Part 5

Hardly had I set foot upon the land But I around me felt a freer air: ’Mid grand activity which knows no pause I found my own increasing day by day; And by the influences which wove my web After the poet’s came the scholar’s turn. Accounting precious every instant’s time In high conceptions I was all immersed: Dante, with Analytic Commentary, Was the first outcome of my new pursuits: And, spite of all disparagement, the work Earns me the sympathy of distinguished men. Charles Lyell, having read it, to me wrote, Giving clear pledge of unsolicited Regard--a Scotchman he, of lofty mind, And Allighieri’s signal devotee: He on my heart, which honours his deserts, Is still impressed, after the unequalled Frere. And now him also doth the urn enclose,[59] And bitter tears he leaves me to outpour. I say it again; no longer in the heat Of Massic or Falernian, nor indeed Of politics, I set to tracing out Our classic writers’ anti-papal spirit, With critical mind--confuting carping tongues; To Lyell did I dedicate the book.

Stately an University had risen In this enormous capital of the realm:[60] And now the Council, from whose midst emerged Such ample learning sacred and profane, Offered me of its own accord the chair Allotted to Italian literature.

To Italy, to flout three Kings, I sped My fame, and triumphed over lies with truth. Let Tyranny hate me, while my country loves,-- Her exiled son has never wrought her shame; And this I know--despite all senseless rage, My books have made their way from hand to hand. And not those hymns alone where I forecast The Ausonian Genius’ future rapt in thought;[61] But that Arcanum of Platonic Love Which offers in five tomes broad scrutinies, Where pondering I analyse the myths Of every country, every faith and age; And that in which I showed symbolic all Our Allighieri’s mystic Beatrice, Delineated by the schemes occult Of most remote gymnosophistic times, Which schools of magians had inherited, And through the Mysteries bequeathed to us; Also that other noted by its name, Rome toward the Middle of our Century. In each my work, to freedom dedicate, I demonstrate the iniquities of priests: In all that I expounded nought I feigned, But drew my facts from pages thousandfold.

Immoderate study always is unwise, But, if ’tis noxious, it amounts to guilt. No, that which I have published, much though it be, Is but the half of what I’ve written down. Ah for my blindness whom have I to blame, When by myself my eyes were done to death?

Having in England stayed my roaming course, And seeing my future less ambiguously, Like Dante’s, “Vita Nuova!”[62] was my word: He wrote but I resolved to practise it. “Let warm affections in my novel lot Arise,” I said, “to populate my breast.

Within the hotbed of our vicious times Love proffered me its frenzies and remorse: But, never a seducer, still seduced, Quicksand to quicksand, angry seas I ploughed: Now let a holier love possess my soul,-- May he who churned it up restore its calm.” And prudent reason here will not disclose What and how many tempests I endured. Upon my canvas be concealed, concealed, The flush upon my brow in others’ shame.[63] And on those quicksands while I fix my gaze A dreadful shudder creeps along my veins, And in that shudder I my visage smite, Uttering a curse against my weaknesses. The quicksands are afar, the harbour’s here.

Settled in London, all my travels past, Among the men I most was pleased to meet, Gaetano Polidori, learned, wise, Who had been Count Alfieri’s secretary, ’Mid all the Italians whom I had known as yet Appeared to merit honour and esteem. Teaching was his profession. He had done No small translating-work, had much composed. Tuscan by birth, by accent all the more, An elegant writer both in prose and verse, He showed me, joined with candid character, The strictest morals and a cultured mind. Upon the day when I returned his call, And saw him ’mid his well-bred family, I twice and thrice fixed my admiring eyes Upon the second daughter’s comeliness. A single moment regulates a life: My heart became the lodestone, she the pole. And every hour my love became more keen When hundred virtues and no self-conceit ... I know that what I’m writing she dislikes,[64] But, hiding it from her, I speak it still: Knowing her fully, I have often said-- Angel in soul, and angel in her looks. Feeling within me glow the lighted flame, I wrote to Polidori, and ’twas thus: “If to the gracious name of friend you please To add the loving name of son as well (Pray Heaven that so it may be!) be not loth To give the enclosed into your Frances’ hands. If this displease you, little though it were, If so it haps you disapprove my suit, Throw the two letters both into the fire, And speak of this no more; but pray concede Our friendship be not sundered, yours and mine,-- You so would punish my straightforwardness.” A day being past, the maid to me so dear Gave me a most affectionate response; And at the altar after four months more We vowed between us two a mutual faith.[65] In marriage-knot at summit of my hopes, My days went by in cheerful industry. As sweet reward of honourable zeal, My credit made advance from day to day. Four only children Heaven conceded me, And all the four I see around me still, The issue of affections tender and true In the four opening matrimonial years.

