Gabriele Rossetti: A Versified Autobiography

by Gabriele Rossetti

LIFE IN ITALY

I know my fame will have but scanty flight,
Readers to whom I speak of Italy.
Yet, if in any of you there rose a wish
To know me who I am, I’ll meet it here.
Ovid’s own native soil is mine as well:
He spoke about himself, and so will I.
In verses Ovid wrote, but I in prose—
Prose of eleven syllables with rhymes;
But, be they verses, I shall not contest.
And, without more preamble, hear me now.

Along the beach of the Frentani lies
On teeming hills, the Adriatic near,
A small municipality of Rome—
Histonium once and Vasto now ’tis called.
There, with no waft of Fortune, I received
A humble cradle from a worthy pair.[1]

The brief statement of my father, in his verses and his note, may be slightly extended. Nicola Rossetti was a blacksmith and locksmith; his wife, Maria Francesca Pietrocola, was the daughter of a shoemaker. Both families seem to have held a creditable, though certainly a by no means distinguished, position in the small Vastese community. The original name of the Rossetti race (as I have heard my father more than once affirm) was not Rossetti but Della Guardia. Some babies in the Della Guardia family were born with red or reddish hair (I presume, four or five generations before my father’s birth); and the Vastese—who, like other Italians, never lose a chance of calling people by nicknames—termed them “the Rossetti”—i.e. “The Little Reds,” and this continued to serve as surname for their progeny. Thus the surname Rossetti may be regarded as equivalent to the English surname Reddish, or Rudkins (if Rudkins is an abbreviation of Ruddykins). The family of Della Guardia still exists in Vasto. It appears to have been entitled to bear a crest—which is a sturdy-looking tree, with the motto “Frangas non flectas”; for a seal (still in my possession), showing this crest and motto, was delivered to Gabriele Rossetti, on his quitting Vasto in youth, by his elder brother the Canon Andrea, who told him that it was the family-device. This was often used, I may add, by Dante Gabriel Rossetti. It appears that in the Rossetti line, or else in the Della Guardia line, there must have been some degree of literary eminence prior to the date of the blacksmith Nicola; as I find, in a letter addressed by Gabriele Rossetti, towards 1807, to his elder brother Domenico, the phrase: “You know that our stock has always abounded in great men of letters.” One cannot suppose that this statement is a mere fib: I have not, however, found any confirmation of it in books about Vasto, nor do I remember that my father ever referred to such a matter by word of mouth.

I believe that Nicola Rossetti came to his end in a distressing way. When the French Republican army invaded the Neapolitan territory in 1798, the troops required Nicola to render some service, such as horseshoeing, provisioning, transport, or what not. He showed no inclination to comply, and was beaten or otherwise ill-treated; and this so preyed on his mind that his health suffered, and death ensued. His decease may, I presume, have occurred towards 1800; his widow survived till 1822 or some such date. Gabriele Rossetti used to speak with much affection of his mother, who (like so many Italian women of the lower middle class in those days) could neither write nor read. He remembered his father as a somewhat harsh man, but upright and worthy of respect. The Rossetti family is now wholly extinct, save in the persons of myself and my four children; the line of my father’s married sisters is also extinct.

The precise date of my father’s birth was 28th February 1783 (not 1st March, as has at times been written and printed). He was born in a lofty brown building, which, in a water-colour with which I was favoured towards the date of the Vastese centenary celebration of his birth, wears a somewhat stately though wholly unadorned aspect. It looks like an edifice which has stood for some centuries, solid but uncared for. It is now, I understand, a dilapidated structure, let out in tenements to a poor class of people. The question of buying it for the city of Vasto, in memory of Gabriele Rossetti, has often been mooted, but not carried into effect. There are prophets who have no honour in their own country; and others who, rather profusely honoured there by word of mouth, are left in the lurch when deeds and subscriptions are in demand.

In the first opening years of joyousness
I showed clear sign of studious aptitude;
And, following my brothers, three in count,
Whose lively parts had been in evidence,
I was escorted by this goodly three
Into Apollo’s and Minerva’s fane.[2]

Thrilled by the first Phœbean impulses,
Rough versicles I traced with facile hand:
And yet, to my surprise, those lines of mine
Almost took wing into a distant flight.
A hope of Pindus did I hear me named:
But praise increased my ardour, not my pride.
And yet some vanity there came and mixed
With the fair issue of my preluding:
But, all the more I heard the applause increase,
With equal force did study grow in me.
Not surely that I tried to load my page
With pomp abstruse extraneous to my drift;
But counterwise each image and each rhyme,
The more spontaneous, so meseemed more fair.
In trump of gold and in the oaten pipe
Let some seek the sublime, I seek for ease.
I shunned those verses which sprawl forth untuned
Even from my days of schoolboy tutelage:
I know they please some people, but not me:
Admiring Dante, Metastasio
I laud; and hold—a true Italian ear
Must not admit one inharmonious verse.
Some lines require a very surgeon’s hand
To make them upon crutches stand afoot.
So be they! But, to set them musical,
They must, by Heaven, be in themselves a song.
This seems a truthful, not a jibing, rule—
Music and lyric are a twinborn thing.
Yet think not that I deem me satisfied
With upblown empty sound without ideas:—
Then will a harmony be beautiful
When great emotions and great thoughts it stirs.

To painting with an equal ardency
An almost sudden impulse led me on;
And with the pen I drew in such a mode
That all my work would look as if engraved.
To question what I say would nothing serve,
For on my hands more than one proof remains.[3]
A plaining ditty which describes my state,
And wherein I deplore my fate perverse,
And whose adorning is two pen-designs,
Is still preserved among my earliest scraps:
And many more, for him who disbelieves,
Can thoroughly attest what I aver.

