The Poetical Works of Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Edited with preface by W. M. Rossetti. A new edition in one volume

Preface

BY WILLIAM M. ROSSETTI A NEW EDITION IN ONE VOLUME ELLIS AND ELVEY LONDON 1S91 All rigkti reset ved Printed by Hajell, WaUon, & Viney, Ltl., London and Ayleabnry. CONTENTS. PAGE Preface by William M. Rossetti xv POEMS. I.— Principal Poems : — Dante at Verona ........ I A Last Confession . . . ... , ■ 1 8 The Bride's Prelude 35 Sister Helen 66 The Staff and Scrip 75 Jenny 83 The Stream's Secret . , =95 Rose Mary 103 The White Ship 137 The King's Tragedy 148 The House of Life, A Sonnet-Sequence — Introductory Sonnet , I', 6 Part I. — Youth and Change :— I. Love Enthroned 177 2. Bridal Birth 177 3. Love's Testament 178 4. Lovesight 1 78 5. Heart's Hope 179 6. The Kiss 179 7. Supreme Surrender 180 8. Love's Lovers CONTENTS. VIII PAGE 9. Passion and Worship . . . ■ .181 10. The Portrait 181 11.

The Love-letter 182 12. The Lovers' Walk 182 13. Youth's Antiphony '83 14. Youth's Spring-tribute ..... 183 15. The Birth-bond 184 16. A Day of Love 184 17. Beauty's Pageant . . . . . . 1S5 iS. Genius in Beauty . . . . • .185 19. Silent Noon 186 20. Gracious Moonlight . . . . .186 21. Love-sweetness ...... 187 22. Heart's Haven ...... 187 23. Love's Baubles ...... 188 24. Pride of Youth 188 25. Winged Hours 189 26. Mid-rapture 189 27. Heart's Compass ...... 190 28. Soul-light 190 29. The Moonstar 191 30. Last Fire 191 31. Her Gifts 192 32. Equal Troth 192 33. Venus Victrix 193 34. The Dark Glass 193 35. The Lamp's Shrine ..... 194 36. Life-in-love . * 194 37. The Love-moon ...... 195 38. The Morrow's Message . , . . -195 39. Sleepless Dreams 196 40. Severed Selves ...... 196 41. Through Death to Love .... 197 42.

Hope Overtaken ...... 197 43. Love and Hope 198 44. Cloud and Wind 198 45. Secret Parting 199 46. Parted Love ..,..., 199 47. Broken Music . . . . CONTENTS. ix PAGE 48. Death-in-love 200 49, 50, 51, 52. Willow-wood .... 201 53. Without Her 203 54. Love's Fatality ...... 203 55. Stillborn Love 204 56i 57. 58. True Woman (Herself— Her Love— Her Heaven) 204 59. Love's Last Gift 206 Part II. — Change and Fate : — 60. Transfigured Life . . ... 207 61. The Song-Throe 207 62. The Soul's Sphere 208 63. Inclusiveness . . . . . . 208 64. Ardour and Memory 209 65. Known in Vain ...... 209 66. The Heart of the Night .... 210 67. The Landmark 210 68. A Dark Day 211 69. Autumn Idleness . . . . . .211 70. The Hill Summit 212 7ri 72» 73- Tne Choice . . . . . 212 74, 75, 76. Old and New Art (St. Luke the Painter — Not as These — The Husbandmen) 214 77.

