Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti

by Sir Hall Caine

The following letter explains itself, and is introduced as much for the sake of the real humour which it displays, as because it affords an excellent idea of Rossetti’s view of the true function of prose:

I don’t like your Shakspeare article quite as well as the
first Supernatural one, or rather I should say it does not
greatly add to it in my (first) view, though both might gain
by embodiment in one. I think there is some truth in the
charge of metaphysical involution—the German element as I
should call it—and surely you are strong enough to be
English pure and simple. I am sure I could write 100 essays,
on all possible subjects (I once did project a series under
the title, Essays written in the intervals of
Elephantiasis, Hydro-phobia, and Penal Servitude), without
once experiencing the “aching void” which is filled by such
words as “mythopoeic,” and “anthropomorphism.” I do not find
life long enough to know in the least what they mean. They
are both very long and very ugly indeed—the latter only
suggesting to me a Vampire or Somnambulant Cannibal. (To
speak rationally, would not “man-evolved Godhead” be an
English equivalent?) “Euhemeristic” also found me somewhat
on my beam-ends, though explanation is here given; yet I
felt I could do without Euhemerus; and you perhaps without
the humerous. You can pardon me now; for so bad a pun
places me at your mercy indeed. But seriously, simple
English in prose writing and in all narrative poetry
(however monumental language may become in abstract verse)
seems to me a treasure not to be foregone in favour of
German innovations. I know Coleridge went in latterly for as
much Germanism as his time could master; but his best genius
had then left him.

It seems necessary to mention that I lectured in 1880, on the relation of politics to art, and in printing the lecture I asked Rossetti to accept the dedication of it, but this he declined to do in the generous terms I have already referred to. The letter that accompanied his graceful refusal is, however, so full of interesting personal matter that I offer it in this place, with no further explanation than that my essay was designed to show that just as great artists in past ages had participated in political struggles, so now they should not hold themselves aloof from controversies which immediately concern them:

I must admit, at all hazards, that my friends here consider
me exceptionally averse to politics; and I suppose I must
be, for I never read a parliamentary debate in my life! At
the same time I will add that, among those whose opinions I
most value, some think me not altogether wrong when I
venture to speak of the momentary momentousness and eternal
futility of many noisiest questions. However, you must
simply view me as a nonentity in any practical relation to
such matters. You have spoken but too generously of a sonnet
of mine in your lecture just received. I have written a few
others of the sort (which by-the-bye would not prove me a
Tory), but felt no vocation—perhaps no right—-to print
them. I have always reproached myself as sorely amenable to
the condemnations of a very fine poem by Barberino, On
Sloth against Sin, which I translated in the Dante volume.
Sloth, alas! has but too much to answer for with me; and is
one of the reasons (though I will not say the only one), why
I have always fallen back on quality instead of quantity in
the little I have ever done. I think often with Coleridge:
Sloth jaundiced all: and from my graspless hand
Drop friendship’s precious pearls like hour-glass sand.
I weep, yet stoop not: the faint anguish flows,
A dreamy pang in morning’s feverish doze.
However, for all I might desire in the direction spoken of,
volition is vain without vocation; and I had better really
stick to knowing how to mix vermilion and ultramarine for a
flesh-grey, and how to manage their equivalents in verse. To
speak without sparing myself,—my mind is a childish one, if
to be isolated in Art is child’s-play; at any rate I feel
that I do not attain to the more active and practical of the
mental functions of manhood. I can say this to you, because
I know you will make the best and not the worst of me; and
better than such feasible best I do not wish to appear. Thus
you see I don’t think my name ought to head your
introductory paragraph—and there an end. And now of your
new lecture, and of the long letter I lately had from you.
At some moment I should like to know which pieces among the
translations are specially your favourites. Of the three
names you leash together as somewhat those of sensualists,
Cecco Angiolieri is really the only one—as for the
respectable Cino, he would be shocked indeed, though
certainly there are a few oddities bearing that way in the
sonnets between him and Dante (who is again similarly
reproached by his friend Cavalcanti), but I really do suspect that in some cases similar to the one in question
about Cino (though not Guido and Dante) politics were really
meant where love was used as a metaphor.... I assure you,
you cannot say too much to me of this or any other work of
yours; in fact, I wish that we should communicate about
them. I have been thinking yet more on the relations of
politics and art. I do think seriously on consideration that
not only my own sluggishness, but vital fact itself, must
set to a great extent a veto against the absolute
participation of artists in politics. When has it ever been
effected? True, Cellini was a bravo and David a good deal
like a murderer, and in these capacities they were not
without their political use in very turbulent times. But
when the attempt was made to turn Michael Angelo into a
“utility man” of that kind, he did (it is true) some
patriotic duty in the fortification of Florence; but it is
no less a fact that, when he had done all that he thought
became him, he retired to a certain trackless and forgotten
tower, and there stayed in some sort of peace (though much
in request) till he could lead his own life again; nor
should we forget the occasion on which he did not hesitate
even to betake himself to Venice as a refuge. Yet M. Angelo
was in every way a patriot, a philosopher, and a hero. I do
not say this to undervalue the scope of your theory. I think
possibilities are generally so much behind desirabilities
that there is no harm in any degree of incitement in the
right direction; and that is assuredly mental activity of
all kinds. I judge you cannot suspect me of thinking the
apotheosis of the early Italian poets (though surely
spiritual beauty, and not sensuality, was their general aim)
of more importance than the “unity of a great nation.” But
it is in my minute power to deal successfully (I feel) with
the one, while no such entity, as I am, can advance or
retard the other; and thus mine must needs be the poorer
part. Nor (with alas, and again alas!) will Italy or another
twice have her day in its fulness.

