This book culminates the series of collected editions, inaugurated in 1886, that were edited by WMR. In this work WMR and his publisher collapsed all the work into a single volume.
THE WORKS
OF
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
From a Photograph by Downey 1862
PRINTED AND BOUND BY
HAZELL, WATSON AND VINEY, LD
LONDON AND AYLESBURY.
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
DIED 9 APRIL 1882 AGED 53
FRANCES MARY LAVINIA ROSSETTI
DIED 8 APRIL 1886 AGED 85
TO
THE MOTHER'S SACRED MEMORY
THIS COLLECTED EDITION OF
THE SON'S WORKS
IS DEDICATED BY
THE SURVIVING SON AND BROTHER
W M R
The most adequate mode of prefacing the Collected
Works
of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, as of most authors, would probably
be
to offer a broad general view of his writings, and to analyse
with some
critical precision his relation to other writers,
contemporary or otherwise,
and the merits and defects of his
performances. In this case, as in how few
others, one would
also have to consider in what degree his mind worked
con-
sentaneously or diversely in two several arts—the art of
poetry
and the art of painting. But the hand of a brother is not
the
fittest to undertake any work of this scope. My preface
will not therefore
deal with themes such as these, but will
be confined to minor matters, which
may nevertheless be
relevant also within their limits. And first may come a
very
brief outline of the few events of an outwardly uneventful
life.
Gabriel Charles Dante Rossetti, who, at an early stage of
his
professional career, modified his name into Dante Gabriel
Rossetti, was born
on 12th May 1828, at No. 38 Charlotte
Street (now 110 Hallam Street),
Portland Place, London.
In blood he was three-fourths Italian, and only
one-fourth
English; being on the father's side wholly Italian
(Abruzzese),
and on the mother's side half Italian (Tuscan) and
half
English. His father was Gabriele Rossetti, born in 1783 at
Vasto,
in the Abruzzi, Adriatic coast, in the then kingdom
of Naples. Gabriele
Rossetti (died 1854) was a man of letters,
a custodian of ancient bronzes in
the Museo Borbonico of
Naples, and a poet; he distinguished himself by
patriotic
lays which fostered the popular movement resulting in
the
grant of a constitution by Ferdinand I. of Naples in 1820.
The King,
after the fashion of Bourbons and tyrants, revoked
the constitution in 1821,
and persecuted the abettors of it,
and Rossetti had to escape for his
freedom, or perhaps even
for his life. He settled in London in 1824,
married, and
became Professor of Italian in King's College, London,
publishing also
various works of bold speculation in the way
of Dantesque commentary and
exposition. His wife was
Frances Mary Lavinia Polidori (died 1886), daughter
of
Gaetano Polidori (died 1853), a teacher of Italian and literary
man
who had in early youth been secretary to the poet
Alfieri, and who published
various books, including a com-
plete translation of Milton's poems. Frances
Polidori was
English on the side of her mother, whose maiden name
was
Pierce. The family of Rossetti and his wife consisted of
four
children, born in four successive years—Maria
Francesca
(died 1876), Dante Gabriel, William Michael, and
Christina
Georgina (died 1894). Few more affectionate husbands
and
fathers have lived, and no better wife and mother, than
Gabriele and
Frances Rossetti. The means of the family
were always strictly moderate, and
became scanty towards
1843, when the father's health began to fail. In 1842
(or
perhaps 1841) Dante Gabriel left King's College School, where
he had
learned Latin, French, and a beginning of Greek;
and he entered upon the
study of the art of painting, to
which he had from earliest childhood
exhibited a very marked
bent. After a while he was admitted to the school of
the
Royal Academy, but never proceeded beyond its antique
section. In
1848 Rossetti co-operated with two of his fellow-
students in painting, John
Everett Millais and William Hol-
man Hunt, and with the sculptor Thomas
Woolner, in form-
ing the so-called Præraphaelite Brotherhood.