Not every magnate takes to banqueting,
Or lust of Cyprus and Pentapolis.
The Marchese di Vasto, a high-placed lord,
The King of Naples’ Majordomo in Chief
(Whatever face he show in history,
By me his memory must be always blest),
Being once in company with men of mark
Whom he was wont to invite from time to time,—
My verses read by him, and drawings seen—
Felt pleased that I was of his vassalage;
He wrote to his agent telling him of this
And bidding him to send me on to Naples.[4]
There I was patronized, without parade,
By him, who from the first received me well:
But little did that firm support endure,
For a political whirlwind cut it short.
Poor I—how fare in a vast capital?
I had to bow before my destinies.
For scarcely had a year and month elapsed,
In which new studies occupied my mind,
When the French army of invasion came
In the sixth year of this our century,—
And, seeking Sicily in urgent flight,
The Marquis vanished with the perjured King.
Then for the kingdom rose an altered time,
And all the people vied to give it hail,
For they abhorred that Bourbon void of faith,
With executions and with treasons smirched,—
And more his wife, a type unparagoned,
Megæra, Alecto, and Tisiphone.
I will not paint that husband and his wife—
Thank Heaven, the tomb has swallowed them ere now.
Their grandson—this suffices—pairs them both,
Re-named King Bomba, monster in human form.

On saddened brows a few, and many glad,
I read the souls of men enslaved or free:
And, mixed myself ’mid such conflicting minds,
Judge you if I was joyful or was grieved.
The festive thundering of the martial forts
Responded to by frequent trumpet-call,
Cheers that were uttered by a thousand mouths
As the tricoloured banner came in view,
And hurly-burly weltering all around,
Opposed enormous joy to enormous grief.
Yet thoughts, more than enough, ominous and black,
Whispered me somewhile ’mid those shouts of joy:
“My hapless country, what dost thou acclaim,
Now that one despot goes and one arrives?
Ah on thy shoulders still I find the yoke:
They doff the old one and they don the new.”
And from my heart the words leapt to my lips:
“To call this liberty were sure a jibe!
As Ferdinand in Naples stifled her,
So Bonaparte butchered her in France.
But tremble, tremble, impious man! Thy crime
On all the nations’ hearts stands written deep.”

I was a prophet here. Germany in arms,
A nation of great hearts and thought as great,
Avenging Freedom foully done to death,
Against him let whole populations loose.
Behold him fallen on field, captive at sea:
By Liberty he rose, by her he fell.
France in my youthful fervency I loved,
I loved the awful warrior guiding her:
But, when I heard, “He’s made an Emperor now,
Nor that alone, but despot autocrat,”
The hate I felt extinguished all that fire.

For many ’twas a cause of deepest grief
To contemplate with golden diadem
A brother of that despot on our throne.
His praise was—having turned the Bourbon out;
Whence, setting every other thought at rest,
They all applauded him, and so did I.
A chosen band of daring souls and brave
Encircled the incoming Frenchman round,[5]
And of two evils they acclaimed the less,
Awaiting a true good to come one day.
Round the new sceptre flocking now I marked
A crowd of shining minds, and joyed herein;
And, taking up the lyre resolvedly,
Inly I said: “A poet I was born,
And such I will be in my future course!”[6]
The use of reason scarce had I attained
When France’s thundercloud I heard that pealed—Which
next diffused around and far-afar
Terror to Kings, to nations hopefulness.
At dawning of my lifetime I resolved
To follow in that movement—and alas!
From the successive shiftings of the chance,
I, loving good, saw evil that ensued.
Across the Red Sea, sea of blood and war,
Must then the Promised Land be still approached?
That fatal whirlwind, with alternate shock,
In Naples’ kingdom all-deplorable
Full ten times made a change of government,
Alternating with serfdom liberty:
And, with the flight of that demented court,
I saw it for the fourth time altering:
And the ninth change and tenth, which now I see,
Are the most miserable of them all.

Many gave homage to the new-built throne;
And I, while scorning any cringing phrase,
Struck on my lyre, and spread abroad its sound,
Saluting that forthcoming period:
And what I said thereof in varying style,
If not free-toned, is not subservient.
Soon do the accents of my lyre recall
Men’s eyes and praises to the youthful gift,
And I diffuse the firstlings of my fame
About the kingdom’s mighty capital;
But, by attracting blear-eyed rivals too,
Envy first made me a target for her darts.
And so much did this trouble my repose,
And raised hobgoblins such a swarm at home,
That, freed from them, my dolorous exile
Has almost seemed to me beatitude.
How often have I cried—“I am exiled now,
And pardon all the rancour of my foes.”

Ah when I think it o’er I shudder still,
Though past the sixtieth limit of my years.
One Boccanera, livid in his rage,
Tempted a bravo to cut short my life;
Watchful I had to be for several months:
Can then insensate envy reach to this?
But who can tell all the contorted roads
Which rancour led my rivals to pursue?
Charges unjust, anonymous calumnies,—
But yet my innocence o’erthrew them all:
Intrepid I outfaced such keen attacks,
And became known and cherished by the young.
In public halls, where it behoved me at times
To speak the verses I had written down,
The popular applause served to prelude
My song, as soon as I appeared in sight.

That my first volume, as it issued forth,
Earned me the friendship of distinguished men,
And I was made, without soliciting,
The Poet for San Carlo’s Theatre.
I wrote some dramas there, and every one
Of my attempts was followed by success:
First Julius Sabinus’ mournful fate,
Then Hannibal’s light loves in Capua,
And finally the Birth of Hercules,[7]
Were greeted with unanimous applause.
How much I joyed that on that stately stage
My mind was thus allowed to spatiate!
“In this arena of glory,” I would say,
“If I have genius, I can show it forth”;
And dreamed of mingling in one dulcet draught
Alfieri’s style with Metastasio’s.
But my illusions waned; for various thwarts,
And fetters both direct and indirect,
And the composers and the Managers,
And Prime Donne, plots, and etiquettes,
And then protectors and aught stranger still,
Frequently shuffled all my hand of cards.
Incensed I cried: “I’ll leave the Theatre,
For here I’m nothing but a slave of slaves.”

To Monsignor Capecelatro I sped,
Our Minister at the time for Home-affairs,
And meekly spoke, expounding first the facts,
“The Madhouse is not where I want to go.”
Could vanity from sovereign patronage
Dazzle a free Parnassian intellect?
I was content with a subordinate post[8]
Then vacant in the King’s Museum; here
Propitious did the Muses nurture me
With vivid genius of the antique arts.
Here I could pasture in the selfsame hour
My craving mind, and shelter it from vice,
For an immense choice library is joined
To the Museum, in one building’s span:
And thus a double discipline exalts
My soul in beauty’s pathways and in truth’s.
’Mid living bronze and marble animate,
Which constantly held converse with my thoughts,
I something wrote in prose and much in verse,
Evolving grace upon the fair and true.

