More than one note replied with sound of joy.
Silvati and Morelli, noble souls,[33]
Hoisted aloft the Italian battle-flag;
And Minichini,[34] of the Nolan church,
Joining them, sanctified the enterprise.
From Nola’s city on to Monteforte
The band of heroes goes determinate:
Their Country guides them, and Humanity,
And twixt these Freedom who salutes the two.
With vast applause the kingdom echoes round:
Only the palace in dismay is dumb.
Terror and rage distract it hour by hour:
Yet troops are sent--but only raise a laugh;
For squadron after squadron joins with those
So as to number a resistless host:
Despotic sway now comes to such a pass
As to appear a corpse mouldering in worms.
O Monteforte, oh the glorious slope
O’er which shone forth the star of liberty!
Like Sinai and Horeb thou’lt be famed,
For on thee the new age was brought to birth.[35]
That hour supreme is present to my soul,
Whereby I live again in youthful prime.
Naples is wavering between hope and fear,
But outside of her walls ’tis only hope.
She for the towns and cities joyously
Assembles troops and arms, and sends them on.
Guglielmo Pepe--and our fear is sped--
Mounts to be captain of the daring hosts.
Hero, all hail! History shall celebrate,
Not thy good fortune, but thy just renown.
And, more than in thy land, in hard exile
Constant wast thou, strong son of Italy.
Proud am I of thy friendship with myself,--
It is the noblest honour of my life.
And I from far cry at the mountain’s base
To that day’s dawn as prompted by a god,
“Lovely indeed art thou with stars in hair
Which like to vivid sapphires scintillate!”[36]
Dawn thou of brightest day!--and that salute
Soon through the whole of Italy re-rings.
But wherefore must I moan, remembering this?
My land, I saw thee throned, thou’rt now i’ the dust:
For thee, my land, these tears,--no tears for me!
And yet Hope comes dictating to my heart:
“From the new mourning shall new joy result;
That which was then achieved is but a seed,--
The goodly seed shall bear a goodly fruit.”
Yes, O ye nations, courage! and expect
From sterile winter lavish summertime.
July’s ninth day is blazing in the heaven,
And to the people’s will the King accedes.
How could I ever fully represent
The immense delight which I beheld around?
The Bourbon King, throned in his gilded seat,
Object of love in such a festival,
With rage in bosom and with joy in face,
Feigns to applaud the good he so detests:
Then on the gospel swears ... ah crime-stained King!
Thou stamp’st the kiss of Judas on the Christ!
O realm betrayed, to which I wailing speak,
Remember that Alfieri has pronounced--
“To make a blameless king, unmake him first”--
And, if a greedy foreigner, all the more.
The deed then wrought was done in righteousness,
’Twas reason’s revolution: all the same,
As if it were the greatest of all crimes
’Twas punished by the Bourbon’s perfidy.
No, such a sacred movement cost to none
A drop of blood, not even a drop of tears.
Ah I remember those nine hurrying months
As though they had been blessed years of fame!
August the Parliament was opened, where
Some Cato, Tully, or Hortensius, pealed.
Activity is witnessed in the fleet,--
Ancient Amalfi seems therein revived.
The manning of the army starts anew,
But with no mixture of a foreign stock;
And warlike squadrons are adjoined to it
Of civic legions and militia-bands.
The strenuous presses creak, and everywhere
The country’s intellect displays its fruits.
My own blood like a burning lava coursed:
Not I, not I, then sang, but Patriot Love!
And, to encourage that heroic race
Which from ancestral ashes came to birth,
Re-echoed did I hark to those his strains
Which he was pleased to utter through my lips:
From women and from children and from all,
Here, there, and up and down, on every hand.[37]
With dulcet and with martial harmony
By the Musician’s skill invested, these,
Sung in all houses and in every street,
Were even quoted in the Parliament;
To their Tyrtæus all the provinces,
As chorus to the coryphee, replied.
All, all was active: Usages and laws
Progressed in union with the newborn rights.
But many of the law-courts had to shut,
For rivalry in virtue lessened crime.
I must here make a little digression, to illustrate this matter of
“Tyrtæus.” It need scarcely be said that Tyrtæus, who flourished about
650 B.C., was a Greek elegiac poet, born in Attica, lame and
misshapen, and totally ignorant of military matters. In the second
Messenian war the Lacedæmonians were directed by the oracle to apply to
the Athenians for a general; and the Athenians (such at least is the
legend, which may be largely discounted without undue scepticism) sent
them Tyrtæus. This looked very like a _mauvaise plaisanterie_, and was
so regarded by the Lacedæmonians; yet the result justified the oracle,
and the Athenians as well. The poet poured forth his strains with such
splendid impulse and vigour that he animated the troops; they abandoned
the idea of raising the siege of Ithome, and thoroughly defeated the
Messenians. “The popularity of these elegies in the Spartan army was
such that it became the custom to sing them round the camp-fires at
night, the polemarch rewarding the best singer with a piece of flesh.”