There were
three other members of the Brotherhood—James
Collinson,
Frederic George Stephens, and the present writer. Ford
Madox
Brown, the historical painter, was known to Rossetti
a little before the
Præraphaelite scheme was started, and
bore an important part both
in directing his studies and in
upholding the movement, but he did not think
fit to join
the Brotherhood in any direct or complete sense. Through
a
fellow-painter, Walter Howell Deverell, Rossetti came to
know Elizabeth
Eleanor Siddal, daughter of a Sheffield cutler,
herself a milliner's
assistant, gifted with some artistic and
some poetic faculty: in the Spring
of 1860, after a long
engagement, they married. Their wedded life was of
short
duration, as she died in February 1862, having meanwhile
given
birth to a still-born child. For several years up to this
date Rossetti,
designing and painting many works, in oil-
colour or as yet more frequently in water-colour, had resided
at No. 14
Chatham Place, Blackfriars Bridge, a line of street
now demolished. In the
autumn of 1862 he removed to
No. 16 Cheyne Walk, Chelsea. At first certain
apartments in
the house were occupied by Mr. George Meredith the
novelist,
Mr. Swinburne the poet, and myself. This arrangement did
not
last long, although I myself remained a partial inmate of
the house up to
1873. My brother continued domiciled in
Cheyne Walk until his death; but
from 1871 he was some-
times away at Kelmscot manorhouse, in Oxfordshire,
not far
from Lechlade, occupied jointly by himself, and by the poet
Mr.
William Morris with his family. From the autumn of
1872 till the summer of
1874 he was wholly settled at
Kelmscot, scarcely visiting London at all. He
then returned
to London, and Kelmscot passed out of his ken.
In the early months of 1850 the members of the
Præraphae-
lite Brotherhood, with the co-operation of some
friends,
brought out a short-lived magazine named
<xref doc="a.ap4.g415.raw">The Germ</xref>
(after-
wards Art and Poetry); here appeared the
first verses and
the first prose published by Rossetti, including
and
. In 1856 he contributed a little
to
<xref doc="a.ap4.o93.raw">The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine</xref>
, printing there
and
<xref doc="a.1-1851.raw">Staff and Scrip.</xref>
In 1861, during his
married life, he published his volume of
translations
, now entitled
. By
the time therefore of the death of his wife he had a
certain
restricted yet far from inconsiderable reputation as a
poet,
along with his recognized position as a painter—a
non-
exhibiting painter, for, after the first two or three years of
his
professional course, he adhered with practical uniformity
to the plan of
abstaining from exhibition altogether. He
had contemplated bringing out in
or about 1862 a volume of
original poems; but, in the grief and dismay which
over-
whelmed him in losing his wife, he determined to sacrifice to
her
memory this long-cherished project, and he buried in
her coffin the
manuscripts which would have furnished forth
the volume. With the lapse of
years he came to see that,
as a final settlement of the matter, this was
neither obligatory
nor desirable; so in 1869 the manuscripts were
disinterred,
and in 1870 his volume named
<xref doc="a.1-1870.raw">Poems</xref>
was issued. For some
considerable while it was hailed with general and
lofty praise,
chequered by only moderate stricture or demur; but late
in 1871 Mr. Robert Buchanan published under a pseudonym,
in the
<xref doc="a.ap4.c7.raw">Contemporary Review</xref>
, a very hostile article named
<xref doc="a.ap4.c7.18.rad" workcode="buchanan003">The Fleshly School of
Poetry</xref>
, attacking the poems on literary
and more especially on moral grounds.
