Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti Part 9

There is a poem of Vaughan's on Gombauld's _Endimion_, which might make one think it more fascinating than it really is.

Though rather prolix, however, it has attractions as a somewhat devious romantic treatment of the subject. The little book is one of the first I remember in this world, and I used to dip into it again and again as a child, but never yet read it through. I still possess it. I dare say it is not easily met with, and should suppose Keats had probably never seen it. If he had, he might really have taken a hint or two for his scheme, which is hardly so clear even as Gombauld's, though its endless digressions teem with beauty.... I do not think you would benefit at all by seeing Gombauld's _Endimion_. Vaughan's poem on it might be worth quoting as showing what attention the subject had received before Keats. I have the poem in Gilfillan's _Less-Known Poets_.

Rossetti took a great interest in the fund started for the relief of Mme. de Llanos, Keats's sister, whose circ.u.mstances were seriously reduced. He wrote:

By the bye, I don't know whether the subscription for Keats's old and only surviving sister (Madme de Llanos) has been at all ventilated in Liverpool. It flags sorely. Do you think there would be any chance in your neighbourhood? If so, prospectuses, etc., could be sent.

I did not view the prospect of subscriptions as very hopeful, and so conceived the idea of a lecture in the interests of the fund. On this project, Rossetti wrote:

I enclose prospectuses as to the Keats subscription. I may say that I did not know the list would accompany them--still less that contributions would be so low generally as to leave me near the head of the list--an unenviable sort of parade.... My own opinion about the lecture question is this. You know best whether such a lecture could be turned to the purposes of your Keats article (now in progress), or rather be so much deduction from the freshness of its resources: and this should be the _absolute_ test of its being done or not done.... I think, if it can be done without impoverishing your materials, the method of getting Lord Houghton to preside and so raising as much from it as possible is doubtless the right one. Of course I view it as far more hopeful than mere distribution of any number of prospectuses.... Even 25 would be a great contribution to the fund.

The lecture project was not found feasible, and hence it was abandoned.

Meantime the kindness of friends enabled me to add to the list a good number of subscriptions, but feeling scarcely satisfied with any such success as I might be likely to have in that direction, I opened, by the help of a friend, a correspondence with Lord Houghton with a view to inducing him to apply for a pension for the lady. It then transpired that Lord Houghton had already applied to Lord Beaconsfield for a pension for Mme. Llanos, and would doubtless have got it, had not Mr.

Buxton Forman applied for a grant from the Royal Bounty, which was easier to give. I told Rossetti of this fact and he said:

I am not surprised about Lord H., and feel sure it is a pity he was not left to try Beaconsfield, but I judge the projectors on the other side knew nothing of his intentions.

However, _I_ was in no way a projector.

In the end Lord Houghton repeated to Mr. Gladstone the application he had made to Lord Beaconsfield, and succeeded.

Rossetti must have been among the earliest admirers of Keats. I remarked on one occasion that it was very natural that Lord Houghton should consider himself in a sense the first among men now living to champion the poet and establish his name, and Rossetti admitted that this was so, and was ungrudging in his tribute to Lord Houghton's services towards the better appreciation of Keats; but he contended, nevertheless, that he had himself been one of the first writers of the generation succeeding the poet's own to admire and uphold him, and that this was at a time when it made demand of some courage to cla.s.s him among the immortals, when an original edition of any of his books could be bought for sixpence on a bookstall, and when only Leigh Hunt, Cowden Clarke, Hood, Benjamin Haydon, and perhaps a few others, were still living of those who recognised his great gifts.

CHAPTER VI.

Rossetti's primary interest in Chatterton dates back to an early period, as I find by the date, 1848, in the copy he possessed of the poet's works. But throughout a long interval he neglected Chatterton, and it was not until his friend Theodore Watts, who had made Chatterton a special study, had undertaken to select from and write upon him in Ward's _English Poets_, that he revived his old acquaintance. Whatever Rossetti did he did thoroughly, and hence he became as intimate perhaps with the Rowley antiques as any other man had ever been. His letters written during the course of his Chatterton researches must, I think, prove extremely interesting. He says:

Glancing at your Keats MS., I notice (in a series of parallels) the names of Marlowe and Savage; but not the less "marvellous" than absolutely miraculous Chatterton. Are you up in his work? He is in the very first rank! Theod. Watts is "doing him" for the new selection of poets by Arnold and Ward, and I have contributed a sonnet to Watts's article....

