There are, I believe, many continuations of _Christabel_. Tupper did

one! I myself saw a continuation in childhood, long before I saw the

original, and was all agog to see it for years. Our household was all of

Italian, not English environment, and it was only when I went to school

later that I began to ransack bookstalls. The continuation in question

was by one Eliza Stewart, and appeared in a shortlived monthly thing

called _Smallwood’s Magazine_, to which my father contributed

some Italian poetry, and so it came into the house. I thought the

continuation spirited then, and perhaps it may have been so. This must

have 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’s

first appearance! I did not think it worth two shillings,--which was the

price.... Have you seen the continuation of _Christabel_ in _European

Magazine?_ of course it _might_ have been Coleridge’s, so far as the

date of the composition of the original was concerned; but of course it

was not his.

I imagine the “Sir Vinegar Sponge” who translated “_Christabess_ from

the _Doggerel_” must belong to the family of Sponges described by

Coleridge himself, who give out the liquid they take in much dirtier

than they imbibe it. I thought it very possible that Coleridge’s epigram

to this effect might have been provoked by the lampoon referred to, and

Rossetti also thought this probable. Immediately after meeting with the

continuation of _Christabel_ already referred to, I came across great

numbers 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 reach

of 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 satire

on a letter in the _Biographia Literaria_ in which Coleridge says he

saw a portrait of Lessing at Klopstock’s, in which the eyes seemed

singularly like his own. The time has gone by when that flight of

egotism on Coleridge’s part seemed an unpardonable offence, and to our

more modern judgment it scarcely seems necessary that the author of

_Christabel_ should be charged with a desire to look radiant in the

glory reflected by an accidental personal resemblance to the author of

_Laokoon_. Curiously enough I found evidence of the Patmore version

of Coleridge’s intentions as to the ultimate disclosure of the sex of

Géraldine 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 at

Highgate, and consequently acquainted with the earliest forms of the

poem. The review is an unfavourable one, and Coleridge is told in it

that he is the dog-in-the-manger of literature, and that his poem is

proof of the fact that he can write better nonsense poetry than any man

in England. The writer is particularly wroth with what he considers

the wilful indefiniteness of the author, and in proof of a charge of

a desire not to let the public into the secret of the poem, and of

a conscious endeavour to mystify the reader, he deliberately accuses

Coleridge of omitting one line of the poem as it was written, which,

if printed, would have proved conclusively that Géraldine had seduced

Christabel after getting drunk with her,--for such sequel is implied if

not openly stated. I told Rossetti of this brutality of criticism, and

he 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 elder

Patmore referred to, really did exist in the minds of Coleridge’s

so-called friends, who after praising the poem beyond measure whilst

it was in manuscript, abused it beyond reason or decency when it was

printed. 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 Rossetti

mentions.

Rossetti called my attention to a letter by Lamb, about which he

gathered 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 published

first under a fictitious name in _he Monthly Magazine_ They must be

understood as almost wholly satirical of three distinct facets of

Coleridge’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’s

own poetry, not from that of Lamb or Lloyd. Nevertheless, Cottle was

doubtless right as to the fact that Lamb took offence at Coleridge’s

conduct on this account, and Rossetti almost certainly made a good shot

at the truth when he attributed to the rupture thereupon ensuing the

passage 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 inflated

thought and imagery. It may be doubted if there exists anything more

comical; but each of the companion sonnets is good in its way. The

egotism, which was a constant reproach urged by _The Edinburgh_ critics

and by the “Cockney Poets” against the poets of the Lake School, is

splendidly hit off in the first sonnet; the low and creeping meanness,

or say, simpleness, as contrasted with simplicity, of thought and

expression, which was stealing into Wordsworth’s work at that period,

is equally cleverly ridiculed in the second sonnet. In reproducing the

sonnets, Coleridge claims only to have satirised types. As to Lamb’s

letter, it is, indeed, hard to realise the fact that the “gentle-hearted

Charles,” as Coleridge himself named him, could write a galling letter

to the “inspired charity-boy,” for whom at an early period, and again at

the end, he had so profound a reverence. Every word is an outrage, and

every syllable must have hit Coleridge terribly. I called Rossetti’s

attention to the surprising circumstance that in a letter written

immediately after the date of the one in question, Loyd tells Cottle

that he has never known Lamb (who is at the moment staying with him) so

happy 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 great

passage in the second part of _Christabel_. Touching that passage I

called his attention to an imperfection that I must have perceived, or

thought I perceived long before,--an imperfection of craftsmanship that

had 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 of

poetic vision. First, nothing but an earthquake would (speaking within

limits of human experience) unite the two sides of a ravine; and though

_frost_ might bring them together temporarily, _heat and thunder_ must

be powerless to make or to unmake the _marks_ that showed the cliffs to

have once been one, and to have been violently torn apart. Next, _heat_

(supposing _frost_ to be the root-conception) was obviously used merely

as a balancing phrase, and _thunder_ simply as the inevitable rhyme to

_asunder_. I have not seen this matter alluded to, though it may have

been mentioned, and it is certainly not important enough to make any

serious deduction from the pleasure afforded by a passage that is in

other respects so rich in beauty as to be able to endure such modest

discounting. 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 on

Coleridge, and I was curious to learn what note he struck in dealing

with so complex a subject. The keynote of a man’s genius or character

should be struck in a poetic address to him, just as the expressional

individuality of a man’s features (freed of the modifying or emphasising

effects of passing fashions of dress), should be reproduced in his

portrait; but Coleridge’s mind had so many sides to it, and his

character had such varied aspects--from keen and beautiful sensibility

to every form of suffering, to almost utter disregard of the calls of

domestic 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 to

hint, adoring the man as we must, that Coleridge’s personal character

was anything less than one of untarnished purity, and certainly the

persons chiefly concerned in the alleged neglect, Southey and his own

family, have never joined in the strictures commonly levelled against

him: but whatever Coleridge’s personal ego may have been, his creative

ego was assuredly not single in kind or aim. He did some noble things

late in life (instance the passage on “Youth and Age,” and that on “Work

without Hope”), but his poetic genius seemed to desert him when Kant

took possession of him as a gigantic windmill to do battle with, and

it is now hard to say which was the deeper thing in him: the poetry to

which he devoted the sunniest years of his young life, or the philosophy

which he firmly believed it to be the main business of his later life

to expound. In any discussion of the relative claims of these two to

the gratitude of the ages that follow, I found Rossetti frankly took one

side, and constantly said that the few unequal poems Coleridge had left

us, were a legacy more stimulating, solacing, and enduring, than his

philosophy could have been, even if he had perfected that attempt of his

to reconcile all learning and revelation, and if, when perfected, the

whole effort had not proved to be a work of supererogation. I doubt if

Rossetti quite knew what was meant by Coleridge’s “system,” as it was

so frequently called, and I know that he could not be induced by any

eulogiums to do so much as look at the _Biographia Literaria_, though

once he listened whilst I read a chapter from it. He had certainly

little love of the German elements in Coleridge’s later intellectual

life, and hence it is small matter for surprise that in his sonnet

he chose for treatment the more poetic side of Coleridge’s genius.

