tag="{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}a">CHAPTER VIII.

CHAPTER IX.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I.

CHAPTER I.
Gabriele Rossetti—Boyhood—The pre-Raphaelite Movement—Early
Manhood—The Blessed Damozel—Jenny—Sister Helen—The Translations—The
House of Life—The Germ—Oxford and Cambridge Magazine—Blackfriars
Bridge—Married Life

CHAPTER II.

CHAPTER II.
Chelsea—Chloral—Dante's Dream—Recovery of the Poems—Poems—The
Contemporary Controversy—Mr. Theodore Watts—Rose Mary—The
White Ship—The King's Tragedy—Poetic Continuations—Cloud
Confines—Journalistic Slanders

CHAPTER III.

CHAPTER III.
Early Intercourse—Poetic Impulses—Beginning of Correspondence—Early
Letters

CHAPTER IV.

CHAPTER IV.
Inedited Poems—Inedited Ballads—Additions to Sister Helen—Hand
and Soul—St. Agnes of Intercession—Catholic Opinion—Rossetti's
Catholicism—Cloud Confines—The Portrait

CHAPTER V.

CHAPTER V.
Coleridge—Wordsworth—Lamb and Coleridge—Charles Wells—Keats—Leigh
Hunt and Keats—Keats's Sister

CHAPTER VI.

CHAPTER VI.
Chatterton—Oliver Madox Brown—Gilchrist's Blake—George Gilfillan—Old
Periodicals—A Rustic Poet—Art and Politics—Letters in Biography

CHAPTER VII.

CHAPTER VII.
Cheyne Walk—The House—First Meeting—Rossetti's Personality—His
Reading—The Painter's Craft—Mr. Ruskin—Rossetti's Sensitiveness—His
Garden—His Library

CHAPTER VIII.

CHAPTER VIII.
English Sonnets—Sonnet Structure—Shakspeare's Sonnets—Wells's
Sonnet—Charles Whitehead—Ebenezer Jones—Mr. W. M. Rossetti—A New
Sonnet—Mr. W. Davies—Canon Dixon—Miss Christina Rossetti—The Bride's
Prelude—The Supernatural in Poetry

CHAPTER IX.

Last Days—Vale of St John—In the Lake Country—Return to
London—London—Birchington

RECOLLECTIONS OF

DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI

CHAPTER I.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti was the eldest son of Gabriele Rossetti and Frances Polidori, daughter of Alfieri's secretary, and sister of the young physician who travelled with Lord Byron. Gabriele Rossetti was a native of Yasto, in the district of the Abruzzi, kingdom of Naples. He was a patriotic poet of very considerable distinction; and, as a politician, took a part in extorting from Ferdinand I. the Constitution of 1820. After the failure of the Neapolitan insurrection, owing to the treachery of the King (who asked leave of absence on a pretext of ill-health, and returned with an overwhelming Austrian army), the insurrectionists were compelled to fly. Some of them fell victims; others lay long in concealment. Rossetti was one of the latter; and, while he was in hiding, Sir Graham Moore, the English admiral, was lying with an English fleet in the bay. The wife of the admiral had long been a warm admirer of the patriotic hymns of Rossetti, and, when she learned his danger, she prevailed with her husband to make efforts to save him. Sir Graham thereupon set out with another English officer to the place of concealment, habited the poet in an English uniform, placed him between them in a carriage, and put him aboard a ship that sailed next day to Malta, where he obtained the friendship of the governor, John Hookham Frere, by whose agency valuable introductions were procured, and ultimately Rossetti established himself in England. Arrived in London about 1823, he lived a cheerful life as an exile, though deprived of the advantages of his Italian reputation. He married in 1826, and his eldest son was born May 12, 1828, in Charlotte Street, Portland Place, London. He was appointed Professor of Italian at King's College, and died in 1854. His house was for years the constant resort of Italian refugees; and the son used to say that it was from observation of these visitors of his father that he depicted the principal personage of his Last Confession. He did not live to see the returning glories of his country or the consummation we have witnessed of that great movement founded upon the principles for which he fought and suffered. His present position in Italy as a poet and patriot is a high one, a medal having been struck in his honour. An effort is even now afoot to erect a statue to him in his native place, and one of the last occasions upon which the son put pen to paper was when trying to make a reminiscent rough portrait for the use of the sculptor. Gabriele Rossetti spent his last years in the study of Dante, and his works on the subject are unique, exhibiting a peculiar view of Dante's conception of Beatrice, which he believed to be purely ideal, and employed solely for purposes of speculative and political disquisition. Something of this interpretation was fixed undoubtedly upon the personage by Dante himself in his later writings, but whether the change were the result of a maturer and more complicated state of thought, and whether the real and ideal characters of Beatrice may not be compatible, are questions which the poetic mind will not consider it possible to decide. Coleridge, no doubt, took a fair view of Rossetti's theory when he said: "Rossetti's view of Dante's meaning is in great part just, but he has pushed it beyond all bounds of common sense. How could a poet—and such a poet as Dante—have written the details of the allegory as conjectured by Rossetti? The boundaries between his allegory and his pure picturesque are plain enough, I think, at first reading." It was, doubtless, due to his devotion to studies of the Florentine that Gabriele Rossetti named after him his eldest son.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti, whose full baptismal name was Gabriel Charles Dante, was educated principally at King's College School, London, and there attained to a moderate proficiency in the ordinary classical school-learning, besides a knowledge of French, which