Staying amid those admirable hoards,
A treasure-house of arts and industries,
I met with Kings and met with Emperors,
Conspicuous artists, men of lettered fame.[9]
And thus three lustres of my term of life
Wore in that unperturbed abode along;
And I beheld two Kings arrive and go,
Made and unmade by force of destiny.
But, though my work was converse with the dead,
I scanned both courts, their virtues and their vice.
Of the two kings, one bad, and one was good,
And in this sentence all is summarized;
And both their fates depended, and their thrones,
Upon the man who dreamed omnipotence;
But by the Spanish and the Northern storm
The star of Bonaparte turned to pale.
Odious to many, Joseph went his way,—
That silence followed him which speaks for much;
Wasteful and lustful and vainglorious,
He by his courtiers only was deplored.
Better than Ferdinand he was for sure,
But that was merit (merit!) none could miss.
Later when Joachim of a sudden fled,
I heard a general chorus of concern—
“If but his mind were equal to his heart,
Who worthier than he to fill a throne?”
Ferdinand matched with him produces that
Which in a picture gives the shades and lights.
O epoch memorable for wretchedness!
Oh the caprice of barbarous destiny
Which sent us back that faithless Ferdinand,
Bereaving us of kindly Joachim!
And soon the craven to the valiant gave,
By the same destiny, a barbarous death.

O Bonaparte, thou the object deemed
Of worship? Ah he lies who calls thee great![10]
For thee the world claims lofty intellect,
For thee, with an enormous error fooled.
Thou wast, in wresting from the nations hope,
At once liberticide and suicide.
That day when thou didst will thee Emperor,
Thou in St Helena dugg’st out thy grave:
That day thou gav’st back Austria all her strength,
To Russia daring, potency to Kings.
That edict which the applauding Senate brought
To thee, ’twas that the edict of thy death.
Well do I know how scheming sycophants
Proclaimed the day auspicious and of joy;
But that day sowed the mournfulness of years
For thee and thine, for nations, for the world.
And thou, of piercing sight, thou saw’st it not?
By God, a mole would not have failed to see!
For thee I weep not, who in long-drawn throes
Didst reach convulsive to thy latest hour;
But for the innocent nations weep I fain,
Who, by thy hand betrayed, are moaning still.
Ever have I been prone to pardoning thee
Thy proper anguish, but not that of man.
But for that crime by which thou didst indue
Thee with vast shame and us with sorrows vast,
How long ago would Europe have beheld,
One after other, low her tyrants sunk!
When I the effect contemplate of thy crime,
I am tempted to exclaim—Be thou accurst!
Receive the judgment of the centuries—
I seem to hear it sounding o’er thy grave—
“Thou couldst have been the tyrants’ death-dealer,
And chosest for thyself a despot’s name.
As the keen-cutting vengeful sword of God,
Let wrong thou didst to others fall on thee!”

Now the Queen-city, Joachim being gone,
Remained uncertain of her future fate;
And, like death’s messenger, the cry arose—
“Ferdinand hastens back, and Caroline”:
And on a thousand gloomy brows one read
More horror than for earthquake or the plague.
And of those two the most terrific things
I heard a hundred hundred tongues narrate.
Some travelled, some escaped, some hid themselves,
And one was known to have gone mad with fear:
But hope, I saw, had halfway been revived
When it was published—“Caroline is dead.”
Yes, more than halfway; for they all averred:
“This Bourbon, in himself, is weak and null;
And, if he did become so black a wretch,
’Twas that she-Fury who impelled him on:
Now that she’s foundered in the realms of night,
A human being he may be once more.”
And so it proved. The first-imagined fears
Were cleared away from the most troubled minds,
And all perceived that on a better plan
That richly-gifted Kingdom would be ruled,
And would attain, under a milder curb,
If not prosperity, at least repose.
The Aonian chorus revelled in the peace,
And chaunted amid others’ songs my own.
Our Ferdinand the Fourth was just a fiend,
But, dubbed the First, he wears an angel’s grace.
And I beheld that festive ardour grow,
The less expected, all the livelier.
’Tis true so much rejoicing was perturbed,
In almost every confine of the realm,
By feverish epidemic, Noja’s plague,
And, worst of all, a longsome year of dearth:
But still the King dictated remedies,
And, if he could no more, he sympathized.

