybeauty did underlie much of the poet's work. But has not the samepassion made the back-bone of nine-tenths of the noblest English poetrysince Chaucer? If it is objected that Rossetti's love of physicalbeauty took new forms, the rejoinder is that it would have been equallychildish and futile to attempt to prescribe limits for it. All thiswe grant to those unfriendly critics who refuse to see that spiritualbeauty and not sensuality was Rossetti's actual goal. 

 * Writing to me on this subject since Rossetti's death, Mr. Buchanan says:--"In perfect frankness, let me say a few words concerning our old quarrel. While admitting freely that my article in the C. R. Was unjust to Rossetti's claims as a poet, I have ever held, and still hold, that it contained nothing to warrant the manner in which it was received by the poet and his circle. At the time it was written, the newspapers were full of panegyric; mine was a mere drop of gall in an ocean of _eau sucrée_. That it could have had on any man the effect you describe, I can scarcely believe; indeed, I think that no living man had so little to complain of as Rossetti, on the score of criticism. Well, my protest was received in a way which turned irritation into wrath, wrath into violence; and then ensued the paper war which lasted for years. If you compare what I have written of Rossetti with what his admirers have written of myself, I think you will admit that there has been some cause for me to complain, to shun society, to feel bitter against the world; but happily, I have a thick epidermis, and the courage of an approving conscience. I was unjust, as I have said; most unjust when I impugned the purity and misconceived the passion of writings too hurriedly read and reviewed currente calamo; but I was at least honest and fearless, and wrote with no personal malignity. Save for the action of the literary defence, if I may so term it, my article would have been as ephemeral as the mood which induced its composition. I make full admission of Rossetti's claims to the purest kind of literary renown, and if I were to criticise his poems now, I should write very differently. But nothing will shake my conviction that the cruelty, the unfairness, the pusillanimity has been on the other side, not on mine. The amende of my Dedication in God and the Man was a sacred thing; between his spirit and mine; not between my character and the cowards who have attacked it. I thought he would understand, --which would have been, and indeed is, sufficient. I cried, and cry, no truce with the horde of slanderers who hid themselves within his shadow. That is all. But when all is said, there still remains the pity that our quarrel should ever have been. Our little lives are too short for such animosities. Your friend is at peace with God, --that God who will justify and cherish him, who has dried his tears, and who will turn the shadow of his sad life-dream into full sunshine. My only regret now is that we did not meet, --that I did not take him by the hand; but I am old-fashioned enough to believe that this world is only a prelude, and that our meeting may take place--even yet. "

To Rossetti, the poet, the accusation of extolling fleshliness asthe distinct and supreme end of art was, after all, only an error ofcritical judgment; but to Rossetti, the man, the charge was somethingfar more serious. It was a cruel and irremediable wound inflicted upon afine spirit, sensitive to attack beyond all sensitiveness hitherto knownamong poets. He who had withheld his pictures from exhibition from dreadof the distracting influences of popular opinion, he who for fifteenyears had withheld his poems from print in obedience first to anextreme modesty of personal estimate and afterwards to the commands ofa mastering affection was likely enough at forty-two years of age (afterbeing loaded by the disciples that idolised him with only too much ofthe "frankincense of praise and myrrh of flattery") to feel deeply theslander that he had unpacked his bosom of unhealthy passions. But to saythat Rossetti felt the slander does not express his sense of it. He hadreplied to his reviewer and had acted unwisely in so doing; but whenone after one--in the _Quarterly Review, the North American Review_, and elsewhere, in articles more or less ignorant, uncritical, andstupid--the accusations he had rebutted were repeated with increasedbitterness, he lost all hope of stemming the torrent of hostilecriticism. He had, as we have seen, for years lived in partialretirement, enjoying at intervals a garden party behind the house, orgoing about occasionally to visit relatives and acquaintances, but nowhe became entirely reclusive, refusing to see any friends except thethree or four intimate ones who were constantly with him. Nor did themischief end there. We have spoken of his habitual use of chloral, which was taken at first in small doses as a remedy for insomnia andafterwards indulged in to excess at moments of physical prostration ornervous excitement. To that false friend he came at this time with onlytoo great assiduity, and the chloral, added to the seclusive habit oflife, induced a series of terrible though intermittent illnesses and amorbid condition of mind in which for a little while he was the victimof many painful delusions. It was at this time that the soothingfriendship of Dr. Gordon Hake, and his son Mr. George Hake, was of suchinestimable service to Rossetti. Having appeared myself on the scenemuch later I never had the privilege of knowing either of these twogentlemen, for Mr. George Hake was already gone away to Cyprus and Dr. Hake had retired very much into the bosom of his own family where, as isrumoured, he has been engaged upon a literary work which will establishhis fame. But I have often heard Mr. Theodore Watts speak with deepemotion and eloquent enthusiasm of the tender kindness and loyal zealshown to Rossetti during this crisis by Mr. Bell Scott, and by Dr. Hakeand his son. As to Mr. Theodore Watts, whose brotherly devotion to him, and beneficial influence over him from that time forward are so wellknown, this must be considered by those who witnessed it to be almostwithout precedent or parallel even in the beautiful story of literaryfriendships, and it does as much honour to the one as to the other. Nolight matter it must have been to lay aside one's own long-cherishedlife-work and literary ambitions to be Rossetti's closest friend andbrother, at a moment like the present, when he imagined the world to beconspiring against him; but through these evil days, and long after themdown to his death, the friend that clung closer than a brother was withhim, as he himself said, to protect, to soothe, to comfort, to divert, to interest, and inspire him--asking, meantime, no better reward thanthe knowledge that a noble mind and nature was by such sacrifice liftedout of sorrow. Among the world's great men the greatest are sometimesthose whose names are least on our lips, and this is because selfishaims have been so subordinate in their lives to the welfare of othersas to leave no time for the personal achievements that win personaldistinction; but when the world comes to the knowledge of the pricethat has been paid for the devotion that enables others to enjoy theirrenown, shall it not reward with a double meed of gratitude the finespirits to whom ambition has been as nothing against fidelity offriendship? Among the latest words I heard from Rossetti was this:"Watts is a hero of friendship;" and indeed he has displayed hiscapacity for participation in the noblest part of comradeship, thatpart, namely, which is far above the mere traffic that too often goes bythe name, and wherein self-love always counts upon being the gainer. Ifin the end it should appear that he has in his own person done less thanmight have been hoped for from one possessed of his splendid gifts, let it not be overlooked that he has influenced in a quite incalculabledegree, and influenced for good, several of the foremost among those whoin their turn have influenced the age. As Rossetti's faithful friend, and gifted medical adviser, Mr. John Marshall has often declared, therewere periods when Rossetti's very life may be said to have hung upon Mr. Watts's power to cheer and soothe. 

Efforts were afoot about the year 1872 to induce Rossetti to visitItaly--a journey which, strangely enough, he had never made--but thishe could not be prevailed upon to do. In the hope of diverting his mindfrom the unwholesome matters that too largely engaged it, his brotherand friends, prominent among whom at this time were Mr. Bell Scott, Mr. Ford Madox Brown, Mr. W. Graham, and Dr. Gordon Hake, as well as hisassistant and friend, Mr. H. T. Dunn, and Mr. George Hake, induced himto seek a change in Scotland, and there he speedily recovered tone. 

Immediately upon the publication of his first volume, and incitedthereto by the early success of it, he had written the poem _Rose Mary_, as well as two lyrics published at the time in _The Fortnightly Review_;but he suffered so seriously from the subsequent assaults of criticism, that he seemed definitely to lay aside all hope of producing furtherpoetry, and, indeed, to become possessed of the delusion that he had forever lost all power of doing so. It is an interesting fact, well knownin his own literary circle, that his taking up poetry afresh wasthe result of a fortuitous occurrence. After one of his most seriousillnesses, and in the hope of drawing off his attention from himself, and from the gloomy forebodings which in an invalid's mind usuallygather about his own too absorbing personality, a friend prevailed uponhim, with infinite solicitation, to try his hand afresh at a sonnet. Theoutcome was an effort so feeble as to be all but unrecognisable as thework of the author of the sonnets of _The House of Life_, but withmore shrewdness and friendliness (on this occasion) than frankness, the critic lavished measureless praise upon it, and urged the poet torenewed exertion. One by one, at longer or shorter intervals, sonnetswere written, and this exercise did more towards his recovery thanany other medicine, with the result besides that Rossetti eventuallyregained all his old dexterity and mastery of hand. The artifice hadsucceeded beyond every expectation formed of it, serving, indeed, thetwofold end of improving the invalid's health by preventing his broodingover unhealthy matters, and increasing the number of his accomplishedworks. Encouraged by such results, the friend went on to induce Rossettito write a ballad, and this purpose he finally achieved by challengingthe poet's ability to compose in the simple, direct, and emphatic style, which is the style of the ballad proper, as distinguished from theelaborate, ornate, and condensed diction which he had hitherto workedin. Put upon his mettle, the outcome of this second artifice practisedupon him, was that he wrote _The White Ship_, and afterwards _The King'sTragedy_. 

Thus was Rossetti already immersed in this revived occupation of poeticcomposition, and had recovered a healthy* tone of body, before he becameconscious of what was being done with him. It is a further amusing factthat one day he requested to be shown the first sonnet which, in view ofthe praise lavished upon it by the friend on whose judgment he reposed, had encouraged him to renewed effort. The sonnet was bad: the criticknew it was bad, and had from the first hour of its production kept itcarefully out of sight, and was now more than ever unwilling to show it. Eventually, however, by reason of ceaseless importunity, he returned itto its author, who, upon reading it, cried: "You fraud! you said thissonnet was good, and it's the worst I _ever_ wrote. " "The worst everwritten would perhaps be a truer criticism, " was the reply, as thestudio resounded with a hearty laugh, and the poem was committed to theflames. It would appear that to this occurrence we probably owe a largeportion of the contents of the volume of 1881. 

As we say, _Rose Mary_ was the first to be written of the leading poemsthat found places in his final volume. This ballad (or ballad romance, for ballad it can hardly be called) is akin to _Sister Helen_ in_motif_. The superstition involved owes something in this case as inthe other to the invention and poetic bias of the poet. It has, however, less of what has been called the Catholic element, and is more purelyPagan. It is, therefore, as entirely undisturbed by animosity againstheresy, and is concerned only with an ultimate demoniacal justicevisiting the wrongdoer. The main point of divergency lies in thecircumstance that Rose Mary, unlike Helen, is the undesigning instrumentof evil powers, and that her blind deed is the means by which herown and her lover's sin and his treachery become revealed. A furthermaterial point of divergency lies in the fact that unlike Helen, wholoses her soul (as the price of revenge, directed against her betrayer), Rose Mary loses her life (as the price of vengeance directed againstthe evil race), whilst her soul gains rest. The superstition is thatassociated with the beryl stone, wherein the pure only may read thefuture, and from which sinful eyes must chase the spirits of grace andleave their realm to be usurped by the spirits of fire, who seal up thetruth or reveal it by contraries. Rose Mary, who has sinned with herlover, is bidden to look in the beryl and learn where lurks the ambushthat waits to take his life as he rides at break of day. Hiding, butremembering her transgression, she at first shrinks, but at lengthsubmits, and the blessed spirits by whom the stone has been tenantedgive place to the fiery train. The stone is not sealed to her; and thelong spell being ministered, she is satisfied. But she has read thestone by contraries, and her lover falls into the hand of his enemy. By his death is their secret sin made known. And then a newer shame isrevealed, not to her eyes, but to her mother's: even the treachery ofthe murdered man. Ignorant of this to the end, Eose Mary seeks to work atwofold ransoming by banishing from the beryl the evil powers. With thesword of her father (by whom the accursed gift had been brought fromPalestine), she cleaves the heart of the stone, and with the brokenspell her own life breaks. 

It will readily be seen that the scheme of the ballad does not affordopportunity for a memorable incursion in the domain of character. RoseMary herself as a creation is not comparable with Helen. But the balladthroughout is nevertheless a triumph of the higher imagination. Nowhereelse (to take the lowest ground) has Rossetti displayed so great a giftof flashing images upon the mind at once by a single expression. 

 Closely locked, they clung without speech, And the mirrored souls shook each to each, As the cloud-moon and the water-moon Shake face to face when the dim stars swoon In stormy bowers of the night's mid-noon. 

 Deep the flood and heavy the shock When sea meets sea in the riven rock: But calm is the pulse that shakes the sea To the prisoned tide of doom set free In the breaking heart of Rose Mary. 

 She knew she had waded bosom-deep Along death's bank in the sedge of sleep. And now in Eose Mary's lifted eye 'Twas shadow alone that made reply To the set face of the soul's dark shy. 

Nor has Rossetti anywhere displayed a more sustained picturesqueness. One episode stands forth vividly even among so many that areconspicuous. The mother has left her daughter in a swoon to seek help ofthe priest who has knelt unweariedly by the dead body of her daughter'slover, now lying on the ingle-bench in the hall. When the priest hasgone and the castle folk have left her alone, the lady sinks to herknees beside the corpse. Great wrong the dead man has done to her andhers, and perhaps God has wrought this doom of his for a sign; but wellshe knows, or thinks she knows, that if life had remained with him hislove would have been security for their honour. She stoops with a sob tokiss the dead, but before her lips touch the cold brow she sees a packethalf-hidden in the dead man's breast. It is a folded paper about whichthe blood from a spear-thrust has grown clotted, and inside is a tressof golden hair. Some pledge of her child's she thinks it, and proceedsto undo the paper's folds, and then learns the treachery of the fallenknight and suffers a bitterer pang than came of the knowledge of herdaughter's dishonour. It is a love-missive from the sister of his foeand murderer. 

 She rose upright with a long low moan, And stared in the dead man's face new-known. Had it lived indeed? she scarce could tell: 'Twas a cloud where fiends had come to dwell, -- A mask that hung on the gate of Hell. 

 She lifted the lock of gleaming hair, And smote the lips and left it there. "Here's gold that Hell shall take for thy toll! Full well hath thy treason found its goal, O thou dead body and damned soul!"

Anything finer than this it would be hard to discover in Englishnarrative poetry. Every word goes to build up the story: every line isquintessential: every flash of thought helps to heighten the emotion. Indeed the closing lines rise entirely above the limits of ballad poetryinto the realm of dramatic diction. But perhaps the crowning glory andepic grandeur of the poem comes at the close. Awakened from her swoon, Rose Mary makes her way to the altar-cell and there she sees theberyl-stone lying between the wings of some sculptured beast. Within thefated glass she beholds Death, Sorrow, Sin and Shame marshalled past inthe glare of a writhing flame, and thereupon follows a scene scarcelyless terrible than Juliet's vision of the tomb of the Capulets. But shehas been told within this hour that her weak hand shall send hence theevil race by whom the stone is possessed, and with a stern purpose shereaches her father's dinted sword. Then when the beryl is cleft to thecore, and Rose Mary lies in her last gracious sleep--

 With a cold brow like the snows ere May, With a cold breast like the earth till spring, With such a smile as the June days bring-- A clear voice pronounces her beatitude:

 Already thy heart remembereth No more his name thou sought'st in death: For under all deeps, all heights above, -- So wide the gulf in the midst thereof, -- Are Hell of Treason and Heaven of Love. 

 Thee, true soul, shall thy truth prefer To blessed Mary's rose-bower: Warmed and lit is thy place afar With guerdon-fires of the sweet love-star, Where hearts of steadfast lovers are. 

The White Ship was written in 1880; _The King's Tragedy_ in the springof 1881. These historical ballads we must briefly consider together. Thememorable events of which Rossetti has made poetic record are, in _TheWhite Ship_, those associated with the wreck of the ship in which theson and daughter of Henry I. Of England set sail from France, and in_The King's Tragedy_, with the death of James the First of Scots. Thestory of the one is told by the sole survivor, Herold, the butcher ofRouen; and of the other by Catherine Douglas, the maid of honour whoreceived popularly the name of Kate Barlass, in recognition of herheroic act when she barred the door with her arm against the murderersof the King. It is scarcely possible to conceive in either case adiction more perfectly adapted to the person by whom it is employed. If we compare the language of these ballads with that of the sonnets orother poems spoken in the author's own person, we find it is not firstof all gorgeous, condensed, emphatic. It is direct, simple, pure andmusical; heightened, it is true, by imagery acquired in its passagethrough the medium of the poet's mind, but in other respects essentiallythe language of the historical personages who are made to speak. Thediction belongs in each case to the period of the ballad in which itis employed, and yet there is no wanton use of archaisms, or anydisposition manifested to resort to meretricious artifices by which toimpart an appearance of probability to the story other than that whichcomes legitimately of sheer narrative excellence. The characterisationis that of history with the features softened that constituted the proseof real life, and with the salient, moral, and intellectual lineamentsbrought into relief. Herein the ballad may do that final justice whichhistory itself withholds. Thus the King Henry of _The White Ship_ isgoverned by lust of dominion more than by parental affection; and thePrince, his son, is a lawless, shameless youth; intolerant, tyrannical, luxurious, voluptuous, yet capable of self-sacrifice even amidst perilof death. 

 When he should be King, he oft would vow, He 'd yoke the peasant to his own plough. O'er him the ships score their furrows now. God only knows where his soul did wake, But I saw him die for his sister's sake. 

The King James of _The King's Tragedy_ is of a righteous and fearlessnature, strong yet sensitive, unbending before the pride and hate ofpowerful men, resolute, and ready even where fate itself declares thatdeath lurks where his road must lie; his beautiful Queen Jane is sweet, tender, loving, devoted--meet spouse for a poet and king. The incidentstoo are those of history: the choice and final collocation of them, andthe closing scene in which the queen mourns her husband, being the sumof the author's contribution. And those incidents are in the highestdegree varied and picturesque. The author has not achieved a more vividpictorial presentment than is displayed in these latest ballads from hispen. It would be hard to find in his earlier work anything bearing moreclearly the stamp of reality than the descriptions of the wreck in _TheWhite Ship_, of the two drowning men together on the mainyard, of themorning dawning over the dim sea-sky--

 At last the morning rose on the sea Like an angel's wing that beat towards me--

and of the little golden-haired boy in black whose foot patters downthe court of the king. Certainly Rossetti has never attained a higherpictorial level than he reaches in the descriptions of the summonedParliament in _The King's Tragedy_, of the journey to the Charterhouseof Perth, of the woman on the rock of the black beach of the Scottishsea, of the king singing to the queen the song he made while immured byBolingbroke at Windsor, of the knock of the woman at the outer gate, of her voice at night beneath the window, of the death in _The Pitof Fortune's Wheel_. But all lesser excellencies must make way in ourregard before a distinguishing spiritualising element which existsin these ballads only, or mainly amongst the author's works. Naturalportents are here first employed as factors of poetic creation. Presentiment, foreboding, omen become the essential tissue of worksthat are lifted by them into the higher realm of imagination. Thesesupernatural constituents penetrate and pervade _The White Ship_; and_The King's Tragedy_ is saturated in the spirit of them. We do not speakof the incidents associated with the wraith that haunts the isles, butof the less palpable touches which convey the scarce explicablesense of a change of voice when the king sings of the pit that is underfortune's wheel:

 And under the wheel, beheld I there An ugly Pit as deep as hell, That to behold I quaked for fear: And this I heard, that who therein fell Came no more up, tidings to tell: Whereat, astound of the fearful sight, I wot not what to do for fright. (The King's Quair. )

It is the shadow of the supernatural that hangs over the king, and verysoon it must enshroud him. One of the most subtle and impressive of thenatural portents is that which presents itself to the eyes of Catherinewhen the leaguers have first left the chamber, and the moon goes out andleaves black the royal armorial shield on the painted window-pane:

 And the rain had ceased, and the moonbeams lit The window high in the wall, -- Bright beams that on the plank that I knew Through the painted pane did fall And gleamed with the splendour of Scotland's crown And shield armorial. 

 But then a great wind swept up the skies, And the climbing moon fell back; And the royal blazon fled from the floor, And nought remained on its track; And high in the darkened window-pane The shield and the crown were black. 

It has been said that _Sister Helen_ strikes the keynote of Rossetti'screative gift; it ought to be added that _The King's Tragedy_ toucheshis highest reach of imagination. 

Having in the early part of 1881 brought together a sufficient quantityof fresh poetry to fill a volume, Rossetti began negotiations forpublishing it. Anticipatory announcements were at that time constantlyappearing in many quarters, not rarely accompanied by an outspokendisbelief in the poet's ability to achieve a second success equal to hisfirst. In this way it often happens to an author, that, having achieveda single conspicuous triumph, the public mind, which has spontaneouslyoffered him the tribute of a generous recognition, forthwith gravitatestowards a disposition to become silently but unmistakeably scepticalof his power to repeat it. Subsequent effort in such a case is rarelyregarded with that confidence which might be looked for as the rewardof achievement, and which goes far to prepare the mind for the readyacceptance of any genuine triumph. Indeed, a jealous attitude is oftenunconsciously adopted, involving a demand for special qualities, forwhich, perchance, the peculiar character of the past success has createdan appetite, or obedience to certain arbitrary tests, which, thoughpassively present in the recognised work, have grown mainly out ofcritical analysis of it, and are neither radical nor essential. Where, moreover, such conspicuous success has been followed by an intervalof years distinguished by no signal effort, the sceptical bias of thepublic mind sometimes complacently settles into a conviction (gratefulalike to its pride and envy, whilst consciously hurtful to its moregenerous impulses), that the man who made it lived once indeed upon themountains, but has at length come down to dwell finally upon the plain. Literary biography furnishes abundant examples of this imperfectionof character, a foible, indeed, which in its multiform manifestations, probably goes as far as anything else to interfere with the formation ofa just and final judgment of an author's merit within his own lifetime. When it goes the length of affirming that even a great writer's creativeactivity usually finds not merely central realisation, but absoluteexhaustion within the limits of some single work, to reason against itis futile, and length of time affords it the only satisfying refutation. One would think that it could scarcely require to be urged that creativeimpulse, once existent within a mind, can never wholly depart from it, but must remain to the end, dependent, perhaps, for its expression insome measure on external promptings, variable with the variations ofphysical environments, but always gathering innate strength for thehour (silent perchance, or audible only within other spheres), when theinventive faculty shall be harmonised, animated, and lubricated toits utmost height. Nevertheless, Coleridge encountered the implieddoubtfulness of his contemporaries, that the gift remained with himto carry to its completion the execution of that most subtle mid-daywitchery, which, as begun in _Christabel_, is probably the mostdifficult and elusive thing ever attempted in the field of romance. Goethe, too, found himself face to face with outspoken distrust of hiscontinuation of _Faust_; and even Cervantes had perforce to challengethe popular judgment which long refused to allow that the second partof _Don Quixote_, with all its added significance, was adequate tohis original simple conception. Indeed that author must be consideredfortunate who effects a reversal of the public judgment againstthe completion of a fragment, and the repetition of a complete andconspicuous success. 

When Rossetti published his first volume of poems in 1870, he left onlyhis _House of Life_ incomplete; but amongst the readers who then offeredspontaneous tribute to that series of sonnets, and still treasured itas a work of all but faultless symmetry, built up by aid of a blendedinspiration caught equally from Shakspeare and from Dante, with asuperadded psychical quality peculiar to its author, there were many, even amongst the friendliest in sympathy, who heard of the completedsequence with a sense of doubt. Such is the silent and unreasoning andall but irrevocable edict of all popular criticism against continuationsof works which have in fragmentary form once made conquest of thepopular imagination. Moreover, Rossetti's first volume achieved asuccess so signal and unexpected as to subject this second and maturerbook to the preliminary ordeal of such a questioning attitude of mindas we speak of, as the unfailing and ungracious reward of a conspicuoustriumph. In the interval of eleven years, Rossetti had essayed nonotable achievement, and his name had been found attached only to suchfugitive efforts as may have lived from time to time a brief life in thepages of the _Athenĉum_ and _Fortnightly_. Of the works in questiontwo only come now within our province to mention. The first and mostmemorable was the poem _Cloud Confines_. Inadequate as the criticalattention necessarily was which this remarkable lyric obtained, indications were not wanting that it had laid unconquerable siege to thesympathies of that section of the public in whose enthusiasm the life ofevery creative work is seen chiefly to abide. There was in it a lyricalsweetness scarcely ever previously compassed by its author, a cadentundertoned symphony that first gave testimony that the poet held thepower of conveying by words a sensible eflfect of great music, evenas former works of his had given testimony to his power of conveying asensible eflfect by great painting. But to these metrical excellencieswas added an element new to Rossetti's poetry, or seen here for thefirst time conspicuously. Insight and imagination of a high order, together with a poetic instinct whose promptings were sure, had alreadyfound expression in more than one creation moulded into an innatechasteness of perfected parts and wedded to nature with an unerringfidelity. But the range of nature was circumscribed, save only in theone exception of a work throbbing with the sufferings and sorrows ofa shadowed side of modern life. To this lyric, however, there cameas basis a fundamental conception that made aim to grapple with thepro-foundest problems compassed by the mysteries of life and death, anda temper to yield only where human perception fails. Abstract indeedin theme the lyric is, but few are the products of thought out of whichimagination has delved a more concrete and varied picturesqueness:

 What of the heart of hate That beats in thy breast, O Time?-- Bed strife from the furthest prime, And anguish of fierce debate; that shatters her slain, And peace that grinds them as grain, And eyes fixed ever in vain On the pitiless eyes of Fate. 

The second of the fugitive efforts alluded to was a prose work entitled_Hand and Soul_. More poem than story, this beautiful idyl may bebriefly described as mainly illustrative of the struggles of thetransition period through which, as through a slough, all true artistsmust pass who have been led to reflect deeply upon the aims and ends oftheir calling before they attain that goal of settled purpose in whichthey see it to be best to work from their own heart simply, withoutregard for the spectres that would draw them apart into quagmires ofmoral aspiration. These two works and an occasional sonnet, such as thaton the greatly gifted and untimely lost Oliver Madox Brown, made the sumof all {*} that was done, in the interval of eleven years between thedates of the first volume and of that which was now to be published, tokeep before the public a name which rose at once into distinction, andhad since, without feverish periodical bolstering, grown not lessbut more in the ardent upholding of sincere men who, in number andinfluence, comprised a following as considerable perhaps as ownedallegiance to any contemporary. 

 * A ballad appeared in The Dark Blue. 

Having brought these biographical and critical notes to the point atwhich they overlap the personal recollections that form the body of thisvolume, it only remains to say that during the years in which the poemsjust reviewed were being written Rossetti was living at his house inChelsea a life of unbroken retirement. At this time, however (1877-81), his seclusion was not so complete as it had been when he used to seescarcely any one but Mr. Watts and his own family, with an occasionalvisit from Lord and Lady Mount Temple, Mrs. Sumner, etc. Once weekly hewas now visited by his brother William, twice weekly by his attachedand gifted friend Frederick J. Shields, occasionally by his old friendsWilliam Bell Scott and Ford Madox Brown. For the rest, he rarely ifever left the precincts of his home. It was a placid and undisturbedexistence such as he loved. Health too (except for one serious attackin 1877), was good with him, and his energies were, as we have seen, attheir best. 

His personal amiability was, perhaps, never more conspicuous thanin these tranquil years; yet this was the very time when paragraphsinjurious to his character found their way into certain journals. Amongthe numerous stories illustrative of his alleged barbarity of mannerswas the one which has often been repeated both in conversation and inprint to the effect that H. E. H. The Princess Louise was rudely repulsedfrom his door. Rossetti was certainly not easy to approach, but thegeniality of his personal bearing towards those who had commands uponhis esteem was always unfailing, and knowledge of this fact musthave been enough to give the lie to the injurious calumny just named. Nevertheless, Rossetti, who was deeply moved by the imputation, thoughtit necessary to contradict it emphatically, and as the letter in whichhe did this is a thoroughly outspoken and manly one, and touches animportant point in his character, I reprint it in this place:

 16 Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, S. W. , December 28, 1878. 

 My attention has been directed to the following paragraph which has appeared in the newspapers:--"A very disagreeable story is told about a neighbour of Mr. Whistler's, whose works are not exhibited to the vulgar herd; the Princess Louise in her zeal, therefore, graciously sought them at the artist's studio, but was rebuffed by a 'Not at home' and an intimation that he was not at the beck and call of princesses. I trust it is not true, " continues the writer of the paragraph, "that so medievally minded a gentleman is really a stranger to that generous loyalty to rank and sex, that dignified obedience, " etc. 

 The story is certainly "disagreeable" enough; but if I am pointed at as the "near neighbour of Mr. Whistler's" who rebuffed, in this rude fashion, the Princess Louise, I can only say that it is a _canard_ devoid of the smallest nucleus of truth. Her Royal Highness has never called upon me; and I know of only two occasions when she has expressed a wish to do so. Some years ago Mr. Theodore Martin spoke to me upon the subject; but I was at that time engaged upon an important work, and the delays thence arising caused the matter to slip through. And I heard no more upon the subject till last summer, when Mr. Theodore Watts told me that the Princess, in conversation, had mentioned my name to him, and that he had then assured her that I should "feel honoured and charmed to see her, " and suggested her making an appointment. Her Royal Highness knew that Mr. Watts, as one of my most intimate friends, would not have thus expressed himself without feeling fully warranted in so doing; and had she called she would not, I trust, have found me wanting in that "generous loyalty" which is due not more to her exalted position than to her well-known charm of character and artistic gifts. It is true enough that I do not run after great people on account of their mere social position, but I am, I hope, never rude to them; and the man who could rebuff the Princess Louise must be a curmudgeon indeed. 

 D. G. Rossetti. 

At the very juncture in question Lord Lome was suddenly and unexpectedlyappointed Governor-General of Canada, and, leaving England, Her RoyalHighness did not return until Rossetti's health had somewhat suddenlybroken down, and it was impossible for him to see any but his mostintimate friends. 

CHAPTER III. 

My intercourse with Rossetti, epistolary and personal, extended over aperiod of between three and four years. During the first two of theseyears I was, as this volume must show, his constant correspondent, during the third year his attached friend, and during the portion ofthe fourth year of our acquaintance terminating with his life, his dailycompanion and housemate. It is a part of my purpose to help towards theelucidation of Rossetti's personal character by a simple, and Itrust, unaffected statement of my relations to him, and so I begin byexplaining that my knowledge of the man was the sequel to my admirationof the poet. Not accident (the agency that usually operates in suchcases), but his genius and my love of it, began the friendship betweenus. Of Rossetti's pictorial art I knew little, until very recent years, beyond what could be gathered from a few illustrations to books. Myacquaintance with his poetry must have been made at the time of thepublication of the first volume in 1870, but as I did not then possess acopy of the book, and do not remember to have seen one, my knowledge ofthe work must have been merely such as could be gleaned from the readingof reviews. The unlucky controversy, that subsequently arose out of it, directed afresh my attention, in common with that of others, to Rossettiand his school of poetry, with the result of impressing my mind withqualities of the work that were certainly quite outside the issuesinvolved in the discussion. Some two or three years after thatacrimonious controversy had subsided, an accident, sufficiently curiousto warrant my describing it, produced the effect of converting me from atemperate believer in the charm of music and colour in Rossetti's lyricverse, to an ardent admirer of his imaginative genius as displayed inthe higher walks of his art. 

I had set out with a knapsack to make one of my many periodical walkingtours of the beautiful lake country of Westmoreland and Cumberland. Beginning the journey at Bowness--as tourists, if they will accept theadvice of one who knows perhaps the whole of the country, ought alwaysto do--I walked through Dungeon Ghyll, climbed the Stake Pass, descendedinto Borrowdale, and traced the course of the winding Derwent to thatpoint at which it meets the estuary of the lake, and where stands theDerwentwater Hotel. A rain and thunder storm was gathering over theBlack Sail and Great Gable as I reached the summit of the Pass, andtravelling slowly northwards it had overtaken me. Before I reached thehotel, my resting-place for the night, I was certainly as thoroughlysaturated as any one in reasonable moments could wish to be. I rememberthat as I passed into the shelter of the porch an elderly gentleman, whowas standing there, remarked upon the severity of the storm, inquiredwhat distance I had travelled, and expressed amazement that on such aday, when mists were floating, any one could have ventured to cover somuch dangerous mountain-country, --which he estimated as nearly thirtymiles in extent. Beyond observing that my interlocutor was friendlyin manner and knew the country intimately, I do not remember to havereflected either then or afterwards upon his personality exceptperhaps that he might have answered to Wordsworth's scarcely definitedescription of his illustrious friend as "a noticeable man, " withthe further parallel, I think, of possessing "large grey eyes. " Afterattending to the obvious necessity of dry garments in exchange for wetones, and otherwise comforting myself after a fatiguing day's march, Idescended to the drawing-room of the hotel, where a company of personswere trying, with that too formal cordiality peculiar to English people, who are accidentally thrown together in the course of a holiday, to getrid of the depression which results upon dishearteningly unpropitiousweather. Music, as usual, was the gracious angel employed to banish thefiend of ennui, but among those who took no part either in the singingor playing, other than that of an enforced auditor, was the elderlygentleman, my quondam acquaintance of the porch, who stood apart in analcove looking through a window. I stepped up to him and renewed ourtalk. The storm had rather increased than abated since my arrival; thethunder which before had rumbled over the distant Langdale Pikes wasbreaking in sharp peals over our heads, and flashes of sheeted lightninglit up the gathering darkness that lay between us and Castle Crag. A playful allusion to "poor Tom" and to King Lear's undisputed soleenjoyment of such a scene (except as viewed from the ambush of acomfortable hotel) led to the discovery, very welcome to both at amoment when we were at bay for an evening's occupation, that besidesknowledge and love of the country round about us, we had in commonsome knowledge and much love of the far wider realm of books. Thereuponensued a talk chiefly on authors and their works which lasted until longafter the music had ceased, until the elemental as well as instrumentalstorm had passed, and the guests had slipped away one after one, and thelast remaining servant of the house had, by the introduction of acouple of candles, given us a palpable hint that in the opinion of thatguardian of a country inn the hour was come and gone when well-regulatedpersons should betake themselves to bed. To my delight my friendknew nearly every prominent living author, could give me personaldescriptions of them, as well as scholarly and well-digested criticismsof their works. He was certainly no ordinary man, but who he was I havenever learned with certainty, though I cherish the agreeable impressionthat I could give a shrewd guess. At one moment the talk turned on_Festus_, and then I heard the most lucid and philosophical account ofthat work I have ever listened to or read. I was told that the authorof _Festus_ had never (in all the years that had elapsed since itspublication, when he was in his earliest manhood, though now he isgrown elderly) ceased to emend it, notwithstanding the protestationsof critics; and that an improved and enlarged edition of the poem mightprobably appear after his death. Struck with the especial knowledgedisplayed of the author in question, I asked if he happened to bea friend. Then, with a scarcely perceptible smile playing about thecorners of the mouth (a circumstance without significance for me at thetime and only remembered afterwards), my new acquaintance answered:"He is my oldest and dearest friend. " Next morning I saw my night-longconversationalist in company with a clergyman get on to the Buttermerecoach and wave his hand to me as they vanished under the trees thatoverhung the Buttermere road, but in answer to many inquiries the utmostI could learn of my interesting acquaintance was that he was somehowunderstood to be a great author, and a friend of Charles Kingsley, who, I think they said, was or had been with him there or elsewhere thatyear. Whether besides being the "oldest and dearest friend" of theauthor of _Festus_, my delightful companion was Philip James Baileyhimself I have never learned to this day, and can only cherish apleasant trust; but what remains as really important in this connexionis that whosoever he was he originated my first real love of Rossetti'spoetry, and gave me my first realisable idea of the man. Taking up fromthe table some popular _Garland, Casket, Treasury_, or other anthologyof English poetry, he pointed out a sonnet entitled _Lost Days_ (towhich, indeed, a friend at home had directed my attention), and dweltupon its marvellous strength of spiritual insight, and power of symbolicphrase. Of course the sonnet was Rossetti's. It is impossible for meto describe the effect produced upon me by sonnet and exposition. Iresolved not to live many days longer without acquiring a knowledgeof the body of Rossetti's work. Perceiving that the gentleman knewsomething of the poet, I put questions to him which elicited thefact that he had met him many years earlier at, I think he said, Mrs. Gaskell's, when Rossetti was a rather young man, known only as a painterand the leader of an eccentric school in art. He described him as alittle dark man, with fine eyes under a broad brow, with a deep voice, and Bohemian habits--"a little Italian, in short. " [Little, by the way, Rossetti could not properly be said to be, but opinions as to physicalproportions being so liable to vary, I may at once mention that he wasexactly five feet eight inches in height, and except in early manhood, when he was somewhat attenuated, well built in proportion. ] He furtherdescribed Rossetti's manners as those of a man in deliberate revoltagainst society; delighting in an opportunity to startle well-orderedpersons out of their propriety, and to silence by sheer vehemence ofdenunciation the seemly protests of very good and very gentle folk. Theportraiture seems to me now to bear the impress of truth, unlike as itis in some particulars to the man as I knew him. When once, however, years after the event recorded, I bantered Rossetti on the amiablepicture of him I had received from a stranger, he admitted that itwas in the main true to his character early in life, and recounted aninstance in which, from sheer perversity, or at best for amusement, hehad made the late Dean Stanley aghast with horror at the spectacle of ayoung man, born in a Christian country, and in the nineteenth century, defending (in sport) the vices of Neronian Home. 