The term “Tyrtæus of Italy” (Tirteo d’Italia) has been constantly
applied by his countrymen to Gabriele Rossetti. I am not clear when
this practice began, whether before or only after 1846, when Rossetti,
in his _Veggente in Solitudine_, applied the term to _himself_. At
any rate, I had until recently assumed that the phrase had only a
lax application, as indicating that Rossetti, by his declaimed and
published patriotic lyrics, had incited, and would continue to incite,
Italians to combat for liberty and independence. But of late I have
come to the almost confident conclusion that he must have taken a
personal part in the sole military expedition in which the Neapolitan
army sought to maintain the constitution of 1820. This conclusion
is founded upon a letter (in my possession) which a certain Dr
Costanza--to me not otherwise known--addressed to my father on 10th
November 1847. I first read the letter with attention towards 1896, and
I here give a translation of it.
“GIBRALTAR.
“_10th November 1847._
“HONOURED COMPATRIOT,
“Twenty-six years have now passed since we bade one another a last
adieu in the Island of Malta, at the fatal period of ’21. You must
recollect Dr Costanza, then a young physician and surgeon, now
turned of fifty years of age. You had known him in the capital of
the kingdom, and you afterwards met him at Montecassino, _when you
were returning from the gorges of Antrodoca after the hapless result
of that first passage of arms_ upon which depended the fate of our
country. That Costanza is now writing to you, and warmly recommends
to you three fellow-countrymen of ours, recently saved by miracle
from the blood-red hands of the agents of the tyrant of Naples and
Sicily....
“Your Compatriot, and erewhile Companion
in misfortune,
DR COSTANZA.”
In this letter the mention of Antrodoca (or Antrodoco) is the essential
thing. The mountains of Antrodoco are near Rieti, which was the scene
of an engagement, on 7th March 1821, between the Neapolitan and the
Austrian troops. The actual feat of arms was not discreditable to the
Italians; but--perceiving that they were the weaker party, and that
the final issue was hopeless for them--they immediately afterwards
disbanded, and all was over. I cannot indeed, recollect having ever
heard from my father that he was along with the army on that occasion,
nor does he affirm it in his versified Autobiography; yet I now see
that he must have been so. I do not infer that he was in the fighting
ranks; but I do infer that two passages which are to be found in his
_Veggente in Solitudine_ have a more positive meaning than I used to
attribute to them. The passages are as follows:--
1. “Fratelli, all’armi, all’armi!” etc.
“Brothers, to arms, to arms! Our country has summoned us. _I, with my
stimulating songs, will also go among you._”
2. (As already referred to) “Tirteo d’Italia,” etc.
“Who will be the Tyrtæus of Italy in the camp? ’Tis I, ’tis I! _Such I
have been_, such I am.”
The first of these passages comes from a song composed by Rossetti
towards the date of the soldiering in 1821. The second may have been
written about 1845.
I have found one other paper which seems to bear upon this
semi-military act of Gabriele Rossetti. An excellent friend of his,
Ferdinando Ciciloni, wrote to him from Naples on 24th November 1825,
saying: “Three days ago I went to San Sebastiano, which, from the seat
of the Parliament, has become a College of Music. As I crossed the
courtyard, I had a mental vision of Rossetti in uniform, and with two
very black moustaches.” As we have seen (note on p. 36), Rossetti,
though not at all a man of a soldiering turn, had belonged, in 1814,
to the Guard of Internal Security under King Joachim, and once again,
in 1821, he donned a uniform--a British one this time. But Ciciloni’s
remark does not seem very likely to refer to either of these incidents;
rather to something in which the Parliament-building was concerned, and
a muster immediately before the departure of the army to Rieti appears
the most probable occurrence.
Freedom immaculate, O thou who hadst
Such sacred worship on Sebeto’s banks,
Iniquitous plots ’gainst thee, without and in,
The Royal Princes’ visible ill-faith,
Ambition nursed by some few senators,
And envious grudge of many generals,
Engirt thee with the trackless labyrinth
When in thee Heaven was overcome by Hell.