Soul's Beauty 215 78. Body's Beauty 216 79. The Monochord 216 80. From Dawn to Noon 217 81. Memorial Thresholds 217 82. Hoarded Joy 218 83. Barren Spring 218 84. Farewell to the Glen . . . . .219 85. Vain Virtues 219 86. Lost Days 220 87. Death's Songsters 220 88. Hero's Lamp 221 89. The Trees of the Garden . . . 221 90. Retro me, Sathana 222 91. Lost on Both Sides CONTENTS. X 92, 93. The Sun's Shame ..... 223 94. Michelangelo's Kiss ..... 224 95. The Vase of Life 224 96. Life the Beloved 225 97. A Superscription ...... 225 98. He and I 226 99, 100. Newborn Death 226 IOI. The One Hope 227 II, -Miscellaneous Poems : — My Sister's Sleep ........ 229 The Blessed Damozel 232 At the Sun-rise in 1848 237 Autumn Song . 237 The Lady's Lament ........ 238 The Portrait . ; 240 Ave 244 The Card-Dealer 248 World's Worth . 250 On Refusal of Aid between Nations .... 252 On the Vita Nuova of Dante 252 Song and Music 253 The Sea-Limits 254 A Trip to Paris and Belgium (London to Folkestone — Boulogne to Amiens and Paris — The Paris Railway-station — Reaching Brussels — Antwerp to Ghent) . 255 The Staircase of Notre Dame, Paris .... 261 Place de la Bastille, Paris 261 Near Brussels — A Halfway Pause ..... 262 Antwerp and Bruges ....... 263 On Leaving Bruges 264 Vox Ecclesiæ, Vox Christi ...... 265 The Burden of Nineveh . 266 The Church-Porch 272 The Minor ......... 272 A Young Fir- Wood 273 During Music 273 Stratton Water 274 Wellington's Funeral CONTENTS.

X, PAGE Penumbra 283 On the Site of a Mulberry-Tree, planted by William Shakspeare, etc 285 On certain Elizabethan Revivals ..... 285 English May 286 Beauty and the Bird ....... 286 A Match with the Moon 287 Love's Nocturn ........ 288 First Love Remembered 293 Plighted Promise 294 Sudden Light 295 A New Year's Burden 296 Even so 297 The Woodspurge ........ 298 The Honeysuckle . . . 298 Dantis Tenebræ 299 Words on the Window-pane ...... 299 An Old Song Ended . . .... 300 The Song of the Bower ....... 301 Dawn on the Night Journey 303 A Little While 304 Troy Town 305 Eden Bower 308 Love-lily 315 Sunset Wings ...... . . 316 The Cloud Confines 317 Down Stream . . . . . . . . ■ 3J9 Three Shadows 321 A Death-parting 322 Spring 323 Untimely Lost — Oliver Madox Brown .... 323 Parted Presence ........ 324 Spheral Change 326 Alas, So Long ! 327 Insomnia . . . . . . ' . . . . 328 Possession 329 Chimes 330 Adieu .... 333 Soothsay .... .'.-■• CONTENTS.

PAGE Five English Poets : — I. Thomas Chatterton 337 2. William Blake 338 3. Samuel Taylor Coleridge ..... 338 4. John Keats 339 5. Percy Bysshe Shelley . . . . . . 339 To Philip Bourke Marston ...... 340 Tiber, Nile, and Thames 340 Raleigh's Cell in the Tower 341 Winter 341 The Last Three from Trafalgar ..... 342 Czar Alexander the Second ...... 342 III. Sonnets on Pictures : — For an Annunciation, Early German .... 343 For our Lady of the Rocks, by Leonardo da Vinci . . 344 For a Venetian Pastoral, by Giorgione .... 345 For an Allegorical Dance of Women, by Andrea Mantegna 346 For Ruggiero and Angelica, by Ingres .... 347 For a Virgin and Child, by Hans Memmelinck . . 348 For a Marriage of St. Catherine, by the same . . . 349 For the Wine of Circe, by Edward Burne Jones . . 350 For the Holy Family, by Michelangelo . . . .351 For Spring, by Sandro Botticelli 352 IV -Sonnets and Verses for Rossetti's own Works of Art : — Mary's Girlhood 353 The Passover in the Holy Family 355 Mary Magdalene at the Door of Simon the Pharisee . 356 Michael Scott's Wooing 357 Aspecta Medusa "57 Cassandra ........ tx% Venus Verticordia .....,, -i(,0 Pandora 360 A Sea-spell . . 361 Astarte Syriaca ....... -161 Mnemosyne ,g2 CONTENTS.