I happened to have said in speaking of self-indulgence among artists, that there probably existed those to whom it seemed more important to preserve such a pitiful possession as the poetical remains of Cecco Angiolieri than to secure the unity of a great nation. Rossetti half suspected I meant this for a playful backhanded blow at himself (for Cecco was a great favourite with him), and protested that no such individual could exist. I defended my charge by quoting Keats’s—

... the silver flow
Of Hero’s tears, the swoon of Imogen,
Fair Pastorella in the bandit’s den,
Are things to brood on with more ardency
Than the death-day of empires.

But Rossetti grew weary of the jest:

I must protest that what you quote from Keats about “Hero’s
tears,” etc., fails to meet the text. Neither Shakspeare nor
Spenser assuredly was a Cecco; Marlowe may be most meant as
to “Hero,” and he perhaps affords the shadow of a parallel
in career though not in work.

The extract from Rosetti’s letters with which I shall close this chapter is perhaps the most interesting yet made:

One point I must still raise, viz., that I, for one, cannot
conceive, even as the Ghost of a Flea, the ideal individual
who considers the Poetical Remains of Cecco Angiolieri of
more importance than the unity of a great nation! I think
this would have been better if much modified. Say for
instance—“A thing of some moment even while the contest is
waging for the political unity of a great nation.” This is
the utmost reach surely of human comparative valuation. I
think you have brought in Benvenuto and Michael much to the
purpose. Shall I give you a parallel in your own style?
During the months for which poet Coleridge became private
Cumberback (a name in which he said his horse would have
concurred), it seems strange that, in such stirring times,
his regiment should not have been ordered off on foreign
service. In such case that pre-eminent member of the awkward
squad would assuredly have been the very first man killed.
Should we have been more the gainers by his patriotism or
the losers by his poetry? The very last man killed in the
last sortie from Paris during the Prussian siege (he
would go behind a buttress to “pot” a Prussian after
orders were given to retire, and so got “potted” himself)
was Henri Regnault, a painter, whose brilliant work was a
guiding beacon on the road of improvement in French methods
of art, if not in intellectual force. Who shall fail to
honour the noble ardour which drew him from the security of
his studies in Tunis to partake his country’s danger? Yet
who shall forbear to sigh in thinking that, but for this,
his progressing work might still yearly be an element in
art-progress for Europe? Gérome and others betook themselves
to England instead, and are still benefiting the cause for
which they were before all things born. It was David who
said, “Si on tirait à mitraille sur les artistes, on n’y
tuerait pas un seul patriote!” He was a patriot homicide,
and spoke probably what was true in the sense in which he
meant it. As I said, I am glad you turned Ben and Mike to
account, but the above is in some respects an open question.