The outcome of this first serious and sufficient introduction toRossetti's poetry was that I forthwith devoted time to reading andmeditating upon it. Ultimately I lectured twice or thrice on the subjectin Liverpool, first at the Royal Institution, and afterwards at theFree Library. The text of that lecture I still preserve, and as in allprobability it did more than anything else to originate the friendship Iafterwards enjoyed with the poet, I shall try to convey very briefly anidea of its purpose. 

Against both friendly and unfriendly critics of Rossetti I held that toplace him among the "aesthetic" poets was an error of classification. It seemed to me that, unlike the poets properly so described, he hadnothing in common with the Caliban of Mr. Browning, who worked "forwork's sole sake;" and, unlike them yet further, the topmost thingin him was indeed love of beauty, but the deepest thing was love ofuncomely right. The fusion of these elements in Rossetti softened themythological Italian Catholicism that I recognised as a leading thing inhim, and subjugated his sensuous passion. I thought it wrong to say thatRossetti had part or lot with those false artists, or no artists, whoassert, without fear or shame, that the manner of doing a thing shouldbe abrogated or superseded by the moral purpose of its being done. Onthe other hand, Rossetti appeared to make no conscious compromise withthe Puritan principle of doing good; and to demand first of his work thelesson or message it had for us were wilfully to miss of pleasure whilewe vainly strove for profit. He was too true an artist to follow artinto its byeways of moral significance, and thereby cripple its broaderarms; but at the same time all this absorption of the artist in his artseemed to me to live and work together with the personal instincts ofthe man. An artist's nature cannot escape the colouring it gets from thehuman side of his nature, because it is of the essence of art to appealto its own highest faculties largely through the channel of moralinstincts: that music is exquisite and colour splendid, first, becausethey have an indescribable significance, and next because they respondto mere sense. But it appeared to me to be one thing to work for "work'ssole sake, " with an overruling moral instinct that gravitates, as Mr. Arnold would say, towards conduct, and quite another thing to absorb artin moral purposes. I thought that Rossetti's poetry showed how possibleit is, without making conscious compromise with that puritan principleof doing good of which Keats at one period became enamoured, tobe unconsciously making for moral ends. There was for me a passivepuritanism in _Jenny_ which lived and worked together with the poet'spurely artistic passion for doing his work supremely well. Every thoughtin _Dante at Verona_ and _The Last Confession_ seemed mixed with andcoloured by a personal moral instinct that was safe and right. 

This was perhaps the only noticeable feature of my lecture, and knowingRossetti's nature, as since the lecture I have learned to know it, I feel no great surprise that such pleading for the moral impulsesanimating his work should have been of all things the most likely toengage his affections. Just as Coleridge always resented the imputationthat he had ever been concerned with Wordsworth and Southey in theestablishment of a school of poetry, and contended that, in common withhis colleagues, he had been inspired by no desire save that of imitatingthe best examples of Greece and Home, so Rossetti (at least throughoutthe period of my acquaintance with him) invariably shrank fromclassification with the poetry of ĉstheticism, and aspired to the fameof a poet who had been prompted primarily by the highest of spiritualemotions, and to whom the sensations of the body were as naught, unlessthey were sanctified by the concurrence of the soul. My lecture wasprinted, but quite a year elapsed after its preparation beforeit occurred to me that Rossetti himself might derive a moment'sgratification from knowledge of the fact that he had one ardent upholderand sincere well-wisher hitherto unknown to him. At length I sent him acopy of the magazine containing my lecture on his poetry. A post or twolater brought me the following reply:

 Dear Mr. Caine, --

 I am much struck by the generous enthusiasm displayed in your Lecture, and by the ability with which it is written. Your estimate of the impulses influencing my poetry is such as I should wish it to suggest, and this suggestion, I believe, it will have always for a true-hearted nature. You say that you are grateful to me: my response is, that I am grateful to you: for you have spoken up heartily and unfalteringly for the work you love. 

 I daresay you sometimes come to London. I should be very glad to know you, and would ask you, if you thought of calling, to give me a day's notice when to expect you, as I am not always able to see visitors without appointment. The afternoon, about 5, might suit me, or else the evening about 9. 30. With all best wishes, yours sincerely, D. G. Rossetti. 

This was the first of nearly two hundred letters in all received fromRossetti in the course of our acquaintance. A day or two later thefollowing supplementary note reached me:

 I return your article. In reading it, I feel it a distinction that my minute plot in the poetic field should have attracted the gaze of one who is able to traverse its widest ranges with so much command. I shall be much pleased if the plan of calling on me is carried out soon--at any rate I trust it will be so eventually. . . . Have you got, or do you know, my book of translations called _Dante and his Circle?_ If not, I 'll send you one. . . . 

 I have been reading again your article on _The Supernatural in Poetry_. It is truly admirable--such work must soon make you a place. The dramatic paper I thought suffered from some immaturity. 

It is hardly necessary to say that I was equally delighted with thewarmth of the reception accorded to my essay, and with the revelationthe letters appeared to contain of a sincere and unselfish nature. Mypurpose, however, which was a modest one, had been served, and I madeno further attempt to continue the correspondence, least of all did Iexpect or desire to originate anything of the nature of a friendship. Inmy reply to his note, however, I had asked him to accept the dedicationof a little work of mine, and when, with abundant courtesy, he haddeclined to do so on very sufficient grounds, I felt satisfied thatmatters between us should rest where they were. It is a pleasingrecollection, nevertheless, that Rossetti himself had taken a differentview of the relation that had grown up between us, and by many generousappeals induced me to put by all further thoughts of abandoning thecorrespondence out of regard for him. There had ensued an interval inwhich I did not write to him, whereupon he addressed to me a hurriednote, saying:

 Let me have a line from you. I am haunted by the idea, that in declining the dedication, I may have hurt you. I assure you I should be proud to be associated in any way with your work, but gave you my very reasons. 

 I shall be pleased if you do not think them sufficient, and still carry out your original intention. . . . At least write to me. 

I replied to this letter (containing, as it did, the expression of somuch more than the necessary solicitude), by saying that I too had beenhaunted, but it had been by the fear that I had been asking too muchof his attention. As to the dedication, so far from feeling hurt, byRossetti's declining it, I had grown to see that such was the onlycourse that remained to him to take. The terms in which he had repliedto my offer of it (so far from being of a kind to annoy or hurt me), had, to my thinking, been only generous, sympathetic, and beautiful. Again he wrote:

 My dear Caine, --

 Let me assure you at once that correspondence with yourself is one of my best pleasures, and that you cannot write too much or too often for _me_; though after what you have told me as to the apportioning of your time, I should be unwilling to encroach unduly upon it. Neither should I on my side prove very tardy in reply, as you are one to whom I find there _is_ something to say when I sit down with a pen and paper. I have a good deal of enforced evening leisure, as it is seldom I can paint or draw by gaslight. It would not be right in me to refrain from saying that to meet with one so "leal and true" to myself as you are has been a consolation amid much discouragement. . . . I perceive you have had a complete poetic career which you have left behind to strike out into wider waters. . . . The passage on Night, which you say was written under the planet Shelley, seems to me (and to my brother, to whom I read it) to savour more of the "mortal moon"--that is, of a weird and sombre Elizabethanism, of which Beddoes may be considered the modern representative. But we both think it has an unmistakeable force and value; and if you can write better poetry than this, let your angel say unto you, _Write_. 

I take it that it would be wholly unwise of me in selecting excerptsfrom Rossetti's letters entirely to withhold the passages that concernexclusively (so far as their substance goes) my own early doings ortry-ings-to-do; for it ought to be a part of my purpose to lay bare thebeginnings of that friendship by virtue of which such letters exist. I can only ask the readers of these pages to accept my assurance, thatwhatever the number and extent of the passages which I publish that arenecessarily in themselves of more interest to myself personally than tothe public generally, they are altogether disproportionate to the numberand extent of those I withhold. I cannot, however, resist the conclusionthat such picture as they afford of a man beyond the period of middlelife capable of bending to a new and young friend, and of thinking withand for him, is not without an exceptional literary interest as being socontrary to every-day experience. Hence, I am not without hope that theoccasional references to myself which in the course of these extracts Ishall feel it necessary to introduce, may be understood to be employedby me as much for their illustrative value (being indicative ofRossetti's character), as for any purpose less purely impersonal. 

The passage of verse referred to was copied out for Rossetti in reply toan inquiry as to whether I had written poetry. Prompted no doubt by theencouragement derived in this instance, I submitted from time to timeother verses to Rossetti, as subsequent letters show, but it sayssomething for the value of his praise that whatever the measure ofit when his sympathies were fairly aroused, and whatever his naturaltendency to look for the characteristic merits rather than defects ofcompositions referred to his judgment, his candour was always prominentamong his good qualities when censure alone required to be forthcoming. Among many frank utterances of an opinion early formed, that whatevermy potentialities as a writer of prose, I had but small vocation as awriter of poetry, I preserve one such utterance, which will, I trust, befound not less interesting to other readers from affording a glimpse ofthe writer's attitude towards the old controversy touching the severaland distinguishing elements that contribute to make good prose on theone hand and good verse on the other. 

On one occasion he had sent me his fine sonnet on Keats, then justwritten, and, in acknowledging the receipt of it with many expressionsof admiration, I remarked that for some days I had been strugglingdesperately, in all senses, to incubate a sonnet on the same somewhathackneyed subject. I had not written a line or put pen to paper for thepurpose, but I could tell him, in general terms, what my unaccomplishedmarvel of sonnet-craft was to be about. 

Rossetti replied saying that the scheme for a sonnet was "extremelybeautiful, " and urging me to "do it at once. " Alas for my intrepidity, "do it" I did, with the result of awakening my correspondent to thecertainty that, whatever embowerings I had in my mind, that shy bird thesonnet would seek in vain for a nest to hide in there. It asked so muchspecial courage to send a first attempt at sonneteering to the greatestliving master of the sonnet that moral daring alone ought to have got meoff lightly, but here is Rossetti's reply, valuable now, as well for theview it affords of the poet's attitude towards the sonnet as a medium ofexpression, as for other reasons already assigned. The opening passagealludes to a lyric of humble life. 

You may be sure I do not mean essential discouragement when I say that, full as _Nell_ is of reality and pathos, your swing of arm seems to mefirmer and freer in prose than in verse. I do think I see your field tolie chiefly in the achievements of fervid and impassioned prose. . . . I amsure that, when sending me your first sonnet, you wished me to say quitefrankly what I think of it. Well, I do not think it shows a specialvocation for this condensed and emphatic form. The prose version yousent me seems to say much more distinctly what this says with somewant of force. The octave does not seem to me very clearly put, and thesestet does not emphasize in a sufficiently striking way the idea whichthe prose sketch conveyed to me, --that of Keats's special privilege inearly death: viz. , the lovely monumentalized image he bequeathed to usof the young poet. Also I must say that more special originality andeven _newness_ (though this might be called a vulgarizing word), ofthought and picture in individual lines--more of this than I findhere--seems to me the very first qualification of a sonnet--otherwise itputs forward no right to be so short, but might seem a severed passagefrom a longer poem depending on development. I would almost counsel youto try the same theme again--or else some other theme in sonnet-form. I thought the passage on Night you sent showed an aptitude for choiceimagery. I should much like to see something which you view as your bestpoetic effort hitherto. After all, there is no need that every giftedwriter should take the path of poetry--still less of sonneteering. I amconfident in your preference for frankness on my part. 

I tried the theme again before I abandoned it, and was so fortunate asto get him to admit a degree of improvement such as led to hisdesiring to recall his conjectural judgment on my possibilities as asonnet-writer, but as the letters in which he characterises theadvance are neither so terse in criticism, nor so interesting from theexposition of principles, as the one quoted, I pass them by. Withmore confidence in my ultimate comparative success than I had everentertained, Rossetti was only anxious that I should engage in that workto which I. Could address myself with a sense of command; and I think itwill be agreed that, where temperate confidence in what the future maylegitimately hold for one is united to earnest and rightly directedendeavour in the present, it is often a good thing for the man whostands on the threshold of life (to whom, nevertheless, the path passedseems ever to stretch out of sight backwards) to be told the extentto which, little enough at the most, his clasp (to use a phrase of Mr. Browning) may be equal to his grasp. 

My residing, as I did, at a distance from London, was at once thedifficulty which for a time prevented our coming together and thenecessity for correspondence by virtue of which these letters exist. As I failed, however, from hampering circumstance, to meet at once withhimself, Rossetti invariably displayed a good deal of friendly anxietyto bring me into contact with his friends as frequently as occasionrendered it feasible to do so. In this way I met with Mr. MadoxBrown, who was at the moment engaged on his admirable frescoes in theManchester Town Hall, and in this way also I met with other friendsof his resident in my neighbourhood. When I came to know him moreintimately I perceived that besides the kindliness of intention whichhad prompted him to bring me into what he believed to be agreeableassociations, he had adopted this course from the other motive ofdesiring to be reassured as to the comparative harmlessness of mypersonality, for he usually followed the introduction to a friend by aprivate letter of thanks for the reception accorded me, and a number ofdexterously manipulated allusions, which always, I found, produced thedesired result of eliciting the required information (to be gleanedonly from personal intercourse) as to my manner and habits. Later in ouracquaintance, I found that he, like all meditative men, had the greatestconceivable dread of being taken unawares, and that there was no saferway for any fresh acquaintance to insure his taking violently againsthim, than to take the step of coming down upon him suddenly, andwithout appointment, or before a sufficient time had elapsed between thebeginning of the friendship and the actual personal encounter, to admitof his forming preconceived ideas of the manner of man to expect. Theagony he suffered upon the unexpected visit of even the most ardent ofwell-wishers could scarcely be realised at the moment, from the apparentease, and assumed indifference of his outward bearing, and could onlybe known to those who were with him after the trying ordeal hadbeen passed, or immediately before the threatened intrusion had beenconsummated. 

Early in our correspondence a friend of his, an art critic ofdistinction, visited Liverpool with the purpose of lecturing on thevaluable examples of Byzantine art in the Eoyal Institution of thatcity. The lecture was, I fear, almost too good and quite too technicalfor some of the hearers, many of whom claim (and with reason) to belovers of art, and cover the walls of their houses with beautifulrepresentations of lovely landscape, but at the same time erect hugefurnaces which emit vast volumes of black smoke such as prevent the skyof any Liverpool landscape being for an instant lovely. I doubt if thelecture could have been treated more popularly, but there was manifestlya lack of merited appreciation. The archaisms of some of the pictureschosen for illustration (early Byzantine examples exclusively) appearedto cause certain of the audience to smile at much of the lecturer'senthusiasm. Fortunately the man chiefly concerned seemed unconscious ofall this. And indeed, however he fared in public, in private he was onlytoo "dreadfully attended. " After the lecture a good many folks gave himthe benefit of their invaluable opinions on various art questions, andsome, as was natural, made pitiful slips. I observed with secret andscarcely concealed satisfaction his courageous loyalty in defence of hisfriends, and his hitting out in their defence when he believed them tobe assailed. One superlative intelligence, eager to do honour to theguest, yet ignorant of his claim to such honour, gave him a wonderfullyfacile and racy comment on the pre-Raphaelite painters, and, inparticular, made the ridiculous blunder of a deliberate attack uponRossetti, and then paused for breath and for the lecturer's appreciativeresponse; of course, Rossetti's friend was not to be drawn into suchdisloyalty for an instant, even to avoid the risk of ruffling theplumage of the mightiest of the corporate cacklers. Rossetti hadpermitted me in his name to meet his friend, and in writing subsequentlyI alluded to the affection with which he had been mentioned, also tosomething that had been said of his immediate surroundings, and to thatfrank championing of his claims which I have just described. Rossetti'sreply to this is interesting as affording a pathetic view of hisisolation of life and of the natural affectionateness of his nature:

 I am very glad you were welcomed by dear staunch S------, as I felt sure you would be. He holds the honourable position of being almost the only living art-critic who has really himself worked through the art-schools practically, and learnt to draw and paint. He is one of my oldest and best friends, of whom few can be numbered at my age, from causes only too varying. 

 Go from me, summer friends, and tarry not, -- I am no summer friend, but wintry cold, etc. 

 So be it, as needs must be, --not for all, let us hope, and not with all, as good S------ shews. I have not seen him since his return. I wrote him a line to thank him for his friendly reception of you, and he wrote in return to thank me for your acquaintance, and spoke very pleasantly of you. Your youth seems to have surprised him. I sent a letter of his to your address. I hope you may see more of him. . . . You mention something he said to you of me and my surroundings. They are certainly _quiet_ enough as fax as retirement goes, and I have often thought I should enjoy the presence of a congenial and intellectual housefellow and boardfellow in this big barn of mine, which is actually going to rack and ruin for want of use. But where to find the welcome, the willing, and the able combined in one? . . . I was truly concerned to hear of the attack of ill-health you have suffered from, though you do not tell me its exact nature. I hope it was not accompanied by any such symptoms as you mentioned before. . . . I myself have had similar symptoms (though not so fully as you describe), and have spat blood at intervals for years, but now think nothing of it--nor indeed ever did, --waiting for further alarm signals which never came. 

 . . . By-the-bye, I have since remembered that Burne Jones, many years ago, had such an experience as you spoke of before--quite as bad certainly. He was weak for some time after, and has frequently been reminded in minor ways of it, but seems now (at about forty-six or forty-seven) to be more settled in health and stronger, perhaps, than ever before. . . . Your letter holds out the welcome probability of meeting you here ere long. 

This friendly solicitude regarding my health was excited by therevelation of what seemed to me at the time a startling occurrence, buthas doubtless frequently happened to others, and has certainlysince happened to myself without provoking quite so much outcry. Theblood-spitting to which Rossetti here alleges he was liable was ofa comparatively innocent nature. In later years he was assuredly notaltogether a hero as to personal suffering, and I afterwards found that, upon the periodical recurrence of the symptom, he never failed to becomeconvinced that he spat arterial blood, and that on each occasion he hadreceived his death-warrant. Proof enough was adduced that the blood camefrom the minor vessels of the throat, and this was undoubtedly the casein the majority of instances, but whether the same explanation appliedto one alarming occurrence which I shall now recount, seems to meuncertain. 

During the two or three weeks preceding our departure for Cumberland, in the autumn of 1881, during the time of our residence there and duringthe first few weeks after our return to London, Rossetti was afflictedby a violent cough. I noticed that it troubled him almost exclusively inthe night-time, and after the taking of chloral; that it was sometimesattended by vomiting; and that it invariably shook his whole systemso terribly as to leave him for a while entirely prostrate from sheerphysical exhaustion. The spectacle was a painful one, and I watchedclosely its phenomena, with the result of convincing myself thatwhatever radical mischief lay at the root of it, the damage done wasseriously augmented by a conscious giving way to it, induced, I thought, by hope of the relief it sometimes afforded the stomach to get rid ofthe nauseous drug at a moment of reduced digestive vitality. Then itbecame my fear that in these violent and prolonged retchings internalinjury might be sustained, and so I begged him to try to restrain thetendency to cough so much and often. He took the remonstrance with greatgoodnature (observing that he perceived I thought he was putting it on), but I was not conscious that at any moment he acted upon my suggestion. At the time in question I was under the necessity of leaving him fora day or two every week in order to fulfil, a course of lecturingengagements at a distance; and upon my return in each instance I wastold much of all that had happened to him in the interval. On oneoccasion, however, I was conscious that something had occurred of whichhe desired to make a disclosure, for amongst the gifts that Rossettihad not got was that of concealing from his intimate friends any event, however trifling, or however important, which weighed upon his mind. At length I begged him to say what had happened, whereupon, with greatreluctance and many protestations of his intention to observe silence, and constant injunctions as to secrecy, he told me that during the nightof my absence, in the midst of one of his bouts of coughing, he haddischarged an enormous quantity of blood. "I know this is the finalsignal, " he said, "and I shall die. " I did my utmost to compose himby recounting afresh the personal incident hinted at, with many addedfeatures of (I trust) justifiable exaggeration, but it is hardlynecessary to say that I did not hold the promise I gave him as tosecrecy sufficiently sacred, or so exclusive, as to forbid my revealingthe whole circumstance to his medical attendant. I may add that fromthat moment the cough entirely disappeared. 

To return from this reminiscence of a later period to the beginnings, three years earlier, of our correspondence, I will bring the presentchapter to a close by quoting short passages from three letters writtenon the eve of my first visit to Rossetti, in 1880:

 I will be truly glad to meet you when you come to town. You will recognise the hole-and-cornerest of all existences; but I'll read you a ballad or two, and have Brown's report to back my certainty of liking you. . . . I would propose that you should dine with me at 8. 30 on the Monday of your visit, and spend the evening. . . . Better come at 5. 30 to 6 (if feasible to you), that I may try to show you a picture by daylight. . . Of course, when I speak of your dining with me, I mean tête- à-tête, and without ceremony of any kind. I usually dine in my studio, and in my painting coat. I judge this will reach you in time for a note to reach _me_. Telegrams I hate. In hope of the pleasure of a meeting, yours ever. 

How that "hole-and-cornerest of all existences" struck an ardent admirerof the poet-painter's genius, and a devoted lover of his personalcharacter, as then revealed to me, I hope to describe in a later sectionof this book. Meantime I must proceed to cull from the epistolarytreasures I possess a number of interesting passages on literarysubjects, called forth in the course of an intercourse which, at thatstage, had few topics of a private nature to divert it from a channelof impersonal discussion. It is a fact that the letters written to me byRossetti in the year 1880 deal so largely with literary affairs (chieflyof the past) as to be almost capable of _verbatim_ reproduction, evenat the present short interval after his death. If they were to bereproduced, they would be found to cover two hundred pages of thepresent volume, and to be so easy, fluent, varied, and wholly felicitousas to style, and full of research and reflection as to substance, asprobably to earn for the writer a foremost place for epistolary power. Indeed, I am not without hope that this accession of a fresh reputationmay result even upon the excerpts I have decided to introduce. 

CHAPTER IV. 

It was very natural that our earliest correspondence should deal chieflywith Rossetti's own works, for those works gave rise to it. He sent mea copy of his translations from early Italian poets (_Dante and hisCircle_), and a copy of his story, entitled _Hand and Soul_. In postingthe latter, he said:

 I don't know if you ever saw a sort of story of mine called _Hand and Soul_. I send you one with this, as printed to go in my poems (though afterwards omitted, being, nevertheless, more poem than story). I printed it since in the _Fortnightly_--and, I believe, abolished one or two extra sentimentalities. You may have seen it there. In case it's stale, I enclose with this a sonnet which _must_ be new, for I only wrote it the other day. 

 I have already, in the proper place in this volume, said how the story first struck me. Perhaps I had never before reading it seen quite so clearly the complete mission as well as enforced limitations of true art. All the many subtle gradations in the development of purpose were there beautifully pictured in a little creation that was charming in the full sense of a word that has wellnigh lost its charm. For all such as cried out against pursuits originating in what Keats had christened "the infant chamber of sensation, " and for all such as demanded that everything we do should be done to "strengthen God among men, " the story provided this answer: "When at any time hath He cried unto thee, saying, 'My son, lend me thy shoulder, for I fall'?"

 The sonnet sent, and spoken of as having just been written (the letter bears post-mark February 1880), was the sonnet on the sonnet. It is throughout beautiful and in two of its lines (those depicting the dark wharf and the black Styx) truly magnificent. It appears most to be valued, however, as affording a clue to the attitude of mind adopted towards this form of verse by the greatest master of it in modern poetry. I think it is Mr. Pater who says that a fine poem in manuscript carries an aroma with it, and a sensation of music. I must have enjoyed the pleasure of such a presence somewhat frequently about this period, for many of the poems that afterwards found places in the second volume of ballads and sonnets were sent to me from time to time. 

 I should like to know what were the three or four vols. On Italian poetry which you mentioned in a former letter, and which my book somewhat recalled to your mind. I was not aware of any such extensive _English_ work on the subject. Or do you perhaps mean Trucchi's Italian _Dugento Poésie inédite?_ I am sincerely delighted at your rare interest in what I have sent you--both the translations, story, etc. --I enclose three printed pieces meant for my volume but omitted:--the ballad, because it deals trivially with a base amour (it was written _very_ early) and is therefore really reprehensible to some extent; the Shakspeare sonnet, because of its incongruity with the rest of the poems, and also because of the insult (however jocose) to the worshipful body of tailors; and the political sonnet for reasons which are plain enough, though the date at which I wrote it (not without feeling) involves now a prophetic value. In a MS. Vol. I have a sonnet (1871) _After the German Subjugation of France_, which enforces the prophecy by its fulfilment. In this MS. Vol. Are a few pieces which were the only ones I copied in doubt as to their admission when I printed the poems, but none of which did I admit. One day I 'll send it for you to look at. It contains a few sonnets bearing on public matters, but only a few. Tell me what you think on reading my things. All you said in your letter of this morning was very grateful to me. I have a fair amount by me in the way of later MS. Which I may shew you some day when we meet. Meanwhile I feel that your energies are already in full swing--work coming on the heels of work--and that your time cannot long be deferred as regards your place as a writer. 

The ballad of which Rossetti here speaks as dealing trivially with abase amour is entitled _Dennis Shand_. Though an early work, it affordsperhaps the best evidence extant of the poet's grasp of the old balladstyle: it runs easiest of all his ballads, and is in some respects hisbest. Mr. J. A. Symonds has, in my judgment, made the error of speakingof Rossetti as incapable of reproducing the real note of such balladsas _Chevy Chase_ and _Sir Patrick Spens_. Mr. Symonds was right in hiseloquent comments (_Macmillan's Magazine_, February 1882), so far asthey concern the absence from _Rose Mary, The King's Tragedy, and TheWhite Ship_ of the sinewy simplicity of the old singers. But in thosepoems Rossetti attempted quite another thing. There is a development ofthe English ballad that is entirely of modern product, being far morecomplex than the primitive form, and getting rid to some extent of theout-worn notion of the ballad being actually sung to set music, butretaining enough of the sweep of a free rhythm to carry a sensibleeffect as of being chanted when read. This is a sort of ballad-romance, such as _Christabel_ and _The Lay of the Last Minstrel_; and this, andthis only, was what Rossetti aimed after, and entirely compassed in hisfine works just mentioned. But (as Rossetti himself remarked to me inconversation when I repeated Mr. Symonds's criticism, and urged my owngrounds of objection to it), that the poet was capable of the directnessand simplicity which characterise the early ballad-writers, he hadgiven proof in _The Staff and Scrip and Stratton Water. Dennis Shand_is valuable as evidence going in the same direction, but the author'sobjection to it, on ethical grounds, must here prevail to withhold itfrom publication. 

The Shakspeare sonnet, spoken of in the letter as being withheld onaccount of its incongruity with the rest of the poems, was publishedin an early _Academy_, notwithstanding its jocose allusion to theworshipful body of tailors. As it is little known, and really verypowerful in itself, and interesting as showing the author's power overwords in a new direction, I print it in this place. 

 ON THE SITE OF A MULBERRY TREE. 

 Planted by Wm. Shakspeare; felled by the Rev. F. Gastrell. This tree, here fall'n, no common birth or death Shared with its kind. The world's enfranchised son, Who found the trees of Life and Knowledge one, Here set it, frailer than his laurel-wreath. 

 Shall not the wretch whose hand it fell beneath Rank also singly--the supreme unhung? Lo! Sheppard, Turpin, pleading with black tongue This viler thief's unsuffocated breath!

 We 'U search thy glossary, Shakspeare! whence almost, And whence alone, some name shall be reveal'd For this deaf drudge, to whom no length of ears Sufficed to catch the music of the spheres; Whose soul is carrion now, --too mean to yield Some tailor's ninth allotment of a ghost. 

 Stratford-on-Avon. 

The other sonnets referred to, those, namely, on the _French Liberationof Italy_, and the _German Subjugation of France_, display allRossetti's mastery of craftsmanship. In strength of vision, in fertilityof rhythmic resource, in pliant handling, these sonnets are, in myjudgment, among the best written by the author; and if I do not quotethem here, or altogether regret that they do not appear in the author'sworks, it is not because I have any sense of their possibly offendingagainst the delicate sensibilities of an age in which it seems necessaryto hide out of sight whatever appears to impinge upon the domain of whatis called our lower nature. 

The circumstance has hardly obtained even so much as a passing mentionthat Rossetti made certain very important additions to the ballad of_Sister Helen_, just before passing the old volume through the pressafresh for publication, contemporaneously with the new book. Theletters I am now to quote show the origin of those additions, and areinteresting, as affording a view of the author's estimate of the gain inrespect of completeness of conception, and sterner tragic spirit whichresulted upon their adoption. 

I was very glad to have the three articles together, including the onein which you have written on myself. Looking at this again, it seems tome you must possess the _best_ edition (the Tauchnitz, which has my lastemendations). Otherwise I have been meaning all along to offer you acopy of this edition, as I have some. Who was your informant as to datesof the poems, etc. ? They are not correct, yet show some inkling. _Jenny_(in a first form) was written almost as early as _The Blessed Damozel_, which I wrote (and have altered little since), when I was eighteen. Itwas first printed when I was twenty-one. Of the first _Jenny_, perhapsfifty lines survive here and there, but I felt it was quite beyond methen (a world I was then happy enough to be a stranger to), and laterI re-wrote it completely. I will give you correct particulars at sometime. _Sister Helen_, I may mention, was written either in 1851 orbeginning of 1852, and was printed in something called _The DüsseldorfAnnual_ {*} (published in Germany) in 1853; though since much revisedin detail--not in the main. You will be horror-struck to hear thatthe first main addition to this poem was made by me only a few daysago!--eight stanzas (six together, and two scattered ones) involvinga new incident!! Your hair is on end, I know, but if you heard thestanzas, they would smooth if not curl it. The gain is immense. 

 * In The Düsseldorf Annual the poem was signed H. H. H. , and in explanation of this signature Rossetti wrote on his own copy the following characteristic note:--"The initials as above were taken from the lead-pencil. "

In reply to this I told Rossetti that, as a "jealous honourer" of his, I confessed to some uneasiness when I read that he had been makingimportant additions to _Sister Helen_. That I could not think of a stageof the story that would bear so to be severed from what goes before orcomes after it as to admit of interpolation might not of itself go formuch; but the entire ballad was so rounded into unity, one incident sonaturally begetting the next, and the combined incidents so properlybuilding up a fabric of interest of which the meaning was all inwoven, that I could not but fear that whatever the gain in certain directions, the additions of any stanzas involving a new incident might, insome measure, cripple the rest. Even though the new stanzas were asbeautiful, or yet more beautiful than the old ones, and the incident asimpressive as any that goes before it, or comes after it, the gain tothe poem as an individual creation was not, I thought, assured becausepeople used to say my style was hard. 

Rossetti was mistaken in supposing that I possessed the latest andbest edition of his _Poems_, but I had seen the latest of all Englisheditions, and had noted in it several valuable emendations which, insubsequent quotation, I had been careful to employ. One of these seemedto me to involve an immeasurable gain. A stanza of _Sister Helen_, inits first form, ran:

 Oh, the wind is sad in the iron chill, Sister Helen, And weary sad they look by the hill; But Keith of Ewern 's sadder still, Little brother. --etc. Etc. 

In the later edition the fourth line of this stanza ran:

 But he and I are sadder still. 

The change adds enormously to one's estimate of the characterisation. All through the ballad one wants to feel that, despite the bitternessof her speech, the heart of the relentless witch is breaking. Like _TheBroken Heart_ of Ford, the ballad with the amended line was a masterlypicture of suppressed emotion. I hoped the new incident touched the samechord. Rossetti replied:

 Thanks for your present letter, which I will answer with pleasurable care. At present I send you the Tauchnitz edition of my things. The bound copy is hideous, but more convenient--the other pretty. You will find a good many things bettered (I believe) even on the _latest_ English edition. I did not remember that the line you quote from _Sister Helen_ appeared in the new form at all in an English issue. I am greatly pleased at your thinking it, as I do, quite a transfiguring change. . . The next point I have marked in your letter is that about the additions to _Sister Helen_. Of course I knew that your hair must arise from your scalp in protest. But what should you say if Keith of Ewern were a three days' bridegroom--if the spell had begun on the wedding-morning--and if the bride herself became the last pleader for mercy? I fancy you will see your way now. The culminating, irresistible provocation helps, I think, to humanize Helen, besides lifting the tragedy to a yet sterner height. 