XIII PAGE Fiammetta 362 Found 363 The Day-dream ........ 3^4 V. -Poems in Italian (or Italian and English), French, and Latin : — Gioventii e Signoria . . ... . . . 366 Youth and Lordship 367 Proserpina 370 La Ricordanza 370 Proserpina 371 Memory 371 La Bella Mano 372 Con Manto d'Oro, etc 372 Robe d'Or, etc 372 La Bella Mano 373 With Golden Mantle, etc 373 A Golden Robe, etc 373 Barcarola 374 Barcarola ......... 375 Bambino Fasciato 375 Thomæ Fides . 376 VI. -Versicles and Fragments : — The Orchard-pit 377 To Art 378 On Burns 378 Fin di Maggio 378 I saw the Sibyl at Cumæ 378 As balmy as the breath, etc 378 Was it a friend, etc 379 At her step, etc 379 Would God I knew, etc 379 I shut myself in with my soul 379 If I could die, etc 379 She bound her green sleeve, etc 379 Where is the man, etc 380 As much as in a hundred years she's dead . . . 380 Who shall say, etc

PREFACE.

PREFACE.

. THE Collected Works of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, poetry and prose, original and translated, were published under my editorship in two volumes at the close of 1886. The time seems now to have arrived for the issue of an edition better adapted, by limitation of contents and of price, to a wide circulation. In the present volume, therefore, I include all the original poems, but nothing else. My ensuing Preface is con densed from that which appeared in the Collected Works. The most adequate mode of prefacing the poems of Rossetti, as of most authors, would probably be to offer a broad general view of his writings, and to analyse with some critical precision his relation to other writers, contemporary or otherwise, and the merits and defects of his performances. In this case, as in how few others, one would also have to consider in what degree his mind worked consentaneously or diversely in two several arts — the art of poetry and the art of painting.

But the hand of a brother is not the fittest to undertake any work of this scope. My preface will not therefore deal with themes such as these, but will be confined to minor matters, which may nevertheless be relevant also within their limits. And first may come a very brief outline of the few events of an outwardly uneventful life.

PREFACE.

. XVI Gabriel Charles Dante Rossetti, who, at an early stage of his professional career, modified his name into Dante Gabriel Rossetti, was born on 12th May 1828, at No. 38 Charlotte Street, Portland Place, London. In blood he was three-fourths Italian, and only one-fourth English ; being on the father's side wholly Italian (Abruzzese), and on the mother's side half Italian (Tuscan) and half English. His father was Gabriele Rossetti, born in 1783 at Vasto, in the Abruzzi, Adriatic coast, in the then kingdom of Naples. Gabriele Rossetti (died 1854) was a man of letters, a custodian of ancient bronzes in the Museo Borbonico of Naples, and a poet; he distinguished himself by patriotic lays which fostered the popular movement resulting in the grant of a constitution by Ferdinand I. of Naples in 1820.

The King, after the fashion of Bourbons and tyrants, revoked the constitution in 182 1, and persecuted the abettors of it, and Rossetti had to escape. He settled in London towards 1824, married, and became Professor of Italian in King's College, London, publishing also various works of bold speculation in the way of Dantesque commentary and exposition. His wife was Frances Mary Lavinia Polidori (died 1886), daughter of Gaetano Polidori (died 1853), a teacher of Italian and literary man who had in early youth been secretary to the poet Alfieri, and who published various books, including a complete translation of Milton's poems. Frances Polidori was English on the side of her mother, whose maiden name was Pierce. The family of Rossetti and his wife consisted of four children, born in four successive years — Maria Francesca (died 1876), Dante Gabriel, William Michael, and Chris tina Georgina. Few more affectionate husbands and fathers have lived, and no better wife and mother, than