To speak about my wife I shall not pause,-- Others would think it overcharged, inept: This I may tell--she is a blooming graft Of English mother and of Tuscan sire; Through mother and through sire in her one sees Two nations tempering the mind and heart. Let me but say that in her is evinced Frankness of manner unpremeditate; That she both speaks and writes three high-prized tongues, Which rank ’mong Europe’s choicest and most rich; And, when their authors she was studying, She culled the flower of the three literatures. That firm-fixed character which she displays Founded, by means of Jesus’ gospel-book, Upon religion pure morality, Upon morality the purest life; Thus she presents, perfect on every side, The steadfast woman of the sacred page. From living pattern oh what strength the love Of ethical instructions must receive! Wherefore to her more than myself is due Our children’s educating discipline; For of each rule she utters with her lips They see in her the breathing prototype. I never had occasion for a school, Too apt to vitiate a guileless heart; For she in her two daughters had betimes Transfused a taste for music;[66] in all four (Presenting now this model and now that) The taste for letters and the beautiful. In theory and in practice, both alike, Her life is a fine treatise on the good: Always a Christian, not a fanatic, Always devout, but not ecstatical: Heavens, what a woman! her Anglo-Italian soul Has never trespassed over duty’s bound. ’Tis now five lustres I have made her mine, And in five lustres I still see her the more An angel harmony of deeds and words, And in five lustres her all-blameless life Has not one moment, one, belied itself. I thank my God that, when he addressed my heart To new affections, he made these be high: And you, beloved children, thank you me That such a mother I chose to give you breath.

Others perhaps will say that every bird (An ancient saw) approves his proper nest. Maria, Christina, William, Gabriel, My children, _you_’ll reply, and that’s enough.

My loving girls, in whom my soul descries A heavenly mind in virgin modesty, Of intellect and ethics you have given Already a shining proof in prose and verse:[67] You from a double looking-glass, it seems, Reflect upon us all your mother’s soul.

As from a twin-branched fountain-source there spurt Rills of fresh lymph to inundate a mead-- So sometimes sister-like do poetry And painting beautify the selfsame mind: And both unite in you, my Gabriel, And fertilize your soul, and give it fire. These like two fountains both in you upflow, Both in you like two torches are alight; And, while you make them brightly manifest, They both prepare in you exalted work. Run and attain the duplicated goal, Though yours is the most early dawn of life: As able poet I hear you already hailed, Already as able painter see you admired.[68] Now onward, and the double race-course win! You will be doing what I could not do.

If ’tis not vanity, almost re-born I feel in person, even in countenance, My calm-attempered William, in yourself,[69] Thought in your eyes, and on your lips a smile. In two dead languages and four that live Already Truth converses with your mind.

My children, grow, grow up to patriot love; In you the blood and name of me is stored To England from Abruzzo transmigrate. Free you were born, and I was born a serf. O Providence! Mine exile seemed to me The dire injustice of a Fate my foe; But, if mine exile’s fruitage was to prove A family like this, I bless the ban. Yes, for thy deadly rage which hurled me forth, Perfidious Bourbon King, I give thee thanks.

The thirteenth lustre have I now o’erstept Of veteran life used to the field of fight; And, never deviating from myself, I glory in a changeless character. A splendid servitude enchants me not: Dying I’ll cry “All life to Italy!” From the first day when her I knew oppressed, I envied any who could give her aid. Not for _my_ sake I loved her, but for hers, When I devoted to her rest and life. But there are some who, posed as Liberals, Defame with such a title country and self: And things I have to tell so silly or mean That but to think of them my stomach turns.

But, ere I yield me to indignant zeal, I sever the few good from numerous bad. You who, despite the despots and the priests, As firm Italians have revealed yourselves, Ricciardi and Cagnazzi and Saliceti, Gazzola, Mamiani, and Muzzarel,[70] You let Fame publish in all time and place, You and some others--yet ye are but few. And where, immortal Pepe, leave I thee, Who wreath’st young laurel upon hoary hair? Sole Garibaldi is compeer of thine-- The sword of Venice thou, and he of Rome: Tarpeian Eagle and Lion of Adria Maintained by you two a determined strife. By virtue of you Venice and Rome exclaim: “All have we lost, ’tis true, but honour not; For ne’er, undaunted heroes, did you yield Save to the greater number and adverse fate. Ye both, our century’s honour, have pursued The good of Italy and not your own.”

That my father was most right in saying, “And where, immortal Pepe, leave I thee?” will be generally allowed by persons cognizant of the facts. I sincerely regret that he did not add, “And where, immortal of immortals, Mazzini, leave I _thee_?” As he did not add that, I must say a few words to account for so grave an omission.