If I had felt (as Rossetti predicted I should) an uneasy sensationabout the roots of the hair upon hearing that he was making importantadditions to the ballad which seemed to me to be the finest of hisworks, the sensation in that quarter was not less, but more, uponlearning the nature of those additions. But I mistook the character ofthe new incidents. That Sister Helen should be herself the abandoned_bride_ of Ewern (for so I understood the poet's explanation), and, assuch, the last pleader for mercy, pointed, I thought, in the directionof the humanizing emendation ("But he and I are sadder still ")which had given me so much pleasure. That Keith of Ewern should be athree-days' bridegroom, and that the spell should begin on the weddingmorning, were incidents that seemed to intensify every line of thepoem. In this view of Rossetti's account of the additions, there werecertainly difficulties out of which I could see no way, but I seemedto realise that Helen's hate, like Macbeth's ambition, had overleapeditself, and fallen on the other side, and that she would undo her work, if to return were not harder than to go on; her initiate sensibility hadgained hard use, but even as hate recoils on love, so out of the ashesof hate love had arisen. In this view of the characterisation of Helen, the parallel with Macbeth struck me more and more as I thought of it. When Macbeth kills Duncan, and hears the grooms of the chamber cry intheir sleep--"God bless us, " he cannot say "Amen, "

 I had most need of blessing, and Amen Stuck in my throat. 

Helen pleading too late for mercy against the potency of the spell sheherself had raised, seemed to me an incident that raised her to theutmost height of tragic creation. But Rossetti's purpose was at onceless ambitious and more satisfying. 

 Your passage as to the changes in _Sister Helen_ could not well (with all its fine suggestiveness) be likely to meet exactly a reality which had not been submitted to your eye in the verses themselves. It is the _bride of Keith_ who is the last pleader--as vainly as the others, and with a yet more exulting development of vengeance in the forsaken witch. The only acknowledgment by her of a mutual misery is still found in the line you spotted as so great a gain before, and in the last line she speaks. I ought to have sent the stanzas to explain them properly, but have some reluctance to ventilate them at present, much as I should like the opportunity of reading them to you. They will meet your eye in due course, and I am sure of your approval also as regards their value to the ballad. . . . Don't let the changes in _Helen_ get wind overmuch. I want them to be new when published. Answer this when you can. I like getting your epistles. 

The fresh stanzas in question, which had already obtained the suffragesof his brother, of Mr. Bell Scott, and other qualified critics, weresubsequently sent to me. They are as follows. After Keith of Keith, the father of Sister Helen's sometime lover, has pleaded for his son invain, the last suppliant to arrive is his son's bride:

 A lady here, by a dark steed brought, Sister Helen, So darkly clad I saw her not. "See her now or never see aught, Little brother!" (_O Mother, Mary Mother_, _Whit more to see, between Hell and Heaven?_)

 "Her hood falls back, and the moon shines fair, Sister Helen, On the Lady of Ewern's golden hair. " "Blest hour of my power and her despair, Little brother!" (O Mother, Mary Mother, Hour blest and bann'd, between Hell and Heaven!)

 "Pale, pale her cheeks, that in pride did glow, Sister Helen, 'Neath the bridal-wreath three days ago. " "One morn for pride and three days for woe, Little brother!" (O Mother, Mary Mother, Three days, three nights, between Hell and Heaven!)

 "Her clasp'd hands stretch from her bending head, Sister Helen; With the loud wind's wail her sobs are wed. " "What wedding-strains hath her bridal bed, Little brother?" (O Mother, Mary Mother, What strain but death's, between Hell and Heaven?)

 "She may not speak, she sinks in a swoon, Sister Helen, -- She lifts her lips and gasps on the moon. " "Oh! might I but hear her soul's blithe tune, Little brother!" (O Mother, Mary Mother, Her woe's dumb cry, between Hell and Heaven!)

 "They've caught her to Westholm's saddle-bow, Sister Helen, And her moonlit hair gleams white in its flow. " "Let it turn whiter than winter snow, Little brother!" (O Mother, Mary Mother, Woe-withered gold, between Hell and Heaven!)

Besides these there are two new stanzas, one going before, and the otherfollowing after, the six stanzas quoted, but as the scattered passagesinvolve no farther incident, and are rather of interest as explainingand perfecting the idea here expressed, than valuable in themselves, Ido not reprint them. 

I think it must be allowed, by fit judges, that nothing more subtlyconceived than this incident can be met with in English poetry, thoughsomething akin to it was projected by Coleridge in an episode of hiscontemplated _Michael Scott_. It is--in the full sense of an abusedepithet--too weird to be called picturesque. But the crowning merit ofthe poem still lies, as I have said, in the domain of character. Throughall the outbursts of her ignescent hate Sister Helen can never lose theineradicable relics of her human love:

 But he and I are sadder still. 

As Rossetti from time to time made changes in his poems, he transcribedthe amended verses in a copy of the Tauchnitz edition which he keptconstantly by him. Upon reference to this little volume some days afterhis death, I discovered that he had prefaced _Sister Helen_ with anote written in pencil, of which he had given me the substance inconversation about the time of the publication of the altered version, but which he abandoned while passing the book through the press. Thenote (evidently designed to precede the ballad) runs:

 It is not unlikely that some may be offended at seeing the additions made thus late to the ballad of _S. H. _ My best excuse is that I believe some will wonder with myself that such a climax did not enter into the first conception. 

At the foot of the poem this further note is written:

 I wrote this ballad either in 1851 or early in 1852. It was printed in a thing called _The Düsseldorf Annual_ in (I think) 1853--published in Germany. {*}

 * In the same private copy of the Poems the following explanatory passage was written over the much-discussed sonnet, entitled, The Monochord:--"That sublimated mood of the soul in which a separate essence of itself seems as it were to oversoar and survey it. " Neither the style nor the substance is characteristic of Rossetti, and though I do not at the moment remember to have met with the passage elsewhere, I doubt not it is a quotation. That quotation marks are employed is not in itself evidence of much moment, for Rossetti had Coleridge's enjoyment of a literary practical joke, and on one occasion prefixed to a story in manuscript a long passage on noses purporting to be from Tristram Shandy, but which is certainly not discoverable in Sterne's story. 

The next letter I shall quote appears to explain itself:

 There is a last point in your long letter which I have not noticed, though it interested me much: viz. , what you say of your lecture on my poetry; your idea of possibly returning to and enlarging it would, if carried out, be welcome to me. I suppose ere long I must get together such additional work as I have to show--probably a good deal added to the old vol. (which has been for some time out of print) and one longer poem by itself. _The House of Life_, when next issued, will I trust be doubled in number of sonnets; it is nearly so already. Your writing that essay in one day, and the information as to subsequent additions, I noted, and should like to see the passage on _Jenny_ which you have not yet used, if extant. The time taken in composition reminds me of the fact (so long ago!) that I wrote the tale of _Hand and Soul_ (with the exception of an opening page or two) all in one night in December 1849, beginning I suppose about 2 A. M. And ending about 7. In such a case a landscape and sky all unsurmised open gradually in the mind--a sort of spiritual _Turner_, among whose hills one ranges and in whose waters one strikes out at unknown liberty; but I have found this only in nightlong work, which I have seldom attempted, for it leaves one entirely broken, and this state was mine when I described the like of it at the close of the story, ah! once again, how long ago! I have thought of including this story in next issue of poems, but am uncertain. What think you?

It seemed certain that _Hand and Soul_ ought not to continue to lie inthe back numbers, of a magazine. The story, being more poem than aughtelse, might properly lay claim to a place in any fresh collection ofthe author's works. I could see no natural objection on the score ofits being written in prose. As Coleridge and Wordsworth both aptly said, prose is not the antithesis of poetry; science and poetry may standover-against each other, as Keats implied by his famous toast:"Confusion to the man who took the poetry out of the moon, " but proseand poetry surely are or may be practically one. We know that inrhythmic flow they sometimes come very close together, and nowherecloser than in the heightened prose and the poetry of Rossetti. Poeticprose may not be the best prose, just as (to use a false antithesis)dull poetry is called prosaic; but there is no natural antagonismbetween prose and verse as literary mediums, provided always that thespirit that animates them be akin. Rossetti himself constantly urgedthat in prose the first necessity was that it should be direct, and heknew no reproach of poetry more damning than to say it was written inproseman's diction. This was the key to his depreciation of Wordsworth, and doubtless it was this that ultimately operated with him to excludethe story from his published works. I took another view, and did notsee that an accidental difference of outward form ought to prevent hisuniting within single book-covers productions that had so much of theiressential spirit in common. Unlike the Chinese, we do not read by sightonly, and there is in the story such richness, freshness, and varietyof cadence, as appeal to the ear also. Prose may be the lowest orderof rhythmic composition, but we know it is capable of such purity, sweetness, strength, and elasticity, as entitle it to a place as asister art with poetry. Milton, however, although he wrote the noblestof English prose, seemed more than half ashamed of it, as of a kind ofleft-handed performance. Goethe and Wordsworth, on the other hand, notto speak of Coleridge and Shelley (or yet of Keats, whose letters areamong the very best examples extant of the English epistolary style), wrote prose of wonderful beauty and were not ashamed of it. In Milton'scase the subjects, I imagine, were to blame for his indifference to hisachievements in prose, for not even the Westminster Convention, orthe divorce topics of _Tetrachordon_, or yet the liberty of the press, albeit raised to a level of philosophic first principles, were quite upto those fixed stars of sublimity about which it was Milton's pleasureto revolve. _Hand and Soul_ is in faultless harmony with Rossetti's workin verse, because distinguished by the same strength of imagination. That it was written in a single night seems extraordinary when viewedin relation to its sustained beauty; but it is done in a breath, and hasall the excellencies of fervour and force that result upon that methodof composition only. 

A year or two later than the date of the correspondence with which I amnow dealing, Rossetti read aloud a fragment of a story written aboutthe period of _Hand and Soul_. It was to be entitled _St. Agnes ofIntercession_, and it dealt in a mystic way with the doctrine of thetransmigration of souls. He constantly expressed his intention offinishing the story, and said that, although in its existing conditionit was fully as long as the companion story, it would require twice asmuch more to complete it. During the time of our stay at Birchington, atthe beginning of 1882, he seemed anxious to get to work upon it, and hadthe manuscript sent down from London for that purpose; but the packetlay unopened until after his death, when I glanced at it againto refresh my memory as to its contents. The fragment is much tooinconclusive as to design to admit of any satisfying account of itsplot, of which there is more, than in _Hand and Soul_. As far as itgoes, it is the story of a young English painter who becomes the victimof a conviction that his soul has had a prior existence in this world. The hallucination takes entire possession of him, and so unsettleshis life that he leaves England in search of relic or evidence of hisspiritual "double. " Finally, in a picture-gallery abroad, he comes faceto face with a portrait which' he instantly recognises as the portraitof himself, both as he is now and as he was in the time of hisantecedent existence. Upon inquiry, the portrait proves to be that of adistinguished painter centuries dead, whose work had long been the youngEnglishman's guiding beacon in methods of art. Startled beyond measureat the singular discovery of a coincidence which, superstition apart, might well astonish the most unsentimental, he sickens to a fever. Herethe fragment ends. Late one evening, in August 1881, Rossetti gave mea full account of the remaining incidents, but I find myself withoutmemoranda of what was said (it was never my habit to keep record of hisor of any man's conversation), and my recollection of what passed istoo indefinite in some salient particulars to make it safe to attemptto complete the outlines of the story. I consider the fragment in allrespects finer than _Hand and Soul_, and the passage descriptive of theartist's identification of his own personality in the portrait onthe walls of the gallery among the very finest pieces of picturesque, impassioned, and dramatic writing that Rossetti ever achieved. On oneoccasion I remarked incidentally upon something he had said of hisenjoyment of rivers of morning air {*} in the spring of the year, thatit would be an inquiry fraught with a curious interest to find out howmany of those who have the greatest love of the Spring were born in it. 

 * Within the period of my personal knowledge of Rossetti's habits, he certainly never enjoyed any "rivers of morning air" at all, unless they were such as visited him in a darkened bedchamber. 

One felt that one could name a goodly number among the English poetsliving and dead. It would be an inquiry, as Hamlet might say, such aswould become a woman. To this Rossetti answered that he was born on oldMay-day (May 12), 1828; and thereupon he asked the date of my own birth. 

 The comparative dates of our births are curious. . . . I myself was born on old May-Day (12th), in the year (1828) after that in which Blake died. . . . You were born, in fact, just as I was giving up poetry at about 25, on finding that it impeded attention to what constituted another aim and a livelihood into the bargain, _i. E. _ painting. From that date up to the year when I published my poems, I wrote extremely little, --I might almost say nothing, except the renovated _Jenny_ in 1858 or '59. To this again I added a passage or two when publishing in 1870. 

Often since Rossetti's death I have reflected upon the fact that in thatlengthy correspondence between us which preceded personal intimacy, he never made more than a single passing allusion to those adversecriticisms which did so much at one period to sadden and alter his life. Barely, indeed, in conversation did he touch upon that sore subject, butit was obvious enough to the closer observer, as well from his silenceas from his speech, that though the wounds no longer rankled, theydid not wholly heal. I take it as evidence of his desire to put byunpleasant reflections (at least whilst health was whole with him, forhe too often nourished melancholy retrospects when health was brokenor uncertain), that in his correspondence with me, as a young friendwho knew nothing at first hand of his gloomier side, he constantly dweltwith radiant satisfaction and hopefulness on the friendly words that hadbeen said of him. And as frequently as he called my attention to suchfavourable comment, he did so without a particle of vanity, and withonly such joy as he may feel who knows in his secret heart he hasdepreciators, to find that he has ardent upholders too. In one letter hesays:

I should say that between the appearance of the poems and your lecture, there was one article on the subject, of a very masterly kind indeed, by some very scholarly hand (unknown to me), in the _New York CatholicWorld_ (I think in 1874). I retain this article, and will some day sendit you to read. 

He sent me the article, and I found it, as he had found it, among thebest things written on the subject. Naturally, the criticism was bestwhere the subject dealt with impinged most upon the spirit of mediĉvalCatholicism. Perhaps Catholicism is itself essentially mediĉval, andperhaps a man cannot possibly be, what the _Catholic World_ articlecalled Rossetti, a "mediĉval artist heart and soul, " without partakingof a strong religious feeling that is primarily Catholic--so much werethe religion and art of the middle ages knit each to each. Yet, uponreading the article, I doubted one of the writer's inferences, namely, that Rossetti had inherited a Catholic devotion to the Madonna. Not his_Ave_ only seemed to me to live in an atmosphere of tender and sensitivedevotion, but I missed altogether in it, as in other poems of Rossetti, that old, continual, and indispensable Catholic note of mystic Divinelove lost in love of humanity which, I suppose, Mr. Arnold would callanthropomorphism. Years later, when I came to know Rossetti personally, I perceived that the writer of the article in question had not madea bad shot for the truth. True it was, that he had inherited a strongreligious spirit--such as could only be called Catholic--inheritedI say, for, though from his immediate parents, he assuredly did notinherit any devotion to the Madonna, his own submission to religiousinfluences was too unreasoning and unquestioning to be anything butintuitive. Despite some worldly-mindedness, and a certain shrewdness inthe management of the more important affairs of daily life, Rossetti'sattitude towards spiritual things was exactly the reverse of what wecall Protestant. During the last months of his life, when the prospectof leaving the world soon, and perhaps suddenly, impressed upon hismind a deep sense of his religious position, he yielded himself upunhesitatingly to the intuitive influences I speak of; and so far frombeing touched by the interminable controversies which have for ages beenupsetting and uprearing creeds, he seemed both naturally incapable ofcomprehending differences of belief, and unwilling to dwell upon themfor an instant. Indeed, he constantly impressed me during the last daysof his life with the conviction, that he was by religious bias of naturea monk of the middle ages. 

As to the article in _The Catholic Magazine_ I thought I perceived froma curious habit of biblical quotation that it must have been written byan Ecclesiastic. A remark in it to the effect that old age is usuallymore indulgent than middle life to the work of first manhood, and that, consequently, Rossetti would be a less censorious judge of his earlyefforts at a later period of life, seemed to show that the writerhimself was no longer a young man. Further, I seemed to see that thereviewer was not a professional critic, for his work displayed few ofthe well-recognised trade-marks with which the articles of the literarymarket are invariably branded. As a small matter one noticed thesomewhat slovenly use of the editorial _we_, which at the fag-end ofpassages sometimes dropped into _I_. [Upon my remarking upon this toRossetti he remembered incidentally that a similar confounding ofthe singular and plural number of the pronoun produces marvellouslysuggestive effects in a very different work, _Macbeth_, where the kingly_we_ is tripped up by the guilty _I_ in many places. ] Rossetti wrote:

I am glad you liked the _Catholic World_ article, which I certainly viewas one of rare literary quality. I have not the least idea who is thewriter, but am sorry now I never wrote to him under cover of the editorwhen I received it. I did send the _Dante and Circle_, but don't knowif it was ever received or reviewed. As you have the vols, of_Fortnightly_, look up a little poem of mine called the _CloudConfines_, a few months later, I suppose, than the tale. It is one of myfavourites, among my own doings. 

I noticed at this early period, as well as later, that in Rossetti'seyes a favourable review was always enhanced in value if the writerhappened to be a stranger to him; and I constantly protested that afriend's knowledge of one's work and sympathy with it ought not to beless delightful, as such, than a stranger's, however less surprising, though at the same time the tribute that is true to one's art withoutauxiliary aids being brought to bear in its formation must be at oncethe most satisfying assurance of the purity, strength, and completenessof the art itself, and of the safe and enduring quality of theappreciation. It is true that friends who are accustomed to our habit ofthought and manner of expression sometimes catch our meaning before wehave expressed it Not rarely, before our thought has reached that stageat which it becomes intelligible to a stranger, a word, a look, or agesture will convey it perfectly and fully to a friend. And what goes onbetween minds that exist in more or less intimate communion, goes onto a greater degree within the individual mind where the metaphysicalequivalents to a word or a look answer to, and are answered by, thehalf-realised conception. Hence it often happens that even where ourtouch seems to ourselves delicate and precise, a mind not initiatedin our self-chosen method of abbreviation finds only impenetrableobscurity. It is then in the tentative condition of mind just indicatedthat the spirit of art comes in, and enables a man so to clothe histhought in lucid words and fitting imagery that strangers may know, whenthey see it, all that it is, and how he came by it. Although, therefore, the praise of friends should not be less delightful, as praise, thanthat tendered by strangers, there is an added element of surprise andsatisfaction in the latter which the former cannot bring. Rossetticertainly never over-valued the applause of his own immediate circle, but still no man was more sensible of the value of the good opinion ofone or two of his immediate friends. Returning to the correspondence, hesays:

 In what I wrote as to critiques on my poems, I meant to express _special_ gratification from those written by strangers to myself and yet showing full knowledge of the subject and full sympathy with it. Such were Formans at the time, the American one since (and far from alone in America, but this the best) and more lately your own. Other known and unknown critics of course wrote on the book when it appeared, some very favourably and others _quite_ sufficiently abusive. 

As to _Cloud Confines_, I told Rossetti that I considered it inphilosophic grasp the most powerful of his productions, and interestingas being (unlike the body of his works) more nearly akin to the spiritof music than that of painting. 

 By the bye, you are right about _Cloud Confines_, which _is_ my very best thing--only, having been foolishly sent to a magazine, no notice whatever resulted. 

Rossetti was not always open to suggestions as to the need of clarifyingobscure phrases in his verses, but on one or two occasions, when I wasso bold as to hint at changes, I found him in highly tractable moods. I called his attention to what I imagined might prove to be merely aprinter's slip in his poem (a great favourite of mine) entitled _ThePortrait_. The second stanza ran:

 Yet this, of all love's perfect prize, Remains; save what in mournful guise Takes counsel with my soul alone, -- Save what is secret and unknown, Below the earth, above the sky. 

The words "yet" and "save" seemed to me (and to another friend) somewhatpuzzling, and I asked if "but" in the sense of _only_ had been meant. Hewrote:

 That is a very just remark of yours about the passage in _Portrait_ beginning _yet_. I meant to infer _yet only_, but it certainly is truncated. I shall change the line to

 Yet only this, of love's whole prize, Remains, etc. 

 But would again be dubious though explicable. Thanks for the hint. . . . I shall be much obliged to you for any such hints of a verbal nature. 

CHAPTER V. 

The letters printed in the foregoing chapter are valuable as settlingat first-hand all question of the chronology of the poems of Rossetti'svolume of 1870. The poems of the volume of 1881 (Rose Mary and certainof the sonnets excepted) grew under his hand during the period of myacquaintance with him, and their origin I shall in due course record. The two preceding chapters have been for the most part devoted to suchletters (and such explanatory matter as must needs accompany them) asconcern principally, perhaps, the poet and his correspondent; but Ihave thrown into two further chapters a great body of highly interestingletters on subjects of general literary interest (embracing the fulleststatement yet published of Rossetti's critical opinions), and havereserved for a more advanced section of the work a body of furtherletters on sonnet literature which arose out of the discussion of ananthology that I was at the time engaged in compiling. 

It was very natural that Coleridge should prove to be one of the firstsubjects discussed by Rossetti, who admired him greatly, and when ittranspired that Coleridge was, perhaps, my own chief idol, and thatwhilst even yet a child I had perused and reperused not only his poetrybut even his mystical philosophy (impalpable or obscure even to hismaturer and more enlightened, if no more zealous, admirers), thedisposition to write upon him became great upon both sides. "You cannever say too much about Coleridge for me, " Rossetti would write, "forI worship him on the right side of idolatry, and I perceive you knowhim well. " Upon this one of my first remarks was that there was much inColeridge's higher descriptive verse equivalent to the landscape artof Turner. The critical parallel Rossetti warmly approved of, adding, however, that Coleridge, at his best as a pictorial artist, was aspiritualised Turner. He instanced his, We listened and looked sideways up, The moving moon went up the sky And no where did abide, Softly she was going up, And a star or two beside-- The charmed water burnt alway A still and awful red. 

I remarked that Shelley possessed the same power of impregnatinglandscape with spiritual feeling, and this Rossetti readily allowed;but when I proceeded to say that Wordsworth sometimes, though rarely, displayed a power akin to it, I found him less warmly responsive. "Igrudge Wordsworth every vote he gets, " {*} Rossetti frequently said tome, both in writing, and afterwards in conversation. "The threegreatest English imaginations, " he would sometimes add, "are Shakspeare, Coleridge, and Shelley. " I have heard him give a fourth name, Blake. 

 * There is a story frequently told of how, seeing two camels walking together in the Zoological Gardens, keeping step in a shambling way, and conversing with one another, Rossetti exclaimed: "There's Wordsworth and Ruskin virtuously taking a walk!"

He thought Wordsworth was too much the High Priest of Nature to beher lover: too much concerned to transfigure into poetry hispantheo-Christian philosophy regarding Nature, to drop to his knees insimple love of her to thank God that she was beautiful. It was hard toside with Rossetti in his view of Wordsworth, partly because one fearedhe did not practise the patience necessary to a full appreciation ofthat poet, and was consequently apt to judge of him by fugitive linesread at random. In the connection in question, I instanced the lines(much admired by Coleridge) beginning

 Suck, little babe, O suck again! It cools my blood, it cools my brain, and ending--

 The breeze I see is in the tree, It comes to cool my babe and me. 

But Rossetti would not see that this last couplet denoted the point ofartistic vision at which the poet of nature identified himself with her, in setting aside or superseding all proprieties of mere speech. To himWordsworth's Idealism (which certainly had the German trick of keepingclose to the ground) only meant us to understand that the forsakenwoman through whose mouth the words are spoken (in _The Affliction ofMargaret_ ------ of ------) saw _the breeze shake the tree_ afar off. And this attitude towards Wordsworth Rossetti maintained down to theend. I remember that sometime in March of the year in which he died, Mr. Theodore Watts, who was paying one of his many visits to see him in hislast illness at the sea-side, touched, in conversation, upon the powerof Wordsworth's style in its higher vein, and instanced a noble passagein the _Ode to Duty_, which runs:

 Stern Lawgiver! yet thou dost wear The Godhead's most benignant grace; Nor know we anything so fair As is the smile upon thy face; Flowers laugh before thee on their beds; And fragrance in thy footing treads; Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong; And the most ancient heavens, through Thee, are fresh and strong. 

Mr. Watts spoke with enthusiasm of the strength and simplicity, thesonorousness and stately march of these lines; and numbered them, Ithink, among the noblest verses yet written, for every highest qualityof style. 

But Rossetti was unyielding, and though he admitted the beauty of thepassage, and was ungrudging in his tribute to another passage which Ihad instanced--

 O joy that in our embers--

he would not allow that Wordsworth ever possessed a grasp of thegreat style, or that (despite the Ode on Immortality and the sonnet on_Toussaint L'Ouverture_, which he placed at the head of the poet's work)vital lyric impulse was ever fully developed in his muse. He said:

 As to Wordsworth, no one regards the great Ode with more special and unique homage than I do, as a thing absolutely alone of its kind among all greatest things. I cannot say that anything else of his with which I have ever been familiar (and I suffer from long disuse of all familiarity with him) seems at all on a level with this. 

In all humility I regard his depreciatory opinion, not at all as avaluable example of literary judgment, but as indicative of a clearradical difference of poetic bias between the two poets, such as mustin the same way have made Wordsworth resist Rossetti if he had appearedbefore him. I am the more confirmed in this view from the circumstancethat Rossetti, throughout the period of my acquaintance with him, seemedto me always peculiarly and, if I may be permitted to say so withoutoffence, strangely liable to Mr. Watts's influence in his criticalestimates, and that the case instanced was perhaps the only one inwhich I knew him to resist Mr. Watts's opinion upon a matter of poeticalcriticism, which he considered to be almost final, as his letters tome, printed in Chapter VIII. Of this volume, will show. I had a strikinginstance of this, and of the real modesty of the man whom I had heardand still hear spoken of as the most arrogant man of genius of hisday, on one of the first occasions of my seeing him. He read out to mean additional stanza to the beautiful poem _Cloud Confines_: As heread it, I thought it very fine, and he evidently was very fond of ithimself. But he surprised me by saying that he should not print it. Onmy asking him why, he said:

"Watts, though he admits its beauty, thinks the poem would be betterwithout it. "

"Well, but you like it yourself, " said I. 

"Yes, " he replied; "but in a question of gain or loss to a poem, I feelthat Watts must be right. "

And the poem appeared in _Ballads and Sonnets_ without the stanza inquestion. The same thing occurred with regard to the omission of thesonnet _Nuptial Sleep_ from the new edition of the Poems in 1881. Mr. Watts took the view (to Rossetti's great vexation at first) that thissonnet, howsoever perfect in structure and beautiful from the artisticpoint of view, was "out of place and altogether incongruous in a groupof sonnets so entirely spiritual as _The House of Life_, " and Rossettigave way: but upon the subject of Wordsworth in his relations toColeridge, Keats, and Shelley, he was quite inflexible to the last. 

In a letter treating of other matters, Rossetti asked me if I thought"Christabel" really existed as a mediĉval name, or existed at allearlier than Coleridge. I replied that I had not met with it earlierthan the date of the poem. I thought Coleridge's granddaughter musthave been the first person to bear the name. The other names in the poemappear to belong to another family of names, --names with a differentorigin and range of expression, --Leoline, Géraldine, Roland, and mostof all Bracy. It seemed to me very possible that Coleridge inventedthe name, but it was highly probable that he brought it to England fromGermany, where, with Wordsworth, he visited Klopstock in 1798, aboutthe period of the first part of the poem. The Germans have names of akindred etymology and, even if my guess proved wide of the truth, it might still be a fact that the name had German relations. Anotherconjecture that seemed to me a reasonable one was that Coleridge evolvedthe name out of the incidents of the opening passages of the poem. The beautiful thing, not more from its beauty than its suggestiveness, suited his purpose exactly. Rossetti replied:

 Resuming the thread of my letter, I come to the question of the name Christabel, viz. :--as to whether it is to be found earlier than Coleridge. I have now realized afresh what I knew long ago, viz. :--that in the grossly garbled ballad of _Syr Cauline_, in Percy's _Reliques_, there is a Ladye Chrystabelle, but as every stanza in which her name appears would seem certainly to be Percy's own work, I suspect him to be the inventor of the name, which is assuredly a much better invention than any of the stanzas; and from this wretched source Coleridge probably enriched the sphere of symbolic nomenclature. However, a genuine source may turn up, but the name does not sound to me like a real one. As to a German origin, I do not know that language, but would not the second syllable be there the one accented? This seems to render the name shapeless and improbable. 

I mentioned an idea that once possessed me despotically. It was thatwhere Coleridge says

 Her silken robe and inner vest Dropt to her feet, and full in view Behold! her bosom and half her side-- A sight to dream of and not to tell, . . . Shield the Lady Christabel!

he meant ultimately to show _eyes_ in the _bosom_ of the witch. Ifancied that if the poet had worked out this idea in the second part, or in his never-compassed continuation, he must have electrified hisreaders. The first part of the poem is of course immeasurably superiorin witchery to the second, despite two grand things in the latter--thepassage on the severance of early friendships, and the conclusion;although the dexterity of hand (not to speak of the essential spirit ofenchantment) which is everywhere present in the first part, and nowheredominant in the second, exhibits itself not a little in the marvellouspassage in which Géraldine bewitches Christabel. Touching some jocoseallusion by Rossetti to the necessity which lay upon me to startlethe world with a continuation of the poem based upon the lines of myconjectural scheme, I asked him if he knew that a continuation wasactually published in Coleridge's own paper, _The Morning Post_. Itappeared about 1820, and was satirical of course--hitting off manypeculiarities of versification, if no more. With Coleridge's playfullove of satirising himself anonymously, the continuation might even behis own. Rossetti said:

 I do not understand your early idea of _eyes_ in the bosom of Géraldine. It is described as "that bosom old, " "that bosom cold, " which seems to show that its withered character as combined with Geraldine's youth, was what shocked and warned Christabel. The first edition says--

 A sight to dream of, not to tell:-- And she is to sleep with Christabel!

 I dare say Coleridge altered this, because an idea arose, which I actually heard to have been reported as Coleridge's real intention by a member of contemporary circles (P. G. Patmore, father of Coventry P. Who conveyed the report to me)--viz. , that Géraldine was to turn out to be a man!! I believe myself that the conclusion as given by Gillman from Coleridge's account to him is correct enough, only not picturesquely worded. It does not seem a bad conclusion by any means, though it would require fine treatment to make it seem a really good one. Of course the first part is so immeasurably beyond the second, that one feels Chas. Lamb's view was right, and it should have been abandoned at that point. The passage on sundered friendship is one of the masterpieces of the language, but no doubt was written quite separately and then fitted into _Christabel_. The two lines about Roland and Sir Leoline are simply an intrusion and an outrage. I cannot say that I like the conclusion nearly so well as this. It hints at infinite beauty, but somehow remains a sort of cobweb. The conception, and partly the execution, of the passage in which Christabel repeats by fascination the serpent-glance of Géraldine, is magnificent; but that is the only good narrative passage in part two. The rest seems to have reached a fatal facility of jingling, at the heels whereof followed Scott. 

There are, I believe, many continuations of _Christabel_. Tupper didone! I myself saw a continuation in childhood, long before I saw theoriginal, and was all agog to see it for years. Our household was all ofItalian, not English environment, and it was only when I went to schoollater that I began to ransack bookstalls. The continuation in questionwas by one Eliza Stewart, and appeared in a shortlived monthly thingcalled _Smallwood's Magazine_, to which my father contributedsome Italian poetry, and so it came into the house. I thought thecontinuation spirited then, and perhaps it may have been so. This musthave been before 1840 I think. 

The other day I saw in a bookseller's catalogue--_Christabess_, by S. T. Colebritche, translated from the Doggrel by Sir Vinegar Sponge (1816). This seems a parody, not a continuation, in the very year of the poem'sfirst appearance! I did not think it worth two shillings, --which was theprice. . . . Have you seen the continuation of _Christabel_ in _EuropeanMagazine?_ of course it _might_ have been Coleridge's, so far as thedate of the composition of the original was concerned; but of course itwas not his. 

I imagine the "Sir Vinegar Sponge" who translated "_Christabess_ fromthe _Doggerel_" must belong to the family of Sponges described byColeridge himself, who give out the liquid they take in much dirtierthan they imbibe it. I thought it very possible that Coleridge's epigramto this effect might have been provoked by the lampoon referred to, andRossetti also thought this probable. Immediately after meeting with thecontinuation of _Christabel_ already referred to, I came across greatnumbers of such continuations, as well as satires, parodies, reviews, etc. , in old issues of _Blackwood, The Quarterly, and The Examiner_. They seemed to me, for the most part, poor in quality--the highest reachof comicality to which they attained being concerned with side slaps at_Kubla Khan_:

 Better poetry I make When asleep than when awake. Am I sure, or am I guessing? Are my eyes like those of Lessing?

This latter elegant couplet was expected to serve as a scorching satireon a letter in the _Biographia Literaria_ in which Coleridge says hesaw a portrait of Lessing at Klopstock's, in which the eyes seemedsingularly like his own. The time has gone by when that flight ofegotism on Coleridge's part seemed an unpardonable offence, and to ourmore modern judgment it scarcely seems necessary that the author of_Christabel_ should be charged with a desire to look radiant in theglory reflected by an accidental personal resemblance to the author of_Laokoon_. Curiously enough I found evidence of the Patmore versionof Coleridge's intentions as to the ultimate disclosure of the sex ofGéraldine in a review in the _Examiner_. The author was perhaps Hazlitt, but more probably the editor himself, but whether Hazlitt or Hunt, he must have been within the circle that found its rallying point atHighgate, and consequently acquainted with the earliest forms of thepoem. The review is an unfavourable one, and Coleridge is told in itthat he is the dog-in-the-manger of literature, and that his poem isproof of the fact that he can write better nonsense poetry than any manin England. The writer is particularly wroth with what he considersthe wilful indefiniteness of the author, and in proof of a charge ofa desire not to let the public into the secret of the poem, and ofa conscious endeavour to mystify the reader, he deliberately accusesColeridge of omitting one line of the poem as it was written, which, if printed, would have proved conclusively that Géraldine had seducedChristabel after getting drunk with her, --for such sequel is implied ifnot openly stated. I told Rossetti of this brutality of criticism, andhe replied:

 As for the passage in _Christabel_, I am not sure we quite understand each other. What I heard through the Patmores (a complete mistake I am sure), was that Coleridge meant Géraldine to prove to be a man bent on the seduction of Christabel, and presumably effecting it. What I inferred (if so) was that Coleridge had intended the line as in first ed. : "And she is to sleep with Christabel!" as leading up too nearly to what he meant to keep back for the present. But the whole thing was a figment. 

What is assuredly not a figment is, that an idea, such as the elderPatmore referred to, really did exist in the minds of Coleridge'sso-called friends, who after praising the poem beyond measure whilstit was in manuscript, abused it beyond reason or decency when it wasprinted. My settled conviction is that the _Examiner_ criticism, and_not_ the sudden advent of the idea after the first part was written, was the cause of Coleridge's adopting the correction which Rossettimentions. 

