Complete Poetical Works of Dante Gabriel Rossetti

by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

  juvenile in this sense, while others, written at the same

  time, will perhaps take rank at last with his best efforts.

  This, however, was not substantially the case with Keats.

  As to Leigh Hunt’s friendship for Keats, I think the points

  you mention look equivocal; but Hunt was a many-laboured and

  much belaboured man, and as much allowance as may be made on

  this score is perhaps due to him — no more than that much.

  His own powers stand high in various ways — poetically higher

  perhaps than is I at present admitted, despite his

  detestable flutter and airiness for the most part. But

  assuredly by no means could he have stood so high in the

  long-run, as by a loud and earnest defence of Keats. Perhaps

  the best excuse for him is the remaining possibility of an

  idea on his part, that any defence coming from one who had

  himself so many powerful enemies might seem to Keats

  rather to! damage than improve his position.

  I have this minute (at last) read the first instalment of

  your Keats paper, and return it.... One of the most marked

  points in the early recognition of Keats’s claims, as

  compared with the recognition given to other poets, is the

  fact that he was the only one who secured almost at once a

  great poet as a close and obvious imitator — viz., Hood,

  whose first volume is more identical with Keats’s work than

  could be said of any other similar parallel. You quote some

  of Keats’s sayings. One of the most characteristic I think

  is in a letter to Haydon: —

  “I value more the privilege of seeing great things in

  loneliness, than the fame of a prophet.” I had not in mind

  the quotations you give from Keats as bearing on the poetic

  (or prophetic) mission of “doing good.” I must say that I

  should not have thought a longer career thrown away upon him

  (as you intimate) if he had continued to the age of anything

  only to give joy. Nor would he ever have done any “good” at

  all. Shelley did good, and perhaps some harm with it.

  Keats’s joy was after all a flawless gift.

  Keats wrote to Shelley:— “You, I am sure, will forgive me

  for sincerely remarking that you might curb your magnanimity

  and be more of an artist, and load every rift of your

  subject with ore.” Cheeky! — but not so much amiss. Poetry,

  and no prophecy however, must come of that mood, — and no

  pulpit would have held Keats’s wings, — the body and mind

  together were not heavy enough for a counterweight.... Did

  you ever meet with

  ENDIMION

  AN EXCELLENT FANCY FIRST COMPOSED IN FRENCH

  By Monsieur GOMBAULD

  AND NOW ELEGANTLY INTERPRETED

  By RICHARD HURST, Gentleman

  1639.

  ?

  It has very finely engraved plates of the late Flemish type.

  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 circumstances 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 class 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 n
eglected 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 assure you Chatterton’s name must come in somewhere in

  the parallel passage. 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 substitution becomes unavoidable in the text....

  Read the Ballad of Charity, the Eclogues, the songs in

  Ælla, 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, ; Journal Sixth, ;

  The Prophecy, ; and opening of Fragment, . 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, noble Chatterton,

  The angel-trodden stair thy soul could trace

  Up Redcliffe’s spire; and in the world’s armed space

  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 classic, 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 accumulated

  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 troubles
ome 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 passage commencing —

  “Interest, thou universal God 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