Part 4

On my assent, a spacious hall prepares For ladies, men of letters, diplomats. There that distinguished man enraptured heard My burst of song ’mid plaudits many and full;[45] And, being unused to such demonstrances, He deemed the thing almost a prodigy. I sang six themes, and my excited mind Poured copiously divergent styles and rhythms. Persons of eminence, the following day, Graced me by visits of civility. But one beneficent and reverend mien In which I read exalted characters, A diction which, arising from the soul, Goes to the heart, and fixes what it says-- This ’mid the throng I noted. He being gone, I asked his name--and it astonished me; For all that I had heard rumoured around About his talents settled on my thought: An ample treasure-house of classic lore,[46] Such did Fame publish him by hundred mouths: Toward him desire resistless drew me on, Nor did his presence lessen his repute. Unconscious of his fame he singly seemed,-- To hear it named was what he could not brook; Courtesy generous and without display, Learning immense, and greater modesty;-- Ah who could paint that noble-natured man? One day when he accorded praise anew To chaunts of mine which wakened his surprise, I answered him: “In you I seem to see The imperial eagle by a sparrow charmed. I know my verse has earned me banishment; But I, excelling some, bend low to you.” And later, when I saw how plenteously He dealt his succours to the sick and poor, I in John Hookham Frere discerned the type Of the sublime Christian philosopher. None but an angel could pourtray him true,-- I feel my eyes grow moist to speak of him. He called me friend, and that has been my pride, And in myself I reverenced the name. Having that store of virtues in my gaze, Sanctified in him by Christianity,-- ’Tis sacred duty to confess as much-- I felt myself grow better by so great A pattern. Nevermore he left my thoughts, And even in death within my heart he lives.

To him, after I reached the English shores (All distant from him though I then had passed), I dedicated Dante’s Comedy, With Analytic Comment from my pen. That Psaltery to him too I inscribed Which praises freedom and ennobles man, And he with kindliness received the wish I showed that it be dedicate to him. Of him with lively gratitude anew I chaunted in my “Seer in Solitude.” Those lines while I was writing, thou, blest soul, Wast winging forth thy way to Paradise, There to embrace the sister and the spouse From whom thou languishing wast parted here.

O all of you elected spirits and pure, Look down on desolate Rossetti’s grief. He in himself holds that same constancy Which every one of you applauded oft. Still exiled, but now old, infirm, and blind, How different alas from other-while! Different? Ah no! Although oppressed by years, He for his country always is the same. And he, on hearing how that freedom’s tree Has there re-budded, full of sapfulness,[47] Blesses his every sweat of brow poured out To irrigate its high ancestral germ; And, now when all men sweat to nurture it He hopes before he dies to taste its fruits. Now Scythian cold, ’tis true, reigns everywhere, But none can think it will last on for aye: To the political winter now endured A more propitious season must succeed; And all by various signs can estimate That flowers and fruits we yet shall see in bloom.

As Rossetti has here mentioned his edition of Dante’s _Comedy_, and his own _Psaltery_, and as references occur later on to other publications of his, I may as well enter at once into some details in elucidation. After his arrival in England he printed the following works:--