Nevertheless, I think it remains an open question whether the philosophy

of the author of _The Ancient Mariner_ was more influenced by his

poetry, or his poetry by his philosophy; for the philosophy is always

tinged by the mysticism of his poetry, and his poetry is always

adumbrated by the disposition, which afterwards become paramount, to

dig beneath the surface for problems of life and character, and for

“suggestions of the final mystery of existence.” I have heard Rossetti

say that what came most of all uppermost in Coleridge, was his wonderful

intuitive 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; and

perhaps it was partly due to his own sad experience of the dread curse

of insomnia, as well as to keen susceptibility to poetic beauty, that

tears so frequently filled his eyes, and sobs rose to his throat when he

recited the lines beginning

O sleep! it is a gentle thing--

affirming, meantime, that nothing so simple and touching had ever been

written 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 that

Coleridge lived to be scarcely more than sixty, and that his poetic

career really extended over six good years; and hence the thirteenth

line was amended to

Six years from sixty saved.

I doubted if “deepening pain” could be charged with the whole burden

of Coleridge’s constitutional procrastination, and to this objection

Rossetti 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 him

also as to date of influence, Keats was Rossetti’s favourite among

modern English poets. Our friend never tired of writing or talking about

Keats, and never wearied of the society of any one who could generate

a fresh thought concerning him. But his was a robust and

masculine admiration, having nothing in common with the effeminate

extra-affectionateness that has of late been so much ridiculed. His

letters now to be quoted shall speak for themselves as to the qualities

in Keats whereon Rossetti’s appreciation of him was founded: but I may

say in general terms that it was not so much the wealth of expression

in the author of _Endymion_ which attracted the author of _Rose Mary_

as the perfect hold of the supernatural which is seen in _La Belle Dame

Sans Merci_ and in the fragment of the _Eve of St. Mark_. At the time of

our 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 take

occasion to tell briefly the story of the revival of Wells. The facts

to be related were communicated to me by Rossetti in conversation years

after the date of the letter in which this first allusion to the

subject was made. As a boy, Rossetti’s chief pleasure was to ransack

old book-stalls, and the catalogues of the British Museum, for forgotten

works in the bye-ways of English poetry. In this pursuit he became

acquainted with nearly every curiosity of modern poetic literature, and

many were the amusing stories he used to tell at that time, and in after

life, of the titles and contents of the literary oddities he

unearthed. If you chanced at any moment to alight upon any obscure book

particularly curious from its pretentiousness and pomposity, from the

audacity of its claim, or the obscurity and absurdity of its writing,

you might be sure that Rossetti would prove familiar with it, and be

able to recapitulate with infinite zest its salient features; but if you

happened to drop upon ever so interesting an edition of a book (not of

verse) which you supposed to be known to many a reader, the chances were

at least equal that Rossetti would prove to know nothing of it but its

name. In poring over the forgotten pages of the poetry of the beginning

of the century, Rossetti, whilst still a boy, met with the scriptural

drama of _Joseph and his Brethren_. He told me the title did not much

attract him, but he resolved to glance at the contents, and with

that swiftness of insight which throughout life distinguished him, he

instantly perceived its great qualities. I think he said he then wrote a

letter on the subject to one of the current literary journals, probably

_The Literary Gazette_, and by this means came into correspondence with

Charles Wells himself. Rather later a relative of Wells’s sought out the

young enthusiast in London, intending to solicit his aid in an attempt

to induce a publisher to undertake a reprint, but in any endeavours to

this end he must have failed. For many years a copy of the poem, left

by the author’s request at Rossetti’s lodgings, lay there untouched,

and meantime the growing reputation of the young painter brought

about certain removals from Blackfriars Bridge to other chambers, and

afterwards to the house in Cheyne Walk. In the course of these changes

the copy got hidden away, and it was not until numerous applications for

it had been made that it was at length ferreted forth from the chaos of

some similar volumes huddled together in a corner of the studio. Full of

remorse for having so long abandoned a laudable project, Rossetti

then took up afresh the cause of the neglected poem, and enlisted

Mr. Swinburne’s interest so warmly as to prevail with him to use his

influence to secure its publication. This failed however; but in _The

Athenæum_ of April 8, 1876, appeared Mr. Watts’s elaborate account of

Wells and the poem and its vicissitudes, whereupon Messrs. Chatto and

Windus offered to take the risk of publishing it, and the poem

went forth with the noble commendatory essay of the young author of

_Atalanta_, whose reputation was already almost at its height, though

it lacked (doubtless from a touch of his constitutional procrastination)