Then, when he sickened, weighted now with years,
And the severe disease seemed past a cure,
So great the sorrow everywhere appeared
That all the civil orders shared in it;
And, when fair daylight followed on the cloud,
The joy was equal to the genuine grief.
In style now classic or romantic now
Native Academies acclaim the event;
And I, in verse extemporized almost
(And Fame still guerdons it with some applause),
Saluted, in the name of Italy,
The Bourbon Sovereign restored to health.[11]
One Gallo (maybe Corvo?), of Sicily,
Who thought himself a swan of Hippocrene—
Or Gallo or Corvo, acrid and malign—
Trying to do me an ill turn, did a good.
And this affair I’m minded to narrate,—
A curious little story as it is.
He spread on all sides a censorious croak
That my address was outrage ’gainst the King:
And yet that ode contains such flatteries
That, when I now reflect on it, I blush;
And he discerned therein, and clamoured loud,
An actual insult in the seeming praise.[12]
Against my verses such a cackle-cry
Was raised by him on one and other hand
That in the end our arbitrary Police
Prohibited their printing in the book;
And many said that I should find myself
Dismissed my employ, or sent to jail perchance.
The selfsame calumnies against my song,
From quarters more than one, arrived in court.
The King called for a copy, and, reading it,
He was affected, and was moved to tears.
The Duke of Ascoli was on the spot,
Who with minuteness told me of the facts.
Indeed the King so highly prized my lines
That he directed the Home-Minister
To have me summoned, and to give me thanks
In a dispatch sent by the government:
And, paper in hand, he added—“Tell him too,
I wept at it, and feel indebted to him.”
Further to crush that shameless calumny
Which he remarked some people still believed,
He made the Minister Tommasi read
The poem aloud, in Council at the full,—
And oh what plaudits did my lines secure!
And at some parts the King shed tears anew.
I, then at the Museum, saw arrive
A Halberdier with grave and serious mien.
Ah what uncertainties assailed my heart!
Here comes the announcement that will strip me bare!
I read, in doubt and wavering, the dispatch:
“His Majesty requires you—come at once.”
Anxious I sped, and pondered on the way
What answer I could offer to the charge.
I entered with that sinister forecast,
And General Naselli, a Minister,
Came forward and encountered me, all smiles.
He said “Be seated”—pointing with his hand
To a gilded sofa, face to face with him.
He, turning with an affable regard
Toward me, my eyebrows arching with surprise,
Repeats, with manifest complacency,
The kindly words used by the Sovereign:
And on my countenance he could observe,
Mingled with pleasure, some astonishment.
I answered—after a simple preluding
With which I need not here concern myself—
“This moment compensates for studious years,—
I’m thankful for the kindness of our King.
But, Sir, is any power above his own?
What he so much approves others reject.”
He answered me with an offended air—
“Have you your senses? This I can’t excuse.”
And I: “The whole collection is in print,
And my one poem only turned adrift;
My senses serve me well, your Excellency:
The Censorship has over-ruled the King.”
He smiled, and then, in a laconic tone,
Dictated to his secretary thus:
“The poems all must pass the censorship,
Except the one by Gabriel Rossetti.
From his the printing cannot be withheld,
Because the King has passed it and approved.”
I showed about all this no great conceit,
But it was greeted warmly by the young,
And that Sicilian Gallo, envious man,
Remained a laughing-stock, and drooped his comb.[13]
Then, when my lyric came to public light,
It won in Naples universal praise.
The fame of it went forth to Rome itself,
Where I am proud of being amply known,
For there I left a band of well-wishers
When the Provisional Government dissolved
In which I unobtrusively had held
In the Fine Arts a post of eminence.[14]
And the Sebezia Academy with pride
Noted my victory, which involved its own,
And which was viewed with so much bitterness
By Gallo that he fled that very night.
This Gallo against me, an exile now,
Perhaps is crowing still—which I forgive.

In that Parthenopean Company
I sang the Threnody for several dead,
And for the saintly Bruno d’Amantea,
The noble surgeon and philanthropist;[15]
And good Valletta, on coming back from Rome,
And fair Paloma, did I celebrate.[16]
And in the presence of the royal court,
Which had erected a majestic tomb,
I sang the glory and deplored the death
Of the renowned Giovanni Paisiello,[17]
Who, the harmonic Siren’s progeny,
Bore sway o’er Europe’s music on the stage.
Torquato Tasso’s golden trumpet next
Blew with my breath, to magnify himself,[18]
He mine inspirer from the living stone
Which near the sea the King had raised for him;
And on that evening the Sebezia
Brought from all Europe choicest guests to meet.
There the good King of Denmark’s worthy heir
Came to embrace me ’mid a crushing throng;[19]
And with my daring images I struck
French, Russians, Germans, Spaniards, Englishmen.

And now in Sapphic now in Theban mood,
I sang beside the urn, with laurel wreathed,
Wherein Luigi Quattromani sleeps,[20]
A casket from the Bible’s treasure-stores:
In him I greeted, and I bless him now,
The kindly master in the social friend.
Truly a poet—I seem to see him still—
Inspired himself, inspiring others too:
When blind and old, he in his mind preserved
Acutest sight and lively youthfulness.

I interrupt the verse-narrative for a moment, to point out that Rossetti here recounts—what was of leading importance in his Neapolitan career—how he came to be an improvising poet. Luigi Quattromani was a renowned improvisatore, and (so far as I infer) little or not at all an author of verse written and published. The date when Rossetti first knew him, and soon afterwards began improvising, is not here defined; I suppose it may have been towards 1810. When my father came to London in 1824 he resolved not to prolong the practice; thinking, and no doubt rightly, that, although he might excite some surprise and attention by improvising, it would on the whole lower his position as a serious professional man in the teaching and literary vocation. Yet he did occasionally give a specimen of his prowess as an extempore poet; the latest notice I find of such a performance was in his family-circle, in 1840. If I myself ever heard him improvise, I have forgotten it. The observations which he here makes on the dangers of the habit, both to health and to purity of poetic style, are worth noting. He first proceeds with a description of Quattromani’s doings.

Whenso I heard him touch on David’s harp,
All fervid with extemporaneous power,
Upon his face shone out the impassioned soul
Which spread around spontaneous bursts of light.
And that same flame I saw a-shine in him
On mine own spirit did I feel descend.
Yes, what I heard meseemed not possible;
’Twas ecstasy to me, enchantment, dream.
But what appeared incredible almost
Was coming to be realized in myself.
On my way home I tried to do the like,
And oh astonishment! I also sang
Line after line: so strange the upshot seemed
That I renewed the essay for several days.
By daytime and by night assiduously
Did I repeat that same experiment.
Often with Quattromani I conferred,
Who gave my verses not a little praise;
And once the blind old man exclaimed to me—
“Alternate with me in an improvise.”
And, after a few trials and demands,
He took me up with so much ardent zest
That ’mid the pomp of images produced
He gave me many a “viva” from his heart.
He closed by saying: “For poetic strifes
Nature has given you athletic power.”
“Persist,” he often said to me, “persist,
And let no sloth impede you on your road.
A poet you were born, and those who seek
To change your course—believe this—envy you.
What you at your commencement do with me
Might seem the fruit of lengthy studying.”
And often did our verses alternate
In choice assemblies with co-equal praise,
So much men’s judgments wavered in the scales
That ’twixt us victory remained in doubt.
But this impressed on me the stamp of worth—
What honour to contend with such a man!
He, like a living mirror, faces me,
And, seeing myself in him, I can but grieve.
He old and blind, and I too blind and old:
And he died poor, and I am dying poor.
But which of us the more deplorable?
He in his country, I exiled by fate!