1. 1826-7. Dante’s _Inferno_, with a “Comento Analitico.” The intention was to publish the whole of the _Divina Commedia_: but, the expense proving too great, the _Inferno_ alone came out. The great majority of the comment on the _Purgatorio_ was written--not any (I think) of that on the _Paradiso_. The MS. comment on the _Purgatorio_ was presented by me in 1883 to the Municipality of Vasto, under a stipulation (volunteered by the Municipality itself) that they would print it; but this has not been done, and indeed the MS. volume was treated in a highly neglectful style. My father, when in Italy, was of course very well acquainted with Dante’s poem; but he had not studied it with any keenness of scrutiny until he settled in London. When he did that, he soon reached the conclusion that the surface of Dante’s _Commedia_ is very different from its inner core of meaning. At first he considered the inner core to be political: the Empire and Ghibellinism, as against the Papacy and Guelfism. As he progressed his conceptions expanded, and he regarded Dante as a member, both in politics and in religion, of an occult society having a close relation to what we now call Freemasonry; and he opined that the _Commedia_ and other writings of Dante, and also the books of many other famous authors in various languages and epochs, are of similar internal significance. It is not my purpose here to discuss whether he was right or wrong: I hold that he was highly ingenious, that some of his reasonings deserve very careful attention, and that in several instances he pushed things too far. His comment on Dante, and subsequent writings in the same direction, excited some notice in Italy, and at least as much in England. Coleridge thought well of his speculations up to, but not beyond, a certain point; Isaac Disraeli was fully convinced by them; Arthur Hallam, and afterwards Panizzi and Schlegel, wrote in opposition. A learned German, Joseph Mendelssohn, lectured in Berlin on Rossetti’s system, and published his discourses, which are more expository than critical, in 1843. A remarkable book (later than my No. 2) was brought out at Naples by Vecchioni, embodying a course of interpretation and argument closely resembling that of Rossetti, who never quite understood whether the conclusions of Vecchioni had been formed independently or not.

2. 1832. _Lo Spirito Antipapale che produsse la Riforma_ (The Anti-papal Spirit which produced the Reformation) develops and extends the ideas, which Rossetti had conceived during his study of Dante, as to a secret society to which that poet and many other writers belonged, and as to the essentially anti-Christian as well as anti-papal opinions covertly expressed in their writings. An English translation of this work was published.

3. 1833. The work to which the Autobiography has applied the name _Psaltery_ is entitled _Iddio e l’Uomo, Salterio_ (God and Man, a Psaltery). The majority of it was written in Malta: in London considerable additions and changes were made. Leaving some of his individual lyrics out of account, this may be regarded as the completest and best poetic work produced by Rossetti. In 1843 it was republished under a new title, _Il Tempo_ (Time), and with some substantial modifications of plan. This book, and our No. 2, are down in the Pontifical _Index Librorum Prohibitorum_.

4. 1840. _Il Mistero dell’ Amor Platonico del Medio Evo derivato dai Misteri Antichi_ (The Mystery of the Platonic Love of the Middle Ages derived from the Ancient Mysteries). This extensive and rather discursive work, in five volumes, follows up the line of speculation and argument shown in Nos. 1 and 2. Rossetti wrote it with a consciousness that the themes of religion or irreligion which it discusses were volcanic matter for readers to handle, as well as perilous to his own professional position in England. He therefore exhibited his subject with some amount of reticence, meandering through thickets of very audacious thought--the thought of great writers of the past as interpreted (but also to a great extent deprecated) by himself. This book was printed; but, as Mr Frere, partially seconded by Mr Charles Lyell, pronounced it to be foolhardy, it was withheld from publication in England, and was only put on sale on the Continent with precaution and in small numbers.

5. 1842. _La Beatrice di Dante_--an argument that Dante’s Beatrice was not in any sense a real woman, but an embodiment of Philosophy. The reasoning extends a good deal beyond this limit, into regions explored in Nos. 1, 2, and 4. Rossetti completed the work in three disquisitions--or indeed, according to the final arrangement, in nine disquisitions. Only the first of these was published. The others were entrusted to a French writer, M. E. Aroux. He studied them, and published a book named _Dante Hérétique, Révolutionnaire, et Socialiste_--a book which my father, on seeing it in print, did not acknowledge as by any means faithful to his own views. The MS. was returned to Rossetti: somehow it could never be found in our household until the close of 1900, when I discovered it, more or less complete, in an old portfolio.

6. 1846. _Il Veggente in Solitudine_ (The Seer in Solitude) is a long poem of patriotic aim, in several books and all sorts of metres. Its main object is to denounce the then political and religious condition of Italy, and to forecast a better future. This is mixed up with a good deal of autobiographical matter, and with many lyrics of old time (some of them evincing Rossetti’s very best work) interpolated into the context. As a rounded achievement of poetry, this book cannot be eulogized; it had, however, a great though clandestine circulation in Italy, roused enthusiastic feelings, and was so much prized that an honorary medallion of Rossetti, the work of Signor Cerbara, was struck.

