In what I wrote as to critiques on my poems, I meant toexpressspecialgratification from those written bystrangers to myself and yet showing full knowledge of thesubject and full sympathy with it. Such were Formans at thetime, the American one since (and far from alone in America,but this the best) and more lately your own. Other known andunknown critics of course wrote on the book when itappeared, some very favourably and othersquitesufficiently abusive.
As toCloud Confines, I told Rossetti that I considered it in philosophic grasp the most powerful of his productions, and interesting as being (unlike the body of his works) more nearly akin to the spirit of music than that of painting.
By the bye, you are right aboutCloud Confines, whichismy very best thing—only, having been foolishly sent to amagazine, no notice whatever resulted.
Rossetti was not always open to suggestions as to the need of clarifying obscure phrases in his verses, but on one or two occasions, when I was so bold as to hint at changes, I found him in highly tractable moods. I called his attention to what I imagined might prove to be merely a printer’s slip in his poem (a great favourite of mine) entitledThe Portrait. The second stanza ran:
Yet this, of all love’s perfect prize,Remains; save what in mournful guiseTakes counsel with my soul alone,—Save what is secret and unknown,Below the earth, above the sky.
The words “yet” and “save” seemed to me (and to another friend) somewhat puzzling, and I asked if “but” in the sense ofonlyhad been meant. He wrote:
That is a very just remark of yours about the passage inPortraitbeginningyet. I meant to inferyet only, butit certainly is truncated. I shall change the line toYet only this, of love’s whole prize,Remains, etc.But would again be dubious though explicable. Thanks for thehint.... I shall be much obliged to you for any such hintsof a verbal nature.
The letters printed in the foregoing chapter are valuable as settling at first-hand all question of the chronology of the poems of Rossetti’s volume of 1870. The poems of the volume of 1881 (Rose Mary and certain of the sonnets excepted) grew under his hand during the period of my acquaintance with him, and their origin I shall in due course record. The two preceding chapters have been for the most part devoted to such letters (and such explanatory matter as must needs accompany them) as concern principally, perhaps, the poet and his correspondent; but I have thrown into two further chapters a great body of highly interesting letters on subjects of general literary interest (embracing the fullest statement yet published of Rossetti’s critical opinions), and have reserved for a more advanced section of the work a body of further letters on sonnet literature which arose out of the discussion of an anthology that I was at the time engaged in compiling.
It was very natural that Coleridge should prove to be one of the first subjects discussed by Rossetti, who admired him greatly, and when it transpired that Coleridge was, perhaps, my own chief idol, and that whilst even yet a child I had perused and reperused not only his poetry but even his mystical philosophy (impalpable or obscure even to his maturer and more enlightened, if no more zealous, admirers), the disposition to write upon him became great upon both sides. “You can never say too much about Coleridge for me,” Rossetti would write, “for I worship him on the right side of idolatry, and I perceive you know him well.” Upon this one of my first remarks was that there was much in Coleridge’s higher descriptive verse equivalent to the landscape art of Turner. The critical parallel Rossetti warmly approved of, adding, however, that Coleridge, at his best as a pictorial artist, was a spiritualised Turner. He instanced his,
We listened and looked sideways up,The moving moon went up the skyAnd no where did abide,Softly she was going up,And a star or two beside—The charmed water burnt alwayA still and awful red.
I remarked that Shelley possessed the same power of impregnating landscape with spiritual feeling, and this Rossetti readily allowed; but when I proceeded to say that Wordsworth sometimes, though rarely, displayed a power akin to it, I found him less warmly responsive. “I grudge Wordsworth every vote he gets,” {*} Rossetti frequently said to me, both in writing, and afterwards in conversation. “The three greatest English imaginations,” he would sometimes add, “are Shakspeare, Coleridge, and Shelley.” I have heard him give a fourth name, Blake.
* There is a story frequently told of how, seeing two camelswalking together in the Zoological Gardens, keeping step ina shambling way, and conversing with one another, Rossettiexclaimed: “There’s Wordsworth and Ruskin virtuously takinga walk!”
He thought Wordsworth was too much the High Priest of Nature to be her lover: too much concerned to transfigure into poetry his pantheo-Christian philosophy regarding Nature, to drop to his knees in simple love of her to thank God that she was beautiful. It was hard to side with Rossetti in his view of Wordsworth, partly because one feared he did not practise the patience necessary to a full appreciation of that poet, and was consequently apt to judge of him by fugitive lines read at random. In the connection in question, I instanced the lines (much admired by Coleridge) beginning
Suck, little babe, O suck again!It cools my blood, it cools my brain,
and ending—
The breeze I see is in the tree,It comes to cool my babe and me.