Rossetti called my attention to a letter by Lamb, about which hegathered a good deal of interesting conjecture:

 There is (given in _Cottle_) an inconceivably sarcastic, galling, and admirable letter from Lamb to Coleridge, regarding which I never could learn how the deuce their friendship recovered from it. Cottle says the only reason he could ever trace for its being written lay in the three parodied sonnets (one being _The House that Jack Built_) which Coleridge published as a skit on the joint volume brought out by himself, Lamb, and Lloyd. The whole thing was always a mystery to me. But I have thought that the passage on division between friends was not improbably written by Coleridge on this occasion. Curiously enough (if so) Lamb, who is said to have objected greatly to the idea of a second part of _Christabel_, thought (on seeing it) that the mistake was redeemed by this very passage. He _may_ have traced its meaning, though, of course, its beauty alone was enough to make him say so. 

The three satirical sonnets which Rossetti refers to appear not only in_Cottle_ but in a note to the _Biographia Literaria_ They were publishedfirst under a fictitious name in _he Monthly Magazine_ They must beunderstood as almost wholly satirical of three distinct facets ofColeridge's own manner, for even the sonnet in which occur the words

 Eve saddens into night, {*}

has its counterpart in _The Songs of the Pixies_--

 Hence! thou lingerer, light! Eve saddens into night, and nearly all the phrases satirised are borrowed from Coleridge'sown poetry, not from that of Lamb or Lloyd. Nevertheless, Cottle wasdoubtless right as to the fact that Lamb took offence at Coleridge'sconduct on this account, and Rossetti almost certainly made a good shotat the truth when he attributed to the rupture thereupon ensuing thepassage on severed friendship. The sonnet on _The House that Jack Built_is the finest of the three as a satire. 

 * So in the Biographia Literaria; in Cottle, "Eve darkens into night. "

Indeed, the figure used therein as an equipoise to "the hindward charms"satirises perfectly the style of writing characterised by inflatedthought and imagery. It may be doubted if there exists anything morecomical; but each of the companion sonnets is good in its way. Theegotism, which was a constant reproach urged by _The Edinburgh_ criticsand by the "Cockney Poets" against the poets of the Lake School, issplendidly hit off in the first sonnet; the low and creeping meanness, or say, simpleness, as contrasted with simplicity, of thought andexpression, which was stealing into Wordsworth's work at that period, is equally cleverly ridiculed in the second sonnet. In reproducing thesonnets, Coleridge claims only to have satirised types. As to Lamb'sletter, it is, indeed, hard to realise the fact that the "gentle-heartedCharles, " as Coleridge himself named him, could write a galling letterto the "inspired charity-boy, " for whom at an early period, and again atthe end, he had so profound a reverence. Every word is an outrage, andevery syllable must have hit Coleridge terribly. I called Rossetti'sattention to the surprising circumstance that in a letter writtenimmediately after the date of the one in question, Loyd tells Cottlethat he has never known Lamb (who is at the moment staying with him) sohappy before as _just then!_ There can hardly be a doubt, however, that Rossetti's conjecture is a just one as to the origin of the greatpassage in the second part of _Christabel_. Touching that passage Icalled his attention to an imperfection that I must have perceived, orthought I perceived long before, --an imperfection of craftsmanship thathad taken away something of my absolute enjoyment of its many beauties. The passage ends--

 They parted, ne'er to meet again! But never either found another To free the hollow heart from paining-- They stood aloof, the scars remaining, Like cliffs which had been rent asunder; A dreary sea now flows between, But neither heat, nor frost, nor thunder, Shall wholly do away, I ween, The marks of that which once hath been. 

This is, it is needless to say, in almost every respect, finely felt, but the words italicised appeared to display some insufficiency ofpoetic vision. First, nothing but an earthquake would (speaking withinlimits of human experience) unite the two sides of a ravine; and though_frost_ might bring them together temporarily, _heat and thunder_ mustbe powerless to make or to unmake the _marks_ that showed the cliffs tohave once been one, and to have been violently torn apart. Next, _heat_(supposing _frost_ to be the root-conception) was obviously used merelyas a balancing phrase, and _thunder_ simply as the inevitable rhyme to_asunder_. I have not seen this matter alluded to, though it may havebeen mentioned, and it is certainly not important enough to make anyserious deduction from the pleasure afforded by a passage that is inother respects so rich in beauty as to be able to endure such modestdiscounting. Rossetti replied:

 Your geological strictures on Coleridge's "friendship" passage are but too just, and I believe quite new. But I would fain think that this is "to consider too nicely. " I am certainly willing to bear the obloquy of never having been struck by what is nevertheless obvious enough. {*}. . . Lamb's letter _is_ a teazer. The three sonnets in _The Monthly Magazine_ were signed "Nehemiah Higginbotham, " and were meant to banter good-humouredly the joint vol. Issued by Coleridge, Lamb, and Lloyd, --C. Himself being, of course, the most obviously ridiculed. I fancy you have really hit the mark as regards Coleridge's epigram and Sir Vinegar Sponge. He might have been worth two shillings after all. . . . _I_ also remember noting Lloyd's assertion of Lamb's exceptional happiness just after that letter. It is a puzzling affair. However C. And Lamb got over it (for I certainly believe they were friends later in life) no one seems to have recorded. The second vol. Of Cottle, after the raciness of the first, is very disappointing. 

 * In a note on this passage, Canon Dixon writes: What is meant is that in cliffs, actual cliffs, the action of these agents, heat, cold, thunder even, might have an obliterating power; but in the severance of friendship, there is nothing (heat of nature, frost of time, thunder of accident or surprise) that can wholly have the like effect. 

On one occasion Rossetti wrote, saying he had written a sonnet onColeridge, and I was curious to learn what note he struck in dealingwith so complex a subject. The keynote of a man's genius or charactershould be struck in a poetic address to him, just as the expressionalindividuality of a man's features (freed of the modifying or emphasisingeffects of passing fashions of dress), should be reproduced in hisportrait; but Coleridge's mind had so many sides to it, and hischaracter had such varied aspects--from keen and beautiful sensibilityto every form of suffering, to almost utter disregard of the calls ofdomestic duty--that it seemed difficult to think what kind of idea, consistent with the unity of the sonnet and its simplicity of scheme, would call up a picture of the entire man. It goes against the grain tohint, adoring the man as we must, that Coleridge's personal characterwas anything less than one of untarnished purity, and certainly thepersons chiefly concerned in the alleged neglect, Southey and his ownfamily, have never joined in the strictures commonly levelled againsthim: but whatever Coleridge's personal ego may have been, his creativeego was assuredly not single in kind or aim. He did some noble thingslate in life (instance the passage on "Youth and Age, " and that on "Workwithout Hope"), but his poetic genius seemed to desert him when Kanttook possession of him as a gigantic windmill to do battle with, andit is now hard to say which was the deeper thing in him: the poetry towhich he devoted the sunniest years of his young life, or the philosophywhich he firmly believed it to be the main business of his later lifeto expound. In any discussion of the relative claims of these two tothe gratitude of the ages that follow, I found Rossetti frankly took oneside, and constantly said that the few unequal poems Coleridge had leftus, were a legacy more stimulating, solacing, and enduring, than hisphilosophy could have been, even if he had perfected that attempt of histo reconcile all learning and revelation, and if, when perfected, thewhole effort had not proved to be a work of supererogation. I doubt ifRossetti quite knew what was meant by Coleridge's "system, " as it wasso frequently called, and I know that he could not be induced by anyeulogiums to do so much as look at the _Biographia Literaria_, thoughonce he listened whilst I read a chapter from it. He had certainlylittle love of the German elements in Coleridge's later intellectuallife, and hence it is small matter for surprise that in his sonnethe chose for treatment the more poetic side of Coleridge's genius. Nevertheless, I think it remains an open question whether the philosophyof the author of _The Ancient Mariner_ was more influenced by hispoetry, or his poetry by his philosophy; for the philosophy is alwaystinged by the mysticism of his poetry, and his poetry is alwaysadumbrated by the disposition, which afterwards become paramount, todig beneath the surface for problems of life and character, and for"suggestions of the final mystery of existence. " I have heard Rossettisay that what came most of all uppermost in Coleridge, was his wonderfulintuitive knowledge and love of the sea, whose billowy roll, and break, and sibilation, seemed echoed in the very mechanism of his verse. Sleep, too, Rossetti thought, had given up to Coleridge her utmost secrets; andperhaps it was partly due to his own sad experience of the dread curseof insomnia, as well as to keen susceptibility to poetic beauty, thattears so frequently filled his eyes, and sobs rose to his throat when herecited the lines beginning

 O sleep! it is a gentle thing--

affirming, meantime, that nothing so simple and touching had ever beenwritten on the subject. As to the sonnet, he wrote:

 About Coleridge (whom I only view as a poet, his other aspects being to my apprehension mere bogies) I conceive the leading point about his work is its human love, and the leading point about his career, the sad fact of how little of it was devoted to that work. These are the points made in my sonnet, and the last is such as I (alas!) can sympathise with, though what has excluded more poetry with me (_mountains_ of it I don't want to heap) has chiefly been livelihood necessity. I 'll copy the sonnet on opposite page, only I 'd rather you kept it to yourself. _Five_ years of _good_ poetry is too long a tether to give his Muse, I know. 

 His Soul fared forth (as from the deep home-grove The father Songster plies the hour-long quest) To feed his soul-brood hungering in the nest; But his warm Heart, the mother-bird above Their callow fledgling progeny still hove With tented roof of wings and fostering breast Till the Soul fed the soul-brood. Richly blest From Heaven their growth, whose food was Human Love. 

 Tet ah! Like desert pools that shew the stars Once in long leagues--even such the scarce-snatched hours Which deepening pain left to his lordliest powers:-- Heaven lost through spider-trammelled prison-bars! Five years, from seventy saved! yet kindling skies Own them, a beacon to our centuries. 

As a minor point I called Rossetti's attention to the fact thatColeridge lived to be scarcely more than sixty, and that his poeticcareer really extended over six good years; and hence the thirteenthline was amended to

 Six years from sixty saved. 

I doubted if "deepening pain" could be charged with the whole burdenof Coleridge's constitutional procrastination, and to this objectionRossetti replied:

 Line eleven in my first reading was "deepening _sloth_;" but it seemed harsh--and--damn it all! much too like the spirit of Banquo!

Before Coleridge, however, as to warmth of admiration, and before himalso as to date of influence, Keats was Rossetti's favourite amongmodern English poets. Our friend never tired of writing or talking aboutKeats, and never wearied of the society of any one who could generatea fresh thought concerning him. But his was a robust andmasculine admiration, having nothing in common with the effeminateextra-affectionateness that has of late been so much ridiculed. Hisletters now to be quoted shall speak for themselves as to the qualitiesin Keats whereon Rossetti's appreciation of him was founded: but I maysay in general terms that it was not so much the wealth of expressionin the author of _Endymion_ which attracted the author of _Rose Mary_as the perfect hold of the supernatural which is seen in _La Belle DameSans Merci_ and in the fragment of the _Eve of St. Mark_. At the time ofour correspondence, I was engaged upon an essay on Keats, and _à propos_of this Rossetti wrote:

 I shall take pleasure in reading your Keats article when ready. He was, among all his contemporaries who established their names, the one true heir of Shakspeare. Another (unestablished then, but partly revived since) was Charles Wells. Did you ever read his splendid dramatic poem _Joseph and his Brethren?_

In this connexion, as a better opportunity may not arise, I takeoccasion to tell briefly the story of the revival of Wells. The factsto be related were communicated to me by Rossetti in conversation yearsafter the date of the letter in which this first allusion to thesubject was made. As a boy, Rossetti's chief pleasure was to ransackold book-stalls, and the catalogues of the British Museum, for forgottenworks in the bye-ways of English poetry. In this pursuit he becameacquainted with nearly every curiosity of modern poetic literature, andmany were the amusing stories he used to tell at that time, and in afterlife, of the titles and contents of the literary oddities heunearthed. If you chanced at any moment to alight upon any obscure bookparticularly curious from its pretentiousness and pomposity, from theaudacity of its claim, or the obscurity and absurdity of its writing, you might be sure that Rossetti would prove familiar with it, and beable to recapitulate with infinite zest its salient features; but if youhappened to drop upon ever so interesting an edition of a book (not ofverse) which you supposed to be known to many a reader, the chances wereat least equal that Rossetti would prove to know nothing of it but itsname. In poring over the forgotten pages of the poetry of the beginningof the century, Rossetti, whilst still a boy, met with the scripturaldrama of _Joseph and his Brethren_. He told me the title did not muchattract him, but he resolved to glance at the contents, and withthat swiftness of insight which throughout life distinguished him, heinstantly perceived its great qualities. I think he said he then wrote aletter on the subject to one of the current literary journals, probably_The Literary Gazette_, and by this means came into correspondence withCharles Wells himself. Rather later a relative of Wells's sought out theyoung enthusiast in London, intending to solicit his aid in an attemptto induce a publisher to undertake a reprint, but in any endeavours tothis end he must have failed. For many years a copy of the poem, leftby the author's request at Rossetti's lodgings, lay there untouched, and meantime the growing reputation of the young painter broughtabout certain removals from Blackfriars Bridge to other chambers, andafterwards to the house in Cheyne Walk. In the course of these changesthe copy got hidden away, and it was not until numerous applications forit had been made that it was at length ferreted forth from the chaos ofsome similar volumes huddled together in a corner of the studio. Full ofremorse for having so long abandoned a laudable project, Rossettithen took up afresh the cause of the neglected poem, and enlistedMr. Swinburne's interest so warmly as to prevail with him to use hisinfluence to secure its publication. This failed however; but in _TheAthenĉum_ of April 8, 1876, appeared Mr. Watts's elaborate account ofWells and the poem and its vicissitudes, whereupon Messrs. Chatto andWindus offered to take the risk of publishing it, and the poemwent forth with the noble commendatory essay of the young author of_Atalanta_, whose reputation was already almost at its height, thoughit lacked (doubtless from a touch of his constitutional procrastination)the appreciative comment of the discerning critic who first discoveredit. To return to the Keats correspondence:

 I am truly delighted to hear how young you are. In original work, a man does some of his best things by your time of life, though he only finds it out in a rage much later, at some date when he expected to know no longer that he had ever done them. Keats hardly died so much too early--not at all if there had been any danger of his taking to the modern habit eventually--treating material as product, and shooting it all out as it comes. Of course, however, he wouldn't; he was getting always choicer and simpler, and my favourite piece in his works is _La Belle Dame Sans Merci_--I suppose about his last. As to Shelley, it is really a mercy that he has not been hatching yearly universes till now. He might, I suppose; for his friend Trelawny still walks the earth without great-coat, stockings, or underclothing, this Christmas (1879). In criticism, matters are different, as to seasons of production. . . . I am writing hurriedly and horribly in every sense. Write on the subject again and I'll try to answer better. All greetings to you. 

 P. S. --I think your reference to Keats new, and on a high level It calls back to my mind an adaptation of his self- chosen epitaph which I made in my very earliest days of boyish rhyming, when I was rather proud to be as cockney as Keats _could_ be. Here it is, --

 Through one, years since damned and forgot Who stabbed backs by the Quarter, Here lieth one who, while Time's stream Still runs, as God hath taught her, Bearing man's fame to men, hath writ His name upon that water. 

 Well, the rhyme is not so bad as Keats's

 Ear Of Goddess of Therĉa!--

 nor (tell it not in Gath!) as---

 I wove a crown before her For her I love so dearly, A garland for Lenora!

 Is it possible the laurel crown should now hide a venerated and impeccable ear which was once the ear of a cockney?

This letter was written in 1879, and the opening clauses of it were nodoubt penned under the impression, then strong on Rossetti's mind, thathis first volume of poems would prove to be his only one; but when, within two years afterwards he completed _Rose Mary_, and wrote _TheKing's Tragedy_ and _The White Ship_, this accession of materialdissipated the notion that a man does much his best work beforetwenty-five. It can hardly escape the reader that though Rossetti'searlier volume displayed a surprising maturity, the subsequent oneexhibited as a whole infinitely more power and feeling, range ofsympathy, and knowledge of life. The poet's dramatic instinct developedenormously in the interval between the periods of the two books, and, being conscious of this, Rossetti used to say in his later years that hewould never again write poems as from his own person. 

 You say an excellent thing [he writes] when you ask, "Where can we look for more poetry per page than Keats furnishes?" It is strange that there is not yet one complete edition of him. {*} No doubt the desideratum (so far as care and exhaustiveness go), will be supplied when

 Forman's edition appears. He is a good appreciator too, as I have reason to say. You will think it strange that I have not seen the Keats love-letters, but I mean to do so. However, I am told they add nothing to one's idea of his epistolary powers. . . . I hear sometimes from Buxton Forman, and was sending him the other day an extract (from a book called _The Unseen World_) which doubtless bears on the superstition which Keats intended to develope in his lovely _Eve of St. Mark_--a fragment which seems to me to rank with _La Belle Dame Sans Merci_, as a clear advance in direct simplicity. . . . You ought to have my recent Keats sonnet, so I send it. Your own plan, for one on the same subject, seems to me most beautiful. Do it at once. You will see that mine is again concerned with the epitaph, and perhaps my reviving the latter in writing you was the cause of the sonnet. 

 * Rossetti afterwards admitted in conversation that the Aldine Edition seemed complete, though I think he did not approve of the chronological arrangement therein adopted; at least he thought that arrangement had many serious disadvantages. 

Rossetti formed a very different opinion of Keats's love-letters, when, a year later, he came to read them. At first he shared the general viewthat letters so _intimes_ should never have been made public. Afterwardsthe book had irresistible charms for him, from the first page whereonhis old friend, Mr. Bell Scott, has vigorously etched Severn's drawingof the once redundant locks of rich hair, dank and matted overthe forehead cold with the death-dew, down to the last line of theletterpress. He thought Mr. Forman's work admirably done, and as for theletters themselves, he believed they placed Keats indisputably amongthe highest masters of English epistolary style. He considered that allKeats's letters proved him to be no weakling, and that whatever walkhe had chosen he must have been a master. He seemed particularly struckwith the apparently intuitive perception of Shakspeare's subtlestmeanings, which certain of the letters display. In a note he said:

 Forman gave me a copy of Keats's letters to Fanny Brawne. The silhouette given of the lady is sadly disenchanting, and may be the strongest proof existing of how much a man may know about abstract Beauty without having an artist's eye for the outside of it. 

The Keats sonnet, as first shown to me, ran as follows:

 The weltering London ways where children weep, -- Where girls whom none call maidens laugh, where gain, Hurrying men's steps, is yet by loss o'erta'en:-- The bright Castalian brink and Latinos' steep:-- Such were his paths, till deeper and more deep, He trod the sands of Lethe; and long pain, Weary with labour spurned and love found vain, In dead Rome's sheltering shadow wrapped his sleep. 

 O pang-dowered Poet, whose reverberant lips And heart-strung lyre awoke the moon's eclipse, -- Thou whom the daisies glory in growing o'er, -- Their fragrance clings around thy name, not writ, But rumour'd in water, while the fame of it Along Time's flood goes echoing evermore. 

I need hardly say that this sonnet seemed to me extremely noble insentiment, and in music a glorious volume of sound. I felt, however, that it would be urged against it that it did not strike the keynote ofthe genius of Keats; that it would be said that in all the particularsin which Rossetti had truthfully and pathetically described London, Keats was in rather than of it; and that it would be affirmed that Keatslived in a fairy world of his own inventing, caring little for the stormand stress of London life. On the other hand, I knew it could be repliedthat Keats was not indifferent to the misery of city life; that it boreheavily upon him; that it came out powerfully and very sadly in his _Odeto the Nightingale_, and that it may have been from sheer torture inthe contemplation of it that he fled away to a poetic world of his owncreating. Moreover, Rossetti's sonnet touched the life, rather thanthe genius, of Keats, and of this it struck the keynote in the openinglines. I ventured to think that the second and third lines wanted alittle clarifying in the relation in which they stood. They seemed tobe a sudden focussing of the laughter and weeping previously mentioned, rather than, what they were meant to be, a natural and necessaryequipoise showing the inner life of Keats as contrasted with his outerlife. To such an objection as this, Rossetti said:

 I am rather aghast for my own lucidity when I read what you say as to the first quatrain of my Keats sonnet. However, I always take these misconceptions as warnings to the Muse, and may probably alter the opening as below:

 The weltering London ways where children weep And girls whom none call maidens laugh, --strange road, Miring his outward steps who inly trode The bright Castalian brink and Latinos' steep:-- Even such his life's cross-paths: till deathly deep He toiled through sands of Lethe, etc. I 'll say more anent Keats anon. 

About the period of this portion of the correspondence (1880) I wasengaged reading up old periodicals dating from 1816 to 1822. My purposewas to get at first-hand all available data relative to the life ofKeats. I thought I met with a good deal of fresh material, and as theresult of my reading I believed myself able to correct a few errorsas to facts into which previous writers on the subject had fallen. Twothings at least I realised--first, that Keats's poetic gift developedvery rapidly, more rapidly perhaps than that of Shelley; and, next, thatKeats received vastly more attention and appreciation in his day than iscommonly supposed. I found it was quite a blunder to say that the firstvolume of miscellaneous poems fell flat. Lord Houghton says in errorthat the book did not so much as seem to signal the advent of a newCockney poet! It is a fact, however, that this very book, in conjunctionwith one of Shelley's and one of Hunt's, all published 1816-17, gaverise to the name "The Cockney School of Poets, " which was invented bythe writer signing "Z. " in _Blackwood_ in the early part of 1818. Norhad Keats to wait for the publication of the volume before attainingto some poetic distinction. At the close of 1816, an article, underthe head of "Young Poets, " appeared in _The Examiner_, and in thisboth Shelley and Keats were dealt with. Then _The Quarterly_ containedallusions to him, though not by name, in reviews of Leigh Hunt's work, and _Blackwood_ mentioned him very frequently in all sorts of places as"Johnny Keats"--all this (or much of it) before he published anythingexcept occasional sonnets and other fugitive poems in _The Examiner_ andelsewhere. And then when _Endymion_ appeared it was abundantly reviewed. _The Edinburgh_ reviewers had nothing on it (the book cannot have beensent to them, for in 1820 they say they have only just met with it), and I could not find anything in the way of _original_ criticism in_The Examiner_; but many provincial papers (in Manchester, Exeter, andelsewhere) and some metropolitan papers retorted on _The Quarterly_. Allthis, however, does not disturb the impression which (Lord Houghton andMr. W. M. Rossetti notwithstanding) I have been from the first compelledto entertain, namely, that "labour spurned" did more than all else tokill Keats _in 1821_. 

Most men who rightly know the workings of their own minds will agreethat an adverse criticism rankles longer than a flattering noticesoothes; and though it be shown that Keats in 1820 was comparativelyindifferent to the praise of _The Edinburgh_, it cannot follow that in1818 he must have been superior to the blame of _The Quarterly_. It isdifficult to see why a man may not be keenly sensitive to what the worldsays about him, and yet retain all proper manliness as a part of hisliterary character. Surely it was from the mistaken impression thatthis could not be, and that an admission of extreme sensitiveness tocriticism exposed Keats to a charge of effeminacy that Lord Houghtonattempted to prove, against the evidence of all immediate friends, against the publisher's note to _Hyperion_, against the | poet'sself-chosen epitaph, and against all but one or two of the mostself-contained of his letters, that the soul of Keats was so far frombeing "snuffed out by an article, " that it was more than ordinarilyimpervious to hostile comment, even when it came in the shape ofrancorous abuse. In all discussion of the effects produced upon Keatsby the reviews in _Blackwood and The Quarterly_, let it be remembered, first, that having wellnigh exhausted his small patrimony, Keats wasto be dependent upon literature for his future subsistence; next, thatLeigh Hunt attempted no defence of Keats when the bread was being takenout of his mouth, and that Keats felt this neglect and remarked uponit in a letter in which he further cast some doubt upon the purity ofHunt's friendship. Hunt, after Keats's death, said in reference to this:"Had he but given me the hint!" The _hint_, forsooth! Moreover, I canfind no sort of allusion in _The Examiner_ for 1821, to the death ofKeats. I told Rossetti that by the reading of the periodicals of thetime, I formed a poor opinion of Hunt. Previously I was willing tobelieve in his unswerving loyalty to the much greater men who were hisfriends, but even that poor confidence in him must perforce be shakenwhen one finds him silent at a moment when Keats most needs his voice, and abusive when Coleridge is a common subject of ridicule. It wasall very well for Hunt to glorify himself in the borrowed splendour ofKeats's established fame when the poet was twenty years dead, andto make much of his intimacy with Coleridge after the homage of twogenerations had been offered him, but I know of no instance (unless inthe case of Shelley) in which Hunt stood by his friends in the winterof their lives, and gave them that journalistic support which was, poorman, the only thing he ever had to give, whatever he might take. I have, however, heard Mr. H. A. Bright (one of Hawthorne's intimate friends inEngland) say that no man here impressed the American romancer so much asHunt for good qualities, both of heart and head. But what I have statedabove, I believe to be facts; and I have gathered them at first-hand, and by the light of them I do not hesitate to say that there is noreason to believe that it was Keats's illness alone that caused him toregard Hunt's friendship with suspicion. It is true, however, that whenone reads Hunt's letter to Severn at Borne, one feels that he must beforgiven. On this pregnant subject Rossetti wrote:

 Thanks for yours received to-day, and for all you say with so much more kind solicitousness than the matter deserved, about the opening of the Keats sonnet. I have now realized that the new form is a gain in every way; and am therefore glad that, though arising in accident, I was led to make the change. . . . All you say of Keats shows that you have been reading up the subject with good results. I fancy it would hardly be desirable to add the sonnets you speak of (as being worthless) at this date, though they might be valuable for quotation as to the course of his mental and physical state. I do not myself think that any poems now included should be removed, but the reckless and tasteless plan of the gatherings hitherto (in which the _Nightingale_ and other such masterpieces are jostled indiscriminately, with such wretched juvenile trash as _Lines to some Ladies on receiving a Shelly etc_), should of course be amended, and the rubbish (of which there is a fair quantity), removed to a "Juvenile" or other such section. It is a curious fact that among a poet's early writings, some will really be juvenile in this sense, while others, written at the same time, will perhaps take rank at last with his best efforts. This, however, was not substantially the case with Keats. 

 As to Leigh Hunt's friendship for Keats, I think the points you mention look equivocal; but Hunt was a many-laboured and much belaboured man, and as much allowance as may be made on this score is perhaps due to him--no more than that much. His own powers stand high in various ways--poetically higher perhaps than is I at present admitted, despite his detestable flutter and airiness for the most part. But assuredly by no means could he have stood so high in the long-run, as by a loud and earnest defence of Keats. Perhaps the best excuse for him is the remaining possibility of an idea on his part, that any defence coming from one who had himself so many powerful enemies might seem to Keats rather to! damage than improve his position. 

 I have this minute (at last) read the first instalment of your Keats paper, and return it. . . . One of the most marked points in the early recognition of Keats's claims, as compared with the recognition given to other poets, is the fact that he was the only one who secured almost at once a _great_ poet as a close and obvious imitator--viz. , Hood, whose first volume is more identical with Keats's work than could be said of any other similar parallel. You quote some of Keats's sayings. One of the most characteristic I think is in a letter to Haydon:--

 "I value more the privilege of seeing great things in loneliness, than the fame of a prophet. " I had not in mind the quotations you give from Keats as bearing on the poetic (or prophetic) mission of "doing good. " I must say that I should not have thought a longer career thrown away upon him (as you intimate) if he had continued to the age of anything only to give joy. Nor would he ever have done any "good" at all. Shelley did good, and perhaps some harm with it. Keats's joy was after all a flawless gift. 

 Keats wrote to Shelley:--"You, I am sure, will forgive me for sincerely remarking that you might curb your magnanimity and be more of an artist, and load every rift of your subject with ore. " Cheeky!--but not so much amiss. Poetry, and no prophecy however, must come of that mood, --and no pulpit would have held Keats's wings, --the body and mind together were not heavy enough for a counterweight. . . . Did you ever meet with

ENDIMION

AN EXCELLENT FANCY FIRST COMPOSED IN FRENCH

By Monsieur GOMBAULD

AND NOW ELEGANTLY INTERPRETED

By RICHARD HURST, Gentleman

1639. 

?

 It has very finely engraved plates of the late Flemish type. There is a poem of Vaughan's on Gombauld's _Endimion_, which might make one think it more fascinating than it really is. Though rather prolix, however, it has attractions as a somewhat devious romantic treatment of the subject. The little book is one of the first I remember in this world, and I used to dip into it again and again as a child, but never yet read it through. I still possess it. I dare say it is not easily met with, and should suppose Keats had probably never seen it. If he had, he might really have taken a hint or two for his scheme, which is hardly so clear even as Gombauld's, though its endless digressions teem with beauty. . . . I do not think you would benefit at all by seeing Gombauld's _Endimion_. Vaughan's poem on it might be worth quoting as showing what attention the subject had received before Keats. I have the poem in Gilfillan's _Less-Known Poets_. 

Rossetti took a great interest in the fund started for the relief ofMme. De Llanos, Keats's sister, whose circumstances were seriouslyreduced. He wrote:

 By the bye, I don't know whether the subscription for Keats's old and only surviving sister (Madme de Llanos) has been at all ventilated in Liverpool. It flags sorely. Do you think there would be any chance in your neighbourhood? If so, prospectuses, etc. , could be sent. 

I did not view the prospect of subscriptions as very hopeful, and soconceived the idea of a lecture in the interests of the fund. On thisproject, Rossetti wrote:

 I enclose prospectuses as to the Keats subscription. I may say that I did not know the list would accompany them--still less that contributions would be so low generally as to leave me near the head of the list--an unenviable sort of parade. . . . My own opinion about the lecture question is this. You know best whether such a lecture could be turned to the purposes of your Keats article (now in progress), or rather be so much deduction from the freshness of its resources: and this should be the _absolute_ test of its being done or not done. . . . I think, if it can be done without impoverishing your materials, the method of getting Lord Houghton to preside and so raising as much from it as possible is doubtless the right one. Of course I view it as far more hopeful than mere distribution of any number of prospectuses. . . . Even £25 would be a great contribution to the fund. 

The lecture project was not found feasible, and hence it was abandoned. Meantime the kindness of friends enabled me to add to the list a goodnumber of subscriptions, but feeling scarcely satisfied with any suchsuccess as I might be likely to have in that direction, I opened, bythe help of a friend, a correspondence with Lord Houghton with a viewto inducing him to apply for a pension for the lady. It then transpiredthat Lord Houghton had already applied to Lord Beaconsfield for apension for Mme. Llanos, and would doubtless have got it, had not Mr. Buxton Forman applied for a grant from the Royal Bounty, which waseasier to give. I told Rossetti of this fact and he said:

 I am not surprised about Lord H. , and feel sure it is a pity he was not left to try Beaconsfield, but I judge the projectors on the other side knew nothing of his intentions. However, _I_ was in no way a projector. 

In the end Lord Houghton repeated to Mr. Gladstone the application hehad made to Lord Beaconsfield, and succeeded. 

Rossetti must have been among the earliest admirers of Keats. I remarkedon one occasion that it was very natural that Lord Houghton shouldconsider himself in a sense the first among men now living to championthe poet and establish his name, and Rossetti admitted that this was so, and was ungrudging in his tribute to Lord Houghton's services towardsthe better appreciation of Keats; but he contended, nevertheless, that he had himself been one of the first writers of the generationsucceeding the poet's own to admire and uphold him, and that this wasat a time when it made demand of some courage to class him among theimmortals, when an original edition of any of his books could be boughtfor sixpence on a bookstall, and when only Leigh Hunt, Cowden Clarke, Hood, Benjamin Haydon, and perhaps a few others, were still living ofthose who recognised his great gifts. 

CHAPTER VI. 

Rossetti's primary interest in Chatterton dates back to an early period, as I find by the date, 1848, in the copy he possessed of the poet'sworks. But throughout a long interval he neglected Chatterton, andit was not until his friend Theodore Watts, who had made Chattertona special study, had undertaken to select from and write upon him inWard's _English Poets_, that he revived his old acquaintance. WhateverRossetti did he did thoroughly, and hence he became as intimate perhapswith the Rowley antiques as any other man had ever been. His letterswritten during the course of his Chatterton researches must, I think, prove extremely interesting. He says:

 Glancing at your Keats MS. , I notice (in a series of parallels) the names of Marlowe and Savage; but not the less "marvellous" than absolutely miraculous Chatterton. Are you up in his work? He is in the very first rank! Theod. Watts is "doing him" for the new selection of poets by Arnold and Ward, and I have contributed a sonnet to Watts's article. . . . I assure you Chatterton's name _must_ come in somewhere in the parallel passage. He was as great as any English poet whatever, and might absolutely, had he lived, have proved the only man in England's theatre of imagination who could have bandied parts with Shakspeare. The best way of getting at him is in Skeat's Aldine edition (G. Bell and Co. , 1875). Read him carefully, and you will find his acknowledged work essentially as powerful as his antiques, though less evenly successful--the Rowley work having been produced in Bristol leisure, however indigent, and the modern poetry in the very fangs of London struggle. Strong derivative points are to be found in Keats and Coleridge from the study of Chatterton. I feel much inclined to send the sonnet (on Chatterton) as you wish, but really think it is better not to ventilate these things till in print. I have since written one on Blake. Not to know Chatterton is to be ignorant of the _true_ day- spring of modern romantic poetry. . . . I believe the 3d vol. Of Ward's _Selections of English Poetry_, for which Watts is selecting from Chatterton, will soon be out, --but these excerpts are very brief, as are the notices. The rendering from the Rowley antique will be much better than anything formerly done. Skeat is a thorough philologist, but no hand at all when substitution becomes unavoidable in the text. . . . Read the _Ballad of Charity, the Eclogues, the songs in Ĉlla_, as a first taste. Among the modern poems _Narva and Mared_, and the other _African Eclogues_. These are alone in that section _poetry absolute_, and though they are very unequal, it has been most truly said by Malone that to throw the _African Eclogues_ into the Rowley dialect would be at once a satisfactory key to the question whether Chatterton showed in his own person the same powers as in the person of Rowley. Among the satirical and light modern pieces there are many of a first-. Rate order, though generally unequal. Perfect specimens, however, are _The Revenge, a Burletta, Skeat, vol i; Verses to a Lady, p. 84; Journal Sixth, p. 33; The Prophecy, p. 193; and opening of Fragment, p. 132. _ I would advise you to consult the original text. 