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. XVII Gabriele and Frances Rossetti. The means of the family were always strictly moderate, and became scanty towards 1843, when the father's health began to fail. In that year Dante Gabriel left King's College School, where he had learned Latin, French, and a beginning of Greek ; and he entered upon the study ofthe art of painting, to which he had from earliest childhood exhibited a very marked bent. After a while he was admitted to the school of the Royal Academy, but never proceeded be yond its antique section. In 1848 Rossetti co-operated with two of his fellow-students in painting, John Everett Millais and William Holman Hunt, and with the sculptor Thomas Woolner, in forming the so-called Præraphaelite Brotherhood. There were three other members of the Brotherhood — James Collinson (succeeded after two or three years by Walter Howell Deverell), Frederic George Stephens, and the present writer.

Ford Madox Brown, the historical painter, was known to Rossetti much about the same time when the Præraphaelite scheme was started, and bore an important part both in directing his studies and in upholding the movement, but he did not think fit to join the Brotherhood in any direct or complete sense. Through Deverell, Rossetti came to know Elizabeth Eleanor Siddal, daughter of a Sheffield cutler, herself a dressmaker's assistant, gifted with some artistic and some poetic faculty; in the Spring of 1860, after a long engagement, they married. Their wedded life was of short duration, as she died in February 1862, having meanwhile given birth to a still born child. For several years up to this date Rossetti, designing and painting many works, in oil-colour or as yet more frequently in water-colour, had resided at No. 14 Chatham Place, Blackfriars Bridge, a line of b

PREFACE.

. XVIII street now demolished. In the autumn of 1862 he removed to No. 16 Cheyne Walk, Chelsea. At first certain apartments in the house were occupied by Mr. George Meredith the novelist, Mr. Swinburne the poet, and myself. This arrangement did not last long, although I myself remained a partial inmate of the house up to 1873. My brother continued domiciled in Cheyne Walk until his death ; but from about 1869 he was frequently away at Kelmscot Manorhouse, in Oxford shire, not far from Lechlade, occupied jointly by himself, and by the poet Mr. William Morris with his family. From the autumn of 1872 till the summer of 1874 he was wholly settled at Kelmscot, scarcely visiting London at all. He then returned to London, and Kelmscot passed out of his ken. In the early months of 1850 the members of the Præraphaelite Brotherhood, with the co-operation of some friends, brought out a short-lived magazine named The Germ (afterwards Art and Poetry) ; here appeared the first verses and the first prose published by Rossetti, including The Blessed Damosel and Hand and Soul.

In 1856 he contributed a little to The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine, printing there The Burden of Nineveh. In 1861, during his married life, he published his volume of translations The Early Italian Poets, now entitled Dante and his Circle. By the time therefore of the death of his wife he had a certain restricted yet far from inconsiderable reputation as a poet, along with his recognized position as a painter — a non-exhibiting painter, it may here be observed, for, after the first two or three years of his professional course, he adhered with practical uniformity to the plan of abstaining from exhibition altogether. He had contemplated bringing

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. XIX out in or about 1862 a volume of original poems; but, in the grief and dismay which overwhelmed him in losing his wife, he determined to sacrifice to her memory this long-cherished project, and he buried in her coffin the manuscripts which would have furnished forth the volume. With the lapse of years he came to see that, as a final settlement of the matter, this was neither obligatory nor desirable; so in 1869 the manuscripts were disinterred, and in 1870 his volume named Poems was issued. For some considerable while it was hailed with general and lofty praise, chequered by only moderate stricture or demur ; but late in 187 1 Mr. Robert Buchanan published under a pseudonym, in the Contemporary Review, a very hostile article named The Fleshly School of Poetry, attacking the poems on literary and more especially on moral grounds.

