Five volumes of Modern Painters, together with The Seven Lamps of Architecture and the tract on Pre-Raphaelitism, bore the author’s name and Rossetti’s in Mr. Ruskin’s autograph. There was a fine copy in ten volumes of Violet-le-Duc’s Dictionnaire de l’Architecture, and also of the Biographie Générale in forty-six volumes, besides several dictionaries, concordances, and the like. There was also a copy of Fitzgerald’s Calderon. Rossetti seemed to be a reader of Swedenborg, as White’s book on the great mystic testified; also to have been at one time interested in the investigation of the phenomena of Spiritualism. Of one writer of fiction he must have been an ardent reader, for there were at least 100 volumes by Alexandre Dumas. German writers were conspicuously absent, Goethe’s Faust and Carlyle’s translation of Wilhelm, Meister, being about the only notable German works in the library. Rossetti did not appear to be a collector of first editions, nor did it seem that he attached much importance to the mere outsides of his books, but of the insides he was master indeed. The impression left upon the mind after a rapid survey of the poet-painter’s library was that he was a careful, but slow and thorough reader (as was seen by the marginal annotations which nearly every volume contained), and that, though very far from affected by bibliomania, he was not without pride in the possession of rare and valuable books.
When I left the house at a late hour that morning Rossetti was not yet stirring, and so some months passed before I saw him again. If I had tried to formulate the idea—or say sensation—that possessed me at the moment, I think I should have said, in a word or two, that outside the air breathed freely. Within, the gloom, the mediaeval furniture, the brass censers, sacramental cups, lamps; and crucifixes conspired, I thought, to make the atmosphere heavy and unwholesome. As for the man himself who was the central spirit amidst these anachronistic environments, he had, if possible, attached me yet closer to himself by contact. Before this I had been attracted to him in admiration of his gifts: but now I was drawn to him, in something very like pity, for his isolation and suffering. Not that at this time he consciously made demand of much compassion, and least of all from me. Health was apparently whole with him, his spirits were good, and his energies were at their best. He had not yet known the full bitterness of the shadowed valley: not yet learned what it was to hunger for any cheerful society that would relieve him of the burden of the flesh. All that came later. Rossetti was one of the most magnetic of men, but it was not more his genius than his unhappiness that held certain of his friends by a spell.
CHAPTER VIII.
It was characteristic of Rossetti that he addressed me in the following terms probably before I had left his house: for the letter was, no doubt, written in that interval of sleeplessness which he had spoken of as his nightly visitant:
I forgot to say—Don’t, please, spread details as to story of Rose Mary. I don’t want it to be stale or to get forestalled in the travelling of report from mouth to mouth. I hope it won’t be too long before you visit town again,—I will not for an instant question that you would then visit me also.
Six months or more intervened, however, before I was able to visit Rossetti again. In the meantime we corresponded as fully as before: the subject upon which we most frequently exchanged opinions being now the sonnet.
By-the-bye [he says], I cannot understand what you say of
Milton’s, Keats’s, and Coleridge’s sonnets. The last, it is
true, was always poor as a sonnetteer (I don’t see much in
the Autumnal Moon). My own only exception to this verdict
(much as I adore Coleridge’s genius) would be the ludicrous
sonnet on The House that Jack built, which is a
masterpiece in its way. I should not myself number the one
you mention of Keats’s among his best half-dozen (many of
his are mere drafts, strange to say); and cannot at all
enter into your verdict on those of Milton, which seem to me
to be every one of exceptional excellence, though a few are
even finer than the rest, notably, of course, the one you
name. Pardon an egotistic sentence (in answer to what you
say so generously of Lost Days), if I express an opinion
that Known in Vain and Still-born Love may perhaps be
said to head the series in value, though Lost Days might
be equally a favourite with me if I did not remember in what
but too opportune juncture it was wrung out of me. I have a
good number of sonnets for The House of Life still in MS.,
which I have worked on with my best effort, and, I think,
will fully sustain their place. These and other things I
should like to show you whenever we meet again. The MS. vol.
I proposed to send is merely an old set of (chiefly)
trifles, about which I should like an opinion as to whether
any should be included in the future.
I had spoken of Keats’s sonnet beginning
To one who has been long in city pent,