Despite every effort, the nature of the argument wells forth of itself, and almost overflows the dykes which I labour to erect and strengthen. And I regret to tell you (far from rejoicing at it) that in the successive chapters the evidence increases to such a point as to belie all my words, which heal, assuage, and soften down the nature of the thing. Oh how much have I done to disguise it, but all in vain! I confess to you my misdeed: in that which you have read, or which you will be reading, I have suppressed all those passages of the authorities that I quote which exhibit the secret overtly. I have quoted in a maimed form Petrarca, Boccaccio, and especially Swedenborg.... For example, this Swede writes that the entire Bible, both the Old Testament and the New, is written in that selfsame language in which he writes, and that his is none other than a prolongation of that. He says that the Prophets saw God no otherwise than he saw him; that there is no other future life than that which he describes, in which one dies a man, and revives as an angel to a new life; that there are not any other heavens nor another God than those to which he ascended, and that with whom he spoke; and other similar things: all of them expunged by me, even in the thick of the citation which I make. These utterances of his may have illuded the world, before it was understood, by giving the keys, what heaven is, and what the angels and God are; but, the keys having been given, the propositions become horrible and scandalous....
Your very affectionate and oblige
G. Rossetti.
G.
21st July 1840.
My very dear Sir,
... I could send you a hundred things of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries which I have amassed in my extracts. I will limit myself to two sonnets of the famous Raphael of Urbino; and judge you whether he was not of the sect—like his contemporary, Michelangelo Buonarroti, and very many others who were in the environment of the Pope.
“Un pensier dolce è rimembrare, e godo.”[88]
Raphael’s second sonnet. He, having descended from the third heaven (like St Paul), writes thus:
“Come non potè dir d’arcana Dei