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.
4. 1840. Il Mistero dell’ Amor Platonico del Medio Evo derivato 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.
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.
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.
As from a twin-branched fountain-source there spurt
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.
“Born on the 28th February 1783, in Vasto, a sea-coast town in the Kingdom of Naples, he first visited the capital in the capacity of secretary to the Marquis of Vasto, but for the purpose of following, under the auspices of that nobleman, the profession of a painter. His tastes soon took a more decided bent, however, towards literature. He developed a particular talent as a poetical improvisatore; and his poems, both recited and written, gained him considerable reputation. For some while he held the official post of poet to the Theatre of San Carlo. He afterwards entered the Museo Borbonico, as sub-director of the collection generally, and curator of the splendid sculptural department,—a position which led him to devote especial attention to the then fresh explorations at Pompeii and Herculaneum. Here he remained for fifteen years; with an interval of seven months, ending with the Pope’s return in 1813, during which he was at Rome, summoned thither by Murat as a member of the Provisional Government. Courses of lectures and literary instruction also occupied his time. With the restoration of King Ferdinand came the spread of Carbonarism; and Rossetti enrolled himself as a member of that society of national reformers. The short-lived constitution of 1821 succeeded—to expire in nine months; leaving those who, like Rossetti, had hailed its advent with enthusiasm, exposed to the rancour of tyrannic reaction. His patriotic verses were his crime, and proved his rescue. The wife of Admiral Sir Graham Moore had read and admired them: the Admiral was then in Naples; and he prevailed on the poet to terminate by flight the cruel suspense of three months’ concealment, and to embark on board an English vessel in the disguise of a lieutenant. His first asylum was Malta, where he enjoyed and appreciated the intimate friendship of the Right Honourable J. Hookham Frere; two years afterwards he proceeded to England.
“In this country, occupied in teaching Italian, and holding the Professorship at King’s College, he engaged deeply in studies of the letter and spirit of Dante’s imperishable works. The first-fruits of his labours appeared in the ‘Analytic Comment’ on Dante, of which the opening part only, the Hell, published in 1826 and 1827, has yet seen the light. Rossetti’s leading idea (indicated in this work, and enforced in subsequent productions with the fervour of a discoverer, vast literary diligence, and indefatigable minuteness of criticism) is that Dante, in common with numberless other great authors, wrote in a language of secret allegory, which embodies, in the form now of love, now of mythology, now of alchemy, now of freemasonry, the most daring doctrines in metaphysics and politics. In 1832 was published his work ‘On the Anti-Papal Spirit which produced the Reformation, and on the secret influence which it exercised over the Literature of Europe, and especially of Italy, as is proved by many of her Classics, Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, in particular,’ (Sullo Spirito Antipapale, etc.), a treatise which was translated into English; in 1840, ‘The Mystery of the Platonic Love of the Middle Ages, derived from the Ancient Mysteries,’ (Il Mistero dell’Amor Platonico, etc.), in five volumes; and in 1842, ‘A Critical Essay on Dante’s Beatrice’ (La Beatrice di Dante), the concluding parts of which remain in manuscript, but have recently, we understand, been worked up into a Frenchified concoction, issued, or to be issued, under the flaring title, Dante Hérétique, Républicain, et Socialiste. Rossetti’s criticisms have been much criticized. Fraticelli and Schlegel have been his unmitigated opponents: Delécluze, in his Amour du Dante, and the German philosopher Mendelssohn, promulgated, without entirely committing themselves to, his views; an Italian writer of credit, Vecchioni, has taken them up in labours of his own; and Arthur Hallam, immortalized by Tennyson’s In Memoriam, has left a respectful though adverse essay on the subject. In addition to these works, and others of minor account, four poetical volumes attest both the constancy and the versatility of Rossetti’s powers,—Il Tempo, Salterio, Il Veggente in Solitudine, Versi, and L’Arpa Evangelica; the last published not many months ago. Italy is not unmindful of his name.
“In private life Rossetti was thoroughly domestic and warm-hearted. His family and literature formed his world, whence the talents for society of which he possessed an ample share could not withdraw him. No political exile leaves a memory more highly above the whisper of public or private shame.”
Rossetti lies buried in Highgate Cemetery, with the following inscription: “To the dear memory of my husband, Gabriele Rossetti; born at Vasto d’Ammone in the Kingdom of Naples, 28th February 1783; died in London, 26th April 1854.” “He shall return no more nor see his native country.”—Jer. xxii. 10. “Now they desire a better country, that is an heavenly.”—Heb. xi. 16. “Ah Dio ajutami Tu.”
The concluding phrase formed the last emphatic words which Rossetti pronounced in a loud voice, in the evening of 25th April, after some hours of approximate loss of speech. The remains of my mother, my brother’s wife, and my sister Christina, are now interred in the same grave. Towards 1871 a proposal was pressed upon us for transporting my father’s remains to Italy, for ceremonial re-interment there; but the feeling of most members of the family was adverse, and the project was not carried out.
The tone of the versified Autobiography—which is a very genuine document of his character and feelings—shows pretty well what manner of man Gabriele Rossetti was; and in my Memoir of Dante Rossetti I have given some details as to family-life and personal habits. Here, therefore, I shall barely touch the fringe of the subject. It is not for me to spy out every infirmity in my father’s character; and, even were I to try to do so, I should find nothing worse to allege than a phase of self-esteem which at times trenched upon self-complacency, a disregard of externals in point of dress, etc., and an honourable (and, in the circumstances which affected himself in England and his family, a truly very requisite) habit of thriftiness which made him count the cost of every personal indulgence, while nothing expedient was stinted to his wife and children. I know him to have been diligent, indefatigable, upright, high-minded, affectionate, grateful, placable, eminently good-natured, vivacious, cheerful for the most part, friendly, companionable: whether patriotic I need not say. Our excellent friend Dr Adolf Heimann (Professor of German in University College), writing to my brother a letter of condolence on our father’s death, made the following observations, which I consider just:—“I have never seen a more devoted man of letters; endowed with some of the rarest gifts of a literary character, real love for literature, unworldliness, perseverance, and warmth of interest both in writing and reading at an advanced time of life. He might indeed have been a model to all of us. When I look at all the great scholars and men of science whom I have known, I do not remember one who was so little satisfied with show as your father, who was so content with a comparatively humble situation, and so wonderfully patient in times of affliction.”
FRANCES, MARIA, AND CHRISTINA ROSSETTI
From a Photograph
C. 1855.
In person Gabriele Rossetti was barely up to middle height, fleshy and full in contour until his health failed. His eyes were dark and expressive, and did not alter when his sight was damaged; his brow fine and well-rounded; his nose, though not specially large, more than commonly prominent, with wide nostrils. His mouth was pleasant and nicely moulded, with a winning smile, and on occasion a laugh of the heartiest.