The article, in an enlarged form, was afterwards reissued as a pamphlet. The assault produced on Rossetti an effect altogether disproportionate to its intrinsic importance ; indeed, it developed in his character an excess of sensitiveness and of distempered brooding which his nearest relatives and friends had never before surmised, — for hitherto he had on the whole had an ample sufficiency of high spirits, combined with a certain underlying gloominess or abrupt moodiness of nature and outlook. Unfortunately there was in him already only too much of morbid material on which this venom of detraction was to work. For some years the state of his eyesight had given very grave cause for apprehension, he himself fancying from time to time that the evil might end in absolute blindness, a fate with which our father had been formidably threatened in his closing years. From this or other causes insomnia had ensued,

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. XX coped with by far too free a use of chloral, which may have begun towards the end of 1869. In the summer of 1872 he had a dangerous crisis of illness; and from that time forward, but more especially from the middle of 1874, he became secluded in his habits of life, and often depressed, fanciful, and gloomy. Not indeed that there were no intervals of serenity, even of brightness ; for in fact he was often genial and pleasant, and a most agreeable companion, with as much bonhomie as acuteness for wiling an evening away. He continued also to prosecute his pictorial work with ardour and diligence, and at times he added to his product as a poet. The second of his original volumes, Ballads and Sonnets, was published in the autumn of 1881. About the same time he sought change of air and scene in the Vale of St. John, near Keswick, Cumberland ; but he returned to town more shattered in health and in mental tone than he had ever been before.

In December a shock of a quasi-paralytic character struck him down. He rallied sufficiently to remove to Birchington-on-Sea, near Margate. The hand of death was then upon him, and was to be relaxed no more. The last stage of his maladies was uræmia. Tended by his mother and his sister Christina, with the constant companionship at Birchington of Mr. Hall Caine, and in the presence likewise of Mr. Theodore Watts, Mr. Frederick Shields, and myself, he died on Easter Sunday, April 9th 1882. His sister-in-law, the daughter of Madox Brown, arrived immediately after his latest breath had been drawn. He lies buried in the churchyard of Birchington. Few brothers were more constantly together, or shared one another's feelings and thoughts more intimately, in childhood, boyhood, and well on into mature manhood,

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. XXI than Dante Gabriel and myself. I have no idea of limning his character here at any length, but will define a few of its leading traits. He was always and essentially of a dominant turn, in intellect and in temperament a leader. He was impetuous and vehe ment, and necessarily therefore impatient ; easily angered, easily appeased, although the embittered feelings of his later years obscured this amiable quality to some extent ; constant and helpful as a friend where he perceived constancy to be reciprocated ; free-handed and heedless of expenditure, whether for himself or for others ; in family affection warm and equable, and (except in relation to our mother, for whom he had a fondling love) not demonstrative. Never on stilts in matters of the intellect or of aspiration, but steeped in the sense of beauty, and loving, if not always practising, the good ; keenly alive also (though many people seem to discredit this now) to the laughable as well as the grave or solemn side of things; superstitious in grain, and anti-scientific to the marrow.

Throughout his youth and early man hood I considered him to be markedly free from vanity, though certainly well equipped in pride ; the distinction between these two tendencies was less definite in his closing years. Extremely natural and therefore totally unaffected in tone and manner, with the naturalism characteristic of Italian blood ; good-natured and heart}', without being complaisant or accommodating; reserved at times, yet not haughty ; desultory enough in youth, diligent and persistent in maturity ; self-centred always, and brushing aside whatever traversed his purpose or his bent. He was very generally and very greatly liked by persons of extremely diverse character; indeed, I think it cannot be an exaggeration to say that no one

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. XXII ever disliked him. Of course I do not here confound the question of liking a man's personality with that of approving his conduct out-and-out. Of his manner I can perhaps convey but a vague impression. I have said that it was natural ; it was likewise eminently easy, and even of the free-and-easy kind. There was a certain British bluffness, streaking the finely poised Italian suppleness and facility. As he was thoroughly unconventional, caring not at all to fall in with the humours or prepossessions of any particular class of society, or to conciliate or approxi mate the socially distinguished, there was little in him of any veneer or varnish of elegance ; none the less he was courteous and well-bred, meeting all sorts of persons upon equal terms — i.e., upon his own terms ; and I am satisfied that those who are most exacting in such matters found in Rossetti nothing to derogate from the standard of their requirements.

In habit of body he was indolent and lounging, disinclined to any prescribed or trying exertion of any sort, and very difficult to stir out of his ordinary groove, yet not wanting in active promptitude whenever it suited his liking. He often seemed totally unoccupied, especially of an evening; no doubt the brain was busy enough. The appearance of my brother was to my eye rather Italian than English, though I have more than once heard it said that there was nothing observable to bespeak foreign blood. He was of rather low middle stature, say five feet seven and a half, like our father ; and, as the years advanced, he resembled our father not a little in a characteristic way, yet with highly obvious divergences. Meagre in youth, he was at times decidedly fat in mature age. The complexion,

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. XXIII clear and warm, was also dark, but not dusky or sombre. The hair was dark and somewhat silky ; the brow grandly spacious and solid ; the full-sized eyes blueish-grey ; the nose shapely, decided, and rather projecting, with an aquiline tendency and large nostrils, and perhaps no detail in the face was more noticeable at a first glance than the very strong indentation at the spring of the nose below the forehead ; the mouth moderately well shaped, but with a rather thick and unmoulded underlip; the chin unremarkable ; the line of the jaw, after youth was passed, full, rounded, and sweeping ; the ears well formed and rather small than large. His hips were wide, his hands and feet small ; the hands very much those of the artist or author type, white, delicate, plump, and soft as a woman's. His gait was resolute and rapid, his general aspect compact and determined, the prevailing expression of the face that of a fiery and dictatorial mind concentrated into repose.

Some people regarded Rossetti as eminently handsome ; few, I think, would have refused him the epithet of well-looking. It rather surprises me to find from Mr. Caine's book of Recollections that that gentleman, when he first saw Rossetti in 1880, considered him to look full ten years older than he really was, — namely, to look as if sixty two years old. To my own eye nothing ot the sort was apparent. He wore moustaches from early youth, shaving his cheeks; from 1870 or thereabouts he grew whiskers and beard, moderately full and auburn-tinted, as well as moustaches. His voice was deep and har monious ; in the reading of poetry, remarkably rich, with rolling swell and musical cadence. My brother was very little of a traveller ; he disliked the interruption of his ordinary habits of life, and the

PREFACE.

. flurry or discomfort, involved in locomotion. In boyhood he knew Boulogne : he was in Paris three or four times, and twice visited some principal cities of Belgium. This was the whole extent of his foreign travelling. He crossed the Scottish border more than once, and knew various parts of England pretty well — Hastings, Bath, Oxford, Matlock, Stratford-on-Avon, Newcastle on-Tyne, Bognor, Herne Bay ; Kelmscot, Keswick, and Birchington-on-Sea, have been already mentioned. From 1878 or thereabouts he became, until he went to the neighbourhood of Keswick, an absolute home-keeping recluse, never even straying outside the large garden of his own house, except to visit from time to time our mother in the central part of London. From an early period of life he had a large circle of friends, and could always have commanded any amount of intercourse with any number of ardent or kindly well-wishers, had he but felt elasticity and cheerfulness of mind enough for the purpose.