Oft on this foreign shore I’ve asked myself,
Did my addiction to extempore song
Harm me, or profit? I remain in doubt.
But this, without nice solving, I’ll affirm—
I was becoming palsied and in spasms.
A Galen’s rigour ought to cry it down,
And thus prevent so miserable an end.
’Twas so my Brother Dominick expired,[21]
Who in such efforts was expert and apt.
I never heard that brother of mine recite—
He left me a child, but I remember him;
And well I know that he at Parma’s bar
Was greeted as a re-born Cicero.
Youthful he died, far from his family—
And wherefore died? Because he improvised.
More than one symptom has convinced me clear
That, through my leaving off that exercise,
Exile, in that alone, has been my friend:
And so, from much reflection I can say,
That mental strain leads to paralysis.
Nor only with regard to healthful life
Makes it the nerves uncertain and unstrung,
But as to writing with correctness too
I fear at last it worsens toward neglect.
Yes, that it harms the style I can but think:
To work a-sudden is not working well.
Thou who wouldst merit the Phœbean wreath,
O youth, take caution ’gainst this same abuse;
For these my verses, written slipshod-like,
Perhaps derive from that ill-wont of mine;
For now I hurry verse to follow verse,
And reel them off as ’twere a kind of talk.
Good composition craves a needful space,
Not emulous capricious fantasy.

Though such a practice I cannot defend,
Still I become renowned because of that.
Full many a noted passage from my muse
Was quoted, serious and facetious both;
And oft-times at the tables of the great,
Invited guest and poet, I had my place.
What precious days I wasted on good cheer,
Whence, save keen penitence, I’ve nothing now!
Amid our Princes, Dukes, and Marquises,—
Cassero, Campochiaro, Berio—
Phœbus joined Bacchus with a joyous note,
Doubly to drench the mind’s ebriety.
Inflamed and reckless ’mid the toasts and praise,
I saw my youthful Muse more daring grown;
And, when I went from Naples to the Tiber,
I found my fame there copiously diffused.
Among the poets whom I cherished there,
I give but Biondi’s and Ferretti’s names.[22]

As one of the Provisional Government
King Joachim had summoned me to Rome:[23]
Monte Citorio there, seven months and more,
Saw me employed at morning and at eve;
And I was present at the Pope’s return
In year thirteen of this our century.
And there was likewise put in exercise
My Muse, by urgencies a thousandfold;
And I again aroused enthusiasm,
For poetry in Rome is greatly loved.—
Of this no more, for I can hear a voice—
“To enlarge hereon were obvious self-conceit.”

Nor does Rome stint herself to mere applause,
But gives me titles and diplomas too.
The Arcadia, and Tiberine Academy,
The Ardenti of Viterbo, and others more,
Inscribed my own ’mid many goodly names.
In Naples not of the Sebezia alone
But the Pontanian Society,
And even the Orezia from Palermo,
I hold diplomas in this distant land;
And, now that I am at my day’s extreme,
One also I receive from Lyons in France.
I was, not am. The past is all a school
Where clear I see the nothingness of man.
For me has vanished all: only the grave
Awaits me, and thither willingly I go.
Life is a lengthened dream, and, when it ends,
All lettered glory is a dream as well;
And vanity of vanities I mark,
Yea even in that which crowns the highest of men
Had I the golden trump and deathless name
Of Homer, or of Virgil or Torquato,
What would the guerdon of my verses be?
Just a dissyllable I should not hear.
Sad fate!

But I return to Ferdinand,

Auspicious planet to his realm restored.
He, by endowing the Sebezia,
Seemed patron of our country’s intellect;
So that I frequently heard men proclaim—
“Demon he went, and angel he returned.”
But who can ever change the human soul?
He in reverting saw us evermore
As liegemen to himself or to Murat:
The first he greeted with a cheerful mien,
And for the second nursed a secret grudge.
Brothers with brothers he did not unite,
As should have been effected from the first
All the best posts were given away to these,
Though oftentimes unjust and ignorant;
Those others were neglected and depressed,
However honourable and well-informed.
A victim I of such partiality,
Of which the proofs could day by day be seen;
What was my due he gave to some one else.
When Naples to their palace had beheld
From Sicily return the unrighteous court,
In her most famous University
The chair of Eloquence was left unfilled;
And in the ardour of a youthful hope
I too competed ’mid a lettered band.[24]
We numbered thirty-six. Before me I saw
Conspicuous talents, each more strong than I;
And we were set to pass a triple test,
Three different subjects taken out by lot:
Two, writ in the Professors’ presence there,
Who had to be the censors of the themes.
The first was in the language of that Rome
Who gave her laws and usage to the world;
The second, in the tongue of Italy,
Classic in style, and resonant and terse;
Lastly, the third one had to be pronounced
To the assembled public from the chair.
For the two writings, Gatti, Oliva, and I,
Issued with equal credit from the strife:
But in the third and arduous exercise
I gained the victory over all the rest.
Amid the surging and applauding throng,
The Faculty cried many times “Well done!”—
Who got the chair? A certain Bianchi did,
Who had salient merits as a loyalist.
And mice were cutting capers on the forms
Deserted by our youth indignantly.
I vamp up no fantastic notions here:
All Naples can declare it to be true.