Mr. Watts, it seems, with all his admiration of Chatterton, finding thathe could not go to Rossetti's length in comparing him with Shakspeare, did not in the result consider the sonnet on Chatterton referred to inthe foregoing letter, and given below, suitable to be embodied in hisessay:

 With Shakspeare's manhood at a boy's wild heart, -- Through Hamlet's doubt to Shakspeare near allied, And kin to Milton through his Satan's pride, -- At Death's sole door he stooped, and craved a dart; And to the dear new bower of England's art, -- Even to that shrine Time else had deified, The unuttered heart that soared against his side, -- Drove the fell point, and smote life's seals apart. 

 Thy nested home-loves, noble Chatterton, The angel-trodden stair thy soul could trace Up Redcliffe's spire; and in the world's armed space Thy gallant sword-play:--these to many an one Are sweet for ever; as thy grave unknown, And love-dream of thine unrecorded face. 

Some mention was made in this connection of Rossetti's young connection, Oliver Madox Brown, who wrote _Gabriel Denver_ (otherwise _The BlackSwan_) at seventeen years of age. I mentioned the indiscreet remark ofa friend who said that Oliver had enough genius to stock a good fewChattertons, and thereupon Rossetti sent me the following outburst:

 You must take care to be on the right tack about Chatterton. I am very glad to find the gifted Oliver M. B. Already an embryo classic, as I always said he would be; but those who compare net results in such cases as his and Chatterton's cannot know what criticism means. The nett results of advancing epochs, however permanent on accumulated foundation-work, are the poorest of all tests as to relative values. Oliver was the product of the most teeming hot-beds of art and literature, and even of compulsory addiction to the art of painting, in which nevertheless he was rapidly becoming as much a proficient as in literature. What he would have been if, like the ardent and heroic Chatterton, he had had to fight a single-handed battle for art and bread together against merciless mediocrity in high places, --what he would _then_ have become, I cannot in the least calculate; but we know what Chatterton became. Moreover, C. At his death, was two years younger than Oliver--a whole lifetime of advancement at that age frequently--indeed always I believe in leading cases. There are few indeed whom the facile enthusiasm for contemporary models does not deaden to the truly balanced claims of successful efforts in art. However, look at Watts's remodelled extracts when the vol comes out, and also at what he says in detail as to Chatterton, Coleridge, and Keats. 

Of course Rossetti was right in what he said of comparative criticismwhen brought to bear in such cases as those of Chatterton and OliverMadox Brown. Net results are certainly the poorest tests of relativevalues where the work done belongs to periods of development. We cannot, however, see or know any man except through and in his work, and netresults must usually be accepted as the only concrete foundation forjudging of the quality of his genius. Such judgment will always beinfluenced, nevertheless, by considerations such as Rossetti mentions. Touching Chatterton's development, it were hardly rash to say that itappears incredible that the _African Eclogues_ should have been writtenby a boy of seventeen, and, in judging of their place in poetry, one isapt to be influenced by one's first feeling of amazement. Is it possiblethat the Rowley poems may owe much of their present distinction to theearly astonishment that a boy should have written them, albeit they havegreat intrinsic excellencies such as may insure them a high place whenthe romance, intertwined with their history, has been long forgotten?But Chatterton is more talked of than read, and this has been so fromthe first. The antiques are all but unknown; certain of the acknowledgedpoems are remembered, and regarded as fervid and vigorous, and many ofthe lesser pieces are thought slight, weak, and valueless. People do notmeasure the poorer things in Chatterton with his time and opportunities, or they would see only amazing strength and knowledge of the world inall he did. Those lesser pieces were many of them dashed off to answerthe calls of necessity, to flatter the egotism of a troublesome friend, or to wile away a moment of vacancy. Certainly they must not be setagainst his best efforts. As for Chatterton's life, the tragedy of itis perhaps the most moving example of what Coleridge might havetermed the material pathetic. Pathetic, however, as his life was, andmarvellous as was his genius, I miss in him the note of personal purityand majesty of character. I told Rossetti that, in my view, Chattertonlacked sincerity, and on this point he wrote:

 I must protest finally about Chatterton, that he lacks nothing because lacking the gradual growth of the emotional in literature which becomes evident in Keats--still less its excess, which would of course have been pruned, in Oliver. The finest of the Rowley poems--_Eclogues, Ballad of Charity, etc_. , rank absolutely with the finest poetry in the language, and gain (not lose) by moderation. As to what you say of C. 's want of political sincerity (for I cannot see to what other want you can allude), surely a boy up to eighteen may be pardoned for exercising his faculty if he happens to be the one among millions who can use grown men as his toys. He was an absolute and untarnished hero, but for that reckless defying vaunt. Certainly that most vigorous passage commencing--

 "Interest, thou universal God of men, " etc. 

 reads startlingly, and comes in a questionable shape. What is the answer to its enigmatical aspect? Why, that he _meant_ it, and that all would mean it at his age, who had his power, his daring, and his hunger. Still it does, perhaps, make one doubt whether his early death were well or ill for him. In the matter of Oliver (whom no one appreciates more than I do), remember that it was impossible to have more opportunities than _he_ had, or on the other side _fewer_ than Chatterton had. Chatterton at seventeen or less said--

 "Flattery's a cloak, and I will put it on. "

Blake (probably late in life) said--

 "Innocence is a winter gown. "

 . . . I _have_ read the Chatterton article in the review mentioned. If Watts had done it, it would have been immeasurably better. There seems to me, who am very well up in Chatterton, no point whatever made in the article. Why does no one ever even allude to the two attributed portraits of Chatterton--one belonging to Sir H. Taylor, and the other in the Salford Museum? Both seem to be the same person clearly, and a good find for Chatterton, but not conceivably done from him. Nevertheless, I _suspect_ there may be a sidelong genuineness in them. Chatterton was acquainted with one Alcock, a miniature painter at Bristol, to whom he addressed a poem. Had A. Painted C. It would be among the many recorded facts; but it would be singular even if, in C. 's rapid posthumous fame, A. Had never been asked to make a reminiscent likeness of him. Prom such likeness by the miniature painter these _portraits might_ derive--both being life-sized oil heads. There is a savour of Keats in them, though a friend, taking up the younger-looking of the two, said it reminded him of Jack Sheppard! And not such a bad Chatterton-compound either! But I begin to think I have said all this before. . . . Oliver, or "Nolly, " as he was always called, was a sort of spread-eagle likeness of his handsome father, with a conical head like Walter Scott. I must confess to you, that, in this world of books, the only one of his I have read, is _Gabriel Denver_, afterwards reprinted in its original and superior form as _The Black Swan_, but published with the former title in his lifetime. 

Rossetti formed no such philosophic estimate of Chatterton'scontribution to the romantic movement in English poetry as has beenformulated in the essay in Ward's _Poets_. A critic, in the sense of onepossessed of a natural gift of analysis, Rossetti assuredly! was not. Noman's instinct for what is good in poetry was ever swifter or surer thanthat of Rossetti. You might always distrust your judgment if youfound it at variance with his where abstract power and beauty were inquestion. Sooner or later you would inevitably find yourself gravitatingto his view. But here Rossetti's function as a critic ended. His wasat best only the criticism of the creator. Of the gift of ultimateclassification he had none, and never claimed to have any, although nowand again (as where he says that Chatterton was the day-spring ofmodern romantic poetry), he seems to give sign of a power of criticalsynthesis. 

Rossetti's interest in Blake, both as poet and painter, dates back toan early period of his life. I have heard him say that at sixteen orseventeen years of age he was already one of Blake's warmest admirers, and at the time in question, 1845, the author of the _Songs ofInnocence_ had not many readers to uphold him. About four years later, Rossetti made an exceptionally lucky discovery, for he then found inthe possession of Mr. Palmer, an attendant at the British Museum, anoriginal manuscript scrap-book of Blake's, containing a great body ofunpublished poetry and many interesting designs, as well as three orfour remarkably effective profile sketches of the author himself. TheMr. Palmer who held the little book was a relative of the landscapepainter of the same name, who was Blake's friend, and hence theauthenticity of the manuscript was ascertainable on other grounds thanthe indisputable ones of its internal evidences. The book was offered toRossetti for ten shillings, but the young enthusiast was at the time astudent of art, and not much in the way of getting or spending evenso inconsiderable a sum. He told me, however, that at this period hisbrother William, who was, unlike himself, engaged in some reasonablyprofitable occupation, was at all times nothing loath to advance smallsums for the purchase of such literary or other treasures as he usedto hunt up out of obscure corners: by his help the Blake manuscript wasbought, and proved for years a source of infinite pleasure and profit, resulting, as it did, in many very important additions to Blakeliterature when Gilchrist's _Life and Works_ of that author came to bepublished. It is an interesting fact, mention of which ought not tobe omitted, that at the sale of Rossetti's library, which took placea little while after his decease, the scrap-book acquired in the way Idescribe was sold for one hundred and five guineas. 

The sum was a large one, but the little book was undoubtedly the mostvaluable literary relic of Blake then extant. About the time when a newedition of Gilchrist's _Life_ was in the press, Rossetti wrote:

 My evenings have been rather trenched upon lately by helping Mrs. Gilchrist with a new edition of the _Life of Blake_. . . . I don't know if you go in much for him. The new edition of the _Life_ will include a good number of additional letters (from Blake to Hayley), and some addition (though not great) to my own share in the work; as well as much important carrying-on of my brother's catalogue of Blake's works. The illustrations will, I trust, receive valuable additions also, but publishers are apt to be cautious in such expenses. I am writing late at night, to fill up a fag-end of bedtime, and shall write again on this head. 

Rossetti's "own share" in this work consisted of the writing of thesupplementary chapter (left by Gilchrist, with one or two unimportantpassages merely, at the beginning), and the editing of the poems. Whenthere arose, subsequently, some idea of my reviewing the book, Rossettiwrote me the following letter, full of disinterested solicitude:

 You will be quite delighted with an essay on Blake by Jas. Smetham, which occurs in vol ii. ; it is a noble thing; and at the stupendous design called _Plague_ (vol. I. ). I have extracted a passage properly belonging to the same essay, which is as fine as English _can_ be, and which I am sorry to perceive (I think) that Mrs. G. Has omitted from the body of the essay because quoted in another place. This essay is no less than a masterpiece. I wrote the supplementary chapter (vol. I. ), except a few opening paragraphs by Gilchrist, --and in it have now made some mention of Smetham, an old and dear friend of mine. 

 You will admire Shields's paper on the wonderful series of Young's _Night Thoughts_. My brother and I both helped in this new edition, but I added little to what I had done before. I brought forward a portentous series of passages about one "Scofield" in Blake's _Jerusalem_, but did not otherwise write that chapter, except as regards the illustrations. However, don't mention what I have done (in case you write on the subject) except so far as the indices show it, and of course I don't wish to be put forward at all. What I do wish is, that you should say everything that can be gratifying to Mrs. G. As to her husband's work. There is a plate of Blake's Cottage by young Gilchrist which is truly excellent. 

As I have already said, Rossetti traversed the bypaths of Englishliterature (particularly of English poetry) as few can ever havetraversed them. A favourite work with him was Gilfillan's _Less-ReadBritish Poets_, a copy of which had been presented by Miss Boyd. Hesays:

 Did you ever read Christopher Smart's _Song to David_, the only great _accomplished_ poem of the last century? The accomplished ones are Chatterton's, --of course I mean earlier than Blake or Coleridge, and without reckoning so exceptional a genius as Burns. . . . You will find Smart's poem a masterpiece of rich imagery, exhaustive resources, and reverberant sound. It is to be met with in Gilfillan's _Specimens of the Less-Read British Poets_ (3 vols. Nichol, Edin. , 1860). . . . 

 I remember your mentioning Gilfillan as having encouraged your first efforts. He was powerful, though sometimes rather "tall" as a writer, generally most just as a critic, and lastly, a much better man, intellectually and morally, than Aytoun, who tried to "do for" him. His notice of Swift, in the volume in question, has very great force and eloquence. His whole edition of the _British Poets_ is the best of any to read, being such fine type and convenient bulk and weight (a great thing for an arm-chair reader). Unfortunately, he now and then (in the _Less-Read Poets_) cuts down the extracts almost to nothing, and in some cases excises objectionabilities, which is unpardonable. Much better leave the whole out. Also, the edition includes the usual array of nobodies--Addison, Akenside, and the whole alphabet down to Zany and Zero; whereas a great many of the _less-read_ would have been much-read by every worthy reader if they had only been printed in full. So well printed an edition of Donne (for instance) would have been a great boon; but from him Gilfillan only gives (among the _less-read_) the admirable _Progress of the Soul_ and some of the pregnant _Holy Sonnets_. Do you know Donne? There is hardly an English poet better worth a thorough knowledge, in spite of his provoking conceits and occasional jagged jargon. 

 The following paragraph on Whitehead is valuable:

 Charles Whitehead's principal poem is _The Solitary_, which in its day had admirers. It perhaps most recalls Goldsmith. He also wrote a supernatural poem called _Ippolito_. There was a volume of his poems published about 1848, or perhaps a little later, by Bentley. It is disappointing, on the whole, from the decided superiority of its best points to the rest. . . . But the novel of _Richard Savage_ is very remarkable, --a real character really worked out. 

To aid me in certain researches I was at the time engaged in making inthe back-numbers of almost forgotten periodicals, Rossetti wrote:

 The old _Monthly Mag. _ was the precursor of the _New Monthly_, which started about 1830, or thereabouts I think, after which the old one ailed, but went on till fatal old Heraud finished it off by editing it, and fairly massacred that elderly innocent. You speak, in a former letter (touching the continuation of _Christabel_), of "a certain European magazine. " Are you aware that it was as old a thing as _The Gentleman's_, and went on _ad infinitum?_ Other such were the _Universal Magazine, the Scots' Magazine_--all endless in extent and beginning time out of mind, --to say nothing of the _Ladies' Magazine and Wits' Magazine_. Then there was the _Annual Register_. All these are quarters in which you might prosecute researches, and might happen to find something about Keats. _The Monthly Magazine_ must have commenced almost as early, I believe. I cannot help thinking there was a similar _Imperial Magazine_. 

The following letter possesses an interest independent of its subject, which to me, however, is interest enough. Mr. William Watson had sentRossetti a copy of a volume of poems he had just published, andhad received a letter in acknowledgment, wherein our friend, withcharacteristic appreciativeness, said many cordial words of it:

 Your young friend Watson [he said in a subsequent letter] wrote me in a very modest mood for one who can do as he can at his age. I think I must have hurriedly mis-expressed myself in writing to him, as he seems to think I wished to dissuade him from following narrative poetry. Not in the least--I only wished him to try his hand at clearer dramatic life. The dreamy romantic really hardly needs more than one vast Morris in a literature--at any rate in a century. Not that I think him derivable from Morris--he goes straight back to Keats with a little modification. The narrative, whether condensed or developed, is at any rate a far better impersonal form to work in than declamatory harangue, whether calling on the stars or the Styx. I don't know in the least how Watson is faring with the critics. He must not be discouraged, in any case, with his real and high gifts. 

The young poet, in whom Rossetti saw so much to applaud, can scarcely besaid to have fared at all at the hands of the critics. 

Here is a pleasant piece of literary portraiture, as valuable from thepeep it affords into Rossetti's own character as from the description itgives of the rustic poet:

 The other evening I had the pleasant experience of meeting one to whom I have for about two years looked with interest as a poet of the native rustic kind, but often of quite a superior order. I don't know if you noticed, somewhere about the date referred to, in _The Athenĉum_, a review of poems by Joseph Skipsey. Skip-sey has exquisite--though, as in all such cases (except of course Burns's) not equal--powers in several directions, but his pictures of humble life are the best. He is a working miner, and describes rustic loves and sports, and the perils and pathos of pit-life with great charm, having a quiet humour too when needed. His more ambitious pieces have solid merit of feeling, but are much less artistic. The other night, as I say, he came here, and I found him a stalwart son of toil, and every inch a gentleman. In cast of face he recalls Tennyson somewhat, though more bronzed and brawned. He is as sweet and gentle as a woman in manner, and recited some beautiful things of his own with a special freshness to which one is quite unaccustomed. 

Mr. Skipsey was a miner of North Shields, and in the review referred tomuch was made, in a delicate way, of his stern environments. His volumeof lyrics is marked by the quiet humour. Rossetti speaks of, as well asby a rather exasperating inequality. Perhaps the best piece in it is apoem entitled _Thistle and Nettle_, treating with peculiar freshness ofa country courtship. The coming together of two such entirely oppositenatures was certainly curious, and only to be accounted for on theground of Rossetti's breadth of poetic sympathy. It would be interestingto hear what the impressions were of such a rude son of toil uponmeeting with one whose life must have seemed the incarnation of artisticluxury and indulgence. Later on I received the following:

 Poor Skipsey! He has lost the friend who brought him to London only the other day (T. Dixon), and who was his only hold on intellectual life in his district. Dixon died immediately on his return to the North, of a violent attack of asthma to which he was subject. He was a rarely pure and simple soul, and is doubtless gone to higher uses, though few could have reached, with his small opportunities, to such usefulness as he compassed here. He was Ruskin's correspondent in a little book called (I think) _Work by Tyne and Wear_. I got a very touching note from Skipsey on the subject. 

From Mr. Skipsey he received a letter only a little while before hisdeath, and to him he addressed one of the last epistles he penned. 

The following letter explains itself, and is introduced as much forthe sake of the real humour which it displays, as because it affords anexcellent idea of Rossetti's view of the true function of prose:

 I don't like your Shakspeare article quite as well as the first _Supernatural_ one, or rather I should say it does not greatly add to it in my (first) view, though both might gain by embodiment in one. I think there is _some_ truth in the charge of metaphysical involution--the German element as I should call it--and surely you are strong enough to be English pure and simple. I am sure I could write 100 essays, on all possible subjects (I once did project a series under the title, _Essays written in the intervals of Elephantiasis, Hydro-phobia, and Penal Servitude_), without once experiencing the "aching void" which is filled by such words as "mythopoeic, " and "anthropomorphism. " I do not find life long enough to know in the least what they mean. They are both very long and very ugly indeed--the latter only suggesting to me a Vampire or Somnambulant Cannibal. (To speak rationally, would not "man-evolved Godhead" be an _English_ equivalent?) "Euhemeristic" also found me somewhat on my beam-ends, though explanation is here given; yet I felt I could do without Euhemerus; and _you_ perhaps without the _humerous_. You can pardon me now; for _so_ bad a pun places me at your mercy indeed. But seriously, simple English in prose writing and in all narrative poetry (however monumental language may become in abstract verse) seems to me a treasure not to be foregone in favour of German innovations. I know Coleridge went in latterly for as much Germanism as his time could master; but his best genius had then left him. 

It seems necessary to mention that I lectured in 1880, on the relationof politics to art, and in printing the lecture I asked Rossetti toaccept the dedication of it, but this he declined to do in the generousterms I have already referred to. The letter that accompanied hisgraceful refusal is, however, so full of interesting personal matterthat I offer it in this place, with no further explanation than that myessay was designed to show that just as great artists in past ageshad participated in political struggles, so now they should not holdthemselves aloof from controversies which immediately concern them:

 I must admit, at all hazards, that my friends here consider me exceptionally averse to politics; and I suppose I must be, for I never read a parliamentary debate in my life! At the same time I will add that, among those whose opinions I most value, some think me not altogether wrong when I venture to speak of the momentary momentousness and eternal futility of many noisiest questions. However, you must simply view me as a nonentity in any practical relation to such matters. You have spoken but too generously of a sonnet of mine in your lecture just received. I have written a few others of the sort (which by-the-bye would not prove me a Tory), but felt no vocation--perhaps no right---to print them. I have always reproached myself as sorely amenable to the condemnations of a very fine poem by Barberino, _On Sloth against Sin_, which I translated in the Dante volume. Sloth, alas! has but too much to answer for with me; and is one of the reasons (though I will not say the only one), why I have always fallen back on quality instead of quantity in the little I have ever done. I think often with Coleridge:

 Sloth jaundiced all: and from my graspless hand Drop friendship's precious pearls like hour-glass sand. I weep, yet stoop not: the faint anguish flows, A dreamy pang in morning's feverish doze. 

 However, for all I might desire in the direction spoken of, volition is vain without vocation; and I had better really stick to knowing how to mix vermilion and ultramarine for a flesh-grey, and how to manage their equivalents in verse. To speak without sparing myself, --my mind is a childish one, if to be isolated in Art is child's-play; at any rate I feel that I do not attain to the more active and practical of the mental functions of manhood. I can say this to you, because I know you will make the best and not the worst of me; and better than such feasible best I do not wish to appear. Thus you see I don't think my name ought to head your introductory paragraph--and there an end. And now of your new lecture, and of the long letter I lately had from you. At some moment I should like to know which pieces among the translations are specially your favourites. Of the three names you leash together as somewhat those of sensualists, Cecco Angiolieri is really the only one--as for the respectable Cino, he would be shocked indeed, though certainly there are a few oddities bearing that way in the sonnets between him and Dante (who is again similarly reproached by his friend Cavalcanti), but I really _do_ suspect that in some cases similar to the one in question about Cino (though not Guido and Dante) politics were really meant where love was used as a metaphor. . . . I assure you, you cannot say too much to me of this or any other work of yours; in fact, I wish that we should communicate about them. I have been thinking yet more on the relations of politics and art. I do think seriously on consideration that not only my own sluggishness, but vital fact itself, must set to a great extent a _veto_ against the absolute participation of artists in politics. When has it ever been effected? True, Cellini was a bravo and David a good deal like a murderer, and in these capacities they were not without their political use in very turbulent times. But when the attempt was made to turn Michael Angelo into a "utility man" of that kind, he did (it is true) some patriotic duty in the fortification of Florence; but it is no less a fact that, when he had done all that he thought became him, he retired to a certain trackless and forgotten tower, and there stayed in some sort of peace (though much in request) till he could lead his own life again; nor should we forget the occasion on which he did not hesitate even to betake himself to Venice as a refuge. Yet M. Angelo was in every way a patriot, a philosopher, and a hero. I do not say this to undervalue the scope of your theory. I think possibilities are generally so much behind desirabilities that there is no harm in any degree of incitement in the right _direction_; and that is assuredly mental activity of _all_ kinds. I judge you cannot suspect _me_ of thinking the apotheosis of the early Italian poets (though surely spiritual beauty, and not sensuality, was their general aim) of more importance than the "unity of a great nation. " But it is in my minute power to deal successfully (I feel) with the one, while no such entity, as I am, can advance or retard the other; and thus mine must needs be the poorer part. Nor (with alas, and again alas!) will Italy or another twice have her day in its fulness. 

I happened to have said in speaking of self-indulgence among artists, that there probably existed those to whom it seemed more important topreserve such a pitiful possession as the poetical remains of CeccoAngiolieri than to secure the unity of a great nation. Rossetti halfsuspected I meant this for a playful backhanded blow at himself (forCecco was a great favourite with him), and protested that no suchindividual could exist. I defended my charge by quoting Keats's--

 . . . The silver flow Of Hero's tears, the swoon of Imogen, Fair Pastorella in the bandit's den, Are things to brood on with more ardency Than the death-day of empires. 

But Rossetti grew weary of the jest:

 I must protest that what you quote from Keats about "Hero's tears, " etc. , fails to meet the text. Neither Shakspeare nor Spenser assuredly was a Cecco; Marlowe may be most meant as to "Hero, " and he perhaps affords the shadow of a parallel in career though not in work. 

The extract from Rosetti's letters with which I shall close this chapteris perhaps the most interesting yet made:

 One point I must still raise, viz. , that I, for one, cannot conceive, even as the Ghost of a Flea, the ideal individual who considers the Poetical Remains of Cecco Angiolieri of more importance than the unity of a great nation! I think this would have been better if much modified. Say for instance--"A thing of some moment even while the contest is waging for the political unity of a great nation. " This is the utmost reach surely of human comparative valuation. I think you have brought in Benvenuto and Michael much to the purpose. Shall I give you a parallel in your own style?

 During the months for which poet Coleridge became private Cumberback (a name in which he said his horse would have concurred), it seems strange that, in such stirring times, his regiment should not have been ordered off on foreign service. In such case that pre-eminent member of the awkward squad would assuredly have been the very first man killed. Should we have been more the gainers by his patriotism or the losers by his poetry? The very last man killed in the last _sortie_ from Paris during the Prussian siege (he _would_ go behind a buttress to "pot" a Prussian after orders were given to retire, and so got "potted" himself) was Henri Regnault, a painter, whose brilliant work was a guiding beacon on the road of improvement in French methods of art, if not in intellectual force. Who shall fail to honour the noble ardour which drew him from the security of his studies in Tunis to partake his country's danger? Yet who shall forbear to sigh in thinking that, but for this, his progressing work might still yearly be an element in art-progress for Europe? Gérome and others betook themselves to England instead, and are still benefiting the cause for which they were before all things born. It was David who said, "Si on tirait à mitraille sur les artistes, on n'y tuerait pas un seul patriote!" _He_ was a patriot homicide, and spoke probably what was true in the sense in which he meant it. As I said, I am glad you turned Ben and Mike to account, but the above is in some respects an open question. 

I have, as I say, a further batch of letters to introduce, but as thesewere, for the most part, written after an event which forms a land-markin our acquaintance (I mean the occasion of our first meeting), I judgeit is best to reserve them for a later section of this book. There aretwo forms, and, so far as I know, two only, in which a body of letterscan be published with justice to the writer. Of these the first and mostobvious form is to offer them chronologically _in extenso_ or with onlysuch eliminations as seem inevitable, and the second is to tabulate themaccording to subject-matter, and print them in the order not of date butsubstance. There are advantages attending each method, and correspondingdisadvantages also. The temptation to adopt the first of these was, inthis case of Rossetti's letters, almost insurmountable, for nothing canbe more charming in epistolary style than the easy grace with which thewriter passes from point to point, evolving one idea out of another, interlinking subject with subject, and building up a fabric of which themeaning is everywhere inwoven. In this respect Rossetti's letters arealmost as perfect as anything that ever left his hand; and, in freedomof phrase, in power of throwing off parenthetical reflections alwaysfaultlessly enunciated, in play of humour, often in eloquence (neverbecoming declamatory, and calling on "Styx or Stars"), sometimesin pathos, Rossetti's letters are, in a word, admirable. Theyare comparable in these respects with the best things yet done inEnglish, --as pleasing and graceful as Cowper's letters, broader in rangeof subject than the letters of Keats, easier and more colloquial thanthose of Coleridge, and with less appearance of being intended for thepublic eye than is the case with the letters of Byron and of Shelley. Rossetti's letters have, moreover, a value quite apart from the meritsof their epistolary style, in so far as they contain almost the onlyexpression extant of his opinions on literary questions. And this isthe circumstance that has chiefly weighed with me to offer themin fragmentary form interspersed with elucidatory comment bearingprincipally upon the occasions that called them forth. 

Such then as I have described was the nature of my intercourse withRossetti during the first year and a half of our correspondence, and nowthe time had come when I was to meet my friend for the first time faceto face. The elasticity of sympathy by which a man of genius, surroundedby constant friends, could yet bend to a new-comer who was a strangerand twenty-five years his junior, and think and feel with him; thegenerous appreciativeness by which he could bring himself to considerthe first efforts of one quite unknown; and then the unselfishness thatseemed always to prefer the claims of others to his own great claims, could command only the return of unqualified allegiance. Such were thefeelings with which I went forth to my first meeting with Rossetti, andif at any later date, the ardour of my regard for him in any measuresuffered modification, be sure when the time comes to touch upon it Ishall make no more concealment of the causes that led to such a changethan I have made of those circumstances, however personal in primaryinterest, that generated a friendship so unusual and to me so seriousand important. 

CHAPTER VII. 

It was in the autumn of 1880 that I saw Rossetti for the first time. Being then rather reduced in health I contemplated a visit to thesea-side and wrote saying that in passing through London I should availmyself of his oft-repeated invitation to visit him. I gave him thiswarning of my intention, remembering his declared dread of being takenunawares, but I came to know at a subsequent period that for one who waswithin the inner circle of his friends the necessity to advise him ofa visit was by no means binding. His reception of my intimation of anintention to call upon him was received with an amount of epistolaryceremony which I recognise now by the light of further acquaintance aseminently characteristic of the man, although curiously contradictory ofhis unceremonious habits of daily life. The fact is that Rossetti wasof an excessively nervous temperament, and rarely if ever underwent anordeal more trying than a first meeting with any one to whom for sometime previously he had looked forward with interest. Hence by return ofthe post that bore him my missive came two letters, the one obviouslywritten and posted within an hour or two of the other. In the first ofthese he expressed courteously his pleasure at the prospect of seeingme, and appointed 8. 30 p. M. The following evening as his dinner hour athis house in Cheyne Walk. The second letter begged me to come at 5. 30 or6 p. M. , so that we might have a long evening. "You will, I repeat, " hesays, "recognise the hole-and-cornerest of all existences in this bigbarn of mine; but come early and I shall read you some ballads, andwe can talk of many things. " An hour later than the arrival of theseletters came a third epistle, which ran: "Of course when I speak of yourdining with me, I mean tête-à-tête and without ceremony of any kind. Iusually dine in my studio and in my painting coat!" I had before me afive hours' journey to London, so that in order to reach Chelsea at 6P. M. , I must needs set out at mid-day, but oblivious of this necessity, Rossetti had actually posted a fourth letter on the morning of the dayon which we were to meet begging me not on any account to talk, in thecourse of our interview, of a certain personal matter upon which we hadcorresponded. This fourth and final message came to hand the morningafter the meeting, when I had the satisfaction to reflect that (owingmore perhaps to the plethora of other subjects of interest than to anysuspicion of its being tabooed) I had luckily eschewed the proscribedtopic. 

Cheyne Walk was unknown to me at the time in question, except as thelocality in and near which many men and women eminent in literatureresided. It seems hard to realise that this was the case as recently astwo years ago, now that so short an interval has associated it in one'smind with memories which seem to cover a large part of one's life. TheWalk is not now exactly as picturesque as it appears in certain familiarold engravings; the new embankment and the gardens that separate it fromthe main thoroughfare have taken something from its beauty, but it stillpossesses many attractions, and among them a look of age which contrastsagreeably with the spic-and-span newness of neighbouring places. I foundRossetti's house, No. 16, answering in external appearances to the frankdescription he gave of it. It stands about mid-way between the Chelseapier and the new redbrick mansions erected on the Chelsea embankment. It seems to be the oldest house in the Walk, and the exceptionalproportions of its gate-piers, and the weight and mass of its gate andrailings, suggests that probably at some period it stood alone, andcommanded as grounds a large part of the space now occupied by theadjoining residences. Behind the house, during eighteen years ofRossetti's occupancy, there was a garden of almost an acre in extent, covering by much the larger part of the space enclosed by a block offour streets forming a square. At No. 4 Maclise had lived and died; atthe same house George Eliot, after her marriage with Mr. Cross, had cometo live; at No. 5, in the second street to the westward, Thomas Carlylewas still living, and a little beyond Cheyne Row stood the modestcottage wherein Turner died. Rossetti's house had to me the appearanceof a plain Queen Anne erection, much mutilated by the introduction ofunsightly bay-windows; the brickwork seemed to be falling into decay;the paint to be in serious need of renewal; the windows to be dull withthe accumulation of the dust of years; the sills to bear the suspicionof cobwebs; the angles of the steps and the untrodden flags of thecourtyard to be here and there overgrown with moss and weeds; and roundthe walls and up the reveals of doors and windows were creeping thetangled branches of the wildest ivy that ever grew untouched by shears. Such was the exterior of the home of the poet-painter when I walked upto it on the autumn evening of my first visit, and the interior of thehouse was at once like and unlike the exterior. The hall had a puzzlinglook of equal nobility and shabbiness. The floor was paved withbeautiful white marble, which however, was partly covered with a stripof worn cocoa-nut matting; the ceiling was in one of its sectionsgracefully groined, and in each of the walls, which were lofty, therewas an arched recess containing a piece of sculpture; an old inlaidrosewood clock filled a bulkhead on one side facing the door, and on thecorresponding side stood a massive gas branch. A mezzotint lithograph byLegros was the only pictorial decoration of the walls, which were plain, and seemed not to have been distempered for many years. Three doors ledout of the hall, one at each side, and one in front, and two corridorsopened into it, but there was no sign of staircase, nor had it any lightexcept such as was borrowed from the fanlight that looked into theporch. These facts I noted in the few minutes I stood waiting in thehall, but during the many months in which subsequently that house was myown home as well as Rossetti's, I came to see that the changes which thebuilding must have undergone since the period of its erection, had sofilled it with crooks and corners as to bewilder the most ingeniousobserver to account for its peculiarities. 

Very soon Rossetti came to me through the doorway in front, which provedto be the entrance to his studio. Holding forth both hands and crying'Hulloa, ' he gave me that cheery, hearty greeting which I came torecognise as his alone, perhaps, in warmth and unfailing geniality amongall the men of our circle. It was Italian in its spontaneity, and yet itwas English in its manly reserve, and I remember with much tenderness offeeling that never to the last (not even when sickness saddened him, or after an absence of a few days or even hours) did it fail him whenmeeting with those friends to whom to the last he was really attached. Leading the way into the studio, he introduced me to his brother, whowas there upon one of the evening visits, which at intervals of a weekhe was at that time making, with unfailing regularity. I should havedescribed Rossetti, at this time, as a man who looked quite ten yearsolder than his actual age, which was fifty-two, of full middle heightand inclining to corpulence, with a round face that ought, one thought, to be ruddy but was pale, large grey eyes with a steady introspectinglook, surmounted by broad protrusive brows and a clearly-pencilled ridgeover the nose, which was well cut and had large breathing nostrils. Themouth and chin were hidden beneath a heavy moustache and abundant beard, which grew up to the ears, and had been of a mixed black-brown andauburn, and were now streaked with grey. The forehead was large, round, without protuberances, and very gently receding to where thin blackcurls, that had once been redundant, began to tumble down to the ears. The entire configuration of the head and face seemed to me singularlynoble, and from the eyes upwards, full of beauty. He wore a pair ofspectacles, and, in reading, a second pair over the first: but thesetook little from the sense of power conveyed by those steady eyes, and that "bar of Michael Angelo. " His dress was not conspicuous, beinghowever rather negligent than otherwise, and noticeable, if at all, onlyfor a straight sack-coat buttoned at the throat, descending at least tothe knees, and having large pockets cut into it perpendicularly at thesides. This garment was, I afterwards found, one of the articles ofvarious kinds made to the author's own design. When he spoke, even inexchanging the preliminary courtesies of an opening conversation, Ithought his voice the richest I had ever known any one to possess. It was a full deep barytone, capable of easy modulation, and withundertones of infinite softness and sweetness, yet, as I afterwardsfound, with almost illimitable compass, and with every gradation of toneat command, for the recitation or reading of poetry. The studio was alarge room probably measuring thirty feet by twenty, and structurally aspuzzling as the other parts of the house. A series of columns and archeson one side suggested that the room had almost certainly been at someperiod the site of an important staircase with a wide well, and on theother side a broad mullioned window reaching to the ceiling, seemedcertainly to bear record of the occupant's own contribution to thepeculiarities of the edifice. The fireplace was at an end of the room, and over and at each side of it were hung a number of fine drawingsin chalk, chiefly studies of heads, with here and there a water-colourfigure piece, all from Rossetti's hand. At the opposite end of the roomhung some symbolic designs in chalk, _Pandora_ and _Proserpina_ beingamong the number, and easels of various sizes, some very large, bearingpictures in differing stages of completion, occupied positions onall sides of the floor, leaving room only for a sofa, with a bookcasebehind, two old cabinets, two large low easy chairs, and a writing deskand chair at a window at the side, which was heavily darkened by thethick foliage of the trees that grew in the garden beyond. 

