Rills of fresh lymph to inundate a mead--
So sometimes sister-like do poetry
And painting beautify the selfsame mind:
And both unite in you, my Gabriel,
And fertilize your soul, and give it fire.
These like two fountains both in you upflow,
Both in you like two torches are alight;
And, while you make them brightly manifest,
They both prepare in you exalted work.
Run and attain the duplicated goal,
Though yours is the most early dawn of life:
As able poet I hear you already hailed,
Already as able painter see you admired.[68]
Now onward, and the double race-course win!
You will be doing what I could not do.
If ’tis not vanity, almost re-born
I feel in person, even in countenance,
My calm-attempered William, in yourself,[69]
Thought in your eyes, and on your lips a smile.
In two dead languages and four that live
Already Truth converses with your mind.
My children, grow, grow up to patriot love;
In you the blood and name of me is stored
To England from Abruzzo transmigrate.
Free you were born, and I was born a serf.
O Providence! Mine exile seemed to me
The dire injustice of a Fate my foe;
But, if mine exile’s fruitage was to prove
A family like this, I bless the ban.
Yes, for thy deadly rage which hurled me forth,
Perfidious Bourbon King, I give thee thanks.
The thirteenth lustre have I now o’erstept
Of veteran life used to the field of fight;
And, never deviating from myself,
I glory in a changeless character.
A splendid servitude enchants me not:
Dying I’ll cry “All life to Italy!”
From the first day when her I knew oppressed,
I envied any who could give her aid.
Not for _my_ sake I loved her, but for hers,
When I devoted to her rest and life.
But there are some who, posed as Liberals,
Defame with such a title country and self:
And things I have to tell so silly or mean
That but to think of them my stomach turns.
But, ere I yield me to indignant zeal,
I sever the few good from numerous bad.
You who, despite the despots and the priests,
As firm Italians have revealed yourselves,
Ricciardi and Cagnazzi and Saliceti,
Gazzola, Mamiani, and Muzzarel,[70]
You let Fame publish in all time and place,
You and some others--yet ye are but few.
And where, immortal Pepe, leave I thee,
Who wreath’st young laurel upon hoary hair?
Sole Garibaldi is compeer of thine--
The sword of Venice thou, and he of Rome:
Tarpeian Eagle and Lion of Adria
Maintained by you two a determined strife.
By virtue of you Venice and Rome exclaim:
“All have we lost, ’tis true, but honour not;
For ne’er, undaunted heroes, did you yield
Save to the greater number and adverse fate.
Ye both, our century’s honour, have pursued
The good of Italy and not your own.”
That my father was most right in saying, “And where, immortal Pepe,
leave I thee?” will be generally allowed by persons cognizant of the
facts. I sincerely regret that he did not add, “And where, immortal of
immortals, Mazzini, leave I _thee_?” As he did not add that, I must say
a few words to account for so grave an omission.
Mazzini did not settle in London until 1837. It was inevitable that
two such patriots and exiles as Mazzini and Rossetti should know one
another. There was a great amount of mutual respect between them
(of which my Appendix furnishes ample proof), but not anything like
constant personal intercourse--in fact, I do not recollect having
even once seen Mazzini in our house, but I have occasionally seen him
elsewhere. To Italy and freedom they were equally devoted, and the
great conception of Italian unity was present to the minds of both. But
Mazzini was a determined Republican, which Rossetti was not--being,
from the course of his experiences and reflections, more in favour of a
constitutional monarchy, though by no means unsympathetic with the idea
of a Republic at the rare conjunctures when it emerged as having some
practical application: he was never a member of the Giovine Italia.
Mazzini was also, by nature and circumstance, an incessant conspirator,
and promoted a number of unpromising and abortive insurrections,
foredoomed to failure, and viewed with regret, and at times even
with great repugnance, by such Italians as were not committed to the
extremest forms of political theory and practice. It is no business of
mine to express an opinion whether Mazzini or Rossetti was the more
nearly in the right; but it has always been my conviction that, had it
not been for the agitation so strenuously kept alive by the sublime
Genoese patriot, the emancipation and unifying of Italy would not have
taken place so soon as they did.