But Rossetti would not see that this last couplet denoted the point of artistic vision at which the poet of nature identified himself with her, in setting aside or superseding all proprieties of mere speech. To him Wordsworth’s Idealism (which certainly had the German trick of keeping close to the ground) only meant us to understand that the forsaken woman through whose mouth the words are spoken (inThe Affliction of Margaret——— of ———) sawthe breeze shake the treeafar off. And this attitude towards Wordsworth Rossetti maintained down to the end. I remember that sometime in March of the year in which he died, Mr. Theodore Watts, who was paying one of his many visits to see him in his last illness at the sea-side, touched, in conversation, upon the power of Wordsworth’s style in its higher vein, and instanced a noble passage in theOde to Duty, which runs:
Stern Lawgiver! yet thou dost wearThe Godhead’s most benignant grace;Nor know we anything so fairAs is the smile upon thy face;Flowers laugh before thee on their beds;And fragrance in thy footing treads;Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong;And the most ancient heavens, through Thee, arefresh and strong.
Mr. Watts spoke with enthusiasm of the strength and simplicity, the sonorousness and stately march of these lines; and numbered them, I think, among the noblest verses yet written, for every highest quality of style.
But Rossetti was unyielding, and though he admitted the beauty of the passage, and was ungrudging in his tribute to another passage which I had instanced—
O joy that in our embers—
he would not allow that Wordsworth ever possessed a grasp of the great style, or that (despite the Ode on Immortality and the sonnet onToussaint L’Ouverture, which he placed at the head of the poet’s work) vital lyric impulse was ever fully developed in his muse. He said:
As to Wordsworth, no one regards the great Ode with morespecial and unique homage than I do, as a thing absolutelyalone of its kind among all greatest things. I cannot saythat anything else of his with which I have ever beenfamiliar (and I suffer from long disuse of all familiaritywith him) seems at all on a level with this.
In all humility I regard his depreciatory opinion, not at all as a valuable example of literary judgment, but as indicative of a clear radical difference of poetic bias between the two poets, such as must in the same way have made Wordsworth resist Rossetti if he had appeared before him. I am the more confirmed in this view from the circumstance that Rossetti, throughout the period of my acquaintance with him, seemed to me always peculiarly and, if I may be permitted to say so without offence, strangely liable to Mr. Watts’s influence in his critical estimates, and that the case instanced was perhaps the only one in which I knew him to resist Mr. Watts’s opinion upon a matter of poetical criticism, which he considered to be almost final, as his letters to me, printed in Chapter VIII. of this volume, will show. I had a striking instance of this, and of the real modesty of the man whom I had heard and still hear spoken of as the most arrogant man of genius of his day, on one of the first occasions of my seeing him. He read out to me an additional stanza to the beautiful poemCloud Confines: As he read it, I thought it very fine, and he evidently was very fond of it himself. But he surprised me by saying that he should not print it. On my asking him why, he said:
“Watts, though he admits its beauty, thinks the poem would be better without it.”
“Well, but you like it yourself,” said I.
“Yes,” he replied; “but in a question of gain or loss to a poem, I feel that Watts must be right.”
And the poem appeared inBallads and Sonnetswithout the stanza in question. The same thing occurred with regard to the omission of the sonnetNuptial Sleepfrom the new edition of the Poems in 1881. Mr. Watts took the view (to Rossetti’s great vexation at first) that this sonnet, howsoever perfect in structure and beautiful from the artistic point of view, was “out of place and altogether incongruous in a group of sonnets so entirely spiritual asThe House of Life,” and Rossetti gave way: but upon the subject of Wordsworth in his relations to Coleridge, Keats, and Shelley, he was quite inflexible to the last.
In a letter treating of other matters, Rossetti asked me if I thought “Christabel” really existed as a mediæval name, or existed at all earlier than Coleridge. I replied that I had not met with it earlier than the date of the poem. I thought Coleridge’s granddaughter must have been the first person to bear the name. The other names in the poem appear to belong to another family of names,—names with a different origin and range of expression,—Leoline, Géraldine, Roland, and most of all Bracy. It seemed to me very possible that Coleridge invented the name, but it was highly probable that he brought it to England from Germany, where, with Wordsworth, he visited Klopstock in 1798, about the period of the first part of the poem. The Germans have names of a kindred etymology and, even if my guess proved wide of the truth, it might still be a fact that the name had German relations. Another conjecture that seemed to me a reasonable one was that Coleridge evolved the name out of the incidents of the opening passages of the poem. The beautiful thing, not more from its beauty than its suggestiveness, suited his purpose exactly. Rossetti replied:
Resuming the thread of my letter, I come to the question ofthe name Christabel, viz.:—as to whether it is to be foundearlier than Coleridge. I have now realized afresh what Iknew long ago, viz.:—that in the grossly garbled ballad ofSyr Cauline, in Percy’sReliques, there is a LadyeChrystabelle, but as every stanza in which her name appearswould seem certainly to be Percy’s own work, I suspect himto be the inventor of the name, which is assuredly a muchbetter invention than any of the stanzas; and from thiswretched source Coleridge probably enriched the sphere ofsymbolic nomenclature. However, a genuine source may turnup, but the name does not sound to me like a real one. As toa German origin, I do not know that language, but would notthe second syllable be there the one accented? This seems torender the name shapeless and improbable.