Dropping down on the sofa with his head laid low and his feet thrown upin a favourite attitude on the back, which must, I imagine, have been atleast as easy as it was elegant, he began the conversation by banteringme upon what he called my "robustious" appearance compared with what hehad been led to expect from gloomy reports of uncertain health. After aseries of playful touches (all done in the easiest conceivable way, and conveying any impression on earth save the right one, that a firstmeeting with any man, however young and harmless, was little less than atragic event to Rossetti) he glanced one by one at certain of the topicsthat had arisen in the course of our correspondence. I perceived that hewas a ready, fluent, and graceful talker, with a remarkable incisivenessof speech, and a trick of dignifying ordinary topics in words which, without rising above conversation, were so exactly, though freelyenunciated, as would have admitted of their being reported exactly asthey fell from his lips. In some of these respects I found his brotherWilliam resemble him, though, if I may describe the talk of a deadfriend by contrasting it with that of a living one bearing a naturalaffinity to it, I will say that Gabriel's conversation was perhaps morespontaneous, and had more variety of tone with less range of subject, together with the same precision and perspicuity. Very soon the talkbecame general, and then Rossetti spoke without appearance of reserveof his two or three intimate friends, telling me, among other things, of Theodore Watts, that he "had a head exactly like that of Napoleon I. , whom Watts, " he said with a chuckle, "detests more than any characterin history; depend upon it, " he added, "such a head was not given to himfor nothing;" that Frederick Shields was as emotional as Shelley, andFord Madox Brown, whom I had met, as sententious as Dr. Johnson. I keptno sort of record of what passed upon the occasion in question, but Iremember that Rossetti seemed to be playfully battering his friends intheir absence in the assured consciousness that he was doing so in thepresence of a well-wisher; and it was amusing to observe that, after anyparticularly lively sally, he would pause to say something in a soberedtone that was meant to convey the idea that he was really very jealousof his friends' reputation, and was merely for the sake of amusementgiving rein to a sportive fancy. During dinner (and contrary to hisdeclared habit, we did not dine in the studio) he talked a good dealabout Oliver Madox Brown, for whom I had conceived a warm admiration, and to whom I had about that time addressed a sonnet. 

"You had a sincere admiration of the boy's gifts?" I asked. 

"Assuredly. I have always said that twenty years after his death hisname will be a familiar one. _The Black Swan_ is a powerful story, although I must honestly say that it displays in its central incident acertain torpidity that to me is painful. Undoubtedly Oliver had genius, and must have done great things had he lived. His death was a grievousblow to his father. I'm glad you've written that sonnet; I wanted you totoss up your cap for Nolly. " He spoke of Oliver's father as indisputablyone of the greatest of living colourists, inquired earnestly into theprogress of his frescoes at Manchester, for one of the figures in whichI had sat, and showed me a little water-colour drawing made by Oliverhimself when very young. Dinner being now over, I asked Rossetti toredeem his promise to read one of his new ballads; and as his brother, who had often heard it before, expressed his readiness to hear it again, he responded readily, and, taking a small manuscript volume out of asection of the bookcase that had been locked, read us _The White Ship_. I have spoken of the ballad as a poem at an earlier stage, but itremains to me, in this place, to describe the effect produced upon me bythe author's reading. It seemed to me that I never heard anything at allmatchable with Rossetti's elocution; his rich deep voice lent an addedmusic to the music of the verse: it rose and fell in the passagesdescriptive of the wreck with something of the surge and sibilation ofthe sea itself; in the tenderer passages it was soft as a woman's, andin the pathetic stanzas with which the ballad closes it was profoundlymoving. Effective as the reading sounded in that studio, I remember atthe moment to have doubted if it would prove quite so effective from apublic platform. Perhaps there seemed to be so much insistence on therhythm, and so prolonged a tension of the rhyme sounds, as would runthe risk of a charge of monotony if falling on ears less concerned withpoints of metrical beauty than with fundamental substance. Personally, however, I found the reading in the very highest degree enjoyable andinspiring. 

The evening was gone by the time the ballad was ended; and it wasarranged that upon my return to London from the house of a friend atthe sea-side I should again dine with Rossetti, and sleep the nightat Cheyne Walk. I was invited to come early in order to see certainpictures by day-light, and it was then I saw the painter's mostimportant work, --the _Dantés Dream_, which finally (and before Rossettiwas made aware of any steps being taken to that end) I had prevailedwith Alderman Samuelson to purchase for the public gallery at Liverpool. At my request, though only after some importunity, Rossetti read againhis _White Ship_, and afterwards _Rose Mary_, the latter of which hetold me had been written in the country shortly after the appearance ofthe first volume of poems. He remarked that it had occupied three weeksin the writing, and that the physical prostration ensuing had been morethan he would care to go through again. I observed on this head, thatthough highly finished in every stanza, the ballad had an impetuousrush of emotion, and swift current of diction, suggesting speed in itscomposition, as contrasted with the laboured deliberation which thesonnets, for example, appeared to denote. I asked if his work usuallytook much out of him in physical energy. 

"Not my painting, certainly, " he replied, "though in early years ittormented me more than enough. Now I paint by a set of unwritten butclearly-defined rules, which I could teach to any man as systematicallyas you could teach arithmetic; indeed, quite recently I sat all day forthat very purpose with Shields, who is not so great a colourist as he isa draughtsman: he is a great draughtsman--none better now living, unlessit is Leighton or Sir Noel Paton. "

"Still, " I said, "there's usually a good deal in a picture of yoursbeside what you can do by rule. "

"Fundamental conception, no doubt, but beyond that not much. Inpainting, after all, there is in the less important details something ofthe craft of a superior carpenter, and the part of a picture that is notmechanical is often trivial enough. I don't wonder, now, " he added, witha suspicion of a twinkle in the eye, "if you imagine that one comes downhere in a fine frenzy every morning to daub canvas?"

"I certainly imagine, " I replied, "that a superior carpenter would findit hard to paint another _Dante's Dream_, which some people consider thebest example yet seen of the English school. "

"That is friendly nonsense, " rejoined my frank host, "there is now noEnglish school whatever. "

"Well, " I said, "if you deny the name to others who lay more claim toit, will you not at least allow it to the three or four painters whostarted with you in life?"

"Not at all, unless it is to Brown, and he's more French than English;Hunt and Jones have no more claim to the name than I have. As for allthe prattle about pre-Raphaelitism, I confess to you I am weary of it, and long have been. Why should we go on talking about the visionaryvanities of half-a-dozen boys? We've all grown out of them, I hope, bynow. "

I remarked that the pre-Raphaelite movement was no doubt a serious oneat the beginning. 

"What you call the movement was serious enough, but the banding togetherunder that title was all a joke. We had at that time a phenomenalantipathy to the Academy, and in sheer love of being outlawed signed ourpictures with the well-known initials. " I have preserved the substanceof what Rossetti said on this point, and, as far as possible, the actualwords have been given. On many subsequent occasions he expressed himselfin the same way: assuredly with as much seeming depreciation of thepainter's "craft, " although certain examples of modern art called forthhis warmest eulogies. In serious moods he would speak of pictures byMillais, Watts, Leighton, Burne Jones, and others, as works of thehighest genius. 

Reverting to my inquiry as to whether his work took much out of him, heremarked that his poetry usually did. "In that respect, " he said, "I amthe reverse of Swinburne. For his method of production inspiration isindeed the word. With me the case is different. I lie on the couch, theracked and tortured medium, never permitted an instant's surcease ofagony until the thing on hand is finished. "

It was obvious that what Rossetti meant by being racked and tortured, was that his subject possessed him; that he was enslaved by his own"shaping imagination. " Assuredly he was the reverse of a costive poet:impulse was, to use his own phrase, fully developed in his muse. 

I made some playful allusion, assuredly not meant to involve Mr. Swinburne, to Sheridan's epigram on easy writing and hard reading; andto the Abbé de Marolles, who exultingly told some poet that his versescost no trouble: "They cost you what they are worth, " replied the bard. 

"One benefit I do derive, " Rossetti added, "as a result of my method ofcomposition; my work becomes condensed. Probably the man does not livewho could write what I have written more briefly than I have done. "

Emphasis and condensation, I remarked, were indubitably thecharacteristics of his muse. He then read me a great body of the newsonnets of _The House of Life_. Sitting in that studio listening to hisreading and looking up meantime at the chalk-drawings that hung on thewalls, I realised how truly he had said, in correspondence, that thefeeling pervading his pictures was such as his poetry ought to suggest. The affinity between the two seemed to me at that moment to be complete:the same half-sad, half-resigned view of life, the same glimpses ofhope, the same foreshadowings of gloom. 

"You doubtless think it odd, " he said at one moment, "to hear an oldfellow read such love-poetry as much of this is, but I may tell you thatthe larger part of it, though still unpublished, was written when I wasas young as you are. When I print these sonnets, I shall probably affixa note saying, that though many of them are of recent production, not afew are obviously the work of earlier years. "

I expressed admiration of the pathetic sonnet entitled _Without Her_. 

"I cannot tell you, " he said, "at what terrible moment it was wrung fromme. "

He had read it with tears of voice, subsiding at length into suppressedsobs and intervals of silence. As though to explain away this emotion hesaid:

"All poetry, that is really poetry, affects me deeply and often totears. It does not need to be pathetic or yet tender to produce such aresult. I have known in my life two men, and two only, who are similarlysensitive--Tennyson, and my old friend and neighbour William Bell Scott. I once heard Tennyson read _Maud_, and whilst the fiery passages weredelivered with a voice and vehemence which he alone of living men cancompass, the softer passages and the songs made the tears course downhis cheeks. Morris is a fine reader, and so, of his kind, though alittle prone to sing-song, is Swinburne. Browning both reads and talkswell--at least he did so when I knew him intimately as a young man. "

Rossetti went on to say that he had been among Browning's earliestadmirers. As a boy he had seen something signed by the then unknownname of the author of _Paracelsus_, and wrote to him. The result wasan intimacy. He spoke with warmest admiration of _Child Roland_; andreferred to Elizabeth Barrett Browning in terms of regard, and, I thinkI may say, of reverence. 

I asked if he had ever heard Ruskin read. He replied:

"I must have done so, but remember nothing clearly. On one occasion, however, I heard him deliver a speech, and that was something neverto forget. When we were young, we helped Frederick Denison Maurice bytaking classes at the Working Men's College, and there Charles Kingsleyand others made speeches and delivered lectures. Ruskin was asked todo something of the kind and at length consented. He made no sort ofpreparation for the occasion: I know he did not; we were together at hisfather's house the whole of the day in question. At night we drovedown to the College, and then he made the finest speech I ever heard. Idoubted at the time if any written words of his were equal to it! suchflaming diction! such emphasis! such appeal!--yet he had written hisfirst and second volumes of _Modern Painters_ by that time. " I havereproduced the substance of what Rossetti said on the occasion of myreturn visit, and, by help of letters written at the time to a friend, I have in many cases recalled his exact words. A certain incisiveness ofspeech which distinguished his conversation, I confess myself scarcelyable to convey more than a suggestion of; as Mr. Watts has said in _TheAthenĉum_, his talk showed an incisiveness so perfect that it had oftenthe pleasurable surprise of wit. Rossetti had both wit and humour, butthese, during the time that I knew him, were only occasionally presentin his conversation, while the incisiveness was always conspicuous. A certain quiet play of sportive fancy, developing at intervals intobanter, was sometimes observable in his talk with the younger and morefamiliar of his acquaintances, but for the most part his conversationwas serious, and, during the time I knew him, often sad. I speedilyobserved that he was not of the number of those who lead or sustainconversation. He required to be constantly interrogated, but as anegative talker, if I may so describe him, he was by much the best I hadheard. Catching one's drift before one had revealed it, and anticipatingone's objections, he would go on from point to point, almost removingthe necessity for more than occasional words. Nevertheless, as I say, hewas not, in the conversations I have heard, a leading conversationalist;his talk was never more than talk, and in saying that it was uniformlysustained yet never declamatory, I think I convey an idea both of itsmerits and limitations. 

I understood that Rossetti had never at any period of his life been anearly riser, and at the time of the interview in question he was morethan ever before prone to reverse the natural order of waking andsleeping hours. I am convinced that during the time I was with him onlythe necessity of securing a certain short interval of daylight, bywhich it was possible to paint, prevailed with him to rise before noon. Alluding to this idiosyncrasy, he said: "I lie as long, or say as late, as Dr. Johnson used to do. You shall never know, until you discover itfor yourself, at what hour I rise. " He sat up until four A. M. On thisnight of my second visit, --no unaccustomed thing, as I afterwardslearned. I must not omit the mention of one feature of the conversation, revealing to me a new side of his character, or, more properly, a newphase of his mind, which gave me subsequently an infinity of anxiety anddistress. Branching off at a late hour from some entirely foreign topic, he begged me to tell him the facts of some unlucky debate in which Ihad long before been engaged on a public platform with some one who hadattacked him. He had heard a report of what passed at a time whenmy name was unknown to him, as also was that of his assailant. Beingforewarned by William Rossetti of his brother's peculiar sensitivenessto critical attack, and having, moreover, observed something of the kindmyself, I tried to avoid a circumstantial statement of what passed. ButRossetti was, as has been said by one who knew him well, "of imaginationall compact, " and my obvious desire to shelve the subject suggested tohis mind a thousand inferences infinitely more damaging than the fact. To avoid such a result I told him all, and there was little in theway of attack to repeat beyond a few unwelcome strictures on his poem_Jenny_. He listened but too eagerly to what I was saying, and then in avoice slower, softer, and more charged, perhaps, with emotion than I hadheard before, said it was the old story, which began ten years before, and would go on until he had been hunted and hounded to his grave. Startled, and indeed, appalled by so grave a view of what to me hadseemed no more than an error of critical judgment, coupled perhaps, withsome intemperance of condemnation, I prayed of him to think no more ofthe matter, reproached myself with having yielded to his importunity, and begged him to remember that if one man held the opinions I hadrepeated, many men held contrary ones. 

"It was right of you to tell me when I asked you, " he said, "though myfriends usually keep such facts from my knowledge. As to _Jenny_, it isa sermon, nothing less. As I say, it is a sermon, and on a great world, to most men unknown, though few consider themselves ignorant of it. Butof this conspiracy to persecute me--what remains to say but that it iswidespread and remorseless--one cannot but feel it. "

I assured him there existed no conspiracy to persecute him: that he hadardent upholders everywhere, though it was true that few men had foundcrueller critics. He shook his head, and said I knew that what he hadalleged was true, namely that an organised conspiracy existed, havingfor its object to annoy and injure him. Growing a little impatient ofthis delusion, so tenaciously held, against all show of reason, I toldhim that it was no more than the fever of an oppressed brain broughtabout by his reclusive habits of life, by shunning intercourse with allsave some half dozen or more friends. "You tell me, " I said, "that youhave rarely been outside these walls for some years, and your brain hasmeanwhile been breeding a host of hallucinations, like cobwebs in a darkcorner. You have only to go abroad, and the fresh air will blow thesethings away. " But continuing for some moments longer in the same strain, he came to closer quarters and distressed me by naming as enemies threeor four men who had throughout life been his friends, who have spoken ofhim since his death in words of admiration and even affection, and whohad for a time fallen away from him or called on him but rarely, fromcontingencies due to any cause but alienated friendship. 

At length the time had arrived when it was considered prudent to retire. "You are to sleep in Watts's room to-night, " he said: and then in replyto a look of inquiry he added, "He comes here at least twice a week, talking until four o'clock in the morning upon everything from poetryto the Pleiades, and driving away the bogies, and as he lives at PutneyHill, it is necessary to have a bed for him. " Before going into my roomhe suggested that I should go and look, at his. It was entered fromanother and smaller room which he said that he used as a breakfastroom. The outer room was made fairly bright and cheerful by a glitteringchandelier (the property once, he told me, of David Garrick), andfrom the rustle of trees against the window-pane one perceived that itoverlooked the garden; but the inner room was dark with heavy hangingsaround the walls as well as the bed, and thick velvet curtains beforethe windows, so that the candles in our hands seemed unable to lightit, and our voices sounded thick and muffled. An enormous black oakchimney-piece of curious design, having an ivory crucifix on the largestof its ledges, covered a part of one side and reached to the ceiling. Cabinets, and the usual furniture of a bedroom, occupied places aboutthe floor: and in the middle of it, and before a little couch, stooda small table on which was a wire lantern containing a candle whichRossetti lit from the open one in his hand--another candle meantimelying by its side. I remarked that he probably burned a light all night. He said that was so. "My curse, " he added, "is insomnia. Two or threehours hence I shall get up and lie on the couch, and, to pass away aweary hour, read this book"--a volume of Boswell's _Johnson_ which Inoticed he took out of the bookcase as we left the studio. It did notescape me that on the table stood two small bottles sealed and labelled, together with a little measuring-glass. Without looking further at it, but with a terrible suspicion growing over me, I asked if that were hismedicine. 

"They say there is a skeleton in every cupboard, " he said in a lowvoice, "and that's mine; it is chloral. "

When I reached the room that I was to occupy during the night, I foundit, like Rossetti's bedroom, heavy with hangings, and black with antiquepicture panels, with a ceiling (unlike that of the other rooms in thehouse), out of all reach or sight, and so dark from various causes, thatthe candle seemed only to glimmer in it--indeed to add to the darknessby making it felt. Mr. Watts, as Rossetti told me, was entirelyindifferent to these eerie surroundings, even if his fine subjectiveintellect, more prone to meditate than to observe, was ever for aninstant conscious of them; but on myself I fear they weighed heavily, and augmented the feeling of closeness and gloom which had been creepingupon me since I entered the house. Scattered about the room in mostadmired disorder were some outlandish and unheard-of books, and allkinds of antiquarian and Oriental oddities, which books and oddities Iafterwards learnt had been picked up at various times by the occupant inhis ramblings about Chelsea and elsewhere, and never yet taken away byhim, but left there apparently to scare the chambermaid: such as oldcarved heads and gargoyles of the most grinning and ghastly expression, Burmese and Chinese Buddhas in soapstone of every degree of placidugliness, together, I am bound by force of truth to admit, with onepiece of carved Italian marble in bas-relief, of great interest andbeauty. Such was my bed-chamber for the night, and little wonder if itthreatened to murder the innocent sleep. But it was later than 4 A. M. , and wearied nature must needs assert herself, and so I lay down amidstthe odour of bygone ages. 

Presently Rossetti came in, for no purpose that I can remember, exceptto say that he had enjoyed my visit I replied that I should never forgetit. "If you decide to settle in London, " he said, "I trust you 'll comeand live with me, and then many such evenings must remove the memoryof this one. " I laughed, for I thought what he hinted at to be of theremotest likelihood. "I have just taken sixty grains of chloral, " hesaid, as he was going out; "in four hours I take sixty more, and in fourhours after that yet another sixty. "

"Does not the dose increase with you?"

"It has not done so perceptibly in recent years. I judge I've takenmore chloral than any man whatever: Marshall says if I were put into aTurkish bath I should sweat it at every pore. "

There was something in his tone suggesting that he was even proud of theaccomplishment. To me it was a frightful revelation, accounting entirelyfor what had puzzled and distressed me in his delusions already referredto. And now let me say that whilst it would have been on my part themost pitiful weakness (because the most foolish tearfulness of injuringa great man who was strong enough to suffer a good deal to be discountedfrom his strength), to attempt to conceal this painful side ofRossetti's mind, I shall not again allude to those delusions, unlessit be to show that, coming to him with the drug which blighted half hislife, they disappeared when it had been removed. 

None may rightly say to what the use of that drug was due, or what wasdue to it; the sadder side of his life was ever under its shadow; hisoccasional distrust of friends: his fear of enemies: his broken healthand shattered spirits, all came of his indulgence in the perniciousthing. When I remember this I am more than willing to put by all thoughtof the little annoyances, which to me, as to other immediate friends, were constantly occurring through that cause, which seemed at the momentso vexatious and often so insupportable, but which are now forgotten. 

Next morning--(a clear autumn morning)--I strolled through the largegarden at the back of the house, and of course I found it of a piecewith what I had previously seen. A beautiful avenue of lime-trees openedinto a grass plot of nearly an acre in extent. The trees were just asnature made them, and so was the grass, which in places was lying long, dry and withered under the sun, weeds creeping up in damp places, andthe gravel of the pathway scattered upon the verges. This neglectedcondition of the garden was, I afterwards found, humorously charged uponMr. Watts's "reluctance to interfere with nature in her clever scheme ofthe survival of the fittest, " but I suspect it was due at least equallyto the owner's personal indifference to everything of the kind. 

Before leaving I glanced over the bookcase. Rossetti's library was byno means a large one. It consisted, perhaps, of 1000 volumes, scarcelymore; and though this was not large as comprising the library of onewhose reading must have been in two arts pursued as special studies, and each involving research and minute original inquiry, it cannot beconsidered noticeably small, and it must have been sufficient. Rossettidiffered strangely as a reader from the man to whom in bias of geniushe was most nearly related. Coleridge was an omnivorous general reader:Rossetti was eclectic rather than desultory. His library contained anumber of valuable old works of more interest to him from their platesthan letterpress. Of this kind were _Gerard's Herbal_ (1626), supposedto be the source of many a hint utilised by the Morris firm, of whichRossetti was a member; _Poliphili Hypnerotomachia_ (1467); Heywood's_History of Women_ (1624); _Songe de Poliphile_ (1561); Bonnard's_Costumes of 12th, 13th, and l4th Centuries; Habiti Antichi_ (ofwhich the designs are said to be by Titian)--printed Venice, (1664);_Cosmographia_, a history of the peoples of the world (1572); _CiceronisOfficia_ (1534), a blackletter folio, with woodcuts by Burgkmaier;_Jost Amman's Costumes_, with woodcuts coloured by hand; _Cento Novelle_(Venice, 1598); Francesco Barberino's _Documenti (d'Amore_ (Rome, 1640);_Décoda de Titolivio_, a Spanish blackletter, without date, but probablybelonging to the 16th century. Besides these were various vellum-boundworks relating to Greek and Roman allegorical and mythological subjects, and a number of scrap-books and portfolios containing photographs fromnearly all the picture-galleries of Europe, but chiefly of the picturesof the early Florentine and Venetian schools, with an admixture ofSpanish art. Of Michael Angelo's designs for the Sistine Chapel therewas a fine set of photographs. 

These did not make up a very complete ancient artistic library, butRossetti's collection of the poets was more full and valuable. There wasa pretty little early edition of Petrarch, which appeared to havebeen presented first by John Philip Kemble to Polidori (Rossetti'sgrandfather) in 1812; then in 1853 by Polidori to his daughter, Rossetti's mother, Frances Rossetti; and by her in 1870 to her son. Asplendid edition (1552) of Boccaccio's _Decamerone_ contained a numberof valuable marginal notes, chiefly by Rossetti, the first being asfollows:

This volume contains 40 woodcuts besides many initial letters. Thegreater number, if not the whole, must certainly be by Holbein. I amin doubt as to the pictures heading the chapters, but think these mostprobably his, only following the usual style of such illustrationsto Boccaccio, and consequently more Italianised than the others. Theinitial letters present for the most part games of strength or skill. 

There were various editions of Dante, including a very large folioedition of the _Commedia_, dated Florence, 1481, and the works of anumber of Dante's contemporaries. Besides two or three editions ofShakspeare (the best being Dyce's, in 9 vols. ), there were some of theElizabethan dramatists. Coming to later poetry, I found a completeset of Gilfillan's _Poets_, in 45 vols. There was the curious littlemanuscript quarto (much like a shilling school-exercise book) labelled_Blake_, and this was, perhaps, by far the most valuable volume in thelibrary. The contents and history of this book have already been given. 

There were two editions of Gilchrist's _Blake_; complete (or almostcomplete) sets of the works of William Morris and A. C. Swinburne, inscribed in the authors' autographs--the copy of _Atalanta in Calydon_being marked by the poet, "First copy; printed off before the dedicationwas in type. " It may be remembered that Robert Brough translatedBéranger's songs, and dedicated his volume in affectionate termsto Rossetti. The presentation copy of this book bore the followinginscription:--"To D. G. Rossetti, meaning in my _heart_ what I havetried to say in print. Et. B. Brough. 1856. " There were also severalpresentation copies from Robert Browning, Coventry Patmore, W. B. Scott, Sir Henry Taylor, Aubrey de Vere, Tom Taylor, Westland Marston, F. Locker, A. O'Shaughnessy, Sir Theodore Martin; besides volumes bearingthe names of nearly every well-known younger writer of prose or verse. 

Five volumes of _Modern Painters_, together with _The Seven Lamps ofArchitecture_ and the tract on _Pre-Raphaelitism_, bore the author'sname and Rossetti's in Mr. Ruskin's autograph. There was a fine copy inten volumes of Violet-le-Duc's _Dictionnaire de l'Architecture_, andalso of the _Biographie Générale_ in forty-six volumes, besides severaldictionaries, concordances, and the like. There was also a copy ofFitzgerald's _Calderon_. Rossetti seemed to be a reader of Swedenborg, as White's book on the great mystic testified; also to have been at onetime interested in the investigation of the phenomena of Spiritualism. Of one writer of fiction he must have been an ardent reader, for therewere at least 100 volumes by Alexandre Dumas. German writers wereconspicuously absent, Goethe's _Faust_ and Carlyle's translation of_Wilhelm, Meister_, being about the only notable German works in thelibrary. Rossetti did not appear to be a collector of first editions, nor did it seem that he attached much importance to the mere outsides ofhis books, but of the insides he was master indeed. The impression leftupon the mind after a rapid survey of the poet-painter's library wasthat he was a careful, but slow and thorough reader (as was seen by themarginal annotations which nearly every volume contained), and that, though very far from affected by bibliomania, he was not without pridein the possession of rare and valuable books. 

When I left the house at a late hour that morning Rossetti was not yetstirring, and so some months passed before I saw him again. If I hadtried to formulate the idea--or say sensation--that possessed me at themoment, I think I should have said, in a word or two, that outside theair breathed freely. Within, the gloom, the mediaeval furniture, thebrass censers, sacramental cups, lamps; and crucifixes conspired, Ithought, to make the atmosphere heavy and unwholesome. As for theman himself who was the central spirit amidst these anachronisticenvironments, he had, if possible, attached me yet closer to himself bycontact. Before this I had been attracted to him in admiration of hisgifts: but now I was drawn to him, in something very like pity, forhis isolation and suffering. Not that at this time he consciouslymade demand of much compassion, and least of all from me. Health wasapparently whole with him, his spirits were good, and his energies wereat their best. He had not yet known the full bitterness of the shadowedvalley: not yet learned what it was to hunger for any cheerful societythat would relieve him of the burden of the flesh. All that came later. Rossetti was one of the most magnetic of men, but it was not more hisgenius than his unhappiness that held certain of his friends by a spell. 

CHAPTER VIII. 

It was characteristic of Rossetti that he addressed me in the followingterms probably before I had left his house: for the letter was, nodoubt, written in that interval of sleeplessness which he had spoken ofas his nightly visitant:

I forgot to say--Don't, please, spread details as to story of _RoseMary_. I don't want it to be stale or to get forestalled in thetravelling of report from mouth to mouth. I hope it won't be too longbefore you visit town again, --I will not for an instant question thatyou would then visit me also. 

Six months or more intervened, however, before I was able to visitRossetti again. In the meantime we corresponded as fully as before: thesubject upon which we most frequently exchanged opinions being now thesonnet. 

 By-the-bye [he says], I cannot understand what you say of Milton's, Keats's, and Coleridge's sonnets. The last, it is true, was _always_ poor as a sonnetteer (I don't see much in the _Autumnal Moon_). My own only exception to this verdict (much as I adore Coleridge's genius) would be the ludicrous sonnet on _The House that Jack built_, which is a masterpiece in its way. I should not myself number the one you mention of Keats's among his best half-dozen (many of his are mere drafts, strange to say); and cannot at all enter into your verdict on those of Milton, which seem to me to be every one of exceptional excellence, though a few are even finer than the rest, notably, of course, the one you name. Pardon an egotistic sentence (in answer to what you say so generously of _Lost Days_), if I express an opinion that _Known in Vain_ and _Still-born Love_ may perhaps be said to head the series in value, though _Lost Days_ might be equally a favourite with me if I did not remember in what but too opportune juncture it was wrung out of me. I have a good number of sonnets for _The House of Life_ still in MS. , which I have worked on with my best effort, and, I think, will fully sustain their place. These and other things I should like to show you whenever we meet again. The MS. Vol. I proposed to send is merely an old set of (chiefly) trifles, about which I should like an opinion as to whether any should be included in the future. 

I had spoken of Keats's sonnet beginning

 To one who has been long in city pent, with its exquisite last lines--

 E'en like the passage of an angel's tear That falls through the clear ether silently, reminding one of a less spiritual figure--

 Kings like a golden jewel Down a golden stair. 

After his bantering me, as of old he had done, on the use of long andcrabbed words, I hinted that he was in honour bound to agree at leastwith my disparaging judgment upon _Tetrachordon_, if only because of theuse of words that would "have made Quintillian stare. "

I further instanced--

 "Harry whose tuneful and well-measured song;" and "Lawrence, of virtuous father virtuous son, "

as examples of Milton at his weakest as a sonnet-writer. He replied:

 I am sorry I must still differ somewhat from you about Milton's sonnets. I think the one on _Tetrachordon_ a very vigorous affair indeed. The one to Mr. H. Lawes I am half disposed to give you, but not altogether--its close is sweet. As to _Lawrence_, it is curious that my sister was only the other day expressing to me a special relish for this sonnet, and I do think it very fresh and wholesomely relishing myself. It is an awful fact that sun, moon, or candlelight once looked down on the human portent of Dr. Johnson and Mrs. Hannah More convened in solemn conclave above the outspread sonnets of Milton, with a meritorious and considerate resolve of finding out for him "why they were so bad. " This is so stupendous a warning, that perhaps it may even incline one to find some of them better than they are. 

 Coming to Coleridge, I must confess at once that I never meet in any collection with the sonnet on Schiller's _Robbers_ without heading it at once with the words "unconscionably bad. " The habit has been a life-long one. That you mention beginning--"Sweet mercy, " etc. , I have looked for in the only Coleridge I have by me (my brother's cheap edition, for all the faults of which _he_ is not at all answerable), and do not find it there, nor have I it in mind. 

 To pass to Keats. The ed. Of 1868 contains no sonnet on the Elgin Marbles. Is it in a later edition? Of course that on Chapman's _Homer_ is supreme. It ought to be preceded {*} in all editions by the one _To Homer_, "Standing aloof in giant ignorance, " etc. Which contains perhaps the greatest single line in Keats:

 "There is a budding morrow in midnight. "

 * I pointed out that it was written later than the one on Chapman's Homer (notwithstanding its first line) and therefore should follow after it, not go before. 

 Other special favourites with me are--"Why did I laugh to- night?"--" As Hermes once, "--"Time's sea hath been, " and the one _On the Flower and, Leaf_. 

 It is odd that several of these best ones seem to have been early work, and rejected by Keats in his lifetime, while some of those he printed are absolutely sorry drafts. 

 I had admired Coleridge's sonnet on Schiller's _Robbers_ for the perhaps minor excellence of bringing vividly before the mind the scenes it describes. If the sonnet is unconscionably bad so perhaps is the play, the beautiful scene of the setting sun notwithstanding. Eventually, however, I abandoned my belligerent position as to Milton's sonnets: the army of authorities I found ranged against the modest earth-works within which I had entrenched myself must of itself have made me quail. My utmost contention had been that Milton wrote the most impassioned sonnet (_Avenge, O Lord_), the two most nobly pathetic sonnets (_When I consider_ and _Methought I saw_), and one of the poorest sonnets (_Harry, whose tuneful_, etc. ) in English poetry. 

 At this time (September 1880) Mr. J. Ashcroft Noble published an essay on _The Sonnet in England_ in _The Contemporary Review_, and relating thereto Rossetti wrote:

 I have just been reading Mr. Noble's article on the sonnet. As regards my own share in it, I can only say that it greets me with a gratifying ray of generous recognition. It is all the more pleasant to me as finding a place in the very Review which years ago opened its pages to a pseudonymous attack on my poems and on myself. I see a passage in the article which seems meant to indicate the want of such a work on the sonnet as you are wishing to supply. I only trust that you may do so, and that Mr. Noble may find a field for continued poetic criticism. I am very proud to think that, after my small and solitary book has been a good many years published and several years out of print, it yet meets with such ardent upholding by young and sincere men. 

 With the verdicts given throughout the article, I generally sympathise, but not with the unqualified homage to Wordsworth. A reticence almost invariably present is fatal in my eyes to the highest pretensions on behalf of his sonnets. Reticence is but a poor sort of muse, nor is tentativeness (so often to be traced in his work) a good accompaniment in music. Take the sonnet on _Toussaint L'Ouverture_ (in my opinion his noblest, and very noble indeed) and study (from Main's note) the lame and fumbling changes made in various editions of the early lines, which remain lame in the end. Far worse than this, study the relation of the closing lines of his famous sonnet _The World is too much with us_, etc. , to a passage in Spenser, and say whether plagiarism was ever more impudent or manifest (again I derive from Main's excellent exposition of the point), and then consider whether a bard was likely to do this once and yet not to do it often. Primary vital impulse was surely not fully developed in his muse. 

 I will venture to say that I wish my sister's sonnet work had met with what I consider the justice due to it. Besides the unsurpassed quality (in my opinion) of her best sonnets, my sister has proved her poetic importance by solid and noble inventive work of many kinds, which I should be proud indeed to reckon among my life's claims. 

 I have a great weakness myself for many of Tennyson-Turner's sonnets, though of course what Mr. Noble says of them is in the main true, and he has certainly quoted the very finest one, which has a more fervent appeal for me than I could easily derive from Wordsworth in almost any case. 

 Will you give my thanks to Mr. Noble for his frank and outspoken praise?

 Let me hear of your doings and intentions. 

 Ever sincerely yours. 

Three names notably omitted in the article are those of Dobell, W. B. Scott, and Swinburne. 