Mazzini did not settle in London until 1837. It was inevitable that two such patriots and exiles as Mazzini and Rossetti should know one another. There was a great amount of mutual respect between them (of which my Appendix furnishes ample proof), but not anything like constant personal intercourse--in fact, I do not recollect having even once seen Mazzini in our house, but I have occasionally seen him elsewhere. To Italy and freedom they were equally devoted, and the great conception of Italian unity was present to the minds of both. But Mazzini was a determined Republican, which Rossetti was not--being, from the course of his experiences and reflections, more in favour of a constitutional monarchy, though by no means unsympathetic with the idea of a Republic at the rare conjunctures when it emerged as having some practical application: he was never a member of the Giovine Italia. Mazzini was also, by nature and circumstance, an incessant conspirator, and promoted a number of unpromising and abortive insurrections, foredoomed to failure, and viewed with regret, and at times even with great repugnance, by such Italians as were not committed to the extremest forms of political theory and practice. It is no business of mine to express an opinion whether Mazzini or Rossetti was the more nearly in the right; but it has always been my conviction that, had it not been for the agitation so strenuously kept alive by the sublime Genoese patriot, the emancipation and unifying of Italy would not have taken place so soon as they did.

It happened that towards 1850, when my father was writing his Autobiography, he was particularly alienated from the policy pursued by Mazzini and his adherents. The great revolutionary year, 1848, had witnessed uprisings in various parts of Italy (an insurrection in Messina had preceded the French Revolution of February 1848 against Louis Philippe), followed by a regular campaign between the Piedmontese and the Austrians; this was renewed in 1849. In both instances the Austrians were the victors; and many patriotic Italians, including Rossetti, opined that this disastrous result had in large measure been brought about by a Mazzinian agitation (I will not pretend to say how far Mazzini himself was personally responsible for it) which repelled aid that might possibly have been forthcoming from some foreign powers, especially republican France, and denounced the Piedmontese sovereign, Charles Albert, as covertly a traitor to the Italian cause for which he was fighting. I can thus understand a certain feeling on my father’s part which, when he undertook to “sever the few good from numerous bad,” among Italians “posed as Liberals,” withheld him from expressly naming the great protagonist of the national movement, Mazzini, although he indisputably, in his own mind, included him in the roll of “the few good.” Even so the omission is to be regretted.

As to the question of Rossetti’s estimate of Republicanism (to which, as I have already said, he preferred, for practical purposes, a constitutional monarchy), the following distinct profession of faith seems worth preserving. Its date cannot be earlier than June 1850, and is probably a little later. It was written to introduce a poem--not, I think, any that has been published.

“After having seen what is almost always the issue of a democratic republic, more than once attempted in Europe; having seen that, barbarous, sanguinary, fratricidal, predaceous, and atheistic, in France in the last century, it ended in the absolute despotism of Bonaparte; and that, although mild, gentle, generous, and believing, in our own century, it is about to merge into the augmenting despotism of another Bonaparte, who does not even possess the fascination of the military and political successes and the talents of the first; how can ever this blessed Republic still abide in the hearts of so many Italians who sincerely love their country? And yet it does abide.... And was it not this desire which produced among us the discord of minds in 1848, and caused all our subsequent reverses? Oh if all the Italians had then unanimously combined with Charles Albert to expel the common enemy from our sacred soil--oh if many inconsiderate men had not, with the cry of ’Republic’ which they proclaimed with so much fervour, first dismayed that sovereign, and afterwards damped his enthusiasm for Italian independence--at this hour not one German foot would be insolently stamping our land, and Italy would not be such as she has miserably returned to being. Pius IX. himself took fright at that name; and, retreating from the glorious path which he was already footing, he ended by betraying us. A melancholy story this--which has made, makes, and will make, all who love Italy shed prolonged tears.

“‘But then you have no liking for a Republic?’ To any who ask me this, I shall answer: Yes, I like it, and that far better than others do; but I like one which would not have severed from us either Charles Albert or Pius IX., and which would have conduced to our obtaining that national independence that was the ardent longing of all Italians.... I like that Republic which alone can suit the interest of all, and which alone seems capable of enduring in Italy, or indeed in modern Europe.

“Whilst our hapless country had a prospect of good success, I wrote these few extemporized octaves, which might furnish occasion for many notes, so as to establish more fully what such a _Republic without peril_ ought to be--which I have always desired, and now more than ever desire.... I felt my heart touched in re-reading these stanzas; and, rude and unpolished as they are, I yet transcribe them, so that they may bear evidence that my soul did not participate in that political offence which was the cause of our disasters.”

After this rather long digression, I return to the Autobiography, and its contrast between “the few good” and the “numerous bad” Italians.

