dai Misteri Antichi_ (The Mystery of the Platonic Love of the
Middle Ages derived from the Ancient Mysteries). This extensive and
rather discursive work, in five volumes, follows up the line of
speculation and argument shown in Nos. 1 and 2. Rossetti wrote it
with a consciousness that the themes of religion or irreligion which
it discusses were volcanic matter for readers to handle, as well as
perilous to his own professional position in England. He therefore
exhibited his subject with some amount of reticence, meandering through
thickets of very audacious thought--the thought of great writers of
the past as interpreted (but also to a great extent deprecated) by
himself. This book was printed; but, as Mr Frere, partially seconded by
Mr Charles Lyell, pronounced it to be foolhardy, it was withheld from
publication in England, and was only put on sale on the Continent with
precaution and in small numbers.
5. 1842. _La Beatrice di Dante_--an argument that Dante’s Beatrice
was not in any sense a real woman, but an embodiment of Philosophy.
The reasoning extends a good deal beyond this limit, into regions
explored in Nos. 1, 2, and 4. Rossetti completed the work in three
disquisitions--or indeed, according to the final arrangement, in nine
disquisitions. Only the first of these was published. The others
were entrusted to a French writer, M. E. Aroux. He studied them,
and published a book named _Dante Hérétique, Révolutionnaire, et
Socialiste_--a book which my father, on seeing it in print, did not
acknowledge as by any means faithful to his own views. The MS. was
returned to Rossetti: somehow it could never be found in our household
until the close of 1900, when I discovered it, more or less complete,
in an old portfolio.
6. 1846. _Il Veggente in Solitudine_ (The Seer in Solitude) is a long
poem of patriotic aim, in several books and all sorts of metres. Its
main object is to denounce the then political and religious condition
of Italy, and to forecast a better future. This is mixed up with a
good deal of autobiographical matter, and with many lyrics of old time
(some of them evincing Rossetti’s very best work) interpolated into
the context. As a rounded achievement of poetry, this book cannot be
eulogized; it had, however, a great though clandestine circulation in
Italy, roused enthusiastic feelings, and was so much prized that an
honorary medallion of Rossetti, the work of Signor Cerbara, was struck.
7. 1847. _Versi_, published at Lausanne. This volume has not a directly
patriotic or political complexion: it consists of many of Rossetti’s
best poems of early date, along with some of recent years.
8. 1852. _L’Arpa Evangelica_ (The Evangelic Harp). Although printed in
1852, this volume only reached Rossetti’s hands at an advanced date
in 1853. It consists of hymns and lyrics of a distinctly Christian,
combined with an enlarged humanitarian, character. Several of the poems
in this volume are now used in the Evangelical churches of Italy. I
find twenty-one in a volume entitled _Inni e Cantici ad uso delle
Chiese, Famiglie, Scuole, ed Associazioni Cristiane d’ Italia_. Roma,
1897.
It may be as well to say here something as to my father’s religious
opinions. His parents were religious Catholics of the ordinary Italian
type. His bringing-up was religious; and I suppose that, until
manhood was well advanced, he acquiesced, without special zeal, in
the established views and practices of Catholicism. As his political
opinions progressed into active opposition to despotism and the foreign
yoke, so did his religious opinions progress into active, and indeed
very fierce, opposition to Papal dogma and pretensions, and to all
that side of Roman Catholicism which pertains more to sacerdotal and
hierarchical system than to the personality and the gospel utterances
of Jesus Christ. On the other hand, he never ceased to cherish and
reverence this original basis of Evangelical faith and practice. As
I knew him from my earliest years (say from 1834), he adhered to no
ecclesiastical sect whatever; and--allowing for the primitive-Christian
sympathy just referred to--he was certainly far more a free-thinker
than definitely a Christian. As his writings were never of a personally
anti-Christian tone (though they often developed the anti-Christian
views of other authors), and _were_ of an anti-papal tone, he became
mixed up in his later years with Italian anti-papal Protestantizing
religionists, to an extent greater than in his prime he would have
tolerated. Towards 1849 disfrocked priests and semi-Waldensian
semi-simpletons got a good deal about him, when broken health and
precarious eyesight had to some extent enfeebled his mental along
with his bodily powers; and association with these people and their
publications did certainly not tend to promote a vigorous presentment
of his essentially undogmatic but not essentially unspiritual mind. He
came to write about Christian matters in terms suited to an absolute
Christian believer; whereas, in fact, he was a devotional adherent to
the moral and spiritual utterances of Jesus, but was not a practising
member of any Christian denomination, nor a disciple in any theological
school. It should be understood that, though a fervent and outspoken
anti-papalist, he never expressly renounced the Roman Catholic faith.