the appreciative comment of the discerning critic who first discovered

it. 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 Theræa!--

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 no

doubt penned under the impression, then strong on Rossetti’s mind, that

his first volume of poems would prove to be his only one; but when,

within two years afterwards he completed _Rose Mary_, and wrote _The

King’s Tragedy_ and _The White Ship_, this accession of material

dissipated the notion that a man does much his best work before

twenty-five. It can hardly escape the reader that though Rossetti’s

earlier volume displayed a surprising maturity, the subsequent one

exhibited as a whole infinitely more power and feeling, range of

sympathy, and knowledge of life. The poet’s dramatic instinct developed

enormously in the interval between the periods of the two books, and,

being conscious of this, Rossetti used to say in his later years that he

would 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 view

that letters so _intimes_ should never have been made public. Afterwards

the book had irresistible charms for him, from the first page whereon

his old friend, Mr. Bell Scott, has vigorously etched Severn’s drawing

of the once redundant locks of rich hair, dank and matted over

the forehead cold with the death-dew, down to the last line of the

letterpress. He thought Mr. Forman’s work admirably done, and as for the

letters themselves, he believed they placed Keats indisputably among

the highest masters of English epistolary style. He considered that all

Keats’s letters proved him to be no weakling, and that whatever walk

he had chosen he must have been a master. He seemed particularly struck

with the apparently intuitive perception of Shakspeare’s subtlest

meanings, 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 in

sentiment, 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 of

the genius of Keats; that it would be said that in all the particulars

in which Rossetti had truthfully and pathetically described London,

Keats was in rather than of it; and that it would be affirmed that Keats

lived in a fairy world of his own inventing, caring little for the storm

and stress of London life. On the other hand, I knew it could be replied

that Keats was not indifferent to the misery of city life; that it bore

heavily upon him; that it came out powerfully and very sadly in his _Ode

to the Nightingale_, and that it may have been from sheer torture in

the contemplation of it that he fled away to a poetic world of his own

creating. Moreover, Rossetti’s sonnet touched the life, rather than

the genius, of Keats, and of this it struck the keynote in the opening

lines. I ventured to think that the second and third lines wanted a

little clarifying in the relation in which they stood. They seemed to

be a sudden focussing of the laughter and weeping previously mentioned,

rather than, what they were meant to be, a natural and necessary

equipoise showing the inner life of Keats as contrasted with his outer

life. 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 was

engaged reading up old periodicals dating from 1816 to 1822. My purpose

was to get at first-hand all available data relative to the life of

Keats. I thought I met with a good deal of fresh material, and as the

result of my reading I believed myself able to correct a few errors

as to facts into which previous writers on the subject had fallen. Two

things at least I realised--first, that Keats’s poetic gift developed

very rapidly, more rapidly perhaps than that of Shelley; and, next, that

Keats received vastly more attention and appreciation in his day than is

commonly supposed. I found it was quite a blunder to say that the first

volume of miscellaneous poems fell flat. Lord Houghton says in error

that the book did not so much as seem to signal the advent of a new

Cockney poet! It is a fact, however, that this very book, in conjunction

with one of Shelley’s and one of Hunt’s, all published 1816-17, gave

rise to the name “The Cockney School of Poets,” which was invented by

the writer signing “Z.” in _Blackwood_ in the early part of 1818. Nor

had Keats to wait for the publication of the volume before attaining

to some poetic distinction. At the close of 1816, an article, under

the head of “Young Poets,” appeared in _The Examiner_, and in this

both Shelley and Keats were dealt with. Then _The Quarterly_ contained

allusions 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 anything

except occasional sonnets and other fugitive poems in _The Examiner_ and

elsewhere. And then when _Endymion_ appeared it was abundantly reviewed.

_The Edinburgh_ reviewers had nothing on it (the book cannot have been

sent 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, and

elsewhere) and some metropolitan papers retorted on _The Quarterly_. All

this, however, does not disturb the impression which (Lord Houghton and

Mr. W. M. Rossetti notwithstanding) I have been from the first compelled

to entertain, namely, that “labour spurned” did more than all else to

kill Keats _in 1821_.

Most men who rightly know the workings of their own minds will agree

that an adverse criticism rankles longer than a flattering notice

soothes; and though it be shown that Keats in 1820 was comparatively

indifferent to the praise of _The Edinburgh_, it cannot follow that in

1818 he must have been superior to the blame of _The Quarterly_. It is

difficult to see why a man may not be keenly sensitive to what the world

says about him, and yet retain all proper manliness as a part of his

literary character. Surely it was from the mistaken impression that

this could not be, and that an admission of extreme sensitiveness to

criticism exposed Keats to a charge of effeminacy that Lord Houghton

attempted to prove, against the evidence of all immediate friends,

against the publisher’s note to _Hyperion_, against the | poet’s

self-chosen epitaph, and against all but one or two of the most

self-contained of his letters, that the soul of Keats was so far from

being “snuffed out by an article,” that it was more than ordinarily

impervious to hostile comment, even when it came in the shape of

rancorous abuse. In all discussion of the effects produced upon Keats

by the reviews in _Blackwood and The Quarterly_, let it be remembered,

first, that having wellnigh exhausted his small patrimony, Keats was

to be dependent upon literature for his future subsistence; next, that

Leigh Hunt attempted no defence of Keats when the bread was being taken

out of his mouth, and that Keats felt this neglect and remarked upon

it in a letter in which he further cast some doubt upon the purity of

Hunt’s friendship. Hunt, after Keats’s death, said in reference to this:

“Had he but given me the hint!” The _hint_, forsooth! Moreover, I can

find no sort of allusion in _The Examiner_ for 1821, to the death of

Keats. I told Rossetti that by the reading of the periodicals of the

time, I formed a poor opinion of Hunt. Previously I was willing to

believe in his unswerving loyalty to the much greater men who were his

friends, but even that poor confidence in him must perforce be shaken

when one finds him silent at a moment when Keats most needs his voice,

and abusive when Coleridge is a common subject of ridicule. It was

all very well for Hunt to glorify himself in the borrowed splendour of

Keats’s established fame when the poet was twenty years dead, and

to make much of his intimacy with Coleridge after the homage of two

generations had been offered him, but I know of no instance (unless in

the case of Shelley) in which Hunt stood by his friends in the winter

of their lives, and gave them that journalistic support which was, poor

man, 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 in

England) say that no man here impressed the American romancer so much as

Hunt for good qualities, both of heart and head. But what I have stated

above, 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 no

reason to believe that it was Keats’s illness alone that caused him to

regard Hunt’s friendship with suspicion. It is true, however, that when

one reads Hunt’s letter to Severn at Borne, one feels that he must be

forgiven. 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

<center>ENDIMION

AN EXCELLENT FANCY FIRST COMPOSED IN FRENCH

By Monsieur GOMBAULD

AND NOW ELEGANTLY INTERPRETED

By RICHARD HURST, Gentleman

1639.

?</center>

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 of

Mme. de Llanos, Keats’s sister, whose circumstances were seriously

reduced. 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 so

conceived the idea of a lecture in the interests of the fund. On this

project, 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 good

number of subscriptions, but feeling scarcely satisfied with any such

success as I might be likely to have in that direction, I opened, by

the help of a friend, a correspondence with Lord Houghton with a view

to inducing him to apply for a pension for the lady. It then transpired

that Lord Houghton had already applied to Lord Beaconsfield for a

pension for Mme. Llanos, and would doubtless have got it, had not Mr.

Buxton Forman applied for a grant from the Royal Bounty, which was

easier 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 he

had made to Lord Beaconsfield, and succeeded.