It happened that towards 1850, when my father was writing his
Autobiography, he was particularly alienated from the policy pursued
by Mazzini and his adherents. The great revolutionary year, 1848, had
witnessed uprisings in various parts of Italy (an insurrection in
Messina had preceded the French Revolution of February 1848 against
Louis Philippe), followed by a regular campaign between the Piedmontese
and the Austrians; this was renewed in 1849. In both instances the
Austrians were the victors; and many patriotic Italians, including
Rossetti, opined that this disastrous result had in large measure been
brought about by a Mazzinian agitation (I will not pretend to say how
far Mazzini himself was personally responsible for it) which repelled
aid that might possibly have been forthcoming from some foreign powers,
especially republican France, and denounced the Piedmontese sovereign,
Charles Albert, as covertly a traitor to the Italian cause for which he
was fighting. I can thus understand a certain feeling on my father’s
part which, when he undertook to “sever the few good from numerous
bad,” among Italians “posed as Liberals,” withheld him from expressly
naming the great protagonist of the national movement, Mazzini,
although he indisputably, in his own mind, included him in the roll of
“the few good.” Even so the omission is to be regretted.
As to the question of Rossetti’s estimate of Republicanism (to which,
as I have already said, he preferred, for practical purposes, a
constitutional monarchy), the following distinct profession of faith
seems worth preserving. Its date cannot be earlier than June 1850, and
is probably a little later. It was written to introduce a poem--not, I
think, any that has been published.
“After having seen what is almost always the issue of a democratic
republic, more than once attempted in Europe; having seen that,
barbarous, sanguinary, fratricidal, predaceous, and atheistic, in
France in the last century, it ended in the absolute despotism of
Bonaparte; and that, although mild, gentle, generous, and believing,
in our own century, it is about to merge into the augmenting despotism
of another Bonaparte, who does not even possess the fascination of the
military and political successes and the talents of the first; how
can ever this blessed Republic still abide in the hearts of so many
Italians who sincerely love their country? And yet it does abide....
And was it not this desire which produced among us the discord of minds
in 1848, and caused all our subsequent reverses? Oh if all the Italians
had then unanimously combined with Charles Albert to expel the common
enemy from our sacred soil--oh if many inconsiderate men had not, with
the cry of ’Republic’ which they proclaimed with so much fervour,
first dismayed that sovereign, and afterwards damped his enthusiasm
for Italian independence--at this hour not one German foot would be
insolently stamping our land, and Italy would not be such as she has
miserably returned to being. Pius IX. himself took fright at that name;
and, retreating from the glorious path which he was already footing, he
ended by betraying us. A melancholy story this--which has made, makes,
and will make, all who love Italy shed prolonged tears.
“‘But then you have no liking for a Republic?’ To any who ask me this,
I shall answer: Yes, I like it, and that far better than others do;
but I like one which would not have severed from us either Charles
Albert or Pius IX., and which would have conduced to our obtaining that
national independence that was the ardent longing of all Italians.... I
like that Republic which alone can suit the interest of all, and which
alone seems capable of enduring in Italy, or indeed in modern Europe.
“Whilst our hapless country had a prospect of good success, I wrote
these few extemporized octaves, which might furnish occasion for many
notes, so as to establish more fully what such a _Republic without
peril_ ought to be--which I have always desired, and now more than ever
desire.... I felt my heart touched in re-reading these stanzas; and,
rude and unpolished as they are, I yet transcribe them, so that they
may bear evidence that my soul did not participate in that political
offence which was the cause of our disasters.”
After this rather long digression, I return to the Autobiography, and
its contrast between “the few good” and the “numerous bad” Italians.
But ah how few there are that acted thus!
With us a most repulsive crew combined,
Seeking to fish in troubled water-streams.
’Mong scanty good men many bad escaped,
A show of baseness and of wretchedness:
These brought dishonour on the refugees
In French and Portuguese and Spanish soil;
But here in England unexpectedly
There came to settle down the best and worst.
I grieved for famished men and mendicants
Who had recourse to swindling and intrigue:
But Paolelli who became a spy,
And wrought out General Turrigo’s death,[71]
And other such, Italy’s sorrow and shame,
Made me repent--but this I will not say.
Bozzelli was a Liberal of this kind,
And acted it with comic gravity;
And, viler than Borrelli, vilest man,
Betrayed anon his country for a “place.”[72]
The royal beasts having re-sought their dens,
Scoundrels in crowds go to consort with them;
Rome, Naples, Lombardy, and Tuscany,--
I turn my indignant eye from such a horde.