I should do injustice to my own feelings if I were not to mention here some of his leading friends. First and foremost I name Mr. Madox Brown, his chief intimate throughout life, on the unexhausted resources of whose affection and con verse he drew incessantly for long years ; they were at last separated by the removal of Mr. Brown to Man chester, for the purpose of painting the Town Hall frescoes. The Præraphaelites — Millais, Hunt, Woollier, Stephens, Collinson, Deverell — were on terms of un bounded familiarity with him in youth ; owing to death or other causes, he lost sight eventually of all of them except Mr. Stephens. Mr. William Bell Scott was, like Mr. Brown, a close friend from a very early period until the last; Scott being both poet and painter, there was

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. XXV a strict bond of affinity between him and Rossetti. Mr. Ruskin was extremely intimate with my brother from 1854 till about 1865, and was of material help to his professional career. Robert and Mrs. Browning were personally known to Rossetti, perhaps rather earlier than Ruskin. As he rose towards celebrity, Rossetti also knew Burne Jones, and through him Morris and Swinburne, all staunch and fervently sympathetic friends. Mr. Shields was a rather later acquaintance, who soon became an intimate, equally respected and cherished. Then Mr. Hueffer, the musical critic (editor of the Tauchnitz edition of Rossetti's works), and Dr. Hake the poet. Through the latter my brother came to know Mr. Theodore Watts, whose intellectual companionship and incessant assiduity of friendship did more than anything else towards assuaging the discomforts and depression of his closing years.

In the latest period the most intimate among new acquaintances were Mr. William Sharp and Mr. Hall Caine, both of them known to Rossettian readers as his biographers. Nor should I omit to speak of the extremely friendly relation in which my brother stood to some of the principal purchasers of his pictures — Mr. Leathart, Mr. Rae, Mr. Leyland, Mr. Graham, Mr. Valpy, Mr. Turner, and his early associate Mr. Boyce. Other names crowd upon me ; but I forbear. Before proceeding to some brief account of the sequence of my brother's writings, it may be worth while to speak of the poets who were particularly influential in nurturing his mind and educing its own poetic endowment. The first poet with whom he became partially familiar was Shakespeare. Then followed the usual boyish fancies for Walter Scott and

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. XXVI Byron. The Bible was deeply impressive to him, perhaps above all Job, Ecclesiastes, and the Apocalypse. Byron gave place to Shelley when my brother was about sixteen years of age : the old English or Scottish ballads and Mrs. Browning rapidly ensued. It may have been towards this date, say 1845, that he first seriously applied himself to Dante, and drank deep of that in exhaustible well-head of poesy and thought; for the Florentine, though familiar to him as a name, and in some sense as a pervading penetrative influence, from earliest childhood, was not really assimilated until boy hood was practically past. Bailey's Festus was enor mously relished about the same time — read again and yet again ; also Faust, Victor Hugo, De Musset (and along with them a swarm of French novelists), and Keats, whom my brother for the most part, though not without some compunctious visitings now and then, truly preferred to Shelley.

The only classical poet whom he took to in any degree worth speaking of was Homer, the Odyssey considerably more than the Iliad. Tennyson reigned along with Keats, and Edgar Poe and Coleridge along with Tennyson. In the long run he perhaps enjoyed and revered Coleridge beyond any other modern poet whatsoever ; but Coleridge was not so distinctly or separately in the ascendant, at any par ticular period of youth, as several of the others. Blake likewise had his peculiar meed of homage, and Charles Wells, the influence of whose prose style, in the Stories after Nature, I trace to some extent in Rossetti's Hand and Soul. Lastly came Browning, and for a time, like the serpent-rod of Moses, swallowed up all the rest. This was still at an early stage of life : for I think the year 1847 cannot certainly have been passed before my

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. XXVII brother was deep in Browning. One prose-work of great influence upon his mind, and upon his product as a painter, must not be left unspecified — Malory's Mori d' Arthur, which engrossed him towards 1856. The only poet whom I feel it needful to add to the above is Chatterton. In the last two or three years of his life my brother entertained an abnormal — I think an exaggerated— admiration of Chatterton. It appears to me that (to use a very hackneyed phrase) he " evolved this from his inner consciousness" at that late period; certainly in youth and early manhood he had no such feeling. He then read the poems of Chatterton with cursory glance and unexcited spirit, recognizing them as very singular performances for their date in English literature, and for the author's boyish years, but beyond that laying no marked stress upon them.