Rossetti must have been among the earliest admirers of Keats. I remarked

on one occasion that it was very natural that Lord Houghton should

consider himself in a sense the first among men now living to champion

the poet and establish his name, and Rossetti admitted that this was so,

and was ungrudging in his tribute to Lord Houghton’s services towards

the better appreciation of Keats; but he contended, nevertheless,

that he had himself been one of the first writers of the generation

succeeding the poet’s own to admire and uphold him, and that this was

at a time when it made demand of some courage to class him among the

immortals, when an original edition of any of his books could be bought

for sixpence on a bookstall, and when only Leigh Hunt, Cowden Clarke,

Hood, Benjamin Haydon, and perhaps a few others, were still living of

those 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’s

works. But throughout a long interval he neglected Chatterton, and

it was not until his friend Theodore Watts, who had made Chatterton

a special study, had undertaken to select from and write upon him in

Ward’s _English Poets_, that he revived his old acquaintance. Whatever

Rossetti did he did thoroughly, and hence he became as intimate perhaps

with the Rowley antiques as any other man had ever been. His letters

written 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

Ælla_, 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 that

he could not go to Rossetti’s length in comparing him with Shakspeare,

did not in the result consider the sonnet on Chatterton referred to in

the foregoing letter, and given below, suitable to be embodied in his

essay:

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 Black

Swan_) at seventeen years of age. I mentioned the indiscreet remark of

a friend who said that Oliver had enough genius to stock a good few

Chattertons, 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 criticism

when brought to bear in such cases as those of Chatterton and Oliver

Madox Brown. Net results are certainly the poorest tests of relative

values where the work done belongs to periods of development. We cannot,

however, see or know any man except through and in his work, and net

results must usually be accepted as the only concrete foundation for

judging of the quality of his genius. Such judgment will always be

influenced, nevertheless, by considerations such as Rossetti mentions.

Touching Chatterton’s development, it were hardly rash to say that it

appears incredible that the _African Eclogues_ should have been written

by a boy of seventeen, and, in judging of their place in poetry, one is

apt to be influenced by one’s first feeling of amazement. Is it possible

that the Rowley poems may owe much of their present distinction to the

early astonishment that a boy should have written them, albeit they have

great intrinsic excellencies such as may insure them a high place when

the romance, intertwined with their history, has been long forgotten?

But Chatterton is more talked of than read, and this has been so from

the first. The antiques are all but unknown; certain of the acknowledged

poems are remembered, and regarded as fervid and vigorous, and many of

the lesser pieces are thought slight, weak, and valueless. People do not

measure the poorer things in Chatterton with his time and opportunities,

or they would see only amazing strength and knowledge of the world in

all he did. Those lesser pieces were many of them dashed off to answer

the calls of necessity, to flatter the egotism of a troublesome friend,

or to wile away a moment of vacancy. Certainly they must not be set

against his best efforts. As for Chatterton’s life, the tragedy of it

is perhaps the most moving example of what Coleridge might have

termed the material pathetic. Pathetic, however, as his life was, and

marvellous as was his genius, I miss in him the note of personal purity

and majesty of character. I told Rossetti that, in my view, Chatterton

lacked 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’s

contribution to the romantic movement in English poetry as has been

formulated in the essay in Ward’s _Poets_. A critic, in the sense of one

possessed of a natural gift of analysis, Rossetti assuredly! was not. No

man’s instinct for what is good in poetry was ever swifter or surer than

that of Rossetti. You might always distrust your judgment if you

found it at variance with his where abstract power and beauty were in

question. Sooner or later you would inevitably find yourself gravitating

to his view. But here Rossetti’s function as a critic ended. His was

at best only the criticism of the creator. Of the gift of ultimate

classification he had none, and never claimed to have any, although now

and again (as where he says that Chatterton was the day-spring of

modern romantic poetry), he seems to give sign of a power of critical

synthesis.

Rossetti’s interest in Blake, both as poet and painter, dates back to

an early period of his life. I have heard him say that at sixteen or

seventeen years of age he was already one of Blake’s warmest admirers,

and at the time in question, 1845, the author of the _Songs of

Innocence_ had not many readers to uphold him. About four years later,

Rossetti made an exceptionally lucky discovery, for he then found in

the possession of Mr. Palmer, an attendant at the British Museum, an

original manuscript scrap-book of Blake’s, containing a great body of

unpublished poetry and many interesting designs, as well as three or

four remarkably effective profile sketches of the author himself. The

Mr. Palmer who held the little book was a relative of the landscape

painter of the same name, who was Blake’s friend, and hence the

authenticity of the manuscript was ascertainable on other grounds than

the indisputable ones of its internal evidences. The book was offered to

Rossetti for ten shillings, but the young enthusiast was at the time a

student of art, and not much in the way of getting or spending even

so inconsiderable a sum. He told me, however, that at this period his

brother William, who was, unlike himself, engaged in some reasonably

profitable occupation, was at all times nothing loath to advance small

sums for the purchase of such literary or other treasures as he used

to hunt up out of obscure corners: by his help the Blake manuscript was

bought, and proved for years a source of infinite pleasure and profit,

resulting, as it did, in many very important additions to Blake

literature when Gilchrist’s _Life and Works_ of that author came to be

published. It is an interesting fact, mention of which ought not to

be omitted, that at the sale of Rossetti’s library, which took place

a little while after his decease, the scrap-book acquired in the way I

describe was sold for one hundred and five guineas.

The sum was a large one, but the little book was undoubtedly the most

valuable literary relic of Blake then extant. About the time when a new

edition 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 the

supplementary chapter (left by Gilchrist, with one or two unimportant

passages merely, at the beginning), and the editing of the poems. When

there arose, subsequently, some idea of my reviewing the book, Rossetti

wrote 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 English

literature (particularly of English poetry) as few can ever have

traversed them. A favourite work with him was Gilfillan’s _Less-Read

British Poets_, a copy of which had been presented by Miss Boyd. He

says:

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 in

the 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 sent

Rossetti a copy of a volume of poems he had just published, and

had received a letter in acknowledgment, wherein our friend, with

characteristic 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 be

said to have fared at all at the hands of the critics.