7. 1847. _Versi_, published at Lausanne. This volume has not a directly patriotic or political complexion: it consists of many of Rossetti’s best poems of early date, along with some of recent years.

8. 1852. _L’Arpa Evangelica_ (The Evangelic Harp). Although printed in 1852, this volume only reached Rossetti’s hands at an advanced date in 1853. It consists of hymns and lyrics of a distinctly Christian, combined with an enlarged humanitarian, character. Several of the poems in this volume are now used in the Evangelical churches of Italy. I find twenty-one in a volume entitled _Inni e Cantici ad uso delle Chiese, Famiglie, Scuole, ed Associazioni Cristiane d’ Italia_. Roma, 1897.

It may be as well to say here something as to my father’s religious opinions. His parents were religious Catholics of the ordinary Italian type. His bringing-up was religious; and I suppose that, until manhood was well advanced, he acquiesced, without special zeal, in the established views and practices of Catholicism. As his political opinions progressed into active opposition to despotism and the foreign yoke, so did his religious opinions progress into active, and indeed very fierce, opposition to Papal dogma and pretensions, and to all that side of Roman Catholicism which pertains more to sacerdotal and hierarchical system than to the personality and the gospel utterances of Jesus Christ. On the other hand, he never ceased to cherish and reverence this original basis of Evangelical faith and practice. As I knew him from my earliest years (say from 1834), he adhered to no ecclesiastical sect whatever; and--allowing for the primitive-Christian sympathy just referred to--he was certainly far more a free-thinker than definitely a Christian. As his writings were never of a personally anti-Christian tone (though they often developed the anti-Christian views of other authors), and _were_ of an anti-papal tone, he became mixed up in his later years with Italian anti-papal Protestantizing religionists, to an extent greater than in his prime he would have tolerated. Towards 1849 disfrocked priests and semi-Waldensian semi-simpletons got a good deal about him, when broken health and precarious eyesight had to some extent enfeebled his mental along with his bodily powers; and association with these people and their publications did certainly not tend to promote a vigorous presentment of his essentially undogmatic but not essentially unspiritual mind. He came to write about Christian matters in terms suited to an absolute Christian believer; whereas, in fact, he was a devotional adherent to the moral and spiritual utterances of Jesus, but was not a practising member of any Christian denomination, nor a disciple in any theological school. It should be understood that, though a fervent and outspoken anti-papalist, he never expressly renounced the Roman Catholic faith. In the earlier years of his London sojourn it might have been to his advantage (as Professor of Italian in King’s College and elsewhere) to join the Anglican rather than the Roman communion; but this he considered unworthy of an Italian, and he never took any step in that direction. Neither did he naturalize himself as an Englishman.

The means of Gabriele Rossetti were never equal to paying the cost of expensive publications. My No. 1 was brought out by subscription; Nos. 2 and 4 by the spontaneous liberality of Mr Lyell, and, as far as No. 4 is concerned, Mr Frere came forward, as well, at the close. It is only fair to say that Rossetti was a laborious worker, of independent spirit; and, though he accepted with grateful satisfaction the volunteered bounty of Mr Lyell in these instances, and of Mr Frere in some others likewise, he was the least likely of men to go about to “ask, and ye shall receive.”

As I have been speaking--with the distaste which I learned to feel for them as a class--of Protestantizing Italians, I will add that one excellent man I have known among them was my cousin Teodorico Pietrocola-Rossetti. He was in London in the later years of my father’s life, but was not then taking an active part in the Evangelical propaganda to which he devoted all the closing part of his career. In 1883 he died in Florence, while conducting a service for his congregation. A great number of his hymns are in the collection _Inni e Cantici_ before mentioned.

