The silhouette given of the lady is sadly disenchanting, and
may be the strongest proof existing of how much a man may
know about abstract Beauty without having an artist’s eye
for the outside of it.
The Keats sonnet, as first shown to me, ran as follows:
Where girls whom none call maidens laugh, where gain,
Hurrying men’s steps, is yet by loss o’erta’en:—
The bright Castalian brink and Latinos’ steep:—
Such were his paths, till deeper and more deep,
He trod the sands of Lethe; and long pain,
Weary with labour spurned and love found vain,
In dead Rome’s sheltering shadow wrapped his sleep.
O pang-dowered Poet, whose reverberant lips
And heart-strung lyre awoke the moon’s eclipse,—
Thou whom the daisies glory in growing o’er,—
Their fragrance clings around thy name, not writ,
But rumour’d in water, while the fame of it
Along Time’s flood goes echoing evermore.
I need hardly say that this sonnet seemed to me extremely noble in sentiment, and in music a glorious volume of sound. I felt, however, that it would be urged against it that it did not strike the keynote of the genius of Keats; that it would be said that in all the particulars in which Rossetti had truthfully and pathetically described London, Keats was in rather than of it; and that it would be affirmed that Keats lived in a fairy world of his own inventing, caring little for the storm and stress of London life. On the other hand, I knew it could be replied that Keats was not indifferent to the misery of city life; that it bore heavily upon him; that it came out powerfully and very sadly in his Ode to the Nightingale, and that it may have been from sheer torture in the contemplation of it that he fled away to a poetic world of his own creating. Moreover, Rossetti’s sonnet touched the life, rather than the genius, of Keats, and of this it struck the keynote in the opening lines. I ventured to think that the second and third lines wanted a little clarifying in the relation in which they stood. They seemed to be a sudden focussing of the laughter and weeping previously mentioned, rather than, what they were meant to be, a natural and necessary equipoise showing the inner life of Keats as contrasted with his outer life. To such an objection as this, Rossetti said:
say as to the first quatrain of my Keats sonnet. However, I
always take these misconceptions as warnings to the Muse,
and may probably alter the opening as below:
The weltering London ways where children weep
And girls whom none call maidens laugh,—strange road,
Miring his outward steps who inly trode
The bright Castalian brink and Latinos’ steep:—
Even such his life’s cross-paths: till deathly deep
He toiled through sands of Lethe, etc.
I ‘ll say more anent Keats anon.
About the period of this portion of the correspondence (1880) I was engaged reading up old periodicals dating from 1816 to 1822. My purpose was to get at first-hand all available data relative to the life of Keats. I thought I met with a good deal of fresh material, and as the result of my reading I believed myself able to correct a few errors as to facts into which previous writers on the subject had fallen. Two things at least I realised—first, that Keats’s poetic gift developed very rapidly, more rapidly perhaps than that of Shelley; and, next, that Keats received vastly more attention and appreciation in his day than is commonly supposed. I found it was quite a blunder to say that the first volume of miscellaneous poems fell flat. Lord Houghton says in error that the book did not so much as seem to signal the advent of a new Cockney poet! It is a fact, however, that this very book, in conjunction with one of Shelley’s and one of Hunt’s, all published 1816-17, gave rise to the name “The Cockney School of Poets,” which was invented by the writer signing “Z.” in Blackwood in the early part of 1818. Nor had Keats to wait for the publication of the volume before attaining to some poetic distinction. At the close of 1816, an article, under the head of “Young Poets,” appeared in The Examiner, and in this both Shelley and Keats were dealt with. Then The Quarterly contained allusions to him, though not by name, in reviews of Leigh Hunt’s work, and Blackwood mentioned him very frequently in all sorts of places as “Johnny Keats”—all this (or much of it) before he published anything except occasional sonnets and other fugitive poems in The Examiner and elsewhere. And then when Endymion appeared it was abundantly reviewed. The Edinburgh reviewers had nothing on it (the book cannot have been sent to them, for in 1820 they say they have only just met with it), and I could not find anything in the way of original criticism in The Examiner; but many provincial papers (in Manchester, Exeter, and elsewhere) and some metropolitan papers retorted on The Quarterly. All this, however, does not disturb the impression which (Lord Houghton and Mr. W. M. Rossetti notwithstanding) I have been from the first compelled to entertain, namely, that “labour spurned” did more than all else to kill Keats in 1821.