The allusion in the foregoing letter to the work on the Sonnet whichI was aiming to supply, bears reference to the anthology subsequentlypublished under the title of _Sonnets of Three Centuries_. My firstidea was simply to write a survey of the art and history of thesonnet, printing only such examples as might be embraced by my criticalcomments. Rossetti's generous sympathy was warmly engaged in thisenterprise. 

 It would really warm me up much [he writes] to know of _your_ editing a sonnet book You would have my best cooperation as to suggesting examples, but I certainly think that English sonnets (original and exceptionally translated ones, the latter only _perhaps_) should be the sole scheme. Curiously enough, some one wrote me the other day as to a projected series of living sonneteers (other collections being only of those preceding our time). I have half committed myself to contributing, but not altogether as yet. The name of the projector, S. Waddington, is new to me, and I don't know who is to publish. . . . Really you ought to do the sonnet-book you aspire to do. I know but of one London critic (Theodore Watts) whom I should consider the leading man for such a purpose, and I have tried to incite him to it so often that I know now he won't do it; but I have always meant _a complete_ series in which the dead poets must, of course, predominate. As to a series of the living only, I told you of a Mr. Waddington who seems engaged on such a supplementary scheme. What his gifts for it may be I know not, but I suppose he knows it is in requisition. However, there need not be but one such if you felt your hand in for it. His view happens to be also (as you suggest) about 160 sonnets. In reply to your query, I certainly think there must be 20 living writers (male and female--my sister a leader, I consider) who have written good sonnets such as would afford an interesting and representative selection, though assuredly not such as would all take the rank of classics by any means. The number of sonnets now extant, written by poets who did not exist as such a dozen years ago, I believe to be almost infinite, and in sufficiently numerous instances good, however derivative. One younger poet among them, Philip Marston, has written many sonnets which yield to few or none by any poet whatever; but he has printed such a large number in the aggregate, and so unequal one with the other, that the great ones are not to be found by opening at random. "How are they (the poets) to be approached?--" you innocently ask. Ye heavens! how does the cat's-meat-man approach Grimalkin?--and what is that relation in life when compared to the _rapport_ established between the living bard and the fellow-creature who is disposed to cater to his caterwauling appetite for publicity? However, to be serious, I must at least exonerate the bard, I am sure, from any desire to appropriate an "interest in the proceeds. " There are some, I feel certain, to whom the collector might say with a wink, "What are you going to stand?"

I do not myself think that a collection of sonnets inserted at intervalsin an essay is a good form for the purpose. Such a book is from onechief point a book of instantaneous reference, --it would only, perhaps, be read _through_ once in a lifetime. For this purpose a well-indexedcurrent series is best, with any desirable essay prefixed and notesaffixed. . . . I once conceived of a series, to be entitled, THE ENGLISH CASTALY: A QUINTESSENCE:

BEING A COLLECTION OF ALL THAT IS BEST IN ALL ENGLISH POETS, EXCEPTING WORKS OF GREAT LENGTH. 

I still think this a good idea, but, of course, it would be an extensiveundertaking. 

Later on, he wrote:

 I have thought of a title for your book. What think you of this?

A SONNET SEQUENCE

FROM ELDER TO MODERN WORK, WITH FIFTY HITHERTO UNPRINTED SONNETS BY

LIVING WRITERS. 

 That would not be amiss. Tell me if you think of using the title _A Sonnet Sequence_, as otherwise I might use it in the _House of Life_. . . . What do you think of this alternative title:

THE ENGLISH SONNET MUSE

FROM ELIZABETH'S REIGN TO VICTORIA'S. 

 I think _Castalia_ much too euphuistic, and though I shouldn't like the book to be called simply still I have a great prejudice against very florid titles for such gatherings. _Treasury_ has been sadly run upon. 

I did not like _Sonnet Sequence_ for such a collection, and relinquishedthe title; moreover, I had had from the first a clearly defined schemein mind, carrying its own inevitable title, which was in due courseadopted. I may here remark that I never resisted any idea of Rossetti'sat the moment of its inception, since resistance only led to a temporaryoutburst of self-assertion on his part. He was a man of so muchimpulse, --impulse often as violent as lawless--that to oppose him merelyprovoked anger to no good purpose, for as often as not the positionat first adopted with so much pertinacity was afterwards silentlyabandoned, and your own aims quietly acquiesced in. On this subject of atitle he wrote a further letter, which is interesting from more than onepoint of view:

 I don't like _Garland_ at all C. Patmore collected a _Children's Garland. _ I think

ENGLISH SONNET'S

PRESENT AND PAST, WITH--ETC. , would be a good title. I think I prefer _Present and Past_, or _of the P. And P. , _ to _New and Old_ for your purpose; but I own I am partly influenced by the fact that I have settled to call my own vol. _Poems New and Old_, and don't want it to get staled; but I really do think the other at least as good for your purpose--perhaps more dignified. 

Again, in reply to a proposal of my own, he wrote:

 I think _Sonnets of the Century_ an excellent idea and title. I must say a mass of Wordsworth over again, like Main's, is a little disheartening, --still the _best_ selection from him is what one wants. There is some book called _A Century of Sonnets_, but this, I suppose, would not matter. . . . 

 I think sometimes of your sonnet-book, and have formed certain views. I really would not in your place include old work at all: it would be but a scanty gathering, and I feel certain that what is really in requisition is a supplement to Main, containing living writers (printed and un-printed) put together under their authors' names (not separately) and rare gleanings from those more recently dead. 

I fear I did not attach importance to this decision, for I now knew mycorrespondent too well to rely upon his being entirely in the same mindfor long. Hence I was not surprised to receive the following a day ortwo later:

 I lately had a conversation with Watts about your sonnet- book, and find his views to be somewhat different from what I had expressed, and I may add I think now he is right. He says there should be a very careful selection of the elder sonnets and of everything up to present century. I think he is right. 

The fact is, that almost from the first I had taken a view similar toMr. Watts's as to the design of my book, and had determined to call theanthology by the title it now bears. On one occasion, however, I actedrather without judgment in sending Rossetti a synopsis of certaincritical tests formulated by Mr. Watts in a letter of great power andvalue. 

In the letter in question Mr. Watts seemed to be setting himself toconfute some extremely ill-considered remarks made in a certain quarterupon the structure of the sonnet, where (following Macaulay) the criticsays that there exists no good reason for requiring that even theconventional limit as to length should be observed, and that the onlyuse in art of the legitimate model is to "supply a poet with somethingto do when his invention fails. " I confess to having felt no littleamazement that one so devoid of a perception of the true function of thesonnet should have been considered a proper person to introduce a greatsonnet-writer; and Mr. Watts (who, however, made no mention of thewriter) clearly demonstrated that the true sonnet has the foundationof its structure in a fixed metrical law, and hence, that as it isimpossible (as Keats found out for himself) to improve upon the acceptedform, that model--known as the Petrarchian--should, with little or novariation, be worked upon. Rossetti took fire, however, from a mistakennotion that Mr. Watts's canons, as given in the letter in question, and merely reported by me, were much more inflexible than they reallyproved. 

 Sonnets of mine _could not appear_ in any book which contained such rigid rules as to rhyme, as are contained in Watts's letter. I neither follow them, nor agree with them as regards the English language. Every sonnet-writer should show full capability of conforming to them in many instances, but never to deviate from them in English must pinion both thought and diction, and, (mastery once proved) a series gains rather than loses by such varieties as do not lessen the only absolute aim--that of beauty. The English sonnet too much tampered with becomes a sort of bastard madrigal. Too much, invariably restricted, it degenerates into a Shibboleth. 

 Dante's sonnets (in reply to your question--not as part of the above point) vary in arrangement. I never for a moment thought of following in my book the rhymes of each individual sonnet. 

 If sonnets of mine remain admissible, I should prefer printing the two _On Cassandra to The Monochord_ and _Wine of Circe_. 

 I would not be too anxious, were I you, about anything in choice of sonnets except the brains and the music. 

Again he wrote:

 I talked to Watts about his letter. He seems to agree with me as to advisable variation of form in preference to transmuting valuable thought. It would not be afc all found that my best sonnets are always in the mere form which I think the best. The question with me is regulated by what I have to say. But in truth, if I have a distinction as a sonnet-writer, it is that I never admit a sonnet which is not fully on the level of every other. . . . Again, as to this blessed question, though no one ever took more pleasure in continually using the form I prefer when not interfering with thought, to insist on it would after a certain point be ruin to common sense. 

 As to what you say of _The One Hope_--it is fully equal to the very best of my sonnets, or I should not have wound up the series with it. But the fact is, what is peculiar chiefly in the series is, that scarcely one is worse than any other. You have much too great a habit of speaking of a special octave, sestette, or line. Conception, my boy, _fundamental brainwork_, that is what makes the difference in all art. Work your metal as much as you like, but first take care that it is gold and worth working. A Shakspearean sonnet is better than the most perfect in form, because Shakspeare wrote it. 

 As for Drayton, of course his one incomparable sonnet is the _Love-Parting_. That is almost the best in the language, if not quite. I think I have now answered queries, and it is late. Good-night!

Rossetti had somewhat mistaken the scope of the letter referred to, and when he came to know exactly what was intended, I found him in warmagreement with the views therein taken. I have said at an earlier stagethat Rossetti's instinct for what was good in poetry was unfailing, whatever the value of his opinions on critical principles, and hence Ifelt naturally anxious to have the benefit of his views on certain ofthe elder writers. He said:

 I am sorry I am no adept in elder sonnet literature. Many of Donne's are remarkable--no doubt you glean some. None of Shakspeare's is more indispensable than the wondrous one on _Last_ (129). Hartley Coleridge's finest is

 "If I have sinned in act, I may repent. "

 There is a fine one by Isaac Williams, evidently on the death of a worldly man, and he wrote other good ones. To return to the old, I think Stillingfleet's _To Williamson_ very fine. . . . 

 I would like to send you a list of my special favourites among Shakspeare's sonnets--viz. :--

 15, 27, 29, 30, 36, 44, 45, 49, 50, 52, 55, 56, 59, 61, 62, 64, 65, 66, 68, 71, 73, 76, 77, 90, 93, 94, 97, 98, 99, 102, 107, 110, 116, 117, 119, 120, 123, 129, 135, 136, 138, 144, 145. 

 I made the selection long ago, and of course love them in varying degrees. 

 There should be an essential reform in the printing of Shakspeare's sonnets. After sonnet 125 should occur the words _End of Part I_. The couplet-piece, numbered 126, should be called _Epilogue to Part I. _. Then, before 127, should be printed Part II. After 152, should be put End of Part II. --and the two last sonnets should be called Epilogue to Part II. About these two last I have a theory of my own. 

 Did you ever see the excellent remarks on these sonnets in my brother's _Lives of Famous Poets?_ I think a simple point he mentions (for first time) fixes Pembroke clearly as the male friend. I am glad you like his own two fine sonnets. I wish he would write more such. By the bye, you speak with great scorn of the closing couplet in sonnets. I do not certainly think that form the finest, but I do think this and every variety desirable in a series, and have often used it myself. I like your letters on sonnets; write on all points in question. The two last of Shakspeare's sonnets seem to me to have a very probable (and rather elaborate) meaning never yet attributed to them. Some day, when I see you, we will talk it over. Did you ever see a curious book by one Brown (I don't mean Armitage Brown) on Shakspeare's sonnets? By the bye, he is not the source of my notion as above, but a matter of fact he names helps in it. I never saw Massey's book on the subject, but fancy his views and Brown's are somewhat allied. You should look at what my brother says, which is very concise and valuable. I hope I am not omitting to answer you in any essential point, but my writing-table is a chaos into which your last letters have, for the moment, sunk beyond recovery. 

 I consider the foregoing, perhaps, the most valuable of Rossetti's letters to me. I cannot remember that we ever afterwards talked over the two last sonnets of Shakspeare; if we did so, the meaning attached to them by him did not fix itself very definitely upon my memory. 

 In explanation of my alleged dislike of the closing couplet, I may say that a rhymed couplet at the close of a sonnet has an effect upon my ear similar to that produced by the couplets at the ends of some of the acts of Shakspeare's plays, which were in many instances interpolated by the actors to enable them to make emphatic exits. 

 I must now group together a number of short notes on sonnets:

 I think Blanco White's sonnet difficult to overrate in _thought_--probably in this respect unsurpassable, but easy to overrate as regards its workmanship. Of course there is the one fatally disenchanting line:

 While fly and leaf and insect stood revealed. 

 The poverty of vision which could not see at a glance that fly and insect were one and the same, is, as you say, enough to account for its being the writer's only sonnet (there is one more however which I don't know). 

 I'll copy you overpage a sonnet which I consider a very fine one, but which may be said to be quite unknown. It is by Charles Whitehead, who wrote the very admirable and exceptional novel of _Richard Savage_, published somewhere about 1840. 

 Even as yon lamp within my vacant room With arduous flame disputes the doubtful night, And can with its involuntary light But lifeless things that near it stand illume; Yet all the while it doth itself consume, And ere the sun hath reached his morning height With courier beams that greet the shepherd's sight, There where its life arose must be its tomb:-- So wastes my life away, perforce confined To common things, a limit to its sphere, It gleams on worthless trifles undesign'd, With fainter ray each hour imprison'd here. Alas to know that the consuming mind Must leave its lamp cold ere the sun appear!

 I am sure you will agree with me in admiring _that_. I quote from memory, and am not sure that I have given line 6 quite correctly. . . . 

 I have just had Blanco White's only other sonnet (_On being called an Old Man at 50_) copied out for you. I do certainly think it ought to go in, though no better than so-so, as you say. But it is just about as good as the former one, but for the leading and splendid thought in the latter. Both are but proseman's diction. 

 There is a sonnet of Chas. Wells's _On Chaucer_ which is not worthy of its writer, but still you should have it. It occurs among some prefatory tributes in _Chaucer Modernised_, edited by E. H. Home. I don't know how you are to get a copy, but the book is in the British Museum Reading Room. The sonnet is signed C. W. Only. 

 The sonnet by Wells seemed to me in every respect poor, and as it was no part of my purpose (as an admirer of Wells) to advertise what the poet could not do, I determined--against Rossetti's judgment--not to print the sonnet. 

 You certainly, in my opinion, ought to print Wells's sonnet. Certainly nothing so disjointed ever gave itself the name before, but it ought to be available for reference, and I do not agree with you in considering it weak in any sense except that of structure. 

 There is a sonnet by Ebenezer Jones, beginning "I never wholly feel that summer is high, " which, though very jagged, has decided merit to warrant its insertion. 

 As for Tennyson, he seems to have given leave for a sonnet to appear in Main's book. Why not in yours? But I have long ceased to know him, nor is any friend of mine in communication with him. . . . My brother has written in his time a few sonnets. Two of them I think very fine-- especially the one called _Shelley's Heart_, which he has lately worked upon again with immense advantage. . . . You do not tell me from whom you have received sonnets. The reason which prevents my coming forward, in such a difficulty, with a new sonnet of my own, is this:--which indeed you have probably surmised: I know nothing would gratify malevolence, after the controversy which ensued on your lecture, more than to be able to assert, however falsely, that we had been working in concert all along, that you were known to me from the first, and that your advocacy had no real spontaneity. . . . When you first entered on the subject, and wrote your lecture, you were a perfect stranger to me, and that fact greatly enhanced my pleasure in its enthusiastic tone. I hope sincerely that we may have further and close opportunities of intercourse, but should like whatever you may write of me to come from the old source of intellectual affinity only. That you should think the subject worthy of further labour is a pleasure to me, but I only trust it may not be a disadvantage to your book in unfriendly eyes, particularly if that view happened to be the proposed publisher's, in which case I should much prefer that this section of your work were withdrawn for a more propitious occasion. . . . I am very glad Brown is furthering your sonnet- book--he knows so many bards. Of course if I were you, I should keep an eye on the mouths even of gift-horses; but were a creditable stud to be trotted out, of course I should be willing; as were I one among many, the objection I noted would not exist. I do not mean for a moment to say that many very fine sonnets might not be obtained from poets not yet known or not widely known; but known names would be the things to parry the difficulty. 

Later he wrote:

 As you know, I want to contribute to your volume if I can do so without fear of the consequences hinted at in a former letter as likely to ensue, so I now enclose a sonnet of my own. If you are out in March 1881, you may be before my new edition, but I am getting my stock together. Not a word of this however, as it mustn't get into gossip paragraphs at present. _The House of Life_ is now a hundred sonnets--all lyrics being removed. Besides this series, I have forty-five sonnets extra. I think, as you are willing, I shall use the title I sent you--_A Sonnet Sequence_. I fancy the alternative title would be briefer and therefore better as

OUR SONNET-MUSE

PROM ELIZABETH TO VICTORIA

I could not be much concerned about the unwillingness to give me a newsonnet which Rossetti at first exhibited, for I knew full well thatsooner or later the sonnet would come. Not that I recognised in him thefaintest scintillation of the affectation so common among authors asto the publication of work. But the fear of any appearance of collusionbetween himself and his critics was, as he said, a bugbear thatconstantly haunted him. Owing to this, a stranger often stood a betterchance of securing his ready and open co-operation than the mostintimate of friends. I frequently yielded to his desire that in anythingthat I might write his name should not be mentioned--too frequentlyby far, to my infinite vexation at the time, and now to my deep andineradicable regret. The sonnet-book out of which arose much of thecorrespondence printed in this chapter, contains in its preface andnotes hardly an allusion to him, and yet he was, in my judgment, out ofall reach and sight, the greatest sonnet-writer of his time. The sonnetfirst sent was _Pride of Youth_, but as this formed part of _The Houseof Life_ series, it was withdrawn, and _Raleigh's Cell in the Tower_was substituted The following hitherto unpublished sonnet was alsocontributed but withdrawn at the last moment, because of its being outof harmony with the sonnets selected to accompany it:

 ON CERTAIN ELIZABETHAN REVIVALS. 

 O ruff-embastioned vast Elizabeth, Bush to these bushel-bellied casks of wine, Home-growth, 'tis true, but rank as turpentine, -- What would we with such skittle-plays at death % Say, must we watch these brawlers' brandished lathe, Or to their reeking wit our ears incline, Because all Castaly flowed crystalline In gentle Shakspeare's modulated breath! What! must our drama with the rat-pit vie, Nor the scene close while one is left to kill! Shall this be poetry % And thou--thou--man Of blood, thou cannibalic Caliban, What shall be said to thee?--a poet?--Fie! "An honourable murderer, if you will"

 I mentioned to you [he says] William Davies, author of _Songs of a Wayfarer_ (by the bye, another man has since adopted his title). He has many excellent sonnets, and is a valued friend of mine. I shall send you, on his behalf, a copy of the book for selection of what you may please. . . . It is very unequal, but the best truly excellent. The sonnets are numerous, and some good, though the best work in the book is not among them. There are two poems--_The Garden_, and another called, I think, _On a dried-up Spring_, which are worthy of the most fastidious collections. Many of the poems are unnamed, and the whole has too much of a Herrick air. . . . 

 It is quite refreshing to find you so pleased with my good friend Davies's book, and I wish he were in London, as I would have shown him what you say, which I know would have given him pleasure. He is a man who suffers much from moods of depression, in spite of his philosophic nature. I have marked fifty pieces of different kinds throughout his book, and of these twenty-nine are sonnets. Had those fifty been alone printed, Davies would now be remembered and not forgotten: but all poets now-a-days are redundant except Tennyson. . . . 

 I am this evening writing to Davies, who is in Rome, and could not resist enclosing what you say, with so much experimental appreciativeness of his book, and of his intention to fill it with moral sunshine. I am sure he 'll send a new sonnet if he has one, but I fancy his bardic day is over. I should think he was probably not subject to melancholy when he wrote the _Wayfarer_. However, he tells me that his spirits have improved in Italy. One other little book of Herrickian verse he has written, called _The Shepherd!s Garden_, but there are no sonnets in it. Besides this, he published a volume containing a record of travel of a very interesting kind, and called _The Pilgrimage of the Tiber_. This is well known. It is illustrated, many of the drawings being by himself, for he is quite as much painter as poet. He also wrote in _The Quarterly Review_ an article on the sonnet (I should think about 1870 or so), and, a little later, one which raised great wrath, on the English School of Painting. These I have not seen. He "lacks advancement, " however; having fertile powers and little opportunity, and being none the luckier (I think) for a small independence which keeps off _compulsion_ to work, though of willingness he has abundance in many directions. 

 There is an admirable but totally unknown living poet named Dixon. I will send you two small vols, of his which he gave me long ago, but please take good care of them, and return them as soon as done with. I value them highly. I forgot till to-day that he had written any sonnets, but I see there are three in one vol. And one in another. I have marked my two favourites. He should certainly be represented in your book. If I live, I mean to write something about him in some quarter when I can. His finest passages are as fine as any living man can do. He was a canon of Carlisle Cathedral, and at present has a living somewhere. If you wanted to ask him for an original sonnet, you might mention my name, and address him at Carlisle with _Please forward_. Of course he is a Rev. 

 You will be sorry to hear that Davies has abandoned the hope of producing a new sonnet to his own satisfaction. I have again, however, urged him to the onslaught, and told him how deserving you are of his efforts. 

 Swinburne, who is a vast admirer of my sister's, thinks the _Advent_ perhaps the noblest of all her poems, and also specially loves the _Passing Away_. I do not know that I quite agree with your decided preference for the two sonnets of hers you signalise, --the _World_ is very fine, but the other, _Dead before Death_, a little sensational for her. I think _After Death_ one of her noblest, and the one _After Communion_. In my own view, the greatest of all her poems is that on France after the siege--_To-Day for Me_. A very splendid piece of feminine ascetic passion is _The Convent Threshold_. 

 I have run the sonnet you like, _St. Luke the Painter_, into a sequence with two more not yet printed, and given the three a general title of _Old and New Art_, as well as special titles to each. I shall annex them to _The House of Life_. 

 Have you ever read Vaughan? He resembles Donne a good deal as to quaintness, but with a more emotional personality. 

 I have altered the last line of octave in _Lost Days_. It now runs--

 "The undying throats of Hell, athirst alway. "

 I always had it in my mind to make a change here, as the _in_ standing in the line in its former reading clashed with _in_ occurring in the previous line. I have done what I think is a prime sonnet on the murdered Czar, which I enclose, but don't show it to a soul. 

 Theodore Watts is going to print a very fine sonnet of his own in _The Athenĉum_. It is the first verse he ever put in print, though he wrote much (when a very young man). Tell me how you like it. I think he is destined to shine in that class of poetry. 

 I knew you must like Watts's sonnets. They are splendid affairs. I am not sure that I agree with you in liking the first the better of the two: the second (_Natura Maligna_) is perhaps the deeper and finer. I have asked Watts to give you a new sonnet, and I think perhaps he will do so, or at all events give you permission to use those he has printed. He has just come into the room, and says he would like to hear from you on the subject. 

 From one rather jocular sentence in your note I judge you may include some sonnets of your own. I see no possible reason why you should not. You are really now, at your highest, among our best sonnet-writers, and have written two or three sonnets that yield to few or none whatever. I am forced, however, to request that you will not put in the one referring to myself, from my constant bugbear of any appearance of collusion. That sonnet is a very fine one--my brother was showing it me again the other day. It is not my personal gratification alone, though that is deep, because I know you are sincere, which leads me to the conclusion that it is your best, and very fine indeed. I think your Cumberland sonnet admirable. The sonnet on Byron is extremely musical in flow and the symbolic scenery of exceptional excellence. The view taken is the question with me. Byron's vehement directness, at its best, is a lasting lesson: and, dubious monument as _Don Juan_ may be, it towers over the century. Of course there is truth in what you say; but _ought_ it to be the case? and is it the case in any absolute sense? You deal frankly with your sonnets, and do not shrink from radical change. I think that on Oliver much better than when I saw it before. The opening phrases of both octave and sestette are very fine; but the second quatrain and the second terzina, though with a quality of beauty, both seem somewhat to lack distinctness. The word _rivers_ cannot be used with elision--the v is a hard pebble in the flow, and so are the closing consonants. You must put up with _streams_ if you keep the line. 

 You should have Bailey's dedicatory sonnet in _Festus_. 

 I am enclosing a fine sonnet by William Bell Scott, which I wished him to let me send you for your book. It has not yet been printed. I think I heard of some little chaffy matter between him and you, but, doubtless, you have virtually forgotten all about it. I must say frankly that I think the day when you made the speech he told me of must have been rather a wool-gathering one with you. . . . I suppose you know that Scott has written a number of fine sonnets contained in his vol of _Poems_ published about 1875, I think. 

 I directed the attention of Mr. Waddington (whom, however, I don't know personally) to a most noble sonnet by Fanny Kemble, beginning, "Art thou already weary of the way?" He has put it in, and several others of hers, but she is very unequal, and I don't know if the others should be there, but you should take the one in question. It sadly wants new punctuation, being vilely printed just as I first saw it when a boy in some twopenny edition. 

 In a memoir of Gilchrist, appended now by his widow to the _Life of Blake_, there is a sonnet by G. , perhaps interesting enough, as being exceptional, for you to ask for it; but I don't advise you, if you don't think it worth. 

 I have received from Mrs. Meynell, a sister of Eliz. Thompson, the painter, a most genuine little book of poems containing some sonnets of true spiritual beauty. I must send it you. 

 This book had just then been introduced to Rossetti with much warmth of praise by Mr. Watts, and he took to it vastly. 

This closes Rossetti's interesting letters on sonnet literature. Inreprinting his first volume of _Poems_ he had determined to removethe sonnets of _The House of Life_ to the new volume of _Ballads andSonnets_, and fill the space with the fragment of a poem written inyouth, and now called _The Bride's Prelude_. He sent me a proof. Thereader will remember that as a narrative fragment it is lessremarkable for striking incident (though never failing of interestand picturesqueness) than for a slow and psychical development whichultimately gained a great hold of the sympathies. The poem leaves behindit a sense as of a sultry day. Judging first of its merits as a song(using the word in its broad and simple sense), the poem flows on thetongue with unbroken sweetness and with a variety of cadence and lightand shade of melody which might admit of its pursuing its meanderingsthrough five times its less than 50 pages, and still keeping one'ssenses awake to the constantly recurring advent of new and pleasingliterary forms. The story is a striking one, with a great wealth ofhighly effective incident, --notably the episode of the card-playing, and of the father striking down the sword which Raoul turns against thebreast of the bride. Almost equally memorable are the scenes in whichthe lover appears, and the occasional interludes of incident in which, between the pauses of the narrative, the bridegroom's retinue are heardsporting in the courtyard without. 

The whole atmosphere of the poem is saturated in a medievalism of spiritto which no lapse of modernism does violence, and the spell of romancewhich comes with that atmosphere of the middle ages is never broken, butpreserved in the minutest most matter-of-fact details, such as the bowlof water that stood amidst flowers, and in which the sister Amelotte"slid a cup" and offered it to Aloyse to drink. But the one great charmof the poem lies in its subtle and most powerful psychical analysis, seen foreshadowed in the first mention of the bride sitting in theshade, but first felt strongly when she begs her sister to pray, andagain when she tells how, at God's hint, she had whispered something ofthe whole tale to her sister who slept

The dread introspection pictured after the sin is in the highest degreetragic, and affects one like remorse in its relentlessness, althoughless remorse than fear of discovery. The sickness of the followingcondition, with its yearnings, longings, dizziness, is very noblydone, and delicate as is the theme, and demanding a touch of unerringstrength, yet lightness, the part of the poem concerned with it containscertain of the most beautiful and stirring things. The madness (for itis not less than such) in which at the sea-side, believing Urscelyn tobe lost, the bride tells the whole tale, whilst her curse laughed withinher to see the amazement and anger of her brothers and of her father, is doubtless true enough to the frenzied state of her mind; but mysympathies go out less to that part of the poem than to the subsequentpart, in which the bride-mother is described as leaning along in thoughtafter her child, till tears, not like a wedded girl's, fall among hercurls. Highly dramatic, too, is the passage in which she fears to cursethe evil men whose evil hands have taken her child, lest from evil lipsthe curse should be a blessing. 

The characterisation seemed to be highly powerful, and, so far as itwent, finely contrasted. I could almost have wished that the love forwhich the bride suffers so much had been more dwelt upon, and Urscelynhad been made somehow more worthy of such love and sacrifice. The onlypoint in which the poem struck me, after mature reflection, as lessadmirable than certain others of the author's, lay in the circumstancethat the narrative moves slowly, but, of course, it should be rememberedthat the poem is one of emotion, not incident. There are most magicalflashes of imagery in the poem, notably in the passage beginning

 Her thought, long stagnant, stirred by speech, Gave her a sick recoil; As, dip thy fingers through the green That masks a pool, where they have been, The naked depth is black between. 

Rossetti wrote a valuable letter on his scheme for the completion of_The Bride's Prelude_:

 I was much pleased with your verdict on _The Bride's Prelude_. I think the poem is saved by its picturesqueness, but that otherwise the story up to the point reached is too purely repellent. I have the sequel quite clear in my mind, and in it the mere passionate frailty of Aloyse's first love would be followed by a true and noble love, rendered calamitous by Urscelyn, who then (having become a powerful soldier of fortune) solicits the hand of Aloyse. Thus the horror which she expresses against him to her sister on the bridal morning would be fully justified. Of course, Aloyse would confess her fault to her second lover whose love would, nevertheless, endure. The poem would gain so greatly by this sequel that I suppose I must set to and finish it one day, old as it is. I suppose it would be doubled, but hardly more. I hate long poems. 

 I quite think the card-playing passage the best thing--as a unit--in the poem: but your opinion encourages my own, that it fails nowhere of good material. It certainly moves slowly as you say, and this is quite against the rule I follow. But here was no life condensed in an episode; but a story which had necessarily to be told step by step, and a situation which had unavoidably to be anatomised. If it is not unworthy to appear with my best things, that is all I hope for it. You have pitched curiously upon some of my favourite touches, and very coincidently with Watts's views. 

Early in 1881, he wrote:

 I am writing a ballad on the death of James I. Of Scots. It is already twice the length of _The White Ship_, and has a good slice still to come. It is called _The King's Tragedy_, and is a ripper I can tell you!

 The other day I got from Italy a paper containing a really excellent and exceptional notice of my poems, written by the author of a volume also sent me containing, among other translations from the English, _Jenny, Last Confession_, etc. 

 I have been re-reading, after many years, Keats's _Otho the Great_, and find it a much better thing than I remembered, though only a draft. 

 I am much exercised as to what you mention as to a _Michael Scott_ scheme of Coleridge's. Where does he speak of it, and what is it? It is quite new to me; but curiously enough, I have a complete scheme drawn up for a ballad, to be called _Michael Scott's Wooing_, not the one I proposed beginning now--and also have long designed a picture under the same title, but of quite different motif! Allan Cunningham wrote a romance called _Sir Michael Scott_, but I never saw it. 

 I have heard from Walter Severn about a subscription proposed to erect a gravestone to his father beside that of Keats. I should like you to copy for me your sonnet on Severn. I hear it is in _The Athenĉum_, but have not seen it. I was asked to prepare an inscription, which I send you. Nothing would be so good as Severn's own words. 

 I strongly urge you to go on with your book on the _Supernatural_. The closing chapter should, I think, be on the _weird_ element in its perfection, as shown by recent poets in the mess--i. E. Those who take any lead. Tennyson has it certainly here and there in imagery, but there is no great success in the part it plays through his _Idylls_. The Old Romaunt beats him there. The strongest instance of this feeling in Tennyson that I remember is in a few lines of _The Palace of Art_:

 And hollow breasts enclosing hearts of flame; And with dim-fretted foreheads all On corpses three months old at morn she came That stood against the wall. 

 I won't answer for the precise age of the corpses--perhaps I have staled them somewhat. 

CHAPTER IX. 

It is in the nature of these Recollections that they should be personal, and it can hardly occur to any reader to complain of them for being thatwhich above all else they purport to be. I have hitherto, however, beenconscious of a desire (made manifest to my own mind by the character ofmy selections from the letters written to me) to impart to this volumean interest as broad and general as may be. But my primary purpose isnow, and has been from the first, to afford the best view at my commandof Rossetti as a man; and more helpful to such purpose than any numberof critical opinions, however interesting, have often been thosepassages in his letters where the writer has got closest to hiscorrespondent in revealing most of himself. In the chapter I am nowabout to write I must perforce set aside all limitations of reserve ifI am to convey such an idea of Rossetti's last days as fills my mind; Imust be content to speak almost exclusively of my personal relations tohim, to the enforced neglect of the more intimate relations of others. 

About six months after my first visit, Rossetti invited me to spenda week with him at his house, and this I was glad to be able to do. Ifound him in many important particulars a changed man. His complexionwas brighter than before, and this circumstance taken alone might havebeen understood to indicate improved bodily health, but in actual factit rather denoted in his case a retrograde physical tendency, as beingindicative chiefly of some recent excess in the use of his perniciousdrug. He was distinctly less inclined to corpulence, his eyes were lessbright, and had more frequently than formerly the appearance of gazingupon vacancy, and when he walked to and fro in the studio, as it washis habit to do at intervals of about an hour, he did so with a morelaboured sidelong motion than I had previously noticed, as though thebody unconsciously lost and then regained some necessary control andcommand at almost every step. Half sensible, no doubt, of a reducedcondition, or guessing perhaps the nature of my reflections from acertain uneasiness which it baffled my efforts to conceal, he paused foran instant one evening in the midst of these melancholy perambulationsand asked me how he struck me as to health. More frankly thanjudiciously I answered promptly, Less well than formerly. It was aluckless remark, for Rossetti's prevailing wish at that moment was toconceal even from himself his lowered state, and the time was still tocome when he should crave the questionable sympathy of those who said helooked even more ill than he felt. Just before this, my second visit, he had completed his _King's Tragedy_, and I had heard from his own lipshow prostrate the emotional strain involved in the production of thepoem had first left him. Casting himself now on the couch in an attitudeindicative of unusual exhaustion, he said the ballad had taken much outof him. "It was as though my life ebbed out with it, " he said, and insaying so much of the nervous tension occasioned by the work in questionhe did not overstate the truth as it presented itself to other eyes. Time after time while the ballad was in course of production, he hadmade effort to read it aloud to the friend to whose judgment his poetrywas always submitted, but had as frequently failed to do so from thephysical impossibility of restraining the tears that at every stagewelled up out of an overwrought nature, for the poet never existedperhaps who, while at work, lived so vividly in the imagined situation. And the weight of that work was still upon him when we met again. Hisvoice seemed to have lost much in quality, and in compass too to havediminished: or if the volume of sound remained the same, it appeared tohave retired (so to express it) inwards, and to convey, when he spoke, the idea of a man speaking as much to himself as to others. More thanever now the scene of his life lacked for me some necessary vitality: itbreathed an atmosphere of sorrow: it was like the dream of a distemperedimagination out of which there came no welcome awakening, to say it wasnot true. On the side of his intellectual life Rossetti was obviouslyunder less constraint with me than ever before. Previously he had seemedto make a conscious effort to speak generously of all contemporaries, and cordially of every friend with whom he was brought into activerelations; and if, by force of some stray impulse, he was ever led tosay a disparaging word of any one, he forthwith made a palpable, andsometimes amusing, effort so to obliterate the injurious impressionas to convey the idea that he wished it to appear that he had not saidanything at all. But now this restraint was thrown aside. 