I a.s.sure you Chatterton's name _must_ come in somewhere in the parallel pa.s.sage. He was as great as any English poet whatever, and might absolutely, had he lived, have proved the only man in England's theatre of imagination who could have bandied parts with Shakspeare. The best way of getting at him is in Skeat's Aldine edition (G. Bell and Co., 1875).

Read him carefully, and you will find his acknowledged work essentially as powerful as his antiques, though less evenly successful--the Rowley work having been produced in Bristol leisure, however indigent, and the modern poetry in the very fangs of London struggle. Strong derivative points are to be found in Keats and Coleridge from the study of Chatterton. I feel much inclined to send the sonnet (on Chatterton) as you wish, but really think it is better not to ventilate these things till in print. I have since written one on Blake. Not to know Chatterton is to be ignorant of the _true_ day- spring of modern romantic poetry.... I believe the 3d vol.

of Ward's _Selections of English Poetry_, for which Watts is selecting from Chatterton, will soon be out,--but these excerpts are very brief, as are the notices. The rendering from the Rowley antique will be much better than anything formerly done. Skeat is a thorough philologist, but no hand at all when subst.i.tution becomes unavoidable in the text....

Read the _Ballad of Charity, the Eclogues, the songs in aella_, as a first taste. Among the modern poems _Narva and Mared_, and the other _African Eclogues_. These are alone in that section _poetry absolute_, and though they are very unequal, it has been most truly said by Malone that to throw the _African Eclogues_ into the Rowley dialect would be at once a satisfactory key to the question whether Chatterton showed in his own person the same powers as in the person of Rowley. Among the satirical and light modern pieces there are many of a first-. rate order, though generally unequal.

Perfect specimens, however, are _The Revenge, a Burletta, Skeat, vol i; Verses to a Lady, p. 84; Journal Sixth, p. 33; The Prophecy, p. 193; and opening of Fragment, p. 132._ I would advise you to consult the original text.

Mr. Watts, it seems, with all his admiration of Chatterton, finding that he could not go to Rossetti's length in comparing him with Shakspeare, did not in the result consider the sonnet on Chatterton referred to in the foregoing letter, and given below, suitable to be embodied in his essay:

With Shakspeare's manhood at a boy's wild heart,-- Through Hamlet's doubt to Shakspeare near allied, And kin to Milton through his Satan's pride,-- At Death's sole door he stooped, and craved a dart; And to the dear new bower of England's art,-- Even to that shrine Time else had deified, The unuttered heart that soared against his side,-- Drove the fell point, and smote life's seals apart.

Thy nested home-loves, n.o.ble Chatterton, The angel-trodden stair thy soul could trace Up Redcliffe's spire; and in the world's armed s.p.a.ce Thy gallant sword-play:--these to many an one Are sweet for ever; as thy grave unknown, And love-dream of thine unrecorded face.

Some mention was made in this connection of Rossetti's young connection, Oliver Madox Brown, who wrote _Gabriel Denver_ (otherwise _The Black Swan_) at seventeen years of age. I mentioned the indiscreet remark of a friend who said that Oliver had enough genius to stock a good few Chattertons, and thereupon Rossetti sent me the following outburst:

You must take care to be on the right tack about Chatterton.

I am very glad to find the gifted Oliver M. B. already an embryo cla.s.sic, as I always said he would be; but those who compare net results in such cases as his and Chatterton's cannot know what criticism means. The nett results of advancing epochs, however permanent on acc.u.mulated foundation-work, are the poorest of all tests as to relative values. Oliver was the product of the most teeming hot-beds of art and literature, and even of compulsory addiction to the art of painting, in which nevertheless he was rapidly becoming as much a proficient as in literature. What he would have been if, like the ardent and heroic Chatterton, he had had to fight a single-handed battle for art and bread together against merciless mediocrity in high places,--what he would _then_ have become, I cannot in the least calculate; but we know what Chatterton became. Moreover, C.

at his death, was two years younger than Oliver--a whole lifetime of advancement at that age frequently--indeed always I believe in leading cases. There are few indeed whom the facile enthusiasm for contemporary models does not deaden to the truly balanced claims of successful efforts in art. However, look at Watts's remodelled extracts when the vol comes out, and also at what he says in detail as to Chatterton, Coleridge, and Keats.

