Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti

by Sir Hall Caine

I think Castalia much too euphuistic, and though I
shouldn’t like the book to be called simply still I have a
great prejudice against very florid titles for such
gatherings. Treasury has been sadly run upon.

I did not like Sonnet Sequence for such a collection, and relinquished the title; moreover, I had had from the first a clearly defined scheme in mind, carrying its own inevitable title, which was in due course adopted. I may here remark that I never resisted any idea of Rossetti’s at the moment of its inception, since resistance only led to a temporary outburst of self-assertion on his part. He was a man of so much impulse,—impulse often as violent as lawless—that to oppose him merely provoked anger to no good purpose, for as often as not the position at first adopted with so much pertinacity was afterwards silently abandoned, and your own aims quietly acquiesced in. On this subject of a title he wrote a further letter, which is interesting from more than one point of view:

I don’t like Garland at all C. Patmore collected a
Children’s Garland. I think

ENGLISH SONNET’S PRESENT AND PAST, WITH—ETC.,

would be a good title. I think I prefer Present and Past,
or of the P. and P., to New and Old for your purpose;
but I own I am partly influenced by the fact that I have
settled to call my own vol. Poems New and Old, and don’t
want it to get staled; but I really do think the other at
least as good for your purpose—perhaps more dignified.

Again, in reply to a proposal of my own, he wrote:

I think Sonnets of the Century an excellent idea and
title. I must say a mass of Wordsworth over again, like
Main’s, is a little disheartening,—still the best selection from him is what one wants. There is some book
called A Century of Sonnets, but this, I suppose, would
not matter....
I think sometimes of your sonnet-book, and have formed
certain views. I really would not in your place include old
work at all: it would be but a scanty gathering, and I feel
certain that what is really in requisition is a supplement
to Main, containing living writers (printed and un-printed)
put together under their authors’ names (not separately) and
rare gleanings from those more recently dead.

I fear I did not attach importance to this decision, for I now knew my correspondent too well to rely upon his being entirely in the same mind for long. Hence I was not surprised to receive the following a day or two later:

I lately had a conversation with Watts about your sonnet-
book, and find his views to be somewhat different from what
I had expressed, and I may add I think now he is right. He
says there should be a very careful selection of the elder
sonnets and of everything up to present century. I think he
is right.

The fact is, that almost from the first I had taken a view similar to Mr. Watts’s as to the design of my book, and had determined to call the anthology by the title it now bears. On one occasion, however, I acted rather without judgment in sending Rossetti a synopsis of certain critical tests formulated by Mr. Watts in a letter of great power and value.