Here is a pleasant piece of literary portraiture, as valuable from the

peep it affords into Rossetti’s own character as from the description it

gives 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 Athenæum_, 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 to

much was made, in a delicate way, of his stern environments. His volume

of lyrics is marked by the quiet humour. Rossetti speaks of, as well as

by a rather exasperating inequality. Perhaps the best piece in it is a

poem entitled _Thistle and Nettle_, treating with peculiar freshness of

a country courtship. The coming together of two such entirely opposite

natures was certainly curious, and only to be accounted for on the

ground of Rossetti’s breadth of poetic sympathy. It would be interesting

to hear what the impressions were of such a rude son of toil upon

meeting with one whose life must have seemed the incarnation of artistic

luxury 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 his

death, and to him he addressed one of the last epistles he penned.

The following letter explains itself, and is introduced as much for

the sake of the real humour which it displays, as because it affords an

excellent 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 relation

of politics to art, and in printing the lecture I asked Rossetti to

accept the dedication of it, but this he declined to do in the generous

terms I have already referred to. The letter that accompanied his

graceful refusal is, however, so full of interesting personal matter

that I offer it in this place, with no further explanation than that my

essay was designed to show that just as great artists in past ages

had participated in political struggles, so now they should not hold

themselves 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 to

preserve such a pitiful possession as the poetical remains of Cecco

Angiolieri than to secure the unity of a great nation. Rossetti half

suspected I meant this for a playful backhanded blow at himself (for

Cecco was a great favourite with him), and protested that no such

individual 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 chapter

is 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 these

were, for the most part, written after an event which forms a land-mark

in our acquaintance (I mean the occasion of our first meeting), I judge

it is best to reserve them for a later section of this book. There are

two forms, and, so far as I know, two only, in which a body of letters

can be published with justice to the writer. Of these the first and most

obvious form is to offer them chronologically _in extenso_ or with only

such eliminations as seem inevitable, and the second is to tabulate them

according to subject-matter, and print them in the order not of date but

substance. There are advantages attending each method, and corresponding

disadvantages also. The temptation to adopt the first of these was, in

this case of Rossetti’s letters, almost insurmountable, for nothing can

be more charming in epistolary style than the easy grace with which the

writer passes from point to point, evolving one idea out of another,

interlinking subject with subject, and building up a fabric of which the

meaning is everywhere inwoven. In this respect Rossetti’s letters are

almost as perfect as anything that ever left his hand; and, in freedom

of phrase, in power of throwing off parenthetical reflections always

faultlessly enunciated, in play of humour, often in eloquence (never

becoming declamatory, and calling on “Styx or Stars”), sometimes

in pathos, Rossetti’s letters are, in a word, admirable. They

are comparable in these respects with the best things yet done in

English,--as pleasing and graceful as Cowper’s letters, broader in range

of subject than the letters of Keats, easier and more colloquial than

those of Coleridge, and with less appearance of being intended for the

public eye than is the case with the letters of Byron and of Shelley.

Rossetti’s letters have, moreover, a value quite apart from the merits

of their epistolary style, in so far as they contain almost the only

expression extant of his opinions on literary questions. And this is

the circumstance that has chiefly weighed with me to offer them

in fragmentary form interspersed with elucidatory comment bearing

principally upon the occasions that called them forth.

Such then as I have described was the nature of my intercourse with

Rossetti during the first year and a half of our correspondence, and now

the time had come when I was to meet my friend for the first time face

to face. The elasticity of sympathy by which a man of genius, surrounded

by constant friends, could yet bend to a new-comer who was a stranger

and twenty-five years his junior, and think and feel with him; the

generous appreciativeness by which he could bring himself to consider

the first efforts of one quite unknown; and then the unselfishness that

seemed always to prefer the claims of others to his own great claims,

could command only the return of unqualified allegiance. Such were the

feelings with which I went forth to my first meeting with Rossetti, and

if at any later date, the ardour of my regard for him in any measure

suffered modification, be sure when the time comes to touch upon it I

shall make no more concealment of the causes that led to such a change

than I have made of those circumstances, however personal in primary

interest, that generated a friendship so unusual and to me so serious

and 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 the

sea-side and wrote saying that in passing through London I should avail

myself of his oft-repeated invitation to visit him. I gave him this

warning of my intention, remembering his declared dread of being taken

unawares, but I came to know at a subsequent period that for one who was

within the inner circle of his friends the necessity to advise him of

a visit was by no means binding. His reception of my intimation of an

intention to call upon him was received with an amount of epistolary

ceremony which I recognise now by the light of further acquaintance as

eminently characteristic of the man, although curiously contradictory of

his unceremonious habits of daily life. The fact is that Rossetti was

of an excessively nervous temperament, and rarely if ever underwent an

ordeal more trying than a first meeting with any one to whom for some

time previously he had looked forward with interest. Hence by return of

the post that bore him my missive came two letters, the one obviously

written and posted within an hour or two of the other. In the first of

these he expressed courteously his pleasure at the prospect of seeing

me, and appointed 8.30 p.m. the following evening as his dinner hour at

his house in Cheyne Walk. The second letter begged me to come at 5.30 or

6 p.m., so that we might have a long evening. “You will, I repeat,” he

says, “recognise the hole-and-cornerest of all existences in this big

barn of mine; but come early and I shall read you some ballads, and

we can talk of many things.” An hour later than the arrival of these

letters came a third epistle, which ran: “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 had before me a

five hours’ journey to London, so that in order to reach Chelsea at 6

P.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 day

on which we were to meet begging me not on any account to talk, in the

course of our interview, of a certain personal matter upon which we had

corresponded. This fourth and final message came to hand the morning

after the meeting, when I had the satisfaction to reflect that (owing

more perhaps to the plethora of other subjects of interest than to any

suspicion of its being tabooed) I had luckily eschewed the proscribed

topic.

Cheyne Walk was unknown to me at the time in question, except as the

locality in and near which many men and women eminent in literature

resided. It seems hard to realise that this was the case as recently as

two years ago, now that so short an interval has associated it in one’s

mind with memories which seem to cover a large part of one’s life. The

Walk is not now exactly as picturesque as it appears in certain familiar

old engravings; the new embankment and the gardens that separate it from

the main thoroughfare have taken something from its beauty, but it still

possesses many attractions, and among them a look of age which contrasts

agreeably with the spic-and-span newness of neighbouring places. I found

Rossetti’s house, No. 16, answering in external appearances to the frank

description he gave of it. It stands about mid-way between the Chelsea

pier and the new redbrick mansions erected on the Chelsea embankment.