The article, in an
enlarged form, was afterwards reissued as a
assault produced
on Rossetti an effect altogether dispropor-
tionate to its intrinsic
importance; indeed, it developed in
his character an excess of sensitiveness
and of distempered
brooding which his nearest relatives and friends had
never
before surmised,—for hitherto he had on the whole had
an
ample sufficiency of high spirits, combined with a certain
underlying
gloominess or abrupt moodiness of nature and out-
look. Unfortunately there
was in him already only too much
of morbid material on which this venom of
detraction was
to work. For some years the state of his eyesight had
given
very grave cause for apprehension, he himself fancying from
time
to time that the evil might end in absolute blindness, a
fate with which our
father had been formidably threatened
in his closing years. From this or
other causes insomnia had
ensued, coped with by far too free a use of
chloral, which may
have begun towards the spring of 1870. In the summer
of
1872 he had a dangerous crisis of illness; and from that
time
forward, but more especially from the middle of 1874,
he became secluded in
his habits of life, and often depressed,
fanciful, and gloomy. Not indeed
that there were no in-
tervals of serenity, even of brightness; for in fact
he was
often genial and pleasant, and a most agreeable companion
with as
much bonhomie
away. He continued also to
prosecute his pictorial work
with ardour and diligence, and at times he
added to his
product as a poet. The second of his original volumes,
<xref doc="a.2-1881.raw">Ballads and Sonnets</xref>
, was published in the autumn of 1881.
About the same time he sought
change of air and scene in
the Vale of St. John, near Keswick, Cumberland;
but he
returned to town more shattered in health and in mental tone
than
he had ever been before. In December a shock of a
quasi-paralytic character
struck him down. He rallied
sufficiently to remove to Birchington-on-Sea,
near Margate.
The hand of death was then upon him, and was to be
relaxed
no more. The last stage of his maladies was uræmia.
Tended
by his mother and his sister Christina, with the
constant
companionship at Birchington of Mr. Hall Caine, and in the
presence likewise of Mr. Theodore Watts-Dunton, Mr.
Frederic Shields,
and myself, he died on Easter Sunday,
April 9th 1882. His sister-in-law, the
daughter of Madox
Brown, arrived immediately after his latest breath had
been
drawn. He lies buried in the churchyard of Birchington.
Few brothers were more constantly together, or shared
one another's
feelings and thoughts more intimately, in child-
hood, boyhood, and well on
into mature manhood, than
Dante Gabriel and myself. I have no idea of
limning his
character here at any length, but will define a few of
its
leading traits. He was always and essentially of a dominant
turn, in
intellect and in temperament a leader. He was im-
petuous and vehement, and
necessarily therefore impatient;
easily angered, easily appeased, although
the embittered
feelings of his later years obscured this amiable quality
to
some extent; constant and helpful as a friend where he per-
ceived
constancy to be reciprocated; free-handed and heed-
less of expenditure,
whether for himself or for others; in
family affection warm and equable, and
(except in relation
to our mother, for whom he had a fondling love) not
demon-
strative. Never on stilts in matters of the intellect or
of
aspiration, but steeped in the sense of beauty, and loving,
if not
always practising, the good; keenly alive also to the
laughable as well as
the grave or solemn side of things;
superstitious in grain, and
anti-scientific to the marrow.
Throughout his youth and early manhood I
considered him
to be markedly free from vanity, though certainly
well
equipped in pride; the distinction between these two ten-
dencies
was less definite in his closing years. Extremely
natural and therefore
totally unaffected in tone and manner,
with the naturalism characteristic of
Italian blood; good-
natured and hearty, without being complaisant or
accommo-
dating; reserved at times, yet not haughty; desultory enough
in
youth, diligent and persistent in maturity; self-centred
always, and
brushing aside whatever traversed his purpose
or his bent. He was very
generally and very greatly liked
by persons of extremely diverse character;
indeed, I think
it can be no exaggeration to say that no one ever
disliked
him. Of course I do not here confound the question of liking
a
man's personality with that of approving his conduct out-
and-out.
Of his manner I can perhaps convey but a vague impression.
I have said that it was natural; it was likewise eminently
easy, and
even of the free-and-easy kind. There was a
certain British bluffness,
streaking the finely poised Italian
suppleness and facility. As he was
thoroughly unconven-
tional, caring not at all to fall in with the humours
or pre-
possessions of any particular class of society, or to
conciliate
or approximate the socially distinguished, there was little
in
him of any veneer or varnish of elegance; none the less he
was
courteous and well-bred, meeting all sorts of persons
upon equal
terms—i.e., upon his own terms; and I
am
satisfied that those who are most exacting in such matters
found in
Rossetti nothing to derogate from the standard of
their requirements. In
habit of body he was indolent and
lounging, disinclined to any prescribed or
trying exertion of
any sort, and very difficult to stir out of his ordinary
groove,
yet not wanting in active promptitude whenever it suited
his
liking. He often seemed totally unoccupied, especially
of an evening; no
doubt the brain was busy enough.