Of course Rossetti was right in what he said of comparative criticism when brought to bear in such cases as those of Chatterton and Oliver Madox Brown. Net results are certainly the poorest tests of relative values where the work done belongs to periods of development. We cannot, however, see or know any man except through and in his work, and net results must usually be accepted as the only concrete foundation for judging of the quality of his genius. Such judgment will always be influenced, nevertheless, by considerations such as Rossetti mentions.

Touching Chatterton's development, it were hardly rash to say that it appears incredible that the _African Eclogues_ should have been written by a boy of seventeen, and, in judging of their place in poetry, one is apt to be influenced by one's first feeling of amazement. Is it possible that the Rowley poems may owe much of their present distinction to the early astonishment that a boy should have written them, albeit they have great intrinsic excellencies such as may insure them a high place when the romance, intertwined with their history, has been long forgotten?

But Chatterton is more talked of than read, and this has been so from the first. The antiques are all but unknown; certain of the acknowledged poems are remembered, and regarded as fervid and vigorous, and many of the lesser pieces are thought slight, weak, and valueless. People do not measure the poorer things in Chatterton with his time and opportunities, or they would see only amazing strength and knowledge of the world in all he did. Those lesser pieces were many of them dashed off to answer the calls of necessity, to flatter the egotism of a troublesome friend, or to wile away a moment of vacancy. Certainly they must not be set against his best efforts. As for Chatterton's life, the tragedy of it is perhaps the most moving example of what Coleridge might have termed the material pathetic. Pathetic, however, as his life was, and marvellous as was his genius, I miss in him the note of personal purity and majesty of character. I told Rossetti that, in my view, Chatterton lacked sincerity, and on this point he wrote:

I must protest finally about Chatterton, that he lacks nothing because lacking the gradual growth of the emotional in literature which becomes evident in Keats--still less its excess, which would of course have been pruned, in Oliver.

The finest of the Rowley poems--_Eclogues, Ballad of Charity, etc_., rank absolutely with the finest poetry in the language, and gain (not lose) by moderation. As to what you say of C.'s want of political sincerity (for I cannot see to what other want you can allude), surely a boy up to eighteen may be pardoned for exercising his faculty if he happens to be the one among millions who can use grown men as his toys. He was an absolute and untarnished hero, but for that reckless defying vaunt. Certainly that most vigorous pa.s.sage commencing--

"Interest, thou universal G.o.d of men," etc.

reads startlingly, and comes in a questionable shape. What is the answer to its enigmatical aspect? Why, that he _meant_ it, and that all would mean it at his age, who had his power, his daring, and his hunger. Still it does, perhaps, make one doubt whether his early death were well or ill for him. In the matter of Oliver (whom no one appreciates more than I do), remember that it was impossible to have more opportunities than _he_ had, or on the other side _fewer_ than Chatterton had. Chatterton at seventeen or less said--

"Flattery's a cloak, and I will put it on."

Blake (probably late in life) said--

"Innocence is a winter gown."

... I _have_ read the Chatterton article in the review mentioned. If Watts had done it, it would have been immeasurably better. There seems to me, who am very well up in Chatterton, no point whatever made in the article. Why does no one ever even allude to the two attributed portraits of Chatterton--one belonging to Sir H. Taylor, and the other in the Salford Museum? Both seem to be the same person clearly, and a good find for Chatterton, but not conceivably done from him. Nevertheless, I _suspect_ there may be a sidelong genuineness in them. Chatterton was acquainted with one Alc.o.c.k, a miniature painter at Bristol, to whom he addressed a poem. Had A. painted C. it would be among the many recorded facts; but it would be singular even if, in C.'s rapid posthumous fame, A. had never been asked to make a reminiscent likeness of him. Prom such likeness by the miniature painter these _portraits might_ derive--both being life-sized oil heads. There is a savour of Keats in them, though a friend, taking up the younger-looking of the two, said it reminded him of Jack Sheppard! And not such a bad Chatterton-compound either! But I begin to think I have said all this before.... Oliver, or "Nolly," as he was always called, was a sort of spread-eagle likeness of his handsome father, with a conical head like Walter Scott. I must confess to you, that, in this world of books, the only one of his I have read, is _Gabriel Denver_, afterwards reprinted in its original and superior form as _The Black Swan_, but published with the former t.i.tle in his lifetime.