I mentioned an idea that once possessed me despotically. It was that where Coleridge says
Her silken robe and inner vestDropt to her feet, and full in viewBehold! her bosom and half her side—A sight to dream of and not to tell,. . .Shield the Lady Christabel!
he meant ultimately to showeyesin thebosomof the witch. I fancied that if the poet had worked out this idea in the second part, or in his never-compassed continuation, he must have electrified his readers. The first part of the poem is of course immeasurably superior in witchery to the second, despite two grand things in the latter—the passage on the severance of early friendships, and the conclusion; although the dexterity of hand (not to speak of the essential spirit of enchantment) which is everywhere present in the first part, and nowhere dominant in the second, exhibits itself not a little in the marvellous passage in which Géraldine bewitches Christabel. Touching some jocose allusion by Rossetti to the necessity which lay upon me to startle the world with a continuation of the poem based upon the lines of my conjectural scheme, I asked him if he knew that a continuation was actually published in Coleridge’s own paper,The Morning Post. It appeared about 1820, and was satirical of course—hitting off many peculiarities of versification, if no more. With Coleridge’s playful love of satirising himself anonymously, the continuation might even be his own. Rossetti said:
I do not understand your early idea ofeyesin the bosomof Géraldine. It is described as “that bosom old,” “thatbosom cold,” which seems to show that its withered characteras combined with Geraldine’s youth, was what shocked andwarned Christabel. The first edition says—A sight to dream of, not to tell:—And she is to sleep with Christabel!I dare say Coleridge altered this, because an idea arose,which I actually heard to have been reported as Coleridge’sreal intention by a member of contemporary circles (P. G.Patmore, father of Coventry P. who conveyed the report tome)—viz., that Géraldine was to turn out to be a man!! Ibelieve myself that the conclusion as given by Gillman fromColeridge’s account to him is correct enough, only notpicturesquely worded. It does not seem a bad conclusion byany means, though it would require fine treatment to make itseem a really good one. Of course the first part is soimmeasurably beyond the second, that one feels Chas. Lamb’sview was right, and it should have been abandoned at thatpoint. The passage on sundered friendship is one of themasterpieces of the language, but no doubt was written quiteseparately and then fitted intoChristabel. The two linesabout Roland and Sir Leoline are simply an intrusion and anoutrage. I cannot say that I like the conclusion nearly sowell as this. It hints at infinite beauty, but somehowremains a sort of cobweb. The conception, and partly theexecution, of the passage in which Christabel repeats byfascination the serpent-glance of Géraldine, is magnificent;but that is the only good narrative passage in part two. Therest seems to have reached a fatal facility of jingling, atthe heels whereof followed Scott.
There are, I believe, many continuations ofChristabel. Tupper did one! I myself saw a continuation in childhood, long before I saw the original, and was all agog to see it for years. Our household was all of Italian, not English environment, and it was only when I went to school later that I began to ransack bookstalls. The continuation in question was by one Eliza Stewart, and appeared in a shortlived monthly thing calledSmallwood’s Magazine, to which my father contributed some Italian poetry, and so it came into the house. I thought the continuation spirited then, and perhaps it may have been so. This must have been before 1840 I think.
The other day I saw in a bookseller’s catalogue—Christabess, by S. T. Colebritche, translated from the Doggrel by Sir Vinegar Sponge (1816). This seems a parody, not a continuation, in the very year of the poem’s first appearance! I did not think it worth two shillings,—which was the price.... Have you seen the continuation ofChristabelinEuropean Magazine?of course itmighthave been Coleridge’s, so far as the date of the composition of the original was concerned; but of course it was not his.
I imagine the “Sir Vinegar Sponge” who translated “Christabessfrom theDoggerel” must belong to the family of Sponges described by Coleridge himself, who give out the liquid they take in much dirtier than they imbibe it. I thought it very possible that Coleridge’s epigram to this effect might have been provoked by the lampoon referred to, and Rossetti also thought this probable. Immediately after meeting with the continuation ofChristabelalready referred to, I came across great numbers of such continuations, as well as satires, parodies, reviews, etc., in old issues ofBlackwood, The Quarterly, and The Examiner. They seemed to me, for the most part, poor in quality—the highest reach of comicality to which they attained being concerned with side slaps atKubla Khan:
Better poetry I makeWhen asleep than when awake.Am I sure, or am I guessing?Are my eyes like those of Lessing?