The appearance of my brother was to my eye rather Italian
than English,
though I have more than once heard it said
that there was nothing observable
to bespeak foreign blood.
He was of rather low middle stature, say five feet
seven and
a half, like our father; and, as the years advanced, he
re-
sembled our father not a little in a characteristic way, yet
with
highly obvious divergences. Meagre in youth, he was
at times decidedly fat
in mature age. The complexion, clear
and warm, was also dark, but not dusky
or sombre. The
hair was dark and somewhat silky; the brow grandly
spacious
and solid; the full-sized eyes blueish-grey; the nose
shapely,
decided, and rather projecting, with an aquiline tendency
and
large nostrils, and perhaps no detail in the face was more
noticeable at a
first glance than the very strong indentation
at the spring of the nose
below the forehead; the mouth
moderately well-shaped, but with a rather
thick and un-
moulded under-lip; the chin unremarkable; the line of
the
jaw, after youth was passed, full, rounded, and sweeping; the
ears
well-formed and rather small than large. His lips were
wide, his hands and
feet small; the hands very much those
of the artist or author type, white,
delicate, plump, and soft
as a woman's. His gait was resolute and rapid, his
general
aspect compact and determined, the prevailing expression of
the
face that of a fiery and dictatorial mind concentrated
into repose. Some people regarded Rossetti as eminently
handsome; few,
I think, would have refused him the epithet
of well-looking. It rather
surprises me to find from Mr.
Caine's book of
that that gentleman, when he
first saw Rossetti in 1880, considered
him to look full ten
years older than he really was,—namely, to
look as if sixty-
two years old. To my own eye nothing of the sort
was
apparent. He wore moustaches from early youth, shaving his
cheeks;
from 1873 or thereabouts he grew whiskers and beard,
moderately full and
auburn-tinted, as well as moustaches.
His voice was deep and harmonious; in
the reading of poetry,
remarkably rich, with rolling swell and musical
cadence.
My brother was very little of a traveller; he disliked
the interruption
of his ordinary habits of life, and the flurry
or discomfort, involved in
locomotion; moreover, he was a
bad sailor. In boyhood he knew Boulogne: he
was in Paris
three or four times, and twice visited some principal
cities
of Belgium. This was the whole extent of his foreign
travel-
ling. He crossed the Scottish border more than once and
knew
various parts of England pretty well—Hastings, Bath,
Oxford,
Matlock, Stratford-on-Avon, Newcastle-on-Tyne,
Bognor, Herne Bay; Kelmscot,
Keswick, and Birchington-
on-Sea have been already mentioned. From 1878 or
there-
abouts he became, until he went to the neighbourhood of
Keswick,
an absolute home-keeping recluse, never even
straying outside the large
garden of his own house, except to
visit from time to time our mother in the
central part of
London.
From an early period of life he had a large circle of friends,
and
could always have commanded any amount of inter-
course with any number of
ardent or kindly well-wishers, had
he but felt elasticity or cheerfulness of
mind enough for the
purpose. I should do injustice to my own feelings if I
were
not to mention here some of his leading friends. First and
foremost
I name Mr. Madox Brown, his chief intimate through-
out life, on the
unexhausted resources of whose affection and
converse he drew incessantly
for long years; they were at
last separated by the removal of Mr. Brown to
Manchester,
for the purpose of painting the Town Hall frescoes.
The
Præraphaelites—Millais, Hunt, Woolner, Stephens,
Collinson
—were on terms of unbounded familiarity with him in
youth;
owing to death or other causes, he lost sight eventually of all
of them except Mr. Stephens. Mr. William Bell Scott was,
like Mr.
Brown, a close friend from a very early period until
the last; Scott being
both poet and painter, there was a
strict bond of affinity between him and
Rossetti. Mr. Ruskin
was extremely intimate with my brother from 1854 till
about
1865, and was of material help to his professional career.
