In painting, however, Rossetti was during this time exercising only half his genius. From his childhood it became evident that he was a poet. At the age of five he wrote a sort of play called ‘The Slave,’ which, as may be imagined, showed no noteworthy characteristic save precocity. This was followed by the poem called ‘Sir Hugh Heron,’ which was written about 1844, and some translations of German poetry. ‘The Blessed Damozel’ and ‘Sister Helen’ were produced in their original form so early as 1846 or 1847. The latter of these has undergone more modifications than any other first-class poem of our time. To take even the new edition of the ‘Poems’ which appeared last year [1881], the stanzas introducing the wife of the luckless hero appealing to the sorceress for mercy are so important in the
glamour they shed back over the stanzas that have gone before, that their introduction may almost be characterized as a rewriting of every previous line.
The translations from the early Italian poets also began as far back as 1845 or 1846, and may have been mainly completed by 1849. Rossetti’s gifts as a translator were, no doubt, of the highest. And this arose from his deep sympathy with literature as a medium of human expression: he could enter into the temperaments of other writers, and by sympathy criticize the literary form from the author’s own inner standpoint, supposing always that there was a certain racial kinship with the author. Many who write well themselves have less sympathy with the expressional forms adopted by other writers than is displayed by men who have neither the impulse nor the power to write themselves. But this sympathy betrayed him sometimes into a free rendering of locutions such as a translator should be chary of indulging in. Materials for a volume accumulated slowly, but all the important portions of the ‘Poems’ published in 1870 had been in existence some years before that date. The prose story of ‘Hand and Soul’ was also written as early as 1848 or 1849.
In the spring of 1860 he married Elizabeth Eleanor Siddall, who being very beautiful was constantly painted and drawn by him. She
had one still-born child in 1861, and died in February, 1862. He felt her death very acutely, and for a time ceased to write or to take any interest in his own poetry. Like Prospero, indeed, he literally buried his wand, but for a time only. From this time to his death he continued to produce pictures, all of them showing, as far as technical skill goes, an unfaltering advance in his art.
Yet wonderful as was Rossetti as an artist and poet, he was still more wonderful, I think, as a man. The chief characteristic of his conversation was an incisiveness so perfect and clear as to have often the pleasurable surprise of wit. It is so well known that Rossetti has been for a long time the most retired man of genius of our day, and so many absurd causes for this retirement have been spoken of, that there is nothing indecorous in the true cause of it being made public by one who of late years has known more of him, perhaps, than has any other person. About 1868 the curse of the artistic and poetic temperament—insomnia—attacked him, and one of the most distressing effects of insomnia is a nervous shrinking from personal contact with any save a few intimate friends. This peculiar kind of nervousness may be aggravated by the use of sleeping draughts, and in his case was thus aggravated.
But, although Rossetti lived thus secluded, he did not lose the affectionate regard of the
illustrious men with whom he started in his artistic life. Nor, assuredly, did he deserve to lose it, for no man ever lived, I think, who was so generous as he in sympathizing with other men’s work, save only when the cruel fumes of chloral turned him against everything. And his sympathy was as wide as generous. It was only necessary to mention the name of Leighton or Millais or Madox Brown or Burne Jones or G. F. Watts, or, indeed, of any contemporary painter, to get from him a glowing disquisition upon the merits of each—a disquisition full of the subtlest distinctions, and illuminated by the brilliant lights of his matchless fancy. And it was the same in poetry.
But those who loved Rossetti (that is to say, those who knew him) can realize how difficult it is for me, a friend, to pursue just now such reminiscences as these.