In the earlier years of his London sojourn it might have been to his
advantage (as Professor of Italian in King’s College and elsewhere)
to join the Anglican rather than the Roman communion; but this he
considered unworthy of an Italian, and he never took any step in that
direction. Neither did he naturalize himself as an Englishman.
The means of Gabriele Rossetti were never equal to paying the cost
of expensive publications. My No. 1 was brought out by subscription;
Nos. 2 and 4 by the spontaneous liberality of Mr Lyell, and, as far
as No. 4 is concerned, Mr Frere came forward, as well, at the close.
It is only fair to say that Rossetti was a laborious worker, of
independent spirit; and, though he accepted with grateful satisfaction
the volunteered bounty of Mr Lyell in these instances, and of Mr Frere
in some others likewise, he was the least likely of men to go about to
“ask, and ye shall receive.”
As I have been speaking--with the distaste which I learned to feel
for them as a class--of Protestantizing Italians, I will add that
one excellent man I have known among them was my cousin Teodorico
Pietrocola-Rossetti. He was in London in the later years of my father’s
life, but was not then taking an active part in the Evangelical
propaganda to which he devoted all the closing part of his career.
In 1883 he died in Florence, while conducting a service for his
congregation. A great number of his hymns are in the collection _Inni e
Cantici_ before mentioned.
Back to my tale. And I should here premise
That, turning lengthened studies to account,
I undertook in Malta first to spread
A taste for our Italian literature;
And in distinguished houses not a few
To witness others’ progress was my joy.
A Massic or Falernian wine no more
I drank, as oft in Naples I had done,
But quaffed the spirit of the classics now
Alone, and none could say “Why gorge thyself?”
But, even in study laudable howe’er,
Intemperance is still condemnable.
Many, I know, find teaching wearisome,
Whereas to me ’twas profit and repute;
And I could all repeat from memory
The Comedy of Dante, mystical,
Tasso, Ariosto, drama, satirists,
Petrarch, Chiabrera, and some lyrists more.
Become the foremost of professors there,
I knew the most distinguished travellers
And highest officers of government:
Indeed, from titled man to boatman, all
Bore me affection--saving only one.
The Consul there from Naples was Gerardi,
Who constantly molested refugees.
One day that upon me he fixed his glance,
I cried: “You hangman’s face, what see you in me?”
Confused he drooped his far from pleasant eyes,
And put the tail of him between his legs.
This serf of tyrant power endeavoured then
To get me turned adrift out of the isle,
When Albion’s Sejanus, Castlereagh,
Was ordering to expel the fugitives:
But this Gerardi (he might cry with rage)
Had read my face “Noli me tangere.”
As long as there I lived, I felt assured
That all the world contained no baser man;
But, when I saw in London a Minasi,[48]
I found that I had made a great mistake.
But such a name, by God, pollutes my lips.
No, let my mouth be nevermore befouled
To speak a most opprobrious brigand’s name!
Go, galleys’ rot, or rather gallows’ rot,
Go, Ruffo’s bravo[49] and worse knave than he!
Through that Gerardi, under-strapper of Kings,
I saw from Malta hounded Rossaroll,[50]
And Carrascosa[51] and Abatemarchi,[52]
Capecelatro,[53] Florio, and many more;
And a Poerio,[54] in his rage convulsed,
Was first imprisoned, afterwards expelled.
And Pier de Luca (I record with tears
Thy fate, the flower of courteous learned men)
And Pier de Luca lost his reason hence,
And was in frenzy for some days and nights:
He trembled at Gerardi’s very name,
And later on, to escape, he drowned himself.
O Castlereagh! Thy country rightly deems
That thy best service was thy suicide;
But why no suicide a year before?
Indignant I returned to England’s masts,
For Malta grew to me insufferable.
A nest of corsairs Malta now meseemed,
Where, save that single man, all things I abhorred;
So to the seat imperial of the main
Thetis and Neptune re-conveyed my steps.
Nor shall I paint that lengthy voyaging,
Which in another poem[55] I described.
The curst Gerardi, in insulting terms,
Had written to the Bourbon Council-board
How that Rossetti, that incendiary,
Was to be found upon the British ship;
And cried the King: “Upon a sovereign’s faith,
I’ll do my utmost to get hold of him.”
Well had that General Fardella said,
Who gave me secret pledge of friendliness,
That a malignant star detained me there,
Since o’er me impended a tremendous ire.
And I had stayed, at hazard of my life,
For full three months exposed to all the risk!
Following routine, the British Admiral
Was bidding farewell to the Sovereign;
And he perceived astonished that for rage
The King, like a hyæna, bit his lips.
Treating him almost as a menial, he
Said with an angry and imperious tone:
“Surrender that rebellious subject whom
You saved, and now to England would conduct.”
And he with firmset aspect made reply:
“An English Admiral will not be base.”
Menaces and entreaties he contemned,
And turned his back on him resolvedly;
And, when that evening he returned aboard,
He told what was demanded and refused.
And such a fact cannot be called in doubt,
For all o’er Naples did its rumour run.
I felt myself so moved by that account
That, in the presence of his noble wife,
I with emotion kissed his saving hand.
Thee may God guerdon, mounted soul in heaven!
Twice over did I owe my life to thee,--
And gracious lady, God bless thee alike!
And I reflected: “Why in Ferdinand
Boils up against me such a fierce despite
That, not appeased by lifelong banishment,
He would inflict on me a barbarous death?
So much of rage against my civic song,
In which as father I so lauded him!
And how has he forgotten those my lines
Which drew the very tear-drops from his eyes?”
The savage spirit! When he heard me named,
His knees would jog beneath his body’s weight,
And he against me, the poor exiled bard,
Was all a-tremble, furiously convulsed.
And thence a truthful penman wrote to me
He had himself from the fierce Bourbon heard--
“If even the court declares him innocent,
I’ll make him die under the bastinade:
On public scaffold or in darkest crypt
Die he infallibly shall--and that I swear.”[56]
Thus for a long while I remained in doubt
Of the true motive for such senseless rage:
But then the pen of a most worthy man
Gave me a light amid the obscurity.
What time the King of Naples had decamped,
And I had turned my course to another goal,
Some praise of me was heard by Gaspare Mollo
Duke of Lusciano, who was reckoned then
An able poet; and my fate so willed
That he desired to meet me face to face.
Of voluntary good-will he gave me proofs,
Which I responded to with modesty:
But, when he heard me improvise in verse,
Mollo became as jealous as a beast:
He in my presence spoke in jest alone,
But poured his insults forth behind my back.
He piqued himself the most on improvise:
He saw his primacy endangered much,
And tried his best to make me ludicrous.
And I upon his dramas and his rhymes
(For who can damp a youthful poet’s fire?)
Launched a good ten or dozen epigrams,[57]
Which many men rehearsed with loud guffaws.
For one he gave me, I returned him ten:
This was ill done, I know--but so I did.
Mollo kept brooding o’er his inward grudge,
Which well I read upon his pallid cheek.
Now, when the liberal Government had fall’n,
He was installed as President of a Board
To overhaul the writings then produced.
The President, and Censors in his wake,
From that explosion of anonymous print
Chose hundreds of inflammatory attacks,
And called them all my own--no fable this--
And showed me like a devil to the King.
And how that monumental lie disprove?
If even I had been Briareus,
Writing by night and day with hundred pens,
It would have been a thing impossible
To achieve that quantity of verse and prose.
A shameless slander! Yet my enemy
Mouths it against me, and the King believes.
This statement about the Duke of Lusciano may be quite true--a point
as to which I am not competent to express an opinion. I have always
understood, however, that one main professed grievance of the King
against Rossetti was as follows (and in candour I state it here, as
I did in my Memoir of Dante Rossetti):--At the time when an Austrian
invasion of the Neapolitan territory, connived at by King Ferdinand,
was imminent, Rossetti wrote a lyric expressive of the patriotic rage
natural at the time, containing this quatrain addressed to the King--
“I vindici coltelli
Sapran passarvi il cor:
I Sandi ed i Luvelli
Non son finiti ancor.”
(Avenging knives will be apt to pierce[58] your heart: the Sands and
the Louvels are not yet done with). These lines clearly say that King
Ferdinand, if he were to persist in a certain course, would be very
liable to be assassinated; and, although they do not add that he
_ought_ to be assassinated, the Rè Nasone cannot have been solitary
in scenting out that implication. There was also the affair (referred
to on p. 50 as more than probable) that Rossetti had accompanied the
Neapolitan troops, animating them by his verses to fight against the
Austrians in defence of a constitution which the King, by a gross act
of perjury, had then abolished.
We in the harbour of Naples made a stay
Two weeks almost--it gave me many a thrill.
The very aspect of the city enslaved
Became for me a melancholy scene.
The vigilant Police, who day and night
Laid scores of snares if they might catch me so,
Set full a hundred spies around the ship
To learn who might be come to visit me--
But no one came; and yet by means unknown
Earnest of friendship did not fail to reach.
But now the breeze is favouring, waves a-calm,
And the much longed-for moment is at hand.
How many mothers o’er their slaughtered sons
Wept on the shore because of that wild beast
Who for a five years’ term had sheathed his claws,
And now unsheathed them in the lust of rage!
Joyful I turned my back on servitude,
And full of ardour sped toward Liberty.
Hail and thrice hail, O puissant Albion,
Who, ceaseless in diffusing trades and arts,
Thine irresistible trident dost extend
Over the immense four quarters of the world.
If thou, devout to rightful liberty,
Impart’st to others its inspiring rays,
Thou, arbiter of warfare and of peace,
Wilt become mightier than antique Rome.
Will it, and thou redeem’st a world oppressed,
For thy determined will ensures result.
America, thy rival and thy child,
If thou dost fail, will do it later on:
She in her nascent empire will become
The foremost nation of the rounded world.
She’ll be thy rival, truly glorious,
For still in her gigantic state she grows;
But not vociferous conceited France,
Free and enslaved at once, as if by Fate.
In you two all is diverse--customs, tongues;
Her mark is impetus, and reason thine.
Since my arrival, England, much thou hast done,
Yet much remains to do--do it thou wilt.
Hardly had I set foot upon the land
But I around me felt a freer air:
’Mid grand activity which knows no pause
I found my own increasing day by day;
And by the influences which wove my web
After the poet’s came the scholar’s turn.
Accounting precious every instant’s time
In high conceptions I was all immersed:
Dante, with Analytic Commentary,
Was the first outcome of my new pursuits:
And, spite of all disparagement, the work
Earns me the sympathy of distinguished men.
Charles Lyell, having read it, to me wrote,
Giving clear pledge of unsolicited
Regard--a Scotchman he, of lofty mind,
And Allighieri’s signal devotee:
He on my heart, which honours his deserts,
Is still impressed, after the unequalled Frere.
And now him also doth the urn enclose,[59]
And bitter tears he leaves me to outpour.
I say it again; no longer in the heat
Of Massic or Falernian, nor indeed
Of politics, I set to tracing out
Our classic writers’ anti-papal spirit,
With critical mind--confuting carping tongues;
To Lyell did I dedicate the book.
Stately an University had risen
In this enormous capital of the realm:[60]
And now the Council, from whose midst emerged
Such ample learning sacred and profane,
Offered me of its own accord the chair
Allotted to Italian literature.
To Italy, to flout three Kings, I sped
My fame, and triumphed over lies with truth.
Let Tyranny hate me, while my country loves,--
Her exiled son has never wrought her shame;
And this I know--despite all senseless rage,
My books have made their way from hand to hand.
And not those hymns alone where I forecast
The Ausonian Genius’ future rapt in thought;[61]
But that Arcanum of Platonic Love
Which offers in five tomes broad scrutinies,
Where pondering I analyse the myths
Of every country, every faith and age;
And that in which I showed symbolic all
Our Allighieri’s mystic Beatrice,
Delineated by the schemes occult
Of most remote gymnosophistic times,
Which schools of magians had inherited,
And through the Mysteries bequeathed to us;
Also that other noted by its name,
Rome toward the Middle of our Century.
In each my work, to freedom dedicate,
I demonstrate the iniquities of priests:
In all that I expounded nought I feigned,
But drew my facts from pages thousandfold.
Immoderate study always is unwise,
But, if ’tis noxious, it amounts to guilt.
No, that which I have published, much though it be,
Is but the half of what I’ve written down.
Ah for my blindness whom have I to blame,
When by myself my eyes were done to death?
Having in England stayed my roaming course,
And seeing my future less ambiguously,
Like Dante’s, “Vita Nuova!”[62] was my word:
He wrote but I resolved to practise it.
“Let warm affections in my novel lot
Arise,” I said, “to populate my breast.
[Illustration: GAETANO POLIDORI
_From a Pencil-Drawing by Dante Gabriel Rossetti_
1853]
Within the hotbed of our vicious times
Love proffered me its frenzies and remorse:
But, never a seducer, still seduced,
Quicksand to quicksand, angry seas I ploughed:
Now let a holier love possess my soul,--
May he who churned it up restore its calm.”