As he
rose towards celebrity, Rossetti knew Burne Jones,
and through him Morris
and Swinburne, all staunch and
fervently sympathetic friends. Mr. Shields
was a rather later
acquaintance, who soon became an intimate, equally
re-
spected and cherished. Then Mr. Hueffer the musical
critic
(afterwards a close family connection, editor of the
Tauchnitz
edition of Rossetti's works), and Dr. Hake the poet.
Through
the latter my brother came to know Mr. Theodore Watts-
Dunton,
whose intellectual companionship and incessant
assiduity of friendship did
more than anything else towards
assuaging the discomforts and depression of
his closing years.
In the latest period the most intimate among new
acquaint-
ances were Mr. William Sharp and Mr. Hall Caine, both of
them
known to Rossettian readers as his biographers. Nor
should I omit to speak
of the extremely friendly relation in
which my brother stood to some of the
principal purchasers
of his pictures—Mr. Leathart, Mr. Rae, Mr.
Leyland, Mr.
Graham, Mr. Valpy, Mr. Turner, and his early associate
Mr.
Boyce. Other names crowd upon me—James Hannay,
John
Tupper, Patmore, Thomas and John Seddon, Mrs. Bodichon,
Browning,
John Marshall, Tebbs, Mrs. Gilchrist, Miss Boyd,
Sandys, Whistler, Joseph
Knight, Fairfax Murray, Mr. and
Mrs. Stillman, Treffry Dunn, Lord and Lady
Mount-Temple,
Oliver Madox Brown, the Marstons, father and
son—but I
forbear.
Before proceeding to some brief account of the sequence
etc. of my
brother's writings, it may be worth while to speak
of the poets who were
particularly influential in nurturing
his mind and educing its own poetic
endowment. The first
poet with whom he became partially familiar was
Shakespear.
Then followed the usual boyish fancies for Walter Scott
and
Byron. The Bible was deeply impressive to him, perhaps
above all
Job, Ecclesiastes, and the Apocalypse. Byron gave
place to Shelley when my
brother was about sixteen years
of age; and Mrs. Browning and the old
English or Scottish
ballads rapidly ensued. It may have been towards thisb
date, say 1845, that he first seriously applied himself to
Dante, and
drank deep of that inexhaustible well-head of
poesy and thought; for the
Florentine, though familiar to
him as a name, and in some sense as a
pervading penetrative
influence, from earliest childhood, was not really
assimilated
until boyhood was practically past. Bailey's
<xref doc="a.bailey001.rad" link="dead">Festus</xref>
was
enormously relished about the same time—read again
and
yet again; also
, Victor Hugo, Alfred de Musset (and
along with them a swarm of French
novelists), and Keats,
whom my brother for the most part, though not
without
some compunctious visitings now and then, truly preferred
to
Shelley. The only classical poet whom he took to in any
degree worth
speaking of was Homer, the
ably more than the
Keats, and Edgar Poe and Coleridge
along with Tennyson.
In the long run he perhaps enjoyed and revered
Coleridge
beyond any other modern poet whatsoever; but Coleridge
was not
so distinctly or separately in the ascendant, at any
particular period of
youth, as several of the others. Blake
likewise had his peculiar meed of
homage, and Charles Wells,
the influence of whose prose style, in the
<xref doc="a.wellsc002.rad" link="dead">Stories after Nature</xref>
,
I trace to some extent in Rossetti's
. Lastly
came Browning, and for a time, like the serpent-rod of
Moses,
swallowed up all the rest. This was still at an early stage
of
life; for I think the year 1847 cannot certainly have been
passed before my
brother was deep in Browning. The
readings or fragmentary recitations of
,
, and above all
, are something to remember
from a now distant past. My brother lighted
upon
(published anonymously) in the British Museum, copied it
out,
recognized that it must be Browning's, and wrote to the
great poet at a
venture to say so, receiving a cordial response,
followed by a genial and
friendly intercourse for several
years. One prose-work of great influence
upon my brother's
mind, and upon his product as a painter, must not be
left
unspecified—Malory's
, which he knew to some
extent in boyhood, and which engrossed him
towards 1856.