Rossetti formed no such philosophic estimate of Chatterton's contribution to the romantic movement in English poetry as has been formulated in the essay in Ward's _Poets_. A critic, in the sense of one possessed of a natural gift of a.n.a.lysis, Rossetti a.s.suredly! was not. No man's instinct for what is good in poetry was ever swifter or surer than that of Rossetti. You might always distrust your judgment if you found it at variance with his where abstract power and beauty were in question. Sooner or later you would inevitably find yourself gravitating to his view. But here Rossetti's function as a critic ended. His was at best only the criticism of the creator. Of the gift of ultimate cla.s.sification he had none, and never claimed to have any, although now and again (as where he says that Chatterton was the day-spring of modern romantic poetry), he seems to give sign of a power of critical synthesis.

Rossetti's interest in Blake, both as poet and painter, dates back to an early period of his life. I have heard him say that at sixteen or seventeen years of age he was already one of Blake's warmest admirers, and at the time in question, 1845, the author of the _Songs of Innocence_ had not many readers to uphold him. About four years later, Rossetti made an exceptionally lucky discovery, for he then found in the possession of Mr. Palmer, an attendant at the British Museum, an original ma.n.u.script sc.r.a.p-book of Blake's, containing a great body of unpublished poetry and many interesting designs, as well as three or four remarkably effective profile sketches of the author himself. The Mr. Palmer who held the little book was a relative of the landscape painter of the same name, who was Blake's friend, and hence the authenticity of the ma.n.u.script was ascertainable on other grounds than the indisputable ones of its internal evidences. The book was offered to Rossetti for ten shillings, but the young enthusiast was at the time a student of art, and not much in the way of getting or spending even so inconsiderable a sum. He told me, however, that at this period his brother William, who was, unlike himself, engaged in some reasonably profitable occupation, was at all times nothing loath to advance small sums for the purchase of such literary or other treasures as he used to hunt up out of obscure corners: by his help the Blake ma.n.u.script was bought, and proved for years a source of infinite pleasure and profit, resulting, as it did, in many very important additions to Blake literature when Gilchrist's _Life and Works_ of that author came to be published. It is an interesting fact, mention of which ought not to be omitted, that at the sale of Rossetti's library, which took place a little while after his decease, the sc.r.a.p-book acquired in the way I describe was sold for one hundred and five guineas.

The sum was a large one, but the little book was undoubtedly the most valuable literary relic of Blake then extant. About the time when a new edition of Gilchrist's _Life_ was in the press, Rossetti wrote:

My evenings have been rather trenched upon lately by helping Mrs. Gilchrist with a new edition of the _Life of Blake_....

I don't know if you go in much for him. The new edition of the _Life_ will include a good number of additional letters (from Blake to Hayley), and some addition (though not great) to my own share in the work; as well as much important carrying-on of my brother's catalogue of Blake's works. The ill.u.s.trations will, I trust, receive valuable additions also, but publishers are apt to be cautious in such expenses. I am writing late at night, to fill up a f.a.g-end of bedtime, and shall write again on this head.

Rossetti's "own share" in this work consisted of the writing of the supplementary chapter (left by Gilchrist, with one or two unimportant pa.s.sages merely, at the beginning), and the editing of the poems. When there arose, subsequently, some idea of my reviewing the book, Rossetti wrote me the following letter, full of disinterested solicitude:

You will be quite delighted with an essay on Blake by Jas.

Smetham, which occurs in vol ii.; it is a n.o.ble thing; and at the stupendous design called _Plague_ (vol. i.). I have extracted a pa.s.sage properly belonging to the same essay, which is as fine as English _can_ be, and which I am sorry to perceive (I think) that Mrs. G. has omitted from the body of the essay because quoted in another place. This essay is no less than a masterpiece. I wrote the supplementary chapter (vol. i.), except a few opening paragraphs by Gilchrist,--and in it have now made some mention of Smetham, an old and dear friend of mine.