It seems to be the oldest house in the Walk, and the exceptional

proportions of its gate-piers, and the weight and mass of its gate and

railings, suggests that probably at some period it stood alone, and

commanded as grounds a large part of the space now occupied by the

adjoining residences. Behind the house, during eighteen years of

Rossetti’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 of

four streets forming a square. At No. 4 Maclise had lived and died; at

the same house George Eliot, after her marriage with Mr. Cross, had come

to live; at No. 5, in the second street to the westward, Thomas Carlyle

was still living, and a little beyond Cheyne Row stood the modest

cottage wherein Turner died. Rossetti’s house had to me the appearance

of a plain Queen Anne erection, much mutilated by the introduction of

unsightly bay-windows; the brickwork seemed to be falling into decay;

the paint to be in serious need of renewal; the windows to be dull with

the accumulation of the dust of years; the sills to bear the suspicion

of cobwebs; the angles of the steps and the untrodden flags of the

courtyard to be here and there overgrown with moss and weeds; and round

the walls and up the reveals of doors and windows were creeping the

tangled 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 up

to it on the autumn evening of my first visit, and the interior of the

house was at once like and unlike the exterior. The hall had a puzzling

look of equal nobility and shabbiness. The floor was paved with

beautiful white marble, which however, was partly covered with a strip

of worn cocoa-nut matting; the ceiling was in one of its sections

gracefully groined, and in each of the walls, which were lofty, there

was an arched recess containing a piece of sculpture; an old inlaid

rosewood clock filled a bulkhead on one side facing the door, and on the

corresponding side stood a massive gas branch. A mezzotint lithograph by

Legros was the only pictorial decoration of the walls, which were plain,

and seemed not to have been distempered for many years. Three doors led

out of the hall, one at each side, and one in front, and two corridors

opened into it, but there was no sign of staircase, nor had it any light

except such as was borrowed from the fanlight that looked into the

porch. These facts I noted in the few minutes I stood waiting in the

hall, but during the many months in which subsequently that house was my

own home as well as Rossetti’s, I came to see that the changes which the

building must have undergone since the period of its erection, had so

filled it with crooks and corners as to bewilder the most ingenious

observer to account for its peculiarities.

Very soon Rossetti came to me through the doorway in front, which proved

to be the entrance to his studio. Holding forth both hands and crying

‘Hulloa,’ he gave me that cheery, hearty greeting which I came to

recognise as his alone, perhaps, in warmth and unfailing geniality among

all the men of our circle. It was Italian in its spontaneity, and yet it

was English in its manly reserve, and I remember with much tenderness of

feeling 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 when

meeting with those friends to whom to the last he was really attached.

Leading the way into the studio, he introduced me to his brother, who

was there upon one of the evening visits, which at intervals of a week

he was at that time making, with unfailing regularity. I should have

described Rossetti, at this time, as a man who looked quite ten years

older than his actual age, which was fifty-two, of full middle height

and inclining to corpulence, with a round face that ought, one thought,

to be ruddy but was pale, large grey eyes with a steady introspecting

look, surmounted by broad protrusive brows and a clearly-pencilled ridge

over the nose, which was well cut and had large breathing nostrils. The

mouth 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 and

auburn, and were now streaked with grey. The forehead was large, round,

without protuberances, and very gently receding to where thin black

curls, that had once been redundant, began to tumble down to the ears.

The entire configuration of the head and face seemed to me singularly

noble, and from the eyes upwards, full of beauty. He wore a pair of

spectacles, and, in reading, a second pair over the first: but these

took little from the sense of power conveyed by those steady eyes,

and that “bar of Michael Angelo.” His dress was not conspicuous, being

however rather negligent than otherwise, and noticeable, if at all, only

for a straight sack-coat buttoned at the throat, descending at least to

the knees, and having large pockets cut into it perpendicularly at the

sides. This garment was, I afterwards found, one of the articles of

various kinds made to the author’s own design. When he spoke, even in

exchanging the preliminary courtesies of an opening conversation, I

thought his voice the richest I had ever known any one to possess.

It was a full deep barytone, capable of easy modulation, and with

undertones of infinite softness and sweetness, yet, as I afterwards

found, with almost illimitable compass, and with every gradation of tone

at command, for the recitation or reading of poetry. The studio was a

large room probably measuring thirty feet by twenty, and structurally as

puzzling as the other parts of the house. A series of columns and arches

on one side suggested that the room had almost certainly been at some

period the site of an important staircase with a wide well, and on the

other side a broad mullioned window reaching to the ceiling, seemed

certainly to bear record of the occupant’s own contribution to the

peculiarities 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 drawings

in chalk, chiefly studies of heads, with here and there a water-colour

figure piece, all from Rossetti’s hand. At the opposite end of the room

hung some symbolic designs in chalk, _Pandora_ and _Proserpina_ being

among the number, and easels of various sizes, some very large, bearing

pictures in differing stages of completion, occupied positions on

all sides of the floor, leaving room only for a sofa, with a bookcase

behind, two old cabinets, two large low easy chairs, and a writing desk

and chair at a window at the side, which was heavily darkened by the

thick foliage of the trees that grew in the garden beyond.