The only poet whom I feel it needful to add to the above
is
Chatterton. In the last two or three years of his life my
brother
entertained an abnormal—I think an
exaggerated—
admiration of Chatterton. It appears to me that (to
use a
very hackneyed phrase) he “evolved this from his inner
consciousness” at that late period; certainly in youth
and
early manhood he had no such feeling. He then read the
poems of
Chatterton with cursory glance and unexcited
spirit, recognizing them as
very singular performances for
their date in English literature, and for the
author's boyish
years, but beyond that laying no marked stress upon them.
The reader may perhaps be surprised to find some names
unmentioned in
this list: I have stated the facts as I re-
member and know them. Chaucer,
Spenser, the Elizabethan
dramatists (other than Shakespear), Milton, Dryden,
Pope,
Wordsworth, are unnamed. It should not be supposed that
he read
them not at all, or cared not for any of them; but,
if we except Chaucer in
a rather loose way and (at a late
period of life) Marlowe in some of his
non-dramatic poems,
they were comparatively neglected. Thomas Hood he
valued
highly; also very highly Burns in mature years, but he was
not a
constant reader of the Scottish lyrist. Of Italian poets
he earnestly loved
none save Dante: Cavalcanti in his degree,
and also Poliziano and
Michelangelo—not Petrarca, Boccaccio,
Ariosto, Tasso, or
Leopardi, though in boyhood he delighted
well enough in Ariosto. Of French
poets, none beyond
Hugo and Alfred de Musset; except Villon, and
partially
Dumas, whose novels ranked among his favourite reading.
In
German poetry he read nothing currently in the original,
although (as our
pages bear witness) he had in earliest youth
so far mastered the language as
to make some translations.
Calderon, in Fitzgerald's version, he admired
deeply; but
this was only at a late date. He had no liking for
the
specialities of Scandinavian, nor indeed of Teutonic, thought
and
work, and little or no curiosity about Oriental—such as
Indian,
Persian, or Arabic—poetry. Any writing about
devils, spectres, or
the supernatural generally, whether in
poetry or in prose, had always a
fascination for him; at one
time, say 1844, his supreme delight was the
blood-curdling
romance of Maturin,
.
I now pass to a specification of my brother's own writings.
Of his
merely childish or boyish performances I need have
said nothing, were it not
that they have been mentioned in
other books regarding Rossetti. First then
there was
, a “drama” which he composed and wrote out in
or
about the seventh year of his age. It is of course simple
nonsense.
“Slave” and “traitor” were two words which
he found passim in Shakespear; so he gave to his
principal
characters the names of Slave and Traitor. If what they do
is
meaningless, what they say (when they deviate from
prose) is not exactly
unmetrical. Towards his thirteenth
year he began a romantic prose-tale named
. I hardly think that he composed anything else
prior to the ballad
narrative
, founded on
a tale by Allan Cunningham. Our grandfather printed
it
in 1843, which is some couple of years after the date of
its
composition. It is correctly enough versified, but has no
merit, and
little that could even be called promise. Soon
afterwards a prose-tale named
, in which the devil
played a conspicuous part, was begun, and carried
to some
length; it was of course boyish, but it must, I think,
have
shown some considerable degree of cleverness. In 1844 there
was the
translation of Bürger's
, spirited and fairly
efficient; and in November 1845 was begun a
translation of
the
, almost deserving (if my memory serves me)
to be considered good.
Several hundred lines of it must
certainly have been written. My brother was
by this time
a practised and competent versifier, at any rate, and
his
mere prentice-work may count as finished.
Other original verse, not in any large quantity, succeeded,
along with
the version of
, and the begin-
ning of his translations from the early Italians.