You will admire Shields's paper on the wonderful series of Young's _Night Thoughts_. My brother and I both helped in this new edition, but I added little to what I had done before. I brought forward a portentous series of pa.s.sages about one "Scofield" in Blake's _Jerusalem_, but did not otherwise write that chapter, except as regards the ill.u.s.trations. However, don't mention what I have done (in case you write on the subject) except so far as the indices show it, and of course I don't wish to be put forward at all. What I do wish is, that you should say everything that can be gratifying to Mrs. G. as to her husband's work. There is a plate of Blake's Cottage by young Gilchrist which is truly excellent.

As I have already said, Rossetti traversed the bypaths of English literature (particularly of English poetry) as few can ever have traversed them. A favourite work with him was Gilfillan's _Less-Read British Poets_, a copy of which had been presented by Miss Boyd. He says:

Did you ever read Christopher Smart's _Song to David_, the only great _accomplished_ poem of the last century? The accomplished ones are Chatterton's,--of course I mean earlier than Blake or Coleridge, and without reckoning so exceptional a genius as Burns.... You will find Smart's poem a masterpiece of rich imagery, exhaustive resources, and reverberant sound. It is to be met with in Gilfillan's _Specimens of the Less-Read British Poets_ (3 vols. Nichol, Edin., 1860)....

I remember your mentioning Gilfillan as having encouraged your first efforts. He was powerful, though sometimes rather "tall" as a writer, generally most just as a critic, and lastly, a much better man, intellectually and morally, than Aytoun, who tried to "do for" him. His notice of Swift, in the volume in question, has very great force and eloquence.

His whole edition of the _British Poets_ is the best of any to read, being such fine type and convenient bulk and weight (a great thing for an arm-chair reader). Unfortunately, he now and then (in the _Less-Read Poets_) cuts down the extracts almost to nothing, and in some cases excises objectionabilities, which is unpardonable. Much better leave the whole out. Also, the edition includes the usual array of n.o.bodies--Addison, Akenside, and the whole alphabet down to Zany and Zero; whereas a great many of the _less-read_ would have been much-read by every worthy reader if they had only been printed in full. So well printed an edition of Donne (for instance) would have been a great boon; but from him Gilfillan only gives (among the _less-read_) the admirable _Progress of the Soul_ and some of the pregnant _Holy Sonnets_. Do you know Donne? There is hardly an English poet better worth a thorough knowledge, in spite of his provoking conceits and occasional jagged jargon.

The following paragraph on Whitehead is valuable:

Charles Whitehead's princ.i.p.al poem is _The Solitary_, which in its day had admirers. It perhaps most recalls Goldsmith.

He also wrote a supernatural poem called _Ippolito_. There was a volume of his poems published about 1848, or perhaps a little later, by Bentley. It is disappointing, on the whole, from the decided superiority of its best points to the rest.... But the novel of _Richard Savage_ is very remarkable,--a real character really worked out.

To aid me in certain researches I was at the time engaged in making in the back-numbers of almost forgotten periodicals, Rossetti wrote:

The old _Monthly Mag._ was the precursor of the _New Monthly_, which started about 1830, or thereabouts I think, after which the old one ailed, but went on till fatal old Heraud finished it off by editing it, and fairly ma.s.sacred that elderly innocent. You speak, in a former letter (touching the continuation of _Christabel_), of "a certain European magazine." Are you aware that it was as old a thing as _The Gentleman's_, and went on _ad infinitum?_ Other such were the _Universal Magazine, the Scots' Magazine_--all endless in extent and beginning time out of mind,--to say nothing of the _Ladies' Magazine and Wits' Magazine_. Then there was the _Annual Register_. All these are quarters in which you might prosecute researches, and might happen to find something about Keats. _The Monthly Magazine_ must have commenced almost as early, I believe. I cannot help thinking there was a similar _Imperial Magazine_.

The following letter possesses an interest independent of its subject, which to me, however, is interest enough. Mr. William Watson had sent Rossetti a copy of a volume of poems he had just published, and had received a letter in acknowledgment, wherein our friend, with characteristic appreciativeness, said many cordial words of it: