: Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti by Caine Hall Sir - Rossetti Dante Gabriel 1828-1882

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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

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

Early Intercourse--Poetic Impulses--Beginning of Correspondence--Early Letters

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

Coleridge--Wordsworth--Lamb and Coleridge--Charles Wells--Keats--Leigh Hunt and Keats--Keats's Sister

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

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

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

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

RECOLLECTIONS OF DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI

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 throughout life he spoke well. He learned at home some rudimentary German; Italian he had acquired at a very early age. There has always been some playful mention of certain tragedies and translations upon which he exercised himself from the ages of five to fifteen years; but it is hardly necessary to say that he himself never attached value to these efforts of his precocity; he even displayed, occasionally, a little irritation upon hearing them spoken of as remarkable youthful achievements.

One of these productions of his adolescence, Sir Hugh the Heron, has been so frequently alluded to, that it seems necessary to tell the story of it, as the author himself, in conversation, was accustomed to do. At about twelve years of age, the young poet wrote a scrap of a poem under this title, and then cast it aside. His grandfather, Polidori, had seen the fragment, however, and had conceived a much higher opinion of its merits than even the natural vanity of the young author himself permitted him to entertain. It had then become one of the grandfather's amusements to set up an amateur printing-press in his own house, and occupy his leisure in publishing little volumes of original verse for semi-public circulation. He urged his grandson to finish the poem in question, promising it, in a completed state, the dignity and distinction of type. Prompted by hope of this hitherto unexpected reward, Rossetti--then thirteen to fourteen years of age--finished the juvenile epic, and some bound copies of it got abroad. No more was thought of the matter, and in due time the little bard had forgotten that he had ever done it. But when a genuine distinction had been earned by poetry that was in no way immature, Rossetti discovered, by the gratuitous revelation of a friend, that a copy of the youthful production--privately printed and never published--was actually in the library of the British Museum. Amazed, and indeed appalled as he was by this disclosure, he was powerless to remedy the evil, which he foresaw would some day lead to the poem being unearthed to his injury, and printed as a part of his work. The utmost he could do to avert the threatened mischief he did, and this was to make an entry in a commonplace-book which he kept for such uses, explaining the origin and history of the poem, and expressing a conviction that it seemed to him to be remarkable only from its entire paucity of even ordinary poetic promise. But while this was indubitably a just estimate of these boyish efforts, it is no doubt true, as we shall presently see, that Rossetti's genius matured itself early in life.

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