Back to my tale. And I should here premise That, turning lengthened studies to account, I undertook in Malta first to spread A taste for our Italian literature; And in distinguished houses not a few To witness others’ progress was my joy. A Massic or Falernian wine no more I drank, as oft in Naples I had done, But quaffed the spirit of the classics now Alone, and none could say “Why gorge thyself?” But, even in study laudable howe’er, Intemperance is still condemnable. Many, I know, find teaching wearisome, Whereas to me ’twas profit and repute; And I could all repeat from memory The Comedy of Dante, mystical, Tasso, Ariosto, drama, satirists, Petrarch, Chiabrera, and some lyrists more. Become the foremost of professors there, I knew the most distinguished travellers And highest officers of government: Indeed, from titled man to boatman, all Bore me affection--saving only one.

The Consul there from Naples was Gerardi, Who constantly molested refugees. One day that upon me he fixed his glance, I cried: “You hangman’s face, what see you in me?” Confused he drooped his far from pleasant eyes, And put the tail of him between his legs. This serf of tyrant power endeavoured then To get me turned adrift out of the isle, When Albion’s Sejanus, Castlereagh, Was ordering to expel the fugitives: But this Gerardi (he might cry with rage) Had read my face “Noli me tangere.” As long as there I lived, I felt assured That all the world contained no baser man; But, when I saw in London a Minasi,[48] I found that I had made a great mistake. But such a name, by God, pollutes my lips. No, let my mouth be nevermore befouled To speak a most opprobrious brigand’s name! Go, galleys’ rot, or rather gallows’ rot, Go, Ruffo’s bravo[49] and worse knave than he!

Through that Gerardi, under-strapper of Kings, I saw from Malta hounded Rossaroll,[50] And Carrascosa[51] and Abatemarchi,[52] Capecelatro,[53] Florio, and many more; And a Poerio,[54] in his rage convulsed, Was first imprisoned, afterwards expelled. And Pier de Luca (I record with tears Thy fate, the flower of courteous learned men) And Pier de Luca lost his reason hence, And was in frenzy for some days and nights: He trembled at Gerardi’s very name, And later on, to escape, he drowned himself. O Castlereagh! Thy country rightly deems That thy best service was thy suicide; But why no suicide a year before?

Indignant I returned to England’s masts, For Malta grew to me insufferable. A nest of corsairs Malta now meseemed, Where, save that single man, all things I abhorred; So to the seat imperial of the main Thetis and Neptune re-conveyed my steps. Nor shall I paint that lengthy voyaging, Which in another poem[55] I described.

The curst Gerardi, in insulting terms, Had written to the Bourbon Council-board How that Rossetti, that incendiary, Was to be found upon the British ship; And cried the King: “Upon a sovereign’s faith, I’ll do my utmost to get hold of him.” Well had that General Fardella said, Who gave me secret pledge of friendliness, That a malignant star detained me there, Since o’er me impended a tremendous ire. And I had stayed, at hazard of my life, For full three months exposed to all the risk! Following routine, the British Admiral Was bidding farewell to the Sovereign; And he perceived astonished that for rage The King, like a hyæna, bit his lips. Treating him almost as a menial, he Said with an angry and imperious tone: “Surrender that rebellious subject whom You saved, and now to England would conduct.” And he with firmset aspect made reply: “An English Admiral will not be base.” Menaces and entreaties he contemned, And turned his back on him resolvedly; And, when that evening he returned aboard, He told what was demanded and refused. And such a fact cannot be called in doubt, For all o’er Naples did its rumour run.

I felt myself so moved by that account That, in the presence of his noble wife, I with emotion kissed his saving hand. Thee may God guerdon, mounted soul in heaven! Twice over did I owe my life to thee,-- And gracious lady, God bless thee alike!

And I reflected: “Why in Ferdinand Boils up against me such a fierce despite That, not appeased by lifelong banishment, He would inflict on me a barbarous death? So much of rage against my civic song, In which as father I so lauded him! And how has he forgotten those my lines Which drew the very tear-drops from his eyes?”