Most men who rightly know the workings of their own minds will agree that an adverse criticism rankles longer than a flattering notice soothes; and though it be shown that Keats in 1820 was comparatively indifferent to the praise of The Edinburgh, it cannot follow that in 1818 he must have been superior to the blame of The Quarterly. It is difficult to see why a man may not be keenly sensitive to what the world says about him, and yet retain all proper manliness as a part of his literary character. Surely it was from the mistaken impression that this could not be, and that an admission of extreme sensitiveness to criticism exposed Keats to a charge of effeminacy that Lord Houghton attempted to prove, against the evidence of all immediate friends, against the publisher’s note to Hyperion, against the | poet’s self-chosen epitaph, and against all but one or two of the most self-contained of his letters, that the soul of Keats was so far from being “snuffed out by an article,” that it was more than ordinarily impervious to hostile comment, even when it came in the shape of rancorous abuse. In all discussion of the effects produced upon Keats by the reviews in Blackwood and The Quarterly, let it be remembered, first, that having wellnigh exhausted his small patrimony, Keats was to be dependent upon literature for his future subsistence; next, that Leigh Hunt attempted no defence of Keats when the bread was being taken out of his mouth, and that Keats felt this neglect and remarked upon it in a letter in which he further cast some doubt upon the purity of Hunt’s friendship. Hunt, after Keats’s death, said in reference to this: “Had he but given me the hint!” The hint, forsooth! Moreover, I can find no sort of allusion in The Examiner for 1821, to the death of Keats. I told Rossetti that by the reading of the periodicals of the time, I formed a poor opinion of Hunt. Previously I was willing to believe in his unswerving loyalty to the much greater men who were his friends, but even that poor confidence in him must perforce be shaken when one finds him silent at a moment when Keats most needs his voice, and abusive when Coleridge is a common subject of ridicule. It was all very well for Hunt to glorify himself in the borrowed splendour of Keats’s established fame when the poet was twenty years dead, and to make much of his intimacy with Coleridge after the homage of two generations had been offered him, but I know of no instance (unless in the case of Shelley) in which Hunt stood by his friends in the winter of their lives, and gave them that journalistic support which was, poor man, the only thing he ever had to give, whatever he might take. I have, however, heard Mr. H. A. Bright (one of Hawthorne’s intimate friends in England) say that no man here impressed the American romancer so much as Hunt for good qualities, both of heart and head. But what I have stated above, I believe to be facts; and I have gathered them at first-hand, and by the light of them I do not hesitate to say that there is no reason to believe that it was Keats’s illness alone that caused him to regard Hunt’s friendship with suspicion. It is true, however, that when one reads Hunt’s letter to Severn at Borne, one feels that he must be forgiven. On this pregnant subject Rossetti wrote:
so much more kind solicitousness than the matter deserved,
about the opening of the Keats sonnet. I have now realized
that the new form is a gain in every way; and am therefore
glad that, though arising in accident, I was led to make the
change.... All you say of Keats shows that you have been
reading up the subject with good results. I fancy it would
hardly be desirable to add the sonnets you speak of (as
being worthless) at this date, though they might be valuable
for quotation as to the course of his mental and physical
state. I do not myself think that any poems now included
should be removed, but the reckless and tasteless plan of
the gatherings hitherto (in which the Nightingale and other
such masterpieces are jostled indiscriminately, with such
wretched juvenile trash as Lines to some Ladies on
receiving a Shelly etc), should of course be amended, and
the rubbish (of which there is a fair quantity), removed to
a “Juvenile” or other such section. It is a curious fact
that among a poet’s early writings, some will really be
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.