Dropping down on the sofa with his head laid low and his feet thrown up

in a favourite attitude on the back, which must, I imagine, have been at

least as easy as it was elegant, he began the conversation by bantering

me upon what he called my “robustious” appearance compared with what he

had been led to expect from gloomy reports of uncertain health. After a

series of playful touches (all done in the easiest conceivable way,

and conveying any impression on earth save the right one, that a first

meeting with any man, however young and harmless, was little less than a

tragic event to Rossetti) he glanced one by one at certain of the topics

that had arisen in the course of our correspondence. I perceived that he

was a ready, fluent, and graceful talker, with a remarkable incisiveness

of speech, and a trick of dignifying ordinary topics in words which,

without rising above conversation, were so exactly, though freely

enunciated, as would have admitted of their being reported exactly as

they fell from his lips. In some of these respects I found his brother

William resemble him, though, if I may describe the talk of a dead

friend by contrasting it with that of a living one bearing a natural

affinity to it, I will say that Gabriel’s conversation was perhaps more

spontaneous, and had more variety of tone with less range of subject,

together with the same precision and perspicuity. Very soon the talk

became general, and then Rossetti spoke without appearance of reserve

of 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 character

in history; depend upon it,” he added, “such a head was not given to him

for nothing;” that Frederick Shields was as emotional as Shelley, and

Ford Madox Brown, whom I had met, as sententious as Dr. Johnson. I kept

no sort of record of what passed upon the occasion in question, but I

remember that Rossetti seemed to be playfully battering his friends in

their absence in the assured consciousness that he was doing so in the

presence of a well-wisher; and it was amusing to observe that, after any

particularly lively sally, he would pause to say something in a sobered

tone that was meant to convey the idea that he was really very jealous

of his friends’ reputation, and was merely for the sake of amusement

giving rein to a sportive fancy. During dinner (and contrary to his

declared habit, we did not dine in the studio) he talked a good deal

about 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 his

name will be a familiar one. _The Black Swan_ is a powerful story,

although I must honestly say that it displays in its central incident a

certain torpidity that to me is painful. Undoubtedly Oliver had genius,

and must have done great things had he lived. His death was a grievous

blow to his father. I’m glad you’ve written that sonnet; I wanted you to

toss up your cap for Nolly.” He spoke of Oliver’s father as indisputably

one of the greatest of living colourists, inquired earnestly into the

progress of his frescoes at Manchester, for one of the figures in which

I had sat, and showed me a little water-colour drawing made by Oliver

himself when very young. Dinner being now over, I asked Rossetti to

redeem 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 a

section 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 it

remains to me, in this place, to describe the effect produced upon me by

the author’s reading. It seemed to me that I never heard anything at all

matchable with Rossetti’s elocution; his rich deep voice lent an added

music to the music of the verse: it rose and fell in the passages

descriptive of the wreck with something of the surge and sibilation of

the sea itself; in the tenderer passages it was soft as a woman’s, and

in the pathetic stanzas with which the ballad closes it was profoundly

moving. Effective as the reading sounded in that studio, I remember at

the moment to have doubted if it would prove quite so effective from a

public platform. Perhaps there seemed to be so much insistence on the

rhythm, and so prolonged a tension of the rhyme sounds, as would run

the risk of a charge of monotony if falling on ears less concerned with

points of metrical beauty than with fundamental substance. Personally,

however, I found the reading in the very highest degree enjoyable and

inspiring.

The evening was gone by the time the ballad was ended; and it was

arranged that upon my return to London from the house of a friend at

the sea-side I should again dine with Rossetti, and sleep the night

at Cheyne Walk. I was invited to come early in order to see certain

pictures by day-light, and it was then I saw the painter’s most

important work,--the _Dantés Dream_, which finally (and before Rossetti

was made aware of any steps being taken to that end) I had prevailed

with Alderman Samuelson to purchase for the public gallery at Liverpool.

At my request, though only after some importunity, Rossetti read again

his _White Ship_, and afterwards _Rose Mary_, the latter of which he

told me had been written in the country shortly after the appearance of

the first volume of poems. He remarked that it had occupied three weeks

in the writing, and that the physical prostration ensuing had been more

than he would care to go through again. I observed on this head, that

though highly finished in every stanza, the ballad had an impetuous

rush of emotion, and swift current of diction, suggesting speed in its

composition, as contrasted with the laboured deliberation which the

sonnets, for example, appeared to denote. I asked if his work usually

took much out of him in physical energy.

“Not my painting, certainly,” he replied, “though in early years it

tormented me more than enough. Now I paint by a set of unwritten but

clearly-defined rules, which I could teach to any man as systematically

as you could teach arithmetic; indeed, quite recently I sat all day for

that very purpose with Shields, who is not so great a colourist as he is

a draughtsman: he is a great draughtsman--none better now living, unless

it is Leighton or Sir Noel Paton.”

“Still,” I said, “there’s usually a good deal in a picture of yours

beside what you can do by rule.”

“Fundamental conception, no doubt, but beyond that not much. In

painting, after all, there is in the less important details something of

the craft of a superior carpenter, and the part of a picture that is not

mechanical is often trivial enough. I don’t wonder, now,” he added, with

a suspicion of a twinkle in the eye, “if you imagine that one comes down

here in a fine frenzy every morning to daub canvas?”

“I certainly imagine,” I replied, “that a superior carpenter would find

it hard to paint another _Dante’s Dream_, which some people consider the

best example yet seen of the English school.”

“That is friendly nonsense,” rejoined my frank host, “there is now no

English school whatever.”

“Well,” I said, “if you deny the name to others who lay more claim to

it, will you not at least allow it to the three or four painters who

started 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 all

the 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 visionary

vanities of half-a-dozen boys? We’ve all grown out of them, I hope, by

now.”

I remarked that the pre-Raphaelite movement was no doubt a serious one

at the beginning.

“What you call the movement was serious enough, but the banding together

under that title was all a joke. We had at that time a phenomenal

antipathy to the Academy, and in sheer love of being outlawed signed our

pictures with the well-known initials.” I have preserved the substance

of what Rossetti said on this point, and, as far as possible, the actual

words have been given. On many subsequent occasions he expressed himself

in the same way: assuredly with as much seeming depreciation of the

painter’s “craft,” although certain examples of modern art called forth

his warmest eulogies. In serious moods he would speak of pictures by

Millais, Watts, Leighton, Burne Jones, and others, as works of the

highest genius.

Reverting to my inquiry as to whether his work took much out of him, he

remarked that his poetry usually did. “In that respect,” he said, “I am

the reverse of Swinburne. For his method of production inspiration is

indeed the word. With me the case is different. I lie on the couch, the

racked and tortured medium, never permitted an instant’s surcease of

agony 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; and

to the Abbé de Marolles, who exultingly told some poet that his verses

cost 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 of

composition; my work becomes condensed. Probably the man does not live

who could write what I have written more briefly than I have done.”

Emphasis and condensation, I remarked, were indubitably the

characteristics of his muse. He then read me a great body of the new

sonnets of _The House of Life_. Sitting in that studio listening to his

reading and looking up meantime at the chalk-drawings that hung on the

walls, I realised how truly he had said, in correspondence, that the

feeling 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 of

hope, the same foreshadowings of gloom.

“You doubtless think it odd,” he said at one moment, “to hear an old

fellow read such love-poetry as much of this is, but I may tell you that

the larger part of it, though still unpublished, was written when I was

as young as you are. When I print these sonnets, I shall probably affix

a note saying, that though many of them are of recent production, not a

few 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 from

me.”

He had read it with tears of voice, subsiding at length into suppressed

sobs and intervals of silence. As though to explain away this emotion he

said:

“All poetry, that is really poetry, affects me deeply and often to

tears. It does not need to be pathetic or yet tender to produce such a

result. I have known in my life two men, and two only, who are similarly

sensitive--Tennyson, and my old friend and neighbour William Bell Scott.