These must,
I think, have been in full career in the first half of 1847,
and
may even have begun in 1845. They show a keen sensitive-
ness to
whatsoever is poetic in the originals, and a sinuous
strength and ease in
providing English equivalents, with the
command of a rich and romantic
vocabulary. In his nine-
teenth year, or before 12th May 1847, he wrote
. As that is universally recognized as one of his
typical or consummate
productions, marking the high level
of his faculty whether inventive or
executive, I may here
close this record of preliminaries; the poems, with
such
slight elucidations as my notes supply, being left to speak
for
themselves. I will only add that for some while, more
especially in the
latter part of 1848 and in 1849, my brother
practised his pen to no small
extent in writing sonnets to
bouts-rimés.
room at the top of
No. 50 Charlotte Street, I giving him the
rhymes for a sonnet, and he me the
rhymes for another;
and we would write off our emulous exercises with consider-
able speed,
he constantly the more rapid of the two. From
five to eight minutes may have
been the average time for
one of his sonnets; not unfrequently more, and
sometimes
hardly so much. In fact, the pen scribbled away at
its
fastest. Several of his bouts-rimés
my possession, a little touched up after
the first draft: I
present most of them in this re-edition. Some have a
faux
air
their real
core of significance is necessarily small, the only
wonder being how he
could spin so deftly with so weak a
thread. I may be allowed to mention that
most of my own
sonnets (and not sonnets alone) published in
were
bouts-rimés
tone they are of
course inferior to my brother's work of like
fashioning; in point of
sequence or self-congruity of mean-
ing, the comparison might be less to my
disadvantage.
Dante Rossetti's published works were as follows: three
volumes,
chiefly of poetry. I shall transcribe the title-pages
verbatim.
(1a)
Dante and his Circle.
65, Cornhill
tion, as
regards all editorial parts of this work, are reserved.
(1b)
Vita Nuova, &c. Poets of Dante's Circle. Part II. Poets
chiefly before Dante.
Bond Street.
(2a)
(2b)
(3)
The reader will understand that 1b is essentially the
same
book as 1a, but altered in arrangement, chiefly by inverting
the order in which the poems of Dante and of the Dantesque
epoch, and
those of an earlier period, are printed. In the
present collection, I
reprint 1b, taking no further count of 1a.
The volume 2b is to a great extent the same as
2a, yet by
no means identical with it. 2a contained a section named
In 1881, when 2b and 3 were published
simul-
taneously,
was completed, was made to
consist solely of sonnets, and was
transferred to 3; while the
gap thus left in 2b was
filled up by other poems. This essential
modification of
clearly governed my action.
It thus became impossible for me to reproduce 2a: but
the
question had to be considered whether I should reprint 2b and
3 exactly as they stood in 1881, adding after them a
section
of poems not hitherto printed in any one of my
brother's
volumes; or whether I should recast, in point of
arrange-
ment, the entire contents of 2b and 3,
inserting here and
there, in their most appropriate sequence, the poems
hitherto
unprinted. I have chosen the latter alternative, as being
in my
own opinion the only arrangement which is thoroughly
befitting for an
edition of Collected Works. I am aware that
some readers would have
preferred to see the old order—i.e.,
the order
of 1881—retained, so that the two volumes of that
year could be
perused as they then stood. Indeed, one of
my brother's friends, most
worthy, whether as friend or as
critic, to be consulted on such a subject,
decidedly advocated
that plan. On the other hand, I found my own view
con-
firmed by my sister Christina, who, both as a member of the
family
and as a poetess, deserved an attentive hearing. The
reader who inspects my
table of contents will be readily able
to follow the method of arrangement
which is here adopted.
I have divided the materials into Principal Poems,
Miscel-
laneous Poems, Translations, and some minor headings; and
have
in each section arranged the poems—and the same has
been done
with the prose-writings—in the order of the dates
of their
composition. This order of date is certainly near to
being correct; though
some allowance, especially in the case
of
<xref doc="a.22-1881.raw">The House of Life</xref>
, must be made for differences of period
when the poems were begun and
were brought into their final
form. The few translations which were printed
in 2b (as
also in 2a) have been
removed to follow on after 1b.
There are two poems by my brother which I am unable
to include among his Collected Works. One of these is a
grotesque
ballad about a Dutchman,
, begun
at a very early date, and finished in his last illness.