But ah how few there are that acted thus! With us a most repulsive crew combined, Seeking to fish in troubled water-streams. ’Mong scanty good men many bad escaped, A show of baseness and of wretchedness: These brought dishonour on the refugees In French and Portuguese and Spanish soil; But here in England unexpectedly There came to settle down the best and worst. I grieved for famished men and mendicants Who had recourse to swindling and intrigue: But Paolelli who became a spy, And wrought out General Turrigo’s death,[71] And other such, Italy’s sorrow and shame, Made me repent--but this I will not say. Bozzelli was a Liberal of this kind, And acted it with comic gravity; And, viler than Borrelli, vilest man, Betrayed anon his country for a “place.”[72] The royal beasts having re-sought their dens, Scoundrels in crowds go to consort with them; Rome, Naples, Lombardy, and Tuscany,-- I turn my indignant eye from such a horde.

And then reposefully my glance can pause Upon the upright whom Heaven has with me leagued, And who, inflamed with patriot charity, Reverberate on me their proper light. In a great cause we fell, and from that day We share the sacredness of Fortune’s blows. On reaching London, from the very first I knew some trustworthy, some faithless souls: These base Minasi set upon my track, And I--fool that I was--discerned it not. But all the emigrating company Treated me brother-like--save only one.[73] Still, if in me he blames and snaps on all, For all that’s mine he deems detestable, He prized my steadfast politics alone, And, joined with this, my blameless moral course: As for the rest, he wants all men to sniff In me the agreeable smell which donkeys yield. But wherefore in him did such rage collect? I know not, I: I saw him only once, When some one showed him to me in the street.

Italy, subject of mine every thought, Thine exiled son found kindness everywhere In hundreds of high-hearted foreigners: Only one exiled brother’s fatal hate ... Yet this disgrace is common, and I pause.

Behold I waken from the dream of life, And all the past meseems a flitting shade. Before I quit the earth, or--better so-- Before I there return and sleep in peace, I think it time to make my testament, For now I feel me on the bed of death.

It shall be brief indeed. What can I say? I will repeat with other sufferers-- I leave my corpse to earth, my soul to God, Of whom I ask forgiveness of my sins. I trust in Christ, and cheer me with the thought That his true dogma I have tried to avow. I pardon all, yes all, my enemies.

More than one work of mine lies on my hands; Something I think it well to say of them. I have indited a great roll of rhymes, Eight volumes[74]--to my country they’re bequeathed. Four I have published;[75] four I leave behind, Which are extemporaneous almost all,-- For, having reached the arduous goal of life, A popular poet’s title I desire. The book I called _Arpa Evangelica_, Which aims the man-God’s worship to promote, Will prove--and would it were already in print!-- Grateful to pious souls, I doubt not this. With what rapidity I wrote the book! It seemed as if I knew the whole by heart. Those hymns are not of all one calibre But all of them evince a feeling soul.

I did it in three months--the vein ran quick. In volumes twain, where I make practical Rights linked to duties, which I specify, To which I have appropriately given The title Politic-Dogmatic Lyre, Eschewing style fantastic or bizarre ’Gainst all despotic power I hurl my words. Then in the fourth, mid plaudits, pomps, and rites, I sang that man[76] whom many wrote about, Who first deceived us all, and then betrayed. _Pœnitet me fecisse_ is my finale: I hate as once I loved thee--Man of Fraud!

The work however where with critic thoughts My mind has spatiated and rested most, And where I have sought out the essential truth Of Dante’s Beatrice, as yet concealed, Is that in which I clasp a mighty orb As ’twere, and thereon most I plume myself. In this the mystic diction I expound Of which I recollect I spoke before. A sample of it I printed ten years back In one Discourse alone, but now they are nine. “This, more than poems,” I sometimes exclaim, “May prove my passport to a future age.”

I, if my life is now a bitter one, Can still, amid my very sorrows, say: “I live a freeman,--at my country’s shrine Freedom for me becomes a form of faith: And as I lived I’ll die--a sacred vow.”

And, while I look on all my bygone life, The year of this our century forty-three With black stone noted figures on the roll: I fancied I should die, but sore mishap Left me my life but took my sight away.[77] Worn down and down by bronchial sufferings, From January until September increased, I yet, exhaling in my verse my woes, Nurtured my mind with patriotic thoughts: And daybreaks of the Seer in Solitude Shed on my visioned spirit glowing beams: No, those were not fantastical ideas, For to men’s eyes they are daily verified.[78]

But ah my life now dwindles more and more, And hurries toward its occidental dusk; Yet I enjoyed aforetime strenuous health, Which for grave constant study made me apt: And, now that old and blind I cling to that, I feel that habit serves me more than drugs. How could I curb myself? For I confess My heart vibrates to thousand impulses; Existence is almost the same as thought,-- To live and nought to do I cannot brook. A course of living honourable and hard A poet I began, a poet end.