I once heard Tennyson read _Maud_, and whilst the fiery passages were

delivered with a voice and vehemence which he alone of living men can

compass, the softer passages and the songs made the tears course down

his cheeks. Morris is a fine reader, and so, of his kind, though a

little prone to sing-song, is Swinburne. Browning both reads and talks

well--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 earliest

admirers. As a boy he had seen something signed by the then unknown

name of the author of _Paracelsus_, and wrote to him. The result was

an intimacy. He spoke with warmest admiration of _Child Roland_; and

referred to Elizabeth Barrett Browning in terms of regard, and, I think

I 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 never

to forget. When we were young, we helped Frederick Denison Maurice by

taking classes at the Working Men’s College, and there Charles Kingsley

and others made speeches and delivered lectures. Ruskin was asked to

do something of the kind and at length consented. He made no sort of

preparation for the occasion: I know he did not; we were together at his

father’s house the whole of the day in question. At night we drove

down to the College, and then he made the finest speech I ever heard. I

doubted at the time if any written words of his were equal to it! such

flaming diction! such emphasis! such appeal!--yet he had written his

first and second volumes of _Modern Painters_ by that time.” I have

reproduced the substance of what Rossetti said on the occasion of my

return 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 of

speech which distinguished his conversation, I confess myself scarcely

able to convey more than a suggestion of; as Mr. Watts has said in _The

Athenæum_, his talk showed an incisiveness so perfect that it had often

the pleasurable surprise of wit. Rossetti had both wit and humour, but

these, during the time that I knew him, were only occasionally present

in his conversation, while the incisiveness was always conspicuous.

A certain quiet play of sportive fancy, developing at intervals into

banter, was sometimes observable in his talk with the younger and more

familiar of his acquaintances, but for the most part his conversation

was serious, and, during the time I knew him, often sad. I speedily

observed that he was not of the number of those who lead or sustain

conversation. He required to be constantly interrogated, but as a

negative talker, if I may so describe him, he was by much the best I had

heard. Catching one’s drift before one had revealed it, and anticipating

one’s objections, he would go on from point to point, almost removing

the necessity for more than occasional words. Nevertheless, as I say, he

was not, in the conversations I have heard, a leading conversationalist;

his talk was never more than talk, and in saying that it was uniformly

sustained yet never declamatory, I think I convey an idea both of its

merits and limitations.

I understood that Rossetti had never at any period of his life been an

early riser, and at the time of the interview in question he was more

than ever before prone to reverse the natural order of waking and

sleeping hours. I am convinced that during the time I was with him only

the necessity of securing a certain short interval of daylight, by

which 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 it

for yourself, at what hour I rise.” He sat up until four A.M. on this

night of my second visit,--no unaccustomed thing, as I afterwards

learned. 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 new

phase of his mind, which gave me subsequently an infinity of anxiety and

distress. 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 I

had long before been engaged on a public platform with some one who had

attacked him. He had heard a report of what passed at a time when

my name was unknown to him, as also was that of his assailant. Being

forewarned by William Rossetti of his brother’s peculiar sensitiveness

to critical attack, and having, moreover, observed something of the kind

myself, I tried to avoid a circumstantial statement of what passed. But

Rossetti was, as has been said by one who knew him well, “of imagination

all compact,” and my obvious desire to shelve the subject suggested to

his mind a thousand inferences infinitely more damaging than the fact.

To avoid such a result I told him all, and there was little in the

way 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 a

voice slower, softer, and more charged, perhaps, with emotion than I had

heard 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 had

seemed no more than an error of critical judgment, coupled perhaps, with

some intemperance of condemnation, I prayed of him to think no more of

the matter, reproached myself with having yielded to his importunity,

and begged him to remember that if one man held the opinions I had

repeated, many men held contrary ones.

“It was right of you to tell me when I asked you,” he said, “though my

friends usually keep such facts from my knowledge. As to _Jenny_, it is

a 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. But

of this conspiracy to persecute me--what remains to say but that it is

widespread and remorseless--one cannot but feel it.”

I assured him there existed no conspiracy to persecute him: that he had

ardent upholders everywhere, though it was true that few men had found

crueller critics. He shook his head, and said I knew that what he had

alleged was true, namely that an organised conspiracy existed, having

for its object to annoy and injure him. Growing a little impatient of

this delusion, so tenaciously held, against all show of reason, I told

him that it was no more than the fever of an oppressed brain brought

about by his reclusive habits of life, by shunning intercourse with all

save some half dozen or more friends. “You tell me,” I said, “that you

have rarely been outside these walls for some years, and your brain has

meanwhile been breeding a host of hallucinations, like cobwebs in a dark

corner. You have only to go abroad, and the fresh air will blow these

things away.” But continuing for some moments longer in the same strain,

he came to closer quarters and distressed me by naming as enemies three

or four men who had throughout life been his friends, who have spoken of

him since his death in words of admiration and even affection, and who

had for a time fallen away from him or called on him but rarely, from

contingencies 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 reply

to 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 poetry

to the Pleiades, and driving away the bogies, and as he lives at Putney

Hill, it is necessary to have a bed for him.” Before going into my room

he suggested that I should go and look, at his. It was entered from

another and smaller room which he said that he used as a breakfast

room. The outer room was made fairly bright and cheerful by a glittering

chandelier (the property once, he told me, of David Garrick), and

from the rustle of trees against the window-pane one perceived that it

overlooked the garden; but the inner room was dark with heavy hangings

around the walls as well as the bed, and thick velvet curtains before

the windows, so that the candles in our hands seemed unable to light

it, and our voices sounded thick and muffled. An enormous black oak

chimney-piece of curious design, having an ivory crucifix on the largest

of its ledges, covered a part of one side and reached to the ceiling.

Cabinets, and the usual furniture of a bedroom, occupied places about

the floor: and in the middle of it, and before a little couch, stood

a small table on which was a wire lantern containing a candle which

Rossetti lit from the open one in his hand--another candle meantime

lying 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 three

hours hence I shall get up and lie on the couch, and, to pass away a

weary hour, read this book”--a volume of Boswell’s _Johnson_ which I

noticed he took out of the bookcase as we left the studio. It did not

escape 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 his

medicine.

“They say there is a skeleton in every cupboard,” he said in a low

voice, “and that’s mine; it is chloral.”