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.”