The young men, nettled by a noble scorn,
Called me Professor—not the other man;
And I at home opened a private class,
Where I was trainer of some vivid minds:
And, if I thither could return one day,
How many a pupil should I see around!
Ah fervid youth, liege to the beautiful,
Who so did sorrow for mine adverse fate,
Durso, Malpica, Curci, Caccavon,[25]
And others to whose names my bosom beats,
In you I glory; and you, choice grateful souls,
Glory that I your master was erewhile.
The army, by the royal ordinance,
Saw heroes now supplanted by poltroons;
From the tribunals upright judges banned,
And greedy vultures were installed on them;
And, what is worse, the Kingdom’s treasury
By vultures in like manner was devoured.
Likewise a matter so terrific happed
As to fill all the Kingdom with dismay.
Wicked Canosa, back from Sicily,[26]
Invested as the Minister of Police,
Conceived a project truculent and vile,
Enough for Satan’s self to shudder at.
This monster stands by various writers drawn,
And I can be excused from limning him:
Yet, always by the King’s approval graced,
The man’s foul shame reflected on the King.
In every crime he out-did every wretch,
And now he laboured to out-do himself.
He, pondering an atrocious butchery
Which for whole weeks he set to ruminate,
Filled with the loathliest scum the capital,
Offscouring of the gibbets and the hulks;
And at a signal these men were to pounce
On any whom they saw unlike their crew.
That felon was a new Friar Alberic.[27]
Oh the hard fate and outrage of our time!
The Austrian General fathomed this intrigue,
And forced the King to turn the monster out;
Inept Italian princes were and are
The Austrian Sultan’s underling Bashaws.
Escaped from this portentous massacre,
We all denounced it with stentorian lungs.
And what a sort of crime must that have been
Which very Austria spurned!—and truth it is.
’Twas even said the King——But this I scout.

While from the foulness of despotic power
Such nauseous effluvia were diffused,
A patriotic flame wound everywhere,
And a Vesuvius all the Kingdom seemed;
And from the augmented crackling underground
At last erupted many external peals.
Like gushing blood from several arteries
Toward the treasury all the money flowed;
And with our straits our hardihood increased,
So that the government was undermined;
Already many free-souled squadrons thrilled,
Like winds unloosed to agitate the main.
The Carbonari, an unvanquished sect,[28]
A vast re-union of audacious souls,
Spread with a progress irresistible,
As in a wood by winds a tameless fire:
Opening I saw a gulf without confine,
And on the shelving marge the governors slept.
The politicians’ atrabilious brains
Called that great movement faction—shame be theirs!
For, being Carbonari almost all,
The movement may be termed the Kingdom’s own.

The King, who did us wrong with insolence,
Might have avoided it, had he been wise.
Insensate! His commands are ridiculed
Amid the increasing cries which stun the realm.
Besides, the Vardarelli slain by fraud,[29]
Slain Capobianco,[30] all men recollect.
And what the outcome of the treacheries?
“Freedom” was sounded, “Freedom” everywhere.
Not that which, ever hungering for blood,
Like to a Fury rioted in France;
But sacred Freedom, of angelic form,
Who tells the king “Be just,” and harms him not;
Who at the shrine of the metropolis
Soon saw the nation prostrated around.
O Freedom, girdled by the Italian light,
Never did man kneel unto thee so fair:
In vain Vandalic outrage hurled thee down,
For still in thousand hearts thou bear’st the sway.
I for six lustres vow to thee my life,
And, thine apostle, thee announce and preach.
Thou shalt return, return—no frenzy this!

Our century has seen no brighter year,
That year beheld not a more radiant day,
Than that when the symbolic furnaces
Diffused around the burning and the flash:
Those vivid flashes and those fiery heats
Spread light on minds and flame upon the heart.
And now a lofty hope bestows on all
Blest harmony which universal seems,
Because that flame and light can permeate
Through every member of the social frame.
And one could hear a new alliance preached
Of two great forces in a single sway:
Popular liberty and kingly power
Conjoined in amity by a lasting link;
Each one in this serves to ennoble each,—
Itself the nation honours in the king.[31]
Of such mixed government, which Europe seems
To tend to by an impulse from on high,
England possesses much that’s genuine,
But France has only seen its counterfeit.[32]

At that time, to the sound of thousand cheers,
Spain made it simpler, giving it the throne.
With friendly breeze from that re-fashioned scheme
Nations felt joy and princes troublousness;
And Naples, from of old the liege of Spain,
Revelled in rapture inexpressible:
In launching flames on this side and on that
More than volcano seemed the fiery forge.
That selfsame ardour all through Italy
Hurled curses on the shameful Austrian yoke,
When the year twenty, past its midway course,
Felt all the parching of the Syrian Dog:
That heat still swelled the Carbonaro heat,—
The Ausonian Genius blew his trumpet-call.

And to those memorable clangours soon
More than one note replied with sound of joy.
Silvati and Morelli, noble souls,[33]
Hoisted aloft the Italian battle-flag;
And Minichini,[34] of the Nolan church,
Joining them, sanctified the enterprise.
From Nola’s city on to Monteforte
The band of heroes goes determinate:
Their Country guides them, and Humanity,
And twixt these Freedom who salutes the two.
With vast applause the kingdom echoes round:
Only the palace in dismay is dumb.
Terror and rage distract it hour by hour:
Yet troops are sent—but only raise a laugh;
For squadron after squadron joins with those
So as to number a resistless host:
Despotic sway now comes to such a pass
As to appear a corpse mouldering in worms.

O Monteforte, oh the glorious slope
O’er which shone forth the star of liberty!
Like Sinai and Horeb thou’lt be famed,
For on thee the new age was brought to birth.[35]

That hour supreme is present to my soul,
Whereby I live again in youthful prime.
Naples is wavering between hope and fear,
But outside of her walls ’tis only hope.
She for the towns and cities joyously
Assembles troops and arms, and sends them on.
Guglielmo Pepe—and our fear is sped—
Mounts to be captain of the daring hosts.
Hero, all hail! History shall celebrate,
Not thy good fortune, but thy just renown.
And, more than in thy land, in hard exile
Constant wast thou, strong son of Italy.
Proud am I of thy friendship with myself,—
It is the noblest honour of my life.

And I from far cry at the mountain’s base
To that day’s dawn as prompted by a god,
“Lovely indeed art thou with stars in hair
Which like to vivid sapphires scintillate!”[36]
Dawn thou of brightest day!—and that salute
Soon through the whole of Italy re-rings.

But wherefore must I moan, remembering this?
My land, I saw thee throned, thou’rt now i’ the dust:
For thee, my land, these tears,—no tears for me!
And yet Hope comes dictating to my heart:
“From the new mourning shall new joy result;
That which was then achieved is but a seed,—
The goodly seed shall bear a goodly fruit.”
Yes, O ye nations, courage! and expect
From sterile winter lavish summertime.