The savage spirit! When he heard me named, His knees would jog beneath his body’s weight, And he against me, the poor exiled bard, Was all a-tremble, furiously convulsed. And thence a truthful penman wrote to me He had himself from the fierce Bourbon heard-- “If even the court declares him innocent, I’ll make him die under the bastinade: On public scaffold or in darkest crypt Die he infallibly shall--and that I swear.”[56] Thus for a long while I remained in doubt Of the true motive for such senseless rage: But then the pen of a most worthy man Gave me a light amid the obscurity. What time the King of Naples had decamped, And I had turned my course to another goal, Some praise of me was heard by Gaspare Mollo Duke of Lusciano, who was reckoned then An able poet; and my fate so willed That he desired to meet me face to face. Of voluntary good-will he gave me proofs, Which I responded to with modesty: But, when he heard me improvise in verse, Mollo became as jealous as a beast: He in my presence spoke in jest alone, But poured his insults forth behind my back. He piqued himself the most on improvise: He saw his primacy endangered much, And tried his best to make me ludicrous. And I upon his dramas and his rhymes (For who can damp a youthful poet’s fire?) Launched a good ten or dozen epigrams,[57] Which many men rehearsed with loud guffaws. For one he gave me, I returned him ten: This was ill done, I know--but so I did. Mollo kept brooding o’er his inward grudge, Which well I read upon his pallid cheek. Now, when the liberal Government had fall’n, He was installed as President of a Board To overhaul the writings then produced. The President, and Censors in his wake, From that explosion of anonymous print Chose hundreds of inflammatory attacks, And called them all my own--no fable this-- And showed me like a devil to the King. And how that monumental lie disprove? If even I had been Briareus, Writing by night and day with hundred pens, It would have been a thing impossible To achieve that quantity of verse and prose. A shameless slander! Yet my enemy Mouths it against me, and the King believes.

This statement about the Duke of Lusciano may be quite true--a point as to which I am not competent to express an opinion. I have always understood, however, that one main professed grievance of the King against Rossetti was as follows (and in candour I state it here, as I did in my Memoir of Dante Rossetti):--At the time when an Austrian invasion of the Neapolitan territory, connived at by King Ferdinand, was imminent, Rossetti wrote a lyric expressive of the patriotic rage natural at the time, containing this quatrain addressed to the King--

“I vindici coltelli Sapran passarvi il cor: I Sandi ed i Luvelli Non son finiti ancor.”

(Avenging knives will be apt to pierce[58] your heart: the Sands and the Louvels are not yet done with). These lines clearly say that King Ferdinand, if he were to persist in a certain course, would be very liable to be assassinated; and, although they do not add that he _ought_ to be assassinated, the Rè Nasone cannot have been solitary in scenting out that implication. There was also the affair (referred to on p. 50 as more than probable) that Rossetti had accompanied the Neapolitan troops, animating them by his verses to fight against the Austrians in defence of a constitution which the King, by a gross act of perjury, had then abolished.

We in the harbour of Naples made a stay Two weeks almost--it gave me many a thrill. The very aspect of the city enslaved Became for me a melancholy scene. The vigilant Police, who day and night Laid scores of snares if they might catch me so, Set full a hundred spies around the ship To learn who might be come to visit me-- But no one came; and yet by means unknown Earnest of friendship did not fail to reach.

But now the breeze is favouring, waves a-calm, And the much longed-for moment is at hand. How many mothers o’er their slaughtered sons Wept on the shore because of that wild beast Who for a five years’ term had sheathed his claws, And now unsheathed them in the lust of rage!

Joyful I turned my back on servitude, And full of ardour sped toward Liberty.

Hail and thrice hail, O puissant Albion, Who, ceaseless in diffusing trades and arts, Thine irresistible trident dost extend Over the immense four quarters of the world. If thou, devout to rightful liberty, Impart’st to others its inspiring rays, Thou, arbiter of warfare and of peace, Wilt become mightier than antique Rome. Will it, and thou redeem’st a world oppressed, For thy determined will ensures result. America, thy rival and thy child, If thou dost fail, will do it later on: She in her nascent empire will become The foremost nation of the rounded world. She’ll be thy rival, truly glorious, For still in her gigantic state she grows; But not vociferous conceited France, Free and enslaved at once, as if by Fate. In you two all is diverse--customs, tongues; Her mark is impetus, and reason thine. Since my arrival, England, much thou hast done, Yet much remains to do--do it thou wilt.