And prudent reason here will not disclose
What and how many tempests I endured.
Upon my canvas be concealed, concealed,
The flush upon my brow in others’ shame.[63]
And on those quicksands while I fix my gaze
A dreadful shudder creeps along my veins,
And in that shudder I my visage smite,
Uttering a curse against my weaknesses.
The quicksands are afar, the harbour’s here.
Settled in London, all my travels past,
Among the men I most was pleased to meet,
Gaetano Polidori, learned, wise,
Who had been Count Alfieri’s secretary,
’Mid all the Italians whom I had known as yet
Appeared to merit honour and esteem.
Teaching was his profession. He had done
No small translating-work, had much composed.
Tuscan by birth, by accent all the more,
An elegant writer both in prose and verse,
He showed me, joined with candid character,
The strictest morals and a cultured mind.
Upon the day when I returned his call,
And saw him ’mid his well-bred family,
I twice and thrice fixed my admiring eyes
Upon the second daughter’s comeliness.
A single moment regulates a life:
My heart became the lodestone, she the pole.
And every hour my love became more keen
When hundred virtues and no self-conceit ...
I know that what I’m writing she dislikes,[64]
But, hiding it from her, I speak it still:
Knowing her fully, I have often said--
Angel in soul, and angel in her looks.
Feeling within me glow the lighted flame,
I wrote to Polidori, and ’twas thus:
“If to the gracious name of friend you please
To add the loving name of son as well
(Pray Heaven that so it may be!) be not loth
To give the enclosed into your Frances’ hands.
If this displease you, little though it were,
If so it haps you disapprove my suit,
Throw the two letters both into the fire,
And speak of this no more; but pray concede
Our friendship be not sundered, yours and mine,--
You so would punish my straightforwardness.”
A day being past, the maid to me so dear
Gave me a most affectionate response;
And at the altar after four months more
We vowed between us two a mutual faith.[65]
In marriage-knot at summit of my hopes,
My days went by in cheerful industry.
As sweet reward of honourable zeal,
My credit made advance from day to day.
Four only children Heaven conceded me,
And all the four I see around me still,
The issue of affections tender and true
In the four opening matrimonial years.
To speak about my wife I shall not pause,--
Others would think it overcharged, inept:
This I may tell--she is a blooming graft
Of English mother and of Tuscan sire;
Through mother and through sire in her one sees
Two nations tempering the mind and heart.
Let me but say that in her is evinced
Frankness of manner unpremeditate;
That she both speaks and writes three high-prized tongues,
Which rank ’mong Europe’s choicest and most rich;
And, when their authors she was studying,
She culled the flower of the three literatures.
That firm-fixed character which she displays
Founded, by means of Jesus’ gospel-book,
Upon religion pure morality,
Upon morality the purest life;
Thus she presents, perfect on every side,
The steadfast woman of the sacred page.
From living pattern oh what strength the love
Of ethical instructions must receive!
Wherefore to her more than myself is due
Our children’s educating discipline;
For of each rule she utters with her lips
They see in her the breathing prototype.
I never had occasion for a school,
Too apt to vitiate a guileless heart;
For she in her two daughters had betimes
Transfused a taste for music;[66] in all four
(Presenting now this model and now that)
The taste for letters and the beautiful.
In theory and in practice, both alike,
Her life is a fine treatise on the good:
Always a Christian, not a fanatic,
Always devout, but not ecstatical:
Heavens, what a woman! her Anglo-Italian soul
Has never trespassed over duty’s bound.
’Tis now five lustres I have made her mine,
And in five lustres I still see her the more
An angel harmony of deeds and words,
And in five lustres her all-blameless life
Has not one moment, one, belied itself.
I thank my God that, when he addressed my heart
To new affections, he made these be high:
And you, beloved children, thank you me
That such a mother I chose to give you breath.
[Illustration: CHRISTINA ROSSETTI
_From a Pencil-Drawing by Dante Gabriel Rossetti_
C. 1846]
Others perhaps will say that every bird
(An ancient saw) approves his proper nest.
Maria, Christina, William, Gabriel,
My children, _you_’ll reply, and that’s enough.
My loving girls, in whom my soul descries
A heavenly mind in virgin modesty,
Of intellect and ethics you have given
Already a shining proof in prose and verse:[67]
You from a double looking-glass, it seems,
Reflect upon us all your mother’s soul.