Nor have I in repentance struck my brow
Because my worship of thee wrought me scathe.
Were I in that same case a thousand times,
A thousand I’d return to do the same.
Thee from Christianity I ne’er disjoined,--
I feel my heart-strings quivering to both.
The Bourbon perjury, the Austrian force,
On thee, O sacred Liberty, made war:
And, seeing thy holy worship thus destroyed,
I bade a farewell to the soil profaned,
And so the thundering ship conducted me
Where Christ and Freedom can be both adored.
Name to the world, O sacred Gratitude,
The Scotch-born hero who on British deck
Rescued the singer of Italian hopes
Out of the Bourbon despot’s slaughter-fangs.
Sir Graham Moore,[38] inured to combating
In a great nation’s thundrous lightning-flash,
I bear with an indelible imprint
Thy cherished name written upon my heart.
Those soul-inspired and freedom-loving strains
Intoned by me upon my native soil
On the four winds already had dispread,
O’er mountains and o’er seas, a tireless flight;
And the Britannic Genius, when they reached
His shores, bade Italy’s Tyrtæus hail.
Now my propitious fate had willed it so
That by a lady were my verses read--
A British Admiral’s well-honoured wife,
Whether more fair or gracious who could say?
But this I know--I saw in her combined
Penelope’s heart and Helen’s countenance.
She, worthy partner of the British chief,
Honours in others’ mental gifts her own;
And those who know her know how highly trained
She is, and she alone discerns it not.
To Naples came the lady at the time
When flames burned there of patriotic love,
And she expressed the wish she had conceived
To know the Italian poet face to face;
And with such ardour she admired his work
That numerous verses she could quote by heart.
An English officer, of cultured mind,
Who had always shown me marks of courtesy,
And who in the Museum saw me at whiles,
Made me acquainted with the lady’s wish.
I to the invitation gave response,
And so a day was settled for my call.
She--as a sister might a brother greet
Returning--greeted me in amity;
Yet day by day this kindliness increased.
Fair Angel of God’s presence sent on earth,
Ah not so soon return to Paradise!
Many there circle his eternal throne,
But angels are not plenteous here below.
In all that effervescent period
She, whose good wishes were for our success,
Remained a witness of my innocence,
And an approver of my patriot zeal.
When by the foul effect of treacheries
Our government had perished, she was grieved,
And for unfortunate Rossetti’s fate
She felt concern, and to her husband spoke:
“Save from the axe that guiltless man; if love
Of country is a crime, you are guilty too!”
Alas how hard did exile seem to me,
And leaving in such woes my native land!
Three times he offered refuge on his ship,
And all the three times I rejected it.
But my continuing was so foolhardy
That wiser I accepted it the fourth.
Lamenting night and day my country’s lot,
And as to my own life not caring much,
From March to June I kept myself concealed,
’Mid traps laid by a sleepless-eyed police.[39]
One night I was in that terrific plight,
When a voice called upon my name, and said:
“Fly--I discern your scaffold plain to see!”
I look, and find ’tis General Fardella,
Who was just then the Minister of War;
But, while I am rousing from my wonderment,
The dark receives him--moveless I remain.
Meseems I see him still, the while I write.
He, who so often gave my lines applause,
Had entered furtive in my hiding-place:
But how he found it out I cannot say.
How could I sleep, or hope again for calm?
Within my soul I heard the word--“Fly, fly!”
In perturbations having passed the night,
I to the lady wrote at earliest dawn;
And towards the eve two English subalterns[40]
Most willingly responded to my wish;
And they, to make my move less perilous,
Gave me red uniform resembling theirs.
I on the moment, be it luck or thought
To pass more safely before others’ eyes,
Packed a few clothes and papers many a one
In a small trunk, and was in readiness:
And I exclaimed, twixt joyful heart and grieved,
“I bear with me my all--Ready--let’s go.”
Between the gallant pair I took the coach,
Which drove us forth on our clandestine path[41]
To where a skiff was in await for us,
With six athletic oarsmen on the beach.
O Rochfort,[42] thou to which the naval forts
All paid salute as they before thee passed,
And thundering thou through hundred-fourscore mouths
Didst spread afar thy nautical command,
Thee sinuous the Mediterranean,
And thee vast Ocean’s sheer immensity,
Saw dominating the unstable wave,
And christened thee the Formidable Fort.
Thee from the skiff I see, and feed my glance,
As on artilleried walls, upon thy bows.
The mighty ship gave symptoms of good-will,
Expressed in divers modes by the ample crew;
And I--I kissed that wooden Albion
Amid the naval group who smiled thereat.
