Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti

by Sir Hall Caine

with its exquisite last lines—

E’en like the passage of an angel’s tear
That falls through the clear ether silently,

reminding one of a less spiritual figure—

Kings like a golden jewel
Down a golden stair.

After his bantering me, as of old he had done, on the use of long and crabbed words, I hinted that he was in honour bound to agree at least with my disparaging judgment upon Tetrachordon, if only because of the use of words that would “have made Quintillian stare.”

I further instanced—

“Harry whose tuneful and well-measured song;” and
“Lawrence, of virtuous father virtuous son,”

as examples of Milton at his weakest as a sonnet-writer. He replied:

I am sorry I must still differ somewhat from you about
Milton’s sonnets. I think the one on Tetrachordon a very
vigorous affair indeed. The one to Mr. H. Lawes I am half
disposed to give you, but not altogether—its close is
sweet. As to Lawrence, it is curious that my sister was
only the other day expressing to me a special relish for
this sonnet, and I do think it very fresh and wholesomely
relishing myself. It is an awful fact that sun, moon, or
candlelight once looked down on the human portent of Dr.
Johnson and Mrs. Hannah More convened in solemn conclave
above the outspread sonnets of Milton, with a meritorious
and considerate resolve of finding out for him “why they
were so bad.” This is so stupendous a warning, that perhaps
it may even incline one to find some of them better than
they are.
Coming to Coleridge, I must confess at once that I never
meet in any collection with the sonnet on Schiller’s
Robbers without heading it at once with the words
“unconscionably bad.” The habit has been a life-long one.
That you mention beginning—“Sweet mercy,” etc., I have
looked for in the only Coleridge I have by me (my brother’s
cheap edition, for all the faults of which he is not at
all answerable), and do not find it there, nor have I it in
mind.
To pass to Keats. The ed. of 1868 contains no sonnet on the
Elgin Marbles. Is it in a later edition? Of course that on
Chapman’s Homer is supreme. It ought to be preceded {*} in
all editions by the one To Homer,
“Standing aloof in giant ignorance,” etc.
which contains perhaps the greatest single line in Keats:
“There is a budding morrow in midnight.”
* I pointed out that it was written later than the one on
Chapman’s Homer (notwithstanding its first line) and
therefore should follow after it, not go before.
Other special favourites with me are—“Why did I laugh to-
night?”—” As Hermes once,”—“Time’s sea hath been,” and
the one On the Flower and, Leaf.
It is odd that several of these best ones seem to have been
early work, and rejected by Keats in his lifetime, while
some of those he printed are absolutely sorry drafts.
I had admired Coleridge’s sonnet on Schiller’s Robbers for
the perhaps minor excellence of bringing vividly before the
mind the scenes it describes. If the sonnet is
unconscionably bad so perhaps is the play, the beautiful
scene of the setting sun notwithstanding. Eventually,
however, I abandoned my belligerent position as to Milton’s
sonnets: the army of authorities I found ranged against the
modest earth-works within which I had entrenched myself must
of itself have made me quail. My utmost contention had been
that Milton wrote the most impassioned sonnet (Avenge, O
Lord), the two most nobly pathetic sonnets (When I
consider and Methought I saw), and one of the poorest
sonnets (Harry, whose tuneful, etc.) in English poetry.
At this time (September 1880) Mr. J. Ashcroft Noble
published an essay on The Sonnet in England in The
Contemporary Review, and relating thereto Rossetti wrote:
I have just been reading Mr. Noble’s article on the sonnet.
As regards my own share in it, I can only say that it greets
me with a gratifying ray of generous recognition. It is all
the more pleasant to me as finding a place in the very
Review which years ago opened its pages to a pseudonymous
attack on my poems and on myself. I see a passage in the
article which seems meant to indicate the want of such a
work on the sonnet as you are wishing to supply. I only
trust that you may do so, and that Mr. Noble may find a
field for continued poetic criticism. I am very proud to
think that, after my small and solitary book has been a good
many years published and several years out of print, it yet
meets with such ardent upholding by young and sincere men.
With the verdicts given throughout the article, I generally
sympathise, but not with the unqualified homage to
Wordsworth. A reticence almost invariably present is fatal
in my eyes to the highest pretensions on behalf of his
sonnets. Reticence is but a poor sort of muse, nor is
tentativeness (so often to be traced in his work) a good
accompaniment in music. Take the sonnet on Toussaint
L’Ouverture (in my opinion his noblest, and very noble
indeed) and study (from Main’s note) the lame and fumbling
changes made in various editions of the early lines, which
remain lame in the end. Far worse than this, study the
relation of the closing lines of his famous sonnet The
World is too much with us, etc., to a passage in Spenser,
and say whether plagiarism was ever more impudent or
manifest (again I derive from Main’s excellent exposition of
the point), and then consider whether a bard was likely to
do this once and yet not to do it often. Primary vital
impulse was surely not fully developed in his muse.
I will venture to say that I wish my sister’s sonnet work
had met with what I consider the justice due to it. Besides
the unsurpassed quality (in my opinion) of her best sonnets,
my sister has proved her poetic importance by solid and
noble inventive work of many kinds, which I should be proud
indeed to reckon among my life’s claims.
I have a great weakness myself for many of Tennyson-Turner’s
sonnets, though of course what Mr. Noble says of them is in
the main true, and he has certainly quoted the very finest
one, which has a more fervent appeal for me than I could
easily derive from Wordsworth in almost any case.
Will you give my thanks to Mr. Noble for his frank and
outspoken praise?
Let me hear of your doings and intentions.
Ever sincerely yours.

Three names notably omitted in the article are those of Dobell, W. B. Scott, and Swinburne.