The
other is a brace of sonnets, interesting in subject, and as
being
the very latest thing that he wrote. These works were
presented as a gift of
love and gratitude to Mr. Watts-Dunton,
with whom it remains to publish them
at his own discretion:
he has already brought out
<xref doc="a.ap4.e532.1.rad" workcode="3-1846">Jan van Hunks</xref>
in
.
Dante Rossetti was a very fastidious writer, and, I might
add, a very
fastidious painter. He did not indeed “cudgel
his
brains” for the idea of a poem or the structure or diction
of a
stanza. He wrote out of a large fund or reserve of
thought and
consideration, which would culminate in a clear
impulse or (as we say) an
inspiration. In the execution he
was always heedful and reflective from the
first, and he
spared no after-pains in clarifying and perfecting. He
ab-
horred anything straggling, slipshod, profuse, or uncondensed.
He
often recurred to his old poems, and was reluctant to
leave them merely as
they were. A natural concomitant
of this state of mind was a great
repugnance to the notion of
publishing, or of having published after his
death, whatever
he regarded as juvenile, petty, or inadequate. As editor
of
his Collected Works, I have had to regulate myself to a large
extent
by these feelings of his, whether my own entirely
correspond with them or
not. The amount of unpublished
work which he left behind him was by no means
large; out
of the moderate bulk I have been careful to select only
such
examples as I suppose that he would himself have approved
for the
purpose, or would, at any rate, not gravely have
objected to. A few, which
he might have objected to, figure
as Juvenilia. Some
details regarding the new items will be
found among my notes. Some projects
or arguments of
poems which he never executed are also printed among
his
prose-writings. These particular projects had, I think,
been
practically abandoned by him in all the later years of his
life;
but there was one subject which he had seriously at
heart, and for which he
had collected some materials, and he
would perhaps have put it into shape
had he lived a year or
two longer—a ballad on the subject of Joan
of Arc to match
and
.
I have not unfrequently heard my brother say that he
considered himself more essentially a poet than a painter.
To vary the
form of expression, he thought that he had
mastered the means of embodying
poetical conceptions in the
verbal and rhythmical vehicle more thoroughly
than in form
and design, perhaps more thoroughly than in colour.
I add here the dedications to Rossetti's volumes 1a,
2a,
2b, and 3. The dedication to
1b appears in its proper place.
1a.—
<xref doc="a.1-1861.rad" from="[v]">The Early Italian Poets:</xref>
Whatever is mine in this book is inscribed to my
Wife.—
D.G.R. 1861.
2a.—
<xref doc="a.1-1870.1stedn.rad" from="[v]">Poems</xref>
, 1870:
To William Michael Rossetti, these Poems, to so many of
which, so many
years back, he gave the first brotherly hearing,
are now at last dedicated.
2b.—
<xref doc="a.1-1881.1stedn.rad" from="[v]">Poems</xref>
, 1881:
Same dedication, adding the dates “1870—1881.”
3.—
<xref doc="a.2-1881.1stedn.rad" from="[iii]">Ballads and Sonnets:</xref>
To Theodore Watts, the Friend whom my verse won for me,
these few more
pages are affectionately inscribed.
In the
“‘Many poems in this volume were written between 1847 and
1853. Others are of recent date, and a few belong to the inter-
vening period. It has been thought unnecessary to specify the
earlier work, as nothing is included which the author believes to
be immature.’“The above brief note was prefixed to these poems when first
published in 1870. They have now been for some time out of
print.“The fifty sonnets of
, which first appeared<xref doc="a.22-1881.raw">The House of Life</xref>
here, are now embodied with the full series in the volume entitled
.<xref doc="a.2-1881.raw">Ballads and Sonnets</xref> “The fragment of
, now first printed, wasThe Bride's Prelude
written very early, and is here associated with other work of the
same date; though its publication in an unfinished form needs
some indulgence.”
The pieces marked thus * are now printed for the first time;
those marked † have appeared in print before, but are
now first in-
cluded in the Collected Works.