To the saloon bright-shining in the dusk
I sped, to give Thetis and Neptune thanks.
“Here is a pair of gods not fabulous,”
I said, when greeted by their noble smiles.
The grace which can forestall a modest wish
I always found on either countenance.
Then in the night I went with saddened soul
To contemplate the shore which met my view.
All are reposing in the silent hour,
Except some watch that paces vigilant;
And I alone and pensive on the prow
Stand communing with this my land betrayed;
And a few happy days and many dire
Are passing in review before mine eyes.
Ever ferocious Tyranny I saw
Becoming stronger by flagitious means;
And Freedom, tasted for a few poor days,
Begetting, like the fruit of Eden, death;
And Treason, like a snake pestiferous,
From two great goblets sipping tears and blood.
And, while my fantasy on every side
Ran riot, struck by miserable ideas,
The scenes of sanguinary Ninety-nine
Offered themselves to my dejected soul;
And o’er the regal lair meseemed I saw
A host funereal of threat’ning ghosts.
“Unhappy country, adieu!”--And that adieu
Over all Italy I diffused in song.[43]
LIFE IN EXILE--MALTA AND ENGLAND
To thee the first the British prow was turned,
Flourishing Malta, small but beautiful,
A quiet refuge ’mid the unquiet sea,
Of an Italian mind and Arab speech.
I, sifting out of fallacies the truth,
Full half a lustre passed within thy bounds;
And, but for patriotic sorrowings,
Out there I should have led a placid life,--
For I encountered courteous, cultured minds,--
Culture in some, in many courtesy.
But both of these--they have my homage here--
I amply in one person found conjoined,
John Hookham Frere, a learned man and wise,
A Privy Councillor of the British Crown.
Himself he shone, not through extraneous aids,
And how I knew him I shall gladly tell.
Fame, so propitious to poetic gifts,
In Malta made a magnified report--
That Italy’s Tyrtæus had arrived,
And rescued by the British Admiral.
And I by many people was informed
That in the higher class the wish prevailed
That in some noted house I should display
My fervour of poetic improvise;
And I, now so suspicious of my powers,
Unhesitating answered--“Yes, at once.”
Ah me unhappy! I’m no more the man!
But such must be the course of human fate.
Too true, I, then a river, am now a rill--
A rill which comes anear to drying up.
In vain I stir my fancy, which is tired,--
I cannot even command poetic phrase.
These verses--let me say this prose in rhyme--
As I dictate them, others write them down,[44]
And, as they all gush out extempore,
Some of them will be good, and others bad:
Nor do I blot the bad to keep the best,
But pass them current as they chance to come.
To get the whole expressed without constraint,
And without labouring after phrase and word,
I pitched on purpose on that sextal rhyme
In which one easily words the thing one wants.
On my assent, a spacious hall prepares
For ladies, men of letters, diplomats.
There that distinguished man enraptured heard
My burst of song ’mid plaudits many and full;[45]
And, being unused to such demonstrances,
He deemed the thing almost a prodigy.
I sang six themes, and my excited mind
Poured copiously divergent styles and rhythms.
Persons of eminence, the following day,
Graced me by visits of civility.
But one beneficent and reverend mien
In which I read exalted characters,
A diction which, arising from the soul,
Goes to the heart, and fixes what it says--
This ’mid the throng I noted. He being gone,
I asked his name--and it astonished me;
For all that I had heard rumoured around
About his talents settled on my thought:
An ample treasure-house of classic lore,[46]
Such did Fame publish him by hundred mouths:
Toward him desire resistless drew me on,
Nor did his presence lessen his repute.
Unconscious of his fame he singly seemed,--
To hear it named was what he could not brook;
Courtesy generous and without display,
Learning immense, and greater modesty;--
Ah who could paint that noble-natured man?
One day when he accorded praise anew
To chaunts of mine which wakened his surprise,
I answered him: “In you I seem to see
The imperial eagle by a sparrow charmed.
I know my verse has earned me banishment;
But I, excelling some, bend low to you.”
And later, when I saw how plenteously
He dealt his succours to the sick and poor,
I in John Hookham Frere discerned the type
Of the sublime Christian philosopher.
None but an angel could pourtray him true,--
I feel my eyes grow moist to speak of him.
He called me friend, and that has been my pride,
And in myself I reverenced the name.
Having that store of virtues in my gaze,
Sanctified in him by Christianity,--
’Tis sacred duty to confess as much--
I felt myself grow better by so great
A pattern. Nevermore he left my thoughts,
And even in death within my heart he lives.
