It would be far easier to estimate Mr. Rosetti's position as a poet had he written more. Nor is this precisely a truism; for one feels at once that what he has given us is most precisely and emphatically a selection. Every one of his poems, whatever else it may be, is at least a cunning piece of artist's work in this or that particular style, with a distinct flavor of its own and true to itself throughout. If you know, and care for, the old Scots ballad, you will at once appreciate the specimen he gives you. If you object to the coarseness which shades the tenderness of “Stratton Water,” your criticism is unlearned. As well complain of the peat flavor of a “Finnan haddie.”
Poets who sing because they must sing, who pour into trembling ears great heterogeneous floods of song, the reflection of their many moods, things beautiful and rather beautiful, and plain and very plain; all the thousand-and-one scraps which have something clever in them, or illustrate something, or with the composition of which something interesting, whether pleasant or painful, is associated—take, for instance, any chance volume of Wordsworth or Browning—may be in the long run our benefactors, but they have no claim upon the ready-money of thanks; they charm, perhaps, [pg 264] but they often also bore. If a man whose imagination has not been left out is bored by Mr. Rosetti's volume, it is time for him, according to the Turkish proverb, to put his trust in God—his wine is running to the lees, his roses wither. And this is true although the generations of poetic taste are so short-lived that almost before a man has reached the mezzo camino, and certainly before he has lost his sense of life's enjoyments, he is apt to find himself somewhat out of harmony with the poetry of the day. Mr. Rosetti is no prophet of a new theory of art or master of a new phrase-mint, but rather a merchant whose cargo tells a tale of every port at which he has touched.
It is natural to compare, even if only to contrast, any new poet with Mr. Tennyson, as the poet who has had more immediate, sensible influence than any other upon the taste of his day; and although there is a prejudice against comparisons, it is difficult to see how they can be avoided if one is to do something more than point and ejaculate. In the present case, there is at least sufficient resemblance to suggest comparison. Amongst living poets these two are pre-eminently artist-poets, who finish their work and hide well away all their literary shavings. They are almost the only living poets who never go on talking till they can find the right word, and who never stammer.
There is not a scrap of either of these poets that, for the refined work there is in it, it would not be a shame to burn. Again, they are like in this, that they have an intense sensuous appreciation of the medium which they use, which seems to belong rather to the art of the painter or the musician than to that of the poet. It would not be difficult to make a color-box of Mr. Tennyson's favorite words, literary formulas for cool grays and bits of scarlet. On the other hand, Mr. Rosetti's art is rather that of the musician than the painter; he produces his effects rather by subtle changes of manner than by the color of single words, although his choice in these too is exquisite. His modulations remind one of Crashaw's lines in “Music's Duel”:
“The lute's light genius now doth proudly rise,
Heaved on the surges of swoll'n rhapsodies.
Whose flourish, meteor-like, doth curl the air
With flash of high-born fancies; here and there
Dancing in lofty measures, and anon
Creeps on the soft touch of a tender tone,