And then reposefully my glance can pause
Upon the upright whom Heaven has with me leagued,
And who, inflamed with patriot charity,
Reverberate on me their proper light.
In a great cause we fell, and from that day
We share the sacredness of Fortune’s blows.
On reaching London, from the very first
I knew some trustworthy, some faithless souls:
These base Minasi set upon my track,
And I--fool that I was--discerned it not.
But all the emigrating company
Treated me brother-like--save only one.[73]
Still, if in me he blames and snaps on all,
For all that’s mine he deems detestable,
He prized my steadfast politics alone,
And, joined with this, my blameless moral course:
As for the rest, he wants all men to sniff
In me the agreeable smell which donkeys yield.
But wherefore in him did such rage collect?
I know not, I: I saw him only once,
When some one showed him to me in the street.
Italy, subject of mine every thought,
Thine exiled son found kindness everywhere
In hundreds of high-hearted foreigners:
Only one exiled brother’s fatal hate ...
Yet this disgrace is common, and I pause.
Behold I waken from the dream of life,
And all the past meseems a flitting shade.
Before I quit the earth, or--better so--
Before I there return and sleep in peace,
I think it time to make my testament,
For now I feel me on the bed of death.
It shall be brief indeed. What can I say?
I will repeat with other sufferers--
I leave my corpse to earth, my soul to God,
Of whom I ask forgiveness of my sins.
I trust in Christ, and cheer me with the thought
That his true dogma I have tried to avow.
I pardon all, yes all, my enemies.
More than one work of mine lies on my hands;
Something I think it well to say of them.
I have indited a great roll of rhymes,
Eight volumes[74]--to my country they’re bequeathed.
Four I have published;[75] four I leave behind,
Which are extemporaneous almost all,--
For, having reached the arduous goal of life,
A popular poet’s title I desire.
The book I called _Arpa Evangelica_,
Which aims the man-God’s worship to promote,
Will prove--and would it were already in print!--
Grateful to pious souls, I doubt not this.
With what rapidity I wrote the book!
It seemed as if I knew the whole by heart.
Those hymns are not of all one calibre
But all of them evince a feeling soul.
I did it in three months--the vein ran quick.
In volumes twain, where I make practical
Rights linked to duties, which I specify,
To which I have appropriately given
The title Politic-Dogmatic Lyre,
Eschewing style fantastic or bizarre
’Gainst all despotic power I hurl my words.
Then in the fourth, mid plaudits, pomps, and rites,
I sang that man[76] whom many wrote about,
Who first deceived us all, and then betrayed.
_Pœnitet me fecisse_ is my finale:
I hate as once I loved thee--Man of Fraud!
The work however where with critic thoughts
My mind has spatiated and rested most,
And where I have sought out the essential truth
Of Dante’s Beatrice, as yet concealed,
Is that in which I clasp a mighty orb
As ’twere, and thereon most I plume myself.
In this the mystic diction I expound
Of which I recollect I spoke before.
A sample of it I printed ten years back
In one Discourse alone, but now they are nine.
“This, more than poems,” I sometimes exclaim,
“May prove my passport to a future age.”
I, if my life is now a bitter one,
Can still, amid my very sorrows, say:
“I live a freeman,--at my country’s shrine
Freedom for me becomes a form of faith:
And as I lived I’ll die--a sacred vow.”
And, while I look on all my bygone life,
The year of this our century forty-three
With black stone noted figures on the roll:
I fancied I should die, but sore mishap
Left me my life but took my sight away.[77]
Worn down and down by bronchial sufferings,
From January until September increased,
I yet, exhaling in my verse my woes,
Nurtured my mind with patriotic thoughts:
And daybreaks of the Seer in Solitude
Shed on my visioned spirit glowing beams:
No, those were not fantastical ideas,
For to men’s eyes they are daily verified.[78]
But ah my life now dwindles more and more,
And hurries toward its occidental dusk;
Yet I enjoyed aforetime strenuous health,
Which for grave constant study made me apt:
And, now that old and blind I cling to that,
I feel that habit serves me more than drugs.
How could I curb myself? For I confess
My heart vibrates to thousand impulses;
Existence is almost the same as thought,--
To live and nought to do I cannot brook.