July’s ninth day is blazing in the heaven,
And to the people’s will the King accedes.
How could I ever fully represent
The immense delight which I beheld around?

The Bourbon King, throned in his gilded seat,
Object of love in such a festival,
With rage in bosom and with joy in face,
Feigns to applaud the good he so detests:
Then on the gospel swears ... ah crime-stained King!
Thou stamp’st the kiss of Judas on the Christ!

O realm betrayed, to which I wailing speak,
Remember that Alfieri has pronounced—
“To make a blameless king, unmake him first”—
And, if a greedy foreigner, all the more.
The deed then wrought was done in righteousness,
’Twas reason’s revolution: all the same,
As if it were the greatest of all crimes
’Twas punished by the Bourbon’s perfidy.
No, such a sacred movement cost to none
A drop of blood, not even a drop of tears.
Ah I remember those nine hurrying months
As though they had been blessed years of fame!
August the Parliament was opened, where
Some Cato, Tully, or Hortensius, pealed.
Activity is witnessed in the fleet,—
Ancient Amalfi seems therein revived.
The manning of the army starts anew,
But with no mixture of a foreign stock;
And warlike squadrons are adjoined to it
Of civic legions and militia-bands.
The strenuous presses creak, and everywhere
The country’s intellect displays its fruits.
My own blood like a burning lava coursed:
Not I, not I, then sang, but Patriot Love!
And, to encourage that heroic race
Which from ancestral ashes came to birth,
Re-echoed did I hark to those his strains
Which he was pleased to utter through my lips:
From women and from children and from all,
Here, there, and up and down, on every hand.[37]
With dulcet and with martial harmony
By the Musician’s skill invested, these,
Sung in all houses and in every street,
Were even quoted in the Parliament;
To their Tyrtæus all the provinces,
As chorus to the coryphee, replied.
All, all was active: Usages and laws
Progressed in union with the newborn rights.
But many of the law-courts had to shut,
For rivalry in virtue lessened crime.

I must here make a little digression, to illustrate this matter of “Tyrtæus.” It need scarcely be said that Tyrtæus, who flourished about 650 B.C., was a Greek elegiac poet, born in Attica, lame and misshapen, and totally ignorant of military matters. In the second Messenian war the Lacedæmonians were directed by the oracle to apply to the Athenians for a general; and the Athenians (such at least is the legend, which may be largely discounted without undue scepticism) sent them Tyrtæus. This looked very like a mauvaise plaisanterie, and was so regarded by the Lacedæmonians; yet the result justified the oracle, and the Athenians as well. The poet poured forth his strains with such splendid impulse and vigour that he animated the troops; they abandoned the idea of raising the siege of Ithome, and thoroughly defeated the Messenians. “The popularity of these elegies in the Spartan army was such that it became the custom to sing them round the camp-fires at night, the polemarch rewarding the best singer with a piece of flesh.”

The term “Tyrtæus of Italy” (Tirteo d’Italia) has been constantly applied by his countrymen to Gabriele Rossetti. I am not clear when this practice began, whether before or only after 1846, when Rossetti, in his Veggente in Solitudine, applied the term to himself. At any rate, I had until recently assumed that the phrase had only a lax application, as indicating that Rossetti, by his declaimed and published patriotic lyrics, had incited, and would continue to incite, Italians to combat for liberty and independence. But of late I have come to the almost confident conclusion that he must have taken a personal part in the sole military expedition in which the Neapolitan army sought to maintain the constitution of 1820. This conclusion is founded upon a letter (in my possession) which a certain Dr Costanza—to me not otherwise known—addressed to my father on 10th November 1847. I first read the letter with attention towards 1896, and I here give a translation of it.

“Gibraltar.

“10th November 1847.

“Honoured Compatriot,

“Twenty-six years have now passed since we bade one another a last adieu in the Island of Malta, at the fatal period of ’21. You must recollect Dr Costanza, then a young physician and surgeon, now turned of fifty years of age. You had known him in the capital of the kingdom, and you afterwards met him at Montecassino, when you were returning from the gorges of Antrodoca after the hapless result of that first passage of arms upon which depended the fate of our country. That Costanza is now writing to you, and warmly recommends to you three fellow-countrymen of ours, recently saved by miracle from the blood-red hands of the agents of the tyrant of Naples and Sicily....

“Your Compatriot, and erewhile Companion

in misfortune,

Dr Costanza.”

In this letter the mention of Antrodoca (or Antrodoco) is the essential thing. The mountains of Antrodoco are near Rieti, which was the scene of an engagement, on 7th March 1821, between the Neapolitan and the Austrian troops. The actual feat of arms was not discreditable to the Italians; but—perceiving that they were the weaker party, and that the final issue was hopeless for them—they immediately afterwards disbanded, and all was over. I cannot indeed, recollect having ever heard from my father that he was along with the army on that occasion, nor does he affirm it in his versified Autobiography; yet I now see that he must have been so. I do not infer that he was in the fighting ranks; but I do infer that two passages which are to be found in his Veggente in Solitudine have a more positive meaning than I used to attribute to them. The passages are as follows:—

1. “Fratelli, all’armi, all’armi!” etc.

“Brothers, to arms, to arms! Our country has summoned us. I, with my stimulating songs, will also go among you.”

2. (As already referred to) “Tirteo d’Italia,” etc.

“Who will be the Tyrtæus of Italy in the camp? ’Tis I, ’tis I! Such I have been, such I am.”

The first of these passages comes from a song composed by Rossetti towards the date of the soldiering in 1821. The second may have been written about 1845.

I have found one other paper which seems to bear upon this semi-military act of Gabriele Rossetti. An excellent friend of his, Ferdinando Ciciloni, wrote to him from Naples on 24th November 1825, saying: “Three days ago I went to San Sebastiano, which, from the seat of the Parliament, has become a College of Music. As I crossed the courtyard, I had a mental vision of Rossetti in uniform, and with two very black moustaches.” As we have seen (note on p. 36), Rossetti, though not at all a man of a soldiering turn, had belonged, in 1814, to the Guard of Internal Security under King Joachim, and once again, in 1821, he donned a uniform—a British one this time. But Ciciloni’s remark does not seem very likely to refer to either of these incidents; rather to something in which the Parliament-building was concerned, and a muster immediately before the departure of the army to Rieti appears the most probable occurrence.

Freedom immaculate, O thou who hadst
Such sacred worship on Sebeto’s banks,
Iniquitous plots ’gainst thee, without and in,
The Royal Princes’ visible ill-faith,
Ambition nursed by some few senators,
And envious grudge of many generals,
Engirt thee with the trackless labyrinth
When in thee Heaven was overcome by Hell.

Nor have I in repentance struck my brow
Because my worship of thee wrought me scathe.
Were I in that same case a thousand times,
A thousand I’d return to do the same.
Thee from Christianity I ne’er disjoined,—
I feel my heart-strings quivering to both.
The Bourbon perjury, the Austrian force,
On thee, O sacred Liberty, made war:
And, seeing thy holy worship thus destroyed,
I bade a farewell to the soil profaned,
And so the thundering ship conducted me
Where Christ and Freedom can be both adored.

Name to the world, O sacred Gratitude,
The Scotch-born hero who on British deck
Rescued the singer of Italian hopes
Out of the Bourbon despot’s slaughter-fangs.
Sir Graham Moore,[38] inured to combating
In a great nation’s thundrous lightning-flash,
I bear with an indelible imprint
Thy cherished name written upon my heart.
Those soul-inspired and freedom-loving strains
Intoned by me upon my native soil
On the four winds already had dispread,
O’er mountains and o’er seas, a tireless flight;
And the Britannic Genius, when they reached
His shores, bade Italy’s Tyrtæus hail.
Now my propitious fate had willed it so
That by a lady were my verses read—
A British Admiral’s well-honoured wife,
Whether more fair or gracious who could say?
But this I know—I saw in her combined
Penelope’s heart and Helen’s countenance.
She, worthy partner of the British chief,
Honours in others’ mental gifts her own;
And those who know her know how highly trained
She is, and she alone discerns it not.

To Naples came the lady at the time
When flames burned there of patriotic love,
And she expressed the wish she had conceived
To know the Italian poet face to face;
And with such ardour she admired his work
That numerous verses she could quote by heart.
An English officer, of cultured mind,
Who had always shown me marks of courtesy,
And who in the Museum saw me at whiles,
Made me acquainted with the lady’s wish.
I to the invitation gave response,
And so a day was settled for my call.

She—as a sister might a brother greet
Returning—greeted me in amity;
Yet day by day this kindliness increased.
Fair Angel of God’s presence sent on earth,
Ah not so soon return to Paradise!
Many there circle his eternal throne,
But angels are not plenteous here below.
In all that effervescent period
She, whose good wishes were for our success,
Remained a witness of my innocence,
And an approver of my patriot zeal.

When by the foul effect of treacheries
Our government had perished, she was grieved,
And for unfortunate Rossetti’s fate
She felt concern, and to her husband spoke:
“Save from the axe that guiltless man; if love
Of country is a crime, you are guilty too!”

Alas how hard did exile seem to me,
And leaving in such woes my native land!
Three times he offered refuge on his ship,
And all the three times I rejected it.
But my continuing was so foolhardy
That wiser I accepted it the fourth.

Lamenting night and day my country’s lot,
And as to my own life not caring much,
From March to June I kept myself concealed,
’Mid traps laid by a sleepless-eyed police.[39]
One night I was in that terrific plight,
When a voice called upon my name, and said:
“Fly—I discern your scaffold plain to see!”
I look, and find ’tis General Fardella,
Who was just then the Minister of War;
But, while I am rousing from my wonderment,
The dark receives him—moveless I remain.
Meseems I see him still, the while I write.
He, who so often gave my lines applause,
Had entered furtive in my hiding-place:
But how he found it out I cannot say.
How could I sleep, or hope again for calm?
Within my soul I heard the word—“Fly, fly!”
In perturbations having passed the night,
I to the lady wrote at earliest dawn;
And towards the eve two English subalterns[40]
Most willingly responded to my wish;
And they, to make my move less perilous,
Gave me red uniform resembling theirs.
I on the moment, be it luck or thought
To pass more safely before others’ eyes,
Packed a few clothes and papers many a one
In a small trunk, and was in readiness:
And I exclaimed, twixt joyful heart and grieved,
“I bear with me my all—Ready—let’s go.”
Between the gallant pair I took the coach,
Which drove us forth on our clandestine path[41]
To where a skiff was in await for us,
With six athletic oarsmen on the beach.
O Rochfort,[42] thou to which the naval forts
All paid salute as they before thee passed,
And thundering thou through hundred-fourscore mouths
Didst spread afar thy nautical command,
Thee sinuous the Mediterranean,
And thee vast Ocean’s sheer immensity,
Saw dominating the unstable wave,
And christened thee the Formidable Fort.
Thee from the skiff I see, and feed my glance,
As on artilleried walls, upon thy bows.

The mighty ship gave symptoms of good-will,
Expressed in divers modes by the ample crew;
And I—I kissed that wooden Albion
Amid the naval group who smiled thereat.
To the saloon bright-shining in the dusk
I sped, to give Thetis and Neptune thanks.
“Here is a pair of gods not fabulous,”
I said, when greeted by their noble smiles.
The grace which can forestall a modest wish
I always found on either countenance.

Then in the night I went with saddened soul
To contemplate the shore which met my view.
All are reposing in the silent hour,
Except some watch that paces vigilant;
And I alone and pensive on the prow
Stand communing with this my land betrayed;
And a few happy days and many dire
Are passing in review before mine eyes.
Ever ferocious Tyranny I saw
Becoming stronger by flagitious means;
And Freedom, tasted for a few poor days,
Begetting, like the fruit of Eden, death;
And Treason, like a snake pestiferous,
From two great goblets sipping tears and blood.
And, while my fantasy on every side
Ran riot, struck by miserable ideas,
The scenes of sanguinary Ninety-nine
Offered themselves to my dejected soul;
And o’er the regal lair meseemed I saw
A host funereal of threat’ning ghosts.
“Unhappy country, adieu!”—And that adieu
Over all Italy I diffused in song.[43]

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