“Fratelli, all’armi, all’armi!”
I also composed more than sixty manifestoes upon various occurrences; they circulated in print throughout the whole Carboneria, in which I was a member of the General Assembly; likewise a brochure of some length entitled Alla Difesa, O Cittadini. This inflamed all hearts, when the treachery of the perfidious Bourbon King came to be known. [I possess the brochure in question. It was printed towards the end of 1820, at the time when Ferdinand I. was still professing to adhere cordially to the Constitution, notwithstanding the threatening attitude assumed by Austria. Consequently the tone of the author is highly respectful towards Ferdinand, at the same time that the nation is urged to prepare energetically for a war—possible, though as yet not exactly probable—against Austria.—W.]
[38] Sir Graham Moore, brother of the famous General Sir John Moore, who died in the field in the campaign of Corunna. The brothers might truly be called duo fulmina belli.
[39] The house in which I kept needfully concealed for three months is in the Concordia quarter. Opposite it was a meagre invalid, who posted himself all day at the window, to peer at whatever was going on in the neighbourhood—which prevented me from getting a little fresh air. One day, from the shadowed inside of my room, I saw that a funeral-car stopped at his door. I perceived he must be dead, and I was glad of it—why conceal the fact? My prying bugbear being gone, I felt more at liberty, and I wrote for him the following epigrammatic epitaph:—
“Here lies a man of prying peering art,
Who in other folk’s affairs made endless pother:
And he from this world did at last depart,
Merely to fathom what is done in t’other.”
[I may add that on 18th March 1821, midway between the military disaster at Rieti on 7th March, and the dissolution of the Parliament on 21st March, Rossetti procured a Neapolitan passport for either Spain or Malta; but it seems that he never attempted to use it, but lay perdu instead, until shipped off to Malta by Admiral Sir Graham Moore.—W.]
[40] It appears that one of these officers was named Stanford. My aunt, Charlotte Polidori, being in Naples in 1840, knew something of a Mr Stanford, who (as she wrote) “knew Rossetti well; it was on his arm that he leaned when, dressed as an English officer, he went on board. He would have been put to death, had he not left, merely on account of his political opinions—on no other subject could a word be said against him.”—W.