A course of living honourable and hard
A poet I began, a poet end.
But, if I am condemned to days so black,
At least let Tyranny not therefor joy.
I, in this night to which no dawn ensues,
Record a vow to raise my chaunt ’gainst her
So long as life endures, and yet beyond--
For even when I am silent in the earth
To war on her in verse will I persist.
Great God, to whom I hymning wafted prayers
Of Italy--diseased, betrayed, unvenged--
Thou didst preserve me, I know, that I might wage
War on the wretch who in man insults Thyself.
Who knows, who knows but for my latest days
Thou mayest have held reserved a greater strength?
Perchance Thou hast reft mine eyes that I might turn
Back to that poesy which I had left;
Thought prompts me that for this supreme intent
Thou a blind instrument will’st me of Thine hand.
How haps it that the old man’s heart glows young,
And in him life and daring are re-greened?
How haps it that his soul’s a looking-glass,
So to reflect the future’s burst of flame?
A light of prophecy salutes his eyes,
A voice of prophecy salutes his lips.
Magnify, magnify the name of Him
Who knots the mighty bindings of events--
Him by whose hand I, an obscure young man,
Was drawn into the strife of politics.
I nought, He all. I comprehend His power,
And for my very ills I yield Him thanks.
All the less possible the victory seems
So much the greater is the glory of God![79]
To Thee, great God, I owe devoutest praise,
In that, before I sleep the eternal sleep,
In the Subalpine noble Realm I see
Already a liberal form of better rule.
If all has gone to wreckage in the storm,
At least this single plank remains to us.
And nigh to death I still can joy and chaunt,
And can foresee more favourable days.
From the two sees which they so much befouled
Refractory priests a pair have been dismissed;[80]
And without mitre on their tonsured scalps
One takes his way to France, and one to Rome.
Those desecrated altars wait you there
Whence Christ indignant has withdrawn his foot:
There full a thousand demons are your peers,--
Sole Bonaparte and Pius distance you.
Fair Kingdom which, to avenge that double scorn,
Art now expelling the two mitred fiends,
Wherefore dost thou retain a hateful cult
Which Petrarch called a “school of fallacies”?
Oh let the Man of Sin and Realm of Sin,
Pitiful God, come to their end at last!
Farewell, farewell for ever, land beloved,
To whom I joyed to vow my whole of life;
And, while thy foe remains upon the throne,
I evermore against him will to fight.
Yes, I will fight till underground I sink....
And yet I feel alas all vigour wanes:
What is the use of will bereft of strength?
Moaning I quit mine arms: and to the last
Of hours my daytime goes precipitant.
O land of Liberty, accept my thanks;
O hour of my repose, I greet thee well.
When he has footed a disastrous road,
And night without a star engirds him round,
The wearied traveller searches for repose,
Waiting until the dayspring rise anew:
Yes, sleep in quiet, you are tired indeed,
But nevermore the sun for you will rise.
If you have done your duty, happy you,
And for your dust your country prays for peace.
If, sleeping in the earth, you wake in heaven,
Amid the daylight without even and dawn,
Each of your sufferings here becomes a claim,
And in your garland like a jewel shines.
There you will hold, amid the angelic throng,
Fixed on the Eternal Sun insatiate eyes.
Where summer burns not nor doth winter chill,
I shall again embrace thee, O my wife,
Within that everlasting nuptial-bond
Which never hand of Death can sunder more.
There I await thee, thou art sure to come:
Who worthier than thou of that abode?
I know what sun will in thy pilgrimage
Serve as the guide to thine unswerving feet.
Be, in the zenith of thy life and path,
Be thou the escort of our children loved;
This duty when thou wholly hast fulfilled,
Well know’st thou who expects thee above the spheres.
When these my wearied eyelids shall be closed,
Her steps, beloved children, follow ye:
Of her be worthy--and of me perchance--
And unto us you four will all return.
Oh glad the day when seated ’mid you all,
I shall see Paradise for me complete!
Ah let not one of you be wanting there!
And, when you shall ascend to our embrace,
Speak to me of Italy, speak one by one,
For then her state will not endure the same.
Oh if in heaven one day the fame should spread
That she anew resurges free and grand!
Hosannah and hosannah ’mid the harps
Of gold a thousand toward the Eternal Breath
I shall intone: Hosannah in infinite
Chorus, Hosannah, shall the Saints resound:
And in the new augmented jubilee
Far lovelier to me Paradise will show.