To him, after I reached the English shores
(All distant from him though I then had passed),
I dedicated Dante’s Comedy,
With Analytic Comment from my pen.
That Psaltery to him too I inscribed
Which praises freedom and ennobles man,
And he with kindliness received the wish
I showed that it be dedicate to him.
Of him with lively gratitude anew
I chaunted in my “Seer in Solitude.”
Those lines while I was writing, thou, blest soul,
Wast winging forth thy way to Paradise,
There to embrace the sister and the spouse
From whom thou languishing wast parted here.
O all of you elected spirits and pure,
Look down on desolate Rossetti’s grief.
He in himself holds that same constancy
Which every one of you applauded oft.
Still exiled, but now old, infirm, and blind,
How different alas from other-while!
Different? Ah no! Although oppressed by years,
He for his country always is the same.
And he, on hearing how that freedom’s tree
Has there re-budded, full of sapfulness,[47]
Blesses his every sweat of brow poured out
To irrigate its high ancestral germ;
And, now when all men sweat to nurture it
He hopes before he dies to taste its fruits.
Now Scythian cold, ’tis true, reigns everywhere,
But none can think it will last on for aye:
To the political winter now endured
A more propitious season must succeed;
And all by various signs can estimate
That flowers and fruits we yet shall see in bloom.
As Rossetti has here mentioned his edition of Dante’s _Comedy_, and his
own _Psaltery_, and as references occur later on to other publications
of his, I may as well enter at once into some details in elucidation.
After his arrival in England he printed the following works:--
1. 1826-7. Dante’s _Inferno_, with a “Comento Analitico.” The intention
was to publish the whole of the _Divina Commedia_: but, the expense
proving too great, the _Inferno_ alone came out. The great majority of
the comment on the _Purgatorio_ was written--not any (I think) of that
on the _Paradiso_. The MS. comment on the _Purgatorio_ was presented
by me in 1883 to the Municipality of Vasto, under a stipulation
(volunteered by the Municipality itself) that they would print it; but
this has not been done, and indeed the MS. volume was treated in a
highly neglectful style. My father, when in Italy, was of course very
well acquainted with Dante’s poem; but he had not studied it with any
keenness of scrutiny until he settled in London. When he did that, he
soon reached the conclusion that the surface of Dante’s _Commedia_ is
very different from its inner core of meaning. At first he considered
the inner core to be political: the Empire and Ghibellinism, as against
the Papacy and Guelfism. As he progressed his conceptions expanded, and
he regarded Dante as a member, both in politics and in religion, of an
occult society having a close relation to what we now call Freemasonry;
and he opined that the _Commedia_ and other writings of Dante, and
also the books of many other famous authors in various languages and
epochs, are of similar internal significance. It is not my purpose here
to discuss whether he was right or wrong: I hold that he was highly
ingenious, that some of his reasonings deserve very careful attention,
and that in several instances he pushed things too far. His comment
on Dante, and subsequent writings in the same direction, excited some
notice in Italy, and at least as much in England. Coleridge thought
well of his speculations up to, but not beyond, a certain point; Isaac
Disraeli was fully convinced by them; Arthur Hallam, and afterwards
Panizzi and Schlegel, wrote in opposition. A learned German, Joseph
Mendelssohn, lectured in Berlin on Rossetti’s system, and published
his discourses, which are more expository than critical, in 1843. A
remarkable book (later than my No. 2) was brought out at Naples by
Vecchioni, embodying a course of interpretation and argument closely
resembling that of Rossetti, who never quite understood whether the
conclusions of Vecchioni had been formed independently or not.
2. 1832. _Lo Spirito Antipapale che produsse la Riforma_ (The
Anti-papal Spirit which produced the Reformation) develops and extends
the ideas, which Rossetti had conceived during his study of Dante, as
to a secret society to which that poet and many other writers belonged,
and as to the essentially anti-Christian as well as anti-papal opinions
covertly expressed in their writings. An English translation of this
work was published.
3. 1833. The work to which the Autobiography has applied the name
_Psaltery_ is entitled _Iddio e l’Uomo, Salterio_ (God and Man,
a Psaltery). The majority of it was written in Malta: in London
considerable additions and changes were made. Leaving some of his
individual lyrics out of account, this may be regarded as the
completest and best poetic work produced by Rossetti. In 1843 it
was republished under a new title, _Il Tempo_ (Time), and with some
substantial modifications of plan. This book, and our No. 2, are down
in the Pontifical _Index Librorum Prohibitorum_.