I perceived that the drug by which he was enslaved caused what I maybest characterise as intermittent waves of morbid suspiciousness asto the good faith of every individual, including his best, oldest, and truest friends, as to whom the most inexplicable delusions wouldsuddenly come, and as suddenly go. He would talk in the gravest and mostearnest way of the wrongs he had suffered at the hands of a dear friend, and then the moment his eloquence had drawn from me an exclamation ofsympathy for him, he would turn round and heap upon the same individualan extravagance of praise for his fidelity and good faith. And now, he so classed his contemporaries as to leave no doubt that he wasduly sensible of his own place amongst them, preserving, meantime, adignified reticence as to the extent of his personal claims. 

His life was an anachronism. Such a man should have had no dealings withthe nineteenth century: he belonged to the sixteenth, or perhaps thethirteenth, and in Italy not in England. It would, nevertheless, bewrong to say that he was wholly indifferent to important politicalissues, of which he took often a very judicial view. In dismissingfurther mention of this second and prolonged meeting with Rossetti, it only remains to me to say (as a necessary, if strictly personal, explanation of much that will follow), that on the evening preceding mydeparture, he asked me, in the event of my deciding to come to live inLondon, to take up my quarters at his house. To this proposal I made noreply: and neither his speech nor my silence needs any comment, and Ishall offer none. 

A month or two later my own health gave way, and then, a change ofresidence being inevitable, Rossetti repeated his invitation; but aLondon campaign, under such conditions as were necessarily entailedby pitching one's tent with him, got further and further away, untilI seemed to see it through the inverse end of a telescope whereof theslides were being drawn out, out, every day further and further. Idetermined to spend half a year among' the mountains of Cumberland, and went up to the Vale of St. John. Scarcely had I settled there whenRossetti wrote that he must himself soon leave London: that he waswearied out absolutely, and unable to sleep at night, that if he couldonly reach that secluded vale he would breathe a purer air mentallyas well as physically. The mood induced by contemplation of thetranquillity of my retreat over-against the turmoil and distractionsof the city _in_ which, though not _of_ which, he was, added to thedeepening exhaustion which had already begun when I left him, hadprevailed with him, he said, to ask me to come down to London, andtravel back with him. "Supposing, " he wrote, "I were to ask you to cometo town in a fortnight's time from now--I returning with you for a whileinto the country--would that be feasible to you?"

Once unsettled in the environments within which for years he had movedcontentedly, a thousand reasons were found for the contemplated step, and simultaneously a thousand obstacles arose to impede the execution ofit. "They have at length taken my garden, " he said, "as they have longthreatened to do, and now they are really setting about building uponit. I do not in the least know what my plans may be. " And again: "Itseems certain that I must leave this house and seek another. Is thereany house in the neighbourhood of the Vale of St. John with a largishroom one could paint in (to N. Or NE. )?" The idea of his taking up hispermanent abode so far out of the market circle was, I well knew, justone of those impracticable notions which, with Rossetti, were abandonedas soon as conceived, so I was not surprised to hear from him asfollows, by the succeeding post: "In what I wrote yesterday I saidsomething as to a possibility of leaving town, but I now perceive thisis not practicable at present; therefore need not trouble you to takenote of neighbouring houses. " Presently he wrote again: "Bedevilmentsthicken: the garden is ploughed up, and I 've not stirred out of thehouse for a week: I must leave this place at once if I am to leave italive. " {*}

 * It is but just to say that, although Rossetti wrote thus peevishly of what was quite inevitable, --the yielding up of his fine garden, --he would at other times speak of the great courtesy and good-nature of Messrs. Pemberton, in allowing him the use of the garden after it had been severed from the property he hired. 

"My present purpose is to take another house in London. Could you notcome down and beat up agents for me? I know you will not deny me yourhelp. I hear of a house at Brixton, with a garden of two acres, and only£130 a year. " In a day or two even this last hope had proved delusive:"I find the house at Brixton will not do, and I hear of nothing else. . . . I am anxious as to having become perfectly deaf on the right side ofmy head. Partial approaches to this have sometimes occurred to me andpassed away, so I will not be too much troubled at it. " A little laterhe wrote: "Now my housekeeper is leaving me, her mother being very ill. Can you not come to my assistance? Come at once and we will set sailin one boat. " I appear to have replied to this last appeal in a toneof some little scepticism as to his remaining long in the same mindrelative to our mutual housemating, for subsequently he says: "At thiswriting I can see no likelihood of my not remaining in the mind that, in case of your coming to London, your quarters should be taken up here. The house is big enough for two, even if they meant to be strangers toeach other. You would have your own rooms and we should meet just whenwe pleased. You have got a sufficient inkling of my exceptional habitsnot to be scared by them. It is true, at times my health and spirits arevariable, but I am sure we should not be squabbling. However, it seemsyou have no intention of a quite immediate move, and we can speakfarther of it. " I readily consented to do whatever seemed feasibleto help him out of his difficulties, which existed, however, as Iperceived, much more in his own mind than in actual fact. I thoughta brief holiday in the solitude within which I was then located wouldprobably be helpful in restoring a tranquil condition of mind, and ashis brother, Mr. Scott, Mr. Watts, Mr. Shields, and other friends inLondon, were of a similar opinion, efforts were made to induce himto undertake the journey which he had been the first to think of. His oldest friend, Mr. Madox Brown (whose presence would have been asvaluable now as it had proved to be on former occasions), was away atManchester, and remained there throughout the time of his last illness. His moods at this time were too variable to be relied upon three daystogether, and so I find him writing:

 Many thanks for the information as to your Shady Vale, which seems a vision--a distant one, alas!--of Paradise. Perhaps I may reach it yet. . . . I am now thinking of writing another ballad-poem to add at the end of my volume. It is romantic, not historical I have a clear scheme for it and believe your scenery might help me much if I could get there. When you hear that scheme, you will, I believe, pronounce it precisely fitted to the scenery you describe as now surrounding you. That scenery I hope to reach a little later, but meantime should much like to see you in London and return with you. 

The proposed ballad was to be called _The Orchard Pits_ and was to beillustrative of the serpent fascination of beauty, but it was neverwritten. Contented now to await the issue of events, he proceeded towrite on subjects of general interest:

 Keats (page 154, vol. I. , of Houghton's Life, etc. ) mentions among other landscape features the Vale of St. John. So you may think of him in the neighbourhood as well as (or, if you like, rather than) Wordsworth. 

 I have been reading again Hogg's Shelley. S. Appears to have been as mad at Keswick as everywhere else, but not madder;-- that he could not compass. 

At this juncture some unlooked-for hitch in the arrangements thenpending for the sale of the _Dante's Dream_ to the Corporation ofLiverpool rendered my presence in London inevitable, and upon my arrivalI found that Rossetti had fitted out rooms for my reception, althoughI had never down to that moment finally decided to avail myself of anoffer which upon its first being broached, appeared to be too one-sideda bargain (in which of course the sacrifice seemed to be Rossetti's) toadmit of my entertaining it. In this way I drifted into my position asRossetti's housemate. 

The letters and scraps of notes I have embodied in the foregoing willprobably convey a better idea of Rossetti's native irresolution, as itwas made manifest to me in the early part of 1881, than any abstractdefinition, however faithful and exact, could be expected to do. Irresolution was indubitably his most noticeable quality at the timewhen I came into active relation with him; and if I be allowed to haveany perception of character and any acquaintance with the fundamentaltraits that distinguish man from man, I shall say unhesitatingly (thoughI well know how different is the opinion of others) that irresolutionwith melancholy lay at the basis of his nature. I have heard Mr. Swinburne speak of a cheerfulness of deportment in early life, whichimparted an idea as of one who could not easily be depressed. I haveheard Mr. Watts speak of the days at Kelmscott Manor House, wherehe first knew him, and where Rossetti was the most delightful ofcompanions. I have heard Canon Dixon speak of a determination of purposewhich yielded to no sort of obstacle, but carried its point by the sheervehemence with which it asserted it. I can only say that I was witnessto neither characteristic. Of traits the reverse of these, I wasconstantly receiving evidence; but let it be remembered that before Ijoined Rossetti (which was only in the last year of his life) in thatintimate relation which revealed to my unwilling judgment every foibleand infirmity of character, the whole nature of the man had beenvitiated by an enervating drug. At my meeting with him the brighterside of his temperament had been worn away in the night-troubles of hisunrestful couch; and of that needful volition, which establishes fora man the right to rule not others but himself, only the mockery andinexplicable vagaries of temper remained. When I knew him, Rossetti wasdevoid of resolution. At that moment at which he had finally summonedup every available and imaginable reason for pursuing any particularcourse, his purpose wavered and his heart gave way. When I knew him, Rossetti was destitute of cheerfulness or content. At that instant, at which the worst of his shadowy fears had been banished by somefortuitous occurrence that lit up with an unceasing radiation of hopeevery prospect of life, he conjured out of its very brightness freshcause for fear and sadness. True, indeed, these may have been no morethan symptoms of those later phenomena which came of disease, andforeshadowed death. Other minds may reduce to a statement of cause andeffect what I am content to offer as fact. 

Upon settling with Rossetti in July 1881, I perceived that his healthwas weaker. His tendency to corpulence had entirely disappeared, hisfeebleness of step had become at certain moments painfully apparent, and his temper occasionally betrayed signs of bitterness. To myself, personally, he was at this stage as genial as of old, or if for aninstant he gave vent to an unprovoked outburst of wrath, he would farmore than atone for it by a look of inexpressible remorse and somefeeling words of regret, whereof the import sometimes was--

I wish you were indeed my son, for though then I should still have noright to address you so, I should at least have some right to expectyour forgiveness. 

In such moods of more than needful solicitude for one's acutestsensibilities, Rossetti was absolutely irresistible. 

As I have said, the occupant of this great gloomy house, in which I hadnow become a resident, had rarely been outside its doors for two years;certainly never afoot, and only in carriages with his friends. Upon thesecond night of my stay, I announced my intention of taking a walk onthe Chelsea embankment, and begged him to accompany me. To my amazementhe yielded, and every night for a week following, I succeeded ininducing him to repeat the now unfamiliar experience. It was obviousenough to himself that he walked totteringly, with infinite expenditureof physical energy, and returned in a condition of exhaustion that lefthim prostrate for an hour afterwards. The root of all this evil was soonapparent. He was exceeding with the chloral, and little as I expected ordesired to exercise a moral guardianship over the habits of this greatman, I found myself insensibly dropping into that office. 

Negotiations for the sale of the Liverpool picture were now complete;the new volume of poems and the altered edition of the old volume hadbeen satisfactorily passed through the press; and it might have beenexpected that with the anxiety occasioned by these enterprises, would pass away the melancholy which in a nature like Rossetti's theynaturally induced. The reverse was the fact, He became more and moredepressed as each palpable cause of depression was removed, and moreand more liable to give way to excess with the drug. By his brother, Mr. Watts, Mr. Shields, and others who had only too frequently in times pasthad experience of similar outbreaks, this failure in spirits, withall its attendant physical weakness, was said to be due primarily tohypochondriasis. Hence the returning necessity to get him away (asMr. Madox Brown had done at a previous crisis) for a change of air andscene. Once out of this atmosphere of gloom, we hoped that amid cheerfulsurroundings his health would speedily revive. Infinite were the effortsthat had to be made, and countless the precautions that had to be takenbefore he could be induced to set out, but at length we found ourselvesupon our way to Keswick, at nine p. M. , one evening in September, ina special carriage packed with as many artist's trappings and as manybooks as would have lasted for a year. 

We reached Penrith as the grey of dawn had overspread the sky. It wassix o'clock as we got into the carriage that was to drive us through thevale of St. John to our destination at the Legberthwaite end of it. Themorning was now calm, the mountains looked loftier, grander, and yetmore than ever precipitous from the road that circled about their base. Nothing could be heard but the calls of the awakening cattle, the rumbleof cataracts far away, and the rush and surge of those that were near. Rossetti was all but indifferent to our surroundings, or displayed onlysuch fitful interest in them as must have been affected out of a kindlydesire to please me. He said the chloral he had taken daring the journeywas upon him, and he could not see. At length we reached the house thatwas for some months to be our home. It stood at the foot of a ghyll, which, when swollen by rain, was majestic in volume and sound. Thelittle house we had rented was free from all noise other than theoccasional voice of a child or bark of a dog. Here at least he mightbury the memory of the distractions of the city that vexed him. Savefor the ripple of the river that flowed at his feet, the bleatingof sheep on Golden Howe, the echo of the axe of the woodman who wasthinning the neighbouring wood, and the morning and evening mail-coachhorn, he might delude himself into forgetfulness that he belonged anylonger to this noisy earth. 

Next day Rossetti was exceptionally well, and astounded me by theproposal that we should ascend Golden Howe together--a little mountainof some 1000 feet that stands at the head of Thirlmere. With never ahope on my part of our reaching the summit, we set out for that purpose, but through no doubt the exhilarating effect of the mountain air, heactually compassed the task he had proposed to himself, and sat for anhour on that highest point from whence could be seen the Skiddaw rangeto the north, Haven's Crag to the west, Styx Pass and Helvellyn to theeast, and the Dunmail Raise to the south, with the lake below. Rossettiwas struck by the variety of configuration in the hills, and even moreby the variety of colour. But he was no great lover of landscape beauty, and the majestic scene before us produced less effect upon his mind thanmight perhaps have been expected. He seemed to be almost unconscious ofthe unceasing atmospheric changes that perpetually arrest and startle. The observer in whom love of external nature in her grander moods hasnot been weakened by disease. The complete extent of the Vale of St. John could be traversed by the eye from the eminence upon which we sat. The valley throughout its three-mile length is absolutely secluded: onehas only the hills for company, and to say the truth they are sometimesfearful company too. Usually the landscape wears a cheerful aspect, butat times long fleecy clouds drive midway across the mountains, leavingthe tops visible. The scenery is highly awakening to the imagination. Even the country people are imaginative, and the country is fullof ghostly legend. I was never at any moment sensible that theseenvironments affected Rossetti: assuredly they never agitated him, andno effort did he make to turn them to account for the purposes ofthe romantic ballad he had spoken of as likely to grow amidst suchsurroundings. 

Being much more than ordinarily cheerful during the first evenings ofour stay in the North, he talked sometimes of his past life and of themen and women he had known in earlier years. Carlyle's _Reminiscences_had not long before been published. Mrs. Carlyle, therein soextravagantly though naturally belauded, he described as a bitterlittle woman, with, however, the one redeeming quality of unostentatiouscharity: "The poor of Chelsea, " he said, "always spoke well of her. ""George Eliot, " whose genius he much admired, he had ceased to know longbefore her death, but he spoke of the lady as modest and retiring, andamiable to a fault when the outer crust of reticence had been brokenthrough. Longfellow had called upon him whilst he was painting the_Dante's Dream_. The old poet was Courteous and complimentary inthe last degree; he seemed, however, to know little or nothing aboutpainting as an art, and also to have fallen into the error of thinkingthat Rossetti the painter and Sossetti the poet were different men; inshort, that the Dante of that name was the painter, and the William thepoet. Upon leaving the house, Longfellow had said: "I have been glad tomeet you, and should like to have met your brother; pray, tell him howmuch I admire his beautiful poem, _The Blessed Damozel_" Giving nohint of the error, Rossetti said he had answered, "I will tell him. " Hepainted a little during our stay in the North, for it was whilstthere that he began the beautiful replica of his _Proserpina_, now theproperty of Mr. Valpy. I found it one of my best pleasures to watch apicture growing under his hand, and thought it easy to see throughthe medium of his idealised heads, cold even in their loveliness, unsubstantial in their passion, that to the painter life had been adream into which nothing entered that was not as impalpable as itself. Tainted by the touch of melancholy that is the blight that clings to thepurest beauty, his pictured faces were, in my view, akin to his poetry, every line of which, as he sometimes recited it, seemed as though itechoed the burden of a bygone sorrow--the sorrow of a dream rather thanthat of a life, or of a life that had been itself a dream. I also thenrealised what Mr. Theodore Watts has said in a letter just nowwritten to me from Sark, that, "apart from any question of technicalshortcomings, one of Rossetti's strongest claims to the attention ofposterity was that of having invented, in the three-quarter-lengthpictures painted from one face, a type of female beauty which was akinto none other, --which was entirely new, in short, --and which, forwealth of sublime and mysterious suggestion, unaided by complex dramaticdesign, was unique in the art of the world. "

On one occasion the talk turned on the eccentricities and affectationsof men of genius, and I did my best to-ridicule them unsparingly, sayingthey were a purely modern extravagance, the highest intellects of othertimes being ever the sanest, Shakspeare, Cervantes, Goethe, Coleridge, Wordsworth; the root of the evil had been Shelley, who was mad, and inimitation of whose madness, modern men of genius must many of thembe mad also, until it had come to such a pass-that if a gifted manconducted himself throughout life with probity and propriety weinstantly began to doubt the value of his gifts. Rossetti evidentlythought that in all this I was covertly hitting out at himself, andcut short the conversation with an unequivocal hint that he had noaffectations, and could not account himself an authority with respect tothem. 

With such talk a few of our evenings were spent, but too soon theinsatiable craving for the drug came with renewed force, and then allpleasant intercourse was banished. Night after night we sat up untileleven, twelve, and one o'clock, watching the long hours go by withheavy steps; waiting, waiting, waiting for the time at which he couldtake his first draught, and drop into his pillowed place and snatch adreamless sleep of three or four hours' duration. 

In order to break the monotony of nights such as I describe I sometimesread from Fielding, Richardson, and Sterne, but more frequently inducedRossetti to recite. Thus, with failing voice, he would again and againattempt, at my request, his _Cloud Confines_, or passages from _TheKing's Tragedy_, and repeatedly, also, Poe's _Ulalume_ and _Raven_. Iremember that, touching the last-mentioned of these poems, he remarkedthat out of his love of it while still a boy his own _Blessed Damozel_originated. "I saw, " he said, "that Poe had done the utmost it waspossible to do with the grief of the lover on earth, and so I determinedto reverse the conditions, and give utterance to the yearning of theloved one in heaven. " At that time of the year the night closed in asearly as seven or eight o'clock, and then in that little house amongthe solitary hills his disconsolate spirit would sometimes sink beyondsolace into irreclaimable depths of depression. 

It was impossible that such a condition of things should last, and itwas with unspeakable relief that I heard Rossetti express a desire toreturn home. Mr. Watts, who at that time was at Stratford-upon-Avon, hadpromised to join us, but now wrote to say that this was impossible. Hadit been otherwise, Rossetti would willingly have remained, but now helonged to get back to London. His life had lost its joys. The success ofhis Liverpool picture was almost as nothing to him, and the enthusiasticreception given to his book gave him not more than a passing pleasure, though he was deeply touched by the sympathetic and exhaustive criticismpublished by Professor Dowden in _The Academy_, as well as by ProfessorColvin's friendly monograph in _The World_. At length one night, a monthafter our arrival, we set out on our return, and well do I remember thepathos of his words as I helped him (now feebler than ever) into hishouse. "Thank God! home at last, and never shall I leave it again!"

Very natural was the deep concern of his friends, especially of hisbrother and Mr. Shields, at finding him return even less well than hehad set out. With deeper reliance on past knowledge of the man, Mr. Watts still took a hopeful view, attributing the physical prostrationto hypochondriasis, which might, in common with all similar nervousailments, impose as much pain upon the victim as if the sufferingscomplained of had a real foundation in positive disease, but mightalso give way at any moment when the victim could be induced to takea hopeful view of life. The cheerfulness of Mr. Watts's society, afterwhat I well know must have been the lugubrious nature of my own, had atfirst its usual salutary effect upon Rossetti's spirits, and I will notforbear to say that I, too, welcomed it as a draught of healing morningair after a month-long imprisonment in an atmosphere of gloom. But Iwas not yet freed of my charge. The sense of responsibility which in thesolitude of the mountains had weighed me down, was now indeed dividedwith his affectionate family and the friends who were Rossetti's friendsbefore they were mine, and who came at this juncture with willinghelp, prompted chiefly, of course, by devotion to the great man in soretrouble, but also--I must allow myself to think--in one or two cases bydesire to relieve me of some of the burden of the task that had fallenso unexpectedly upon me. Foremost among such disinterested friends wasof course the friend I have spoken of so frequently in these pages, and for whom I now felt a growing regard arising as much out of myperception of the loyalty of his comradeship as the splendour of hisgifts. But after him in solicitous service to Rossetti, at thismoment of great need, came Frederick Shields (the fine tissue of whosehighly-strung nature must have been sorely tried by the strain to whichit was subjected), Mr. W. B. Scott, whose visits were never more warmlywelcomed by Rossetti than at this season, the good and gifted Miss Boyd, and of course Rossetti's brother, sister, and mother, to each of whom hewas affectionately attached. Strange enough it seemed that this man who, for years had shunned the world and chosen solitude when he might havehad society, seemed at last to grow weary of his loneliness. But so itwas. Rossetti became daily more and more dependent upon his friendsfor company that should not fail him, for never for an hour now could heendure to be alone. Remembering this, I almost doubt if by nature he wasat any time a solitary. There are men who feel more deeply the sense ofisolation amidst the busiest crowds than within the narrowest circle ofintimates, and I have heard from Rossetti reminiscences of his earlierlife that led me to believe that he was one of the number. Perhaps, after all, he wandered from the world rather from the dread than withthe hope of solitude. In such pleasant intercourse as the visits of thefriends I have named afforded, was the sadness of the day in a measuredissipated, but when night came I never failed to realise that noprogress whatever had been made. I tried to check the craving forchloral, but I could as easily have checked the rising tide: and wherethe lifelong assiduity of older friends had failed to eradicate amorbid, ruinous, and fatal thirst, it was presumptous if not ridiculousto imagine that the task could be compassed by a frail creature withheart and nerves of wax. But the whole scene was now beginning to havean interest for me more personal and more serious than I have yet givenhint of. The constant fret and fume of this life of baffled effort, of struggle with a deadly drug that had grown to have an objectiveexistence in my mind as the existence of a fiend, was not without asensible effect upon myself. I became ill for a few days with a lowfever, but far worse than this was the fact that there was creeping overme the wild influence of Rossetti's own distempered imaginings. 

Once conscious of such influence I determined to resist it, but how todo so I knew not without flying utterly away from an atmosphere in whichmy best senses seemed to stagnate, and burying the memory of it forever. 

The crisis was pending, and sooner than we expected it came. A nursewas engaged. One evening Dr. Westland Marston and his son Philip BourkeMarston came to spend a few hours with Rossetti, For a while he seemedmuch cheered by their bright society, but later on he gave thosemanifestations of uneasiness which I had learned to know too well. Removing restlessly from seat to seat, he ultimately threw himselfupon the sofa in that rather awkward attitude which I have previouslydescribed as characteristic of him in moments of nervous agitation. Presently he called out that his arm had become paralysed, and, uponattempting to rise, that his leg also had lost its power. We werenaturally startled, but knowing the force of his imagination in itsinfluence on his bodily capacity, we tried playfully to banish the idea. Raising him to his feet, however, we realised that from whatever cause, he had lost the use of the limbs in question, and in the utmost alarmwe carried him to his bedroom, and hurried away for Mr. Marshall It wasfound that he had really undergone a species of paralysis, called, Ithink, loss of co-ordinative power. The juncture was a critical one, andit was at length decided by the able medical adviser just named, thatthe time had come when the chloral, which was at the root of all thismischief, should be decisively, entirely, and instantly cut off. Tocompass this end a young medical man, Mr. Henry Maudsley, was broughtinto the house as a resident to watch and manage the case in theintervals of Mr. Marshall's visits. It is not for me to offer astatement of what was done, and done so ably at this period. I only knowthat morphia was at first injected as a substitute for the narcotic thesystem had grown to demand; that Rossetti was for many hours deliriouswhilst his body was passing through the terrible ordeal of having toconquer the craving for the former drug, and that three or four morningsafter the experiment had been begun he awoke calm in body, and clearin mind, and grateful in heart. His delusions and those intermittentsuspicions of his friends which I have before alluded to, were now gone, as things in the past of which he hardly knew whether in actual factthey had or had not been. Christmas Day was now nigh at hand, and, stillconfined to his room, he begged me to promise to spend that day withhim; "otherwise, " he said, "how sad a day it must be for me, for Icannot fairly ask any other. " With a tenderness of sympathy I shall notforget, Mr. Scott had asked me to dine that day at his more cheerfulhouse; but I reflected that this was to be my first Christmas in Londonand it might be Rossetti's last, so I put by pleasanter considerations. We dined alone, but, somewhat later, William Rossetti, with truebrotherly affection, left the guests at his own house, and ran downto spend an hour with the invalid. We could hear from time to time theringing of the bells of the neighbouring churches, and I noticed thatRossetti was not disturbed by them as he had been formerly. Indeed, thedrug once removed, he was in every sense a changed man. He talked thatnight brightly, and with more force and incisiveness, I thought, than hehad displayed for months. There was the ring of affection in his tone ashe said he had always had loyal friends; and then he spoke with feelingof Mr. Watts's friendship, of Mr. Shields's, and afterwards he spoke ofMr. Burne Jones who had just previously visited him, as well as of Mr. Madox Brown, and his friendship of a lifetime; of Mr. Swinburne, Mr. Morris, Mr. Stephens, Mr. Boyce, and other early friends. He said a wordor two of myself which I shall not repeat, and then spoke with emotionof his mother and sister, and of his sister who was dead, and how theywere supported through their sore trials by religious resignation. Heasked if I, like Shields, was a believer, and seemed altogether in asofter and more spiritual mood than I remember to have noticed before. 

With such talk we passed the Christmas night of 1881. Rossetti recoveredpower in some measure, was able to get down to the studio, and see thefriends who called--Mr. F. E. Leyland frequently, Lord and Lady MountTemple, Mrs. Sumner, Mr. Boyce, Mr. F. G. Stephens, Mr. Gilchrist, Mr. And Mrs. Virtue Tebbs, Mrs. Stillman, Mrs. Coronio, and Mr. C. And Mr. A. Ionides occasionally, as well as those previously named. A visitfrom Dr. Hueffer of the _Times_ (of whose gifts he had a high opinion), enlivened him perceptibly. But he did not recover, and at the end ofJanuary 1882 it was definitely determined that he should go to thesea-side. I was asked to accompany him, and did so. At the rightjuncture Mr. J. P. Seddon very hospitably tendered the use of hishandsome bungalow at Birchington-on-Sea, a little watering-place fourmiles west of Margate. There we spent nine weeks. At first going out hewas able to take short walks on the cliffs, or round the road that windsabout the churchyard, but his strength grew less and less every dayand hour. We were constantly visited by Mr. Watts, whose devotion neverfailed, and Rossetti would brighten up at the prospect of one of hisvisits, and become sensibly depressed when he had gone. Mr. WilliamSharp, too (a young friend of whose gifts as a poet Rossetti had agenuine appreciation, and by whom he had been visited at intervalsfor some time), came out occasionally and cheered up the sufferer ina noticeable degree. Then his mother and sister came and stayed in thehouse during many weeks at the last. How shall I speak of the tendernessof their solicitude, of their unwearying attentions, in a word of theirardent and reciprocated love of the illustrious son and brother for whomthey did the thousand gentle offices which they alone could have done!The end was drawing on, and we all knew the fact. Rossetti had actuallytaken to poetical composition afresh, and had written a facetious ballad(conceived years before) of the length of _The White Ship_, called _JanVan Hunks_, embodying an eccentric story of a Dutchman's wager to smokeagainst the devil. This was to appear in a miscellany of stories andpoems by himself and Mr. Watts, a project which had been a favourite oneof his for some years, and in which he now, in his last moments, took arevived interest strange and strong. 

About this time he derived great gratification from reading an articleon him and his works in _Le Livre_ by Mr. Joseph Knight, an old friendto whom he was deeply attached, and for whose gifts he had a genuineadmiration. Perhaps the very last letter Rossetti penned was written toMr. Knight upon the subject of this article. 

His intellect was as powerful as in his best days, and freer than everof hallucinations. But his bodily strength grew less and less. His sightbecame feebler, and then he abandoned the many novels that had recentlysolaced his idler hours, and Miss Rossetti read aloud to him. Amongother books she read Dickens's _Tale of Two Cities_, and he seemeddeeply touched by Sidney Carton's sacrifice, and remarked that he wouldlike to paint the last scene of the story. 

On Wednesday morning, April 5th, I went into the bedroom to which he hadfor some days been confined, and wrote out to his dictation two sonnetswhich he had composed on a design of his called _The Sphinx_, and whichhe wished to give, together with the drawing and the ballad beforedescribed, to Mr. Watts for publication in the volume just mentioned. On the Thursday morning I found his utterance thick, and his speech fromthat cause hardly intelligible. It chanced that I had just been readingMr. Buchanan's new volume of poems, and in the course of conversationI told him the story of the ballad called _The Lights of Leith_, andhe was affected by the pathos of it. He had heard of that author'sretractation{*} of the charges involved in the article published tenyears earlier, and was manifestly touched by the dedication of theromance _God and the Man_. He talked long and earnestly that morning, and it was our last real interview. He spoke of his love of earlyEnglish ballad literature, and of how when he first met with it he hadsaid to himself: "There lies your line. "

 * The retractation, which now has a peculiar literary interest, was made in the following verses, and should, I think, be recorded here:

 To an old Enemy. 

 I would have snatch'd a bay-leaf from thy brow, Wronging the chaplet on an honoured head; In peace and charity I bring thee now A lily-flower instead. Pure as thy purpose, blameless as thy song, Sweet as thy spirit, may this offering be; Forget the bitter blame that did thee wrong, And take the gift from me!

 In a later edition of the romance the following verses are added to the dedication:

 To Dante Gabriel Rossetti:

 Calmly, thy royal robe of death around thee, Thou Bleekest, and weeping brethren round thee stand-- Gently they placed, ere yet God's angel crown'd thee, My lily in thy hand! I never knew thee living, O my brother! But on thy breast my lily of love now lies; And by that token, we shall know each other, When God's voice saith "Arise!"

"Can you understand me?" he asked abruptly, alluding to the thickness ofhis utterance. 

"Perfectly. "

"Nurse Abrey cannot: what a good creature she is!"

That night we telegraphed to Mr. Marshall, to Mr. W. M. Rossetti, andMr. Watts, and wrote next morning to Mr. Shields, Mr. Scott, and Mr. Madox Brown. It had been found by the resident medical man, Dr. Harris, that in Rossetti's case kidney disease had supervened. His dear motherand I sat up until early morning with him, and when we left him hissister took our place and remained with him the whole of that andsubsequent nights. He sat up in bed most of the time and said a sort ofstupefaction had removed all pain. He crooned over odd lines of poetry. "My own verses torment me, " he said. Then he half-sang, half-recited, snatches from one of Iago's songs in _Othello_. "Strange things, " hemurmured, "to come into one's head at such a moment. " I told him hisbrother and Mr. Watts would be with him to-morrow. "Then you reallythink that I am dying? At _last_ you think so; but _I_ was right fromthe first. "

Next day, Good Friday, the friends named did come, and weak as he was, he was much cheered by their presence. The following day Mr. Marshallarrived. 

That gentleman recognised the alarming position of affairs, but he wasnot without hope. He administered a sort of hot bath, and on Sundaymorning Rossetti was perceptibly brighter. Mr. Shields had now arrived, and one after one of his friends, including Mr. Leyland, who was at thetime staying at Ramsgate, and made frequent calls, visited him in hisroom and found him able to listen and sometimes to talk. In the eveningthe nurse gave a cheering report of his condition, and encouraged bysuch prospects, Mr. Watts, Mr. Shields, and myself, gave way to goodspirits, and retired to an adjoining room. About nine o'clock Mr. Watts left us, and returning in a short time, said he had been in thesickroom, and had had some talk with Rossetti, and found him cheerful. An instant afterwards we heard a scream, followed by a loud rapping atour door. We hurried into Rossetti's room and found him in convulsions. Mr. Watts raised him on one side, whilst I raised him on the other; hismother, sister, and brother, were immediately present (Mr. Shields hadfled away for the doctor); there were a few moments of suspense, andthen we saw him die in our arms. Mrs. William Rossetti arrived fromManchester at this moment. 

Thus on Easter Day Rossetti died. It was hard to realise that he wasactually dead; but so it was, and the dreadful fact had at last comeupon us with a horrible suddenness. Of the business of the next fewdays I need say nothing. I went up to London in the interval between thedeath and burial, and the old house at Chelsea, which, to my mind, in mytime had always been desolate, was now more than ever so, that the manwho had been its vitalising spirit lay dead eighty miles away by theside of the sea. It was decided to bury the poet in the churchyardof Birchington. The funeral, which was a private one, was attended byrelatives and personal friends only, with one or two well-wishers fromLondon. 

Next day we saw most of the friends away by train, and, some days later, Mr. Watts was with myself the last to leave. I thought we two were drawnthe closer each to each from the loss of him by whom we were broughttogether. We walked one morning to the churchyard and found the grave, which nestles under the south-west porch, strewn with flowers. The church is an ancient and quaint early Gothic edifice, somewhatrejuvenated however, but with ivy creeping over its walls. The prospectto the north is of sea only: a broad sweep of landscape so flat and sofeatureless that the great sea dominates it. As we stood there, with therumble of the rolling waters borne to us from the shore, we felt thatthough we had little dreamed that we should lay Rossetti in his lastsleep here, no other place could be quite so fit. It was, indeed, theresting-place for a poet. In this bed, of all others, he must at length, after weary years of sleeplessness, sleep the only sleep that is deepand will endure. Thinking of the incidents which I have in this chaptertried to record, my mind reverted to a touching sonnet which the friendby my side had just printed; and then, for the first time, I was struckby its extraordinary applicability to him whom we had laid below. In itsprinted form it was addressed to Heine, and ran:

 Thou knew'st that island far away and lone Whose shores are as a harp, where billows break In spray of music and the breezes shake O'er spicy seas a woof of colour and tone, While that sweet music echoes like a moan In the island's heart, and sighs around the lake Where, watching fearfully a watchful snake, A damsel weeps upon her emerald throne. 

 Life's ocean, breaking round thy senses' shore, Struck golden song as from the strand of day: For us the joy, for thee the fell foe lay-- Pain's blinking snake around the fair isle's core, Turning to sighs the enchanted sounds that play Around thy lovely island evermore. 

"How strangely appropriate it is, " I said, "to Rossetti, and now Iremember how deeply he was moved on reading it. "

"He guessed its secret; I addressed it, for disguise, to Heine, to whomit was sadly inapplicable. I meant it for _him_. "

THE END.