Oh let the prison unclose where I am shut!
My penal period has fulfilled its term.
And here the versified Autobiography also fulfils its term.
The desire for death, expressed in verse, was genuinely present to
Gabriele Rossetti’s mind. Ever since the break-up of his health--which
came to a severe crisis in 1843, followed by partial blindness, and
that by many and increasing infirmities, paralytic and other--he
found life more burdensome than otherwise, and would willingly have
resigned it but for his earnest wish to work for the benefit of his
family. Even the power of remunerative work failed towards 1847, when
he had to resign his professorship at King’s College. Troublous public
events ensued; the tergiversation of Pope Pius IX., the defeat of the
Piedmontese and other Italians by the Austrian armies, the crushing of
the Roman Republic by a French expedition. These and other political
occurrences greatly darkened the closing years of Rossetti; and yet he
was unconquerably hopeful as to a more or less near future, and the
result justified his hopes.
I will summarize very briefly the events of his life subsequent to the
date of the Autobiography, say 1850.
Rossetti being now, by failure of health and eyesight, debarred from
professional work--though he always continued diligent in no common
degree as a writer, principally in verse--the support of the family
devolved in large part on our mother, who went out teaching, and at one
time conducted a small day-school in London. The four children were, at
the end of 1850, in this position:--Maria, aged twenty-three, a teacher
of Italian, French, etc.; Dante Gabriel, aged twenty-two, a painter
struggling to sell his pictures and make a position; Christina, aged
just twenty, assisting our mother when the day-school was going on,
otherwise without regular employment; myself, aged twenty-one, a clerk
in the Inland Revenue Office and art-critic of _The Spectator_--my
earnings of course scanty, but on the whole the least precarious among
the slender resources of the family. As the day-school in London
brought in no income worth speaking of, Mrs Rossetti, seeing some
prospect of an opening at Frome-Selwood, Somerset, started another
day-school there in the spring of 1853; her husband and Christina
accompanied her. This school proved no more successful than its
predecessor; and, as by the end of 1853 I was beginning to advance
a little in my office, I got the family to re-unite in London from
Lady-day 1854, and had the satisfaction of housing my suffering father
in his last days. The house was named 45 Upper Albany Street, Regent’s
Park--later on, 166 Albany Street. The end came very soon, 26th April
1854.
I subjoin here two obituary notices. The first was written by Conte
Giuseppe Ricciardi, on 1st May 1854, and published in the _Opinione_
of Turin. The second was written by myself, and published in _The
Spectator_, 6th May. In the latter there are a few details (of dates
etc.) which I now know to be not absolutely correct, but I leave
them as they stand. I could cite a great number of other eulogistic
tributes, more especially since 1882, but need not launch out upon
these.
(_a_) “Italian emigrants, and with the emigrants all Italy, are
constrained to mourn another loss. The earliest, the most venerable,
of the exiles, the illustrious Gabriele Rossetti, died in London
on the evening of 26th April, after a banishment of thirty-three
years--all of them spent in upholding the sacred Italian cause....
“Rossetti, an extemporaneous poet already known and valued by the
public at the date, 1820, when in Naples the revolution broke out
which came to such a wretched end in the following year, composed,
among other lyrics, the splendid hymn, ’Sei pur bella cogli astri sul
crine,’ to which I find nothing to be compared except the other lyric
brought out by himself in London in 1831, beginning ‘Sù brandisci la
lancia di guerra’; and this too records another hapless revolution!...
“It is needless to say that not a few writings of the highly
distinguished author remain unpublished; pre-eminent among which are
Parts II. and III. of his Comment on the _Divine Comedy_. For this
(shall I say it?) I have in vain, up to the present date, sought out a
publisher--so miserable are the conditions of Italian literature.
“Rossetti, besides being, as all know, an eminent poet and renowned
scholar, was a fervent patriot, always most constant to his
principles, and a man of unsullied virtue, so that he was revered
even by his political enemies, and no one ever ventured to assail his
reputation in the least degree; while all who came to have a little
knowledge of him soon got to love him.”
(_b_) “Gabriele Rossetti, the most daringly original of the
commentators on Dante, died on the 26th ultimo, in London, in his
seventy-second year.