?
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:
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:
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:
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 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:
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, 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:
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:
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 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:
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—
... 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 Alcock, 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 title 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 analysis, Rossetti assuredly! 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 classification 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 manuscript scrap-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 manuscript 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 manuscript 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 scrap-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:
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
illustrations 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 fag-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 passages 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:
Smetham, which occurs in vol ii.; it is a noble thing; and
at the stupendous design called Plague (vol. i.). I have
extracted a passage 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 passages
about one “Scofield” in Blake’s Jerusalem, but did not
otherwise write that chapter, except as regards the
illustrations. 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:
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
nobodies—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 principal 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:
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 massacred
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:
wrote me in a very modest mood for one who can do as he can
at his age. I think I must have hurriedly mis-expressed
myself in writing to him, as he seems to think I wished to
dissuade him from following narrative poetry. Not in the
least—I only wished him to try his hand at clearer dramatic
life. The dreamy romantic really hardly needs more than one
vast Morris in a literature—at any rate in a century. Not
that I think him derivable from Morris—he goes straight
back to Keats with a little modification. The narrative,
whether condensed or developed, is at any rate a far better
impersonal form to work in than declamatory harangue,
whether calling on the stars or the Styx. I don’t know in
the least how Watson is faring with the critics. He must not
be discouraged, in any case, with his real and high gifts.
The young poet, in whom Rossetti saw so much to applaud, can scarcely be said to have fared at all at the hands of the critics.
Here is a pleasant piece of literary portraiture, as valuable from the peep it affords into Rossetti’s own character as from the description it gives of the rustic poet:
one to whom I have for about two years looked with interest
as a poet of the native rustic kind, but often of quite a
superior order. I don’t know if you noticed, somewhere about
the date referred to, in The Athenæum, a review of poems
by Joseph Skipsey. Skip-sey has exquisite—though, as in all
such cases (except of course Burns’s) not equal—powers in
several directions, but his pictures of humble life are the
best. He is a working miner, and describes rustic loves and
sports, and the perils and pathos of pit-life with great
charm, having a quiet humour too when needed. His more
ambitious pieces have solid merit of feeling, but are much
less artistic. The other night, as I say, he came here, and
I found him a stalwart son of toil, and every inch a
gentleman. In cast of face he recalls Tennyson somewhat,
though more bronzed and brawned. He is as sweet and gentle
as a woman in manner, and recited some beautiful things of
his own with a special freshness to which one is quite
unaccustomed.
Mr. Skipsey was a miner of North Shields, and in the review referred to much was made, in a delicate way, of his stern environments. His volume of lyrics is marked by the quiet humour. Rossetti speaks of, as well as by a rather exasperating inequality. Perhaps the best piece in it is a poem entitled Thistle and Nettle, treating with peculiar freshness of a country courtship. The coming together of two such entirely opposite natures was certainly curious, and only to be accounted for on the ground of Rossetti’s breadth of poetic sympathy. It would be interesting to hear what the impressions were of such a rude son of toil upon meeting with one whose life must have seemed the incarnation of artistic luxury and indulgence. Later on I received the following:
London only the other day (T. Dixon), and who was his only
hold on intellectual life in his district. Dixon died
immediately on his return to the North, of a violent attack
of asthma to which he was subject. He was a rarely pure and
simple soul, and is doubtless gone to higher uses, though
few could have reached, with his small opportunities, to
such usefulness as he compassed here. He was Ruskin’s
correspondent in a little book called (I think) Work by
Tyne and Wear. I got a very touching note from Skipsey on
the subject.
From Mr. Skipsey he received a letter only a little while before his death, and to him he addressed one of the last epistles he penned.
The following letter explains itself, and is introduced as much for the sake of the real humour which it displays, as because it affords an excellent idea of Rossetti’s view of the true function of prose: