[69] I question whether my father was right in supposing me to resemble him in person; I should say that, of the two, Dante Gabriel resembled him more. I have suppressed some lines representative of fatherly fondness more than of myself.—W.
[70] The Conte Giuseppe Ricciardi was a prominent Republican politician, an attached friend of Rossetti. He exerted himself incessantly in the Italian cause; his death took place towards 1885. Terenzio Mamiani was an admired writer in verse and prose; Monsignor Muzzarelli a very open-minded churchman. Cagnazzi (I presume the same person) is spoken of by General Guglielmo Pepe as the “venerable archdeacon Luccado Samuele Cagnazzi, a profound and learned economist,” who became President of the Neapolitan Parliament in 1848. The other names, Saliceti and Gazzola, are identified by me less clearly than probably they ought to be. Pepe, the hero of Venice in 1848-9, was the same who had been the hero of Naples in 1820.—W.
[71] I cannot elucidate this matter of Paolelli and Turrigo.—W.
[72] Bozzelli became Minister of the Interior in Naples in 1848, when Ferdinand II. pretended to re-commence a constitutional government; he was afterwards Prime Minister, conniving in the cause of reaction. During the brief simulation of constitutionalism, General Pepe had much influence over the Government, and he advocated the recall of Rossetti to Naples. My father was nearly on the brink of returning thither, with his family, when the Liberal movement was quenched in blood. The other minister here mentioned, Borrelli, belongs to the earlier constitution of 1820-21; he was Minister of Police, and persuaded the Parliament to authorize the departure of Ferdinand I. from Naples; an event which was pretty soon followed by the repeal of the constitution, and the proscription of its abettors.—W.
[73] This diatribe is directed against Sir Antonio Panizzi, whose name is in the original, given at the close of it: I reduce it here to a comparative trifle, but have not thought it desirable to miss it out entirely. My father considered that, for some reason or none, Panizzi had from the first been ill-disposed towards him; and this feeling was strengthened when Panizzi published an article (or articles) opposing, and partly ridiculing, my father’s theories concerning Dante, etc. I am not sure that I ever read the articles; probably they were bitter (for Panizzi was the reverse of mealy-mouthed); but, when a man says that Beatrice did not exist, and that Dante was a sort of Freemason, he must expect that people who are of a contrary opinion will express themselves forcibly.—W.
[74] They might rather be called notebooks than volumes.—W.
[75] This seems to refer to the volume named—Versi, 1847; also to poems contributed to an Italian Protestantizing magazine, L’Eco di Savonarola.—W.
[76] Pius IX.—W.
[77] My father lost totally, and very suddenly, the sight of one eye. After that he was in constant danger of losing also the sight of the other eye, and he often expected that this would soon be lost. He did, however, to the end of his life, retain a much enfeebled modicum of eyesight. In the expectation of becoming wholly blind, he often spoke and wrote of himself as blind—an exaggeration, but a pardonable one.—W.
[78] The poem The Seer in Solitude (Il Veggente in Solitudine) has been previously mentioned. It is true that some of the ideas presented in that poem as visions or presages—as to the liberation of Italy, etc.—were getting “daily verified” even in Rossetti’s lifetime, and much more conspicuously so a few years afterwards.—W.