This latter elegant couplet was expected to serve as a scorching satire on a letter in theBiographia Literariain which Coleridge says he saw a portrait of Lessing at Klopstock’s, in which the eyes seemed singularly like his own. The time has gone by when that flight of egotism on Coleridge’s part seemed an unpardonable offence, and to our more modern judgment it scarcely seems necessary that the author ofChristabelshould be charged with a desire to look radiant in the glory reflected by an accidental personal resemblance to the author ofLaokoon. Curiously enough I found evidence of the Patmore version of Coleridge’s intentions as to the ultimate disclosure of the sex of Géraldine in a review in theExaminer. The author was perhaps Hazlitt, but more probably the editor himself, but whether Hazlitt or Hunt, he must have been within the circle that found its rallying point at Highgate, and consequently acquainted with the earliest forms of the poem. The review is an unfavourable one, and Coleridge is told in it that he is the dog-in-the-manger of literature, and that his poem is proof of the fact that he can write better nonsense poetry than any man in England. The writer is particularly wroth with what he considers the wilful indefiniteness of the author, and in proof of a charge of a desire not to let the public into the secret of the poem, and of a conscious endeavour to mystify the reader, he deliberately accuses Coleridge of omitting one line of the poem as it was written, which, if printed, would have proved conclusively that Géraldine had seduced Christabel after getting drunk with her,—for such sequel is implied if not openly stated. I told Rossetti of this brutality of criticism, and he replied:
As for the passage inChristabel, I am not sure we quiteunderstand each other. What I heard through the Patmores (acomplete mistake I am sure), was that Coleridge meantGéraldine to prove to be a man bent on the seduction ofChristabel, and presumably effecting it. What I inferred (ifso) was that Coleridge had intended the line as in firsted.: “And she is to sleep with Christabel!” as leading uptoo nearly to what he meant to keep back for the present.But the whole thing was a figment.
What is assuredly not a figment is, that an idea, such as the elder Patmore referred to, really did exist in the minds of Coleridge’s so-called friends, who after praising the poem beyond measure whilst it was in manuscript, abused it beyond reason or decency when it was printed. My settled conviction is that theExaminercriticism, andnotthe sudden advent of the idea after the first part was written, was the cause of Coleridge’s adopting the correction which Rossetti mentions.
Rossetti called my attention to a letter by Lamb, about which he gathered a good deal of interesting conjecture:
There is (given inCottle) an inconceivably sarcastic,galling, and admirable letter from Lamb to Coleridge,regarding which I never could learn how the deuce theirfriendship recovered from it. Cottle says the only reason hecould ever trace for its being written lay in the threeparodied sonnets (one beingThe House that Jack Built)which Coleridge published as a skit on the joint volumebrought out by himself, Lamb, and Lloyd. The whole thing wasalways a mystery to me. But I have thought that the passageon division between friends was not improbably written byColeridge on this occasion. Curiously enough (if so) Lamb,who is said to have objected greatly to the idea of a secondpart ofChristabel, thought (on seeing it) that themistake was redeemed by this very passage. Hemayhavetraced its meaning, though, of course, its beauty alone wasenough to make him say so.
The three satirical sonnets which Rossetti refers to appear not only inCottlebut in a note to theBiographia LiterariaThey were published first under a fictitious name inhe Monthly MagazineThey must be understood as almost wholly satirical of three distinct facets of Coleridge’s own manner, for even the sonnet in which occur the words
Eve saddens into night, {*}
has its counterpart inThe Songs of the Pixies—
Hence! thou lingerer, light!Eve saddens into night,
and nearly all the phrases satirised are borrowed from Coleridge’s own poetry, not from that of Lamb or Lloyd. Nevertheless, Cottle was doubtless right as to the fact that Lamb took offence at Coleridge’s conduct on this account, and Rossetti almost certainly made a good shot at the truth when he attributed to the rupture thereupon ensuing the passage on severed friendship. The sonnet onThe House that Jack Builtis the finest of the three as a satire.
* So in the Biographia Literaria; in Cottle, “Eve darkensinto night.”
Indeed, the figure used therein as an equipoise to “the hindward charms” satirises perfectly the style of writing characterised by inflated thought and imagery. It may be doubted if there exists anything more comical; but each of the companion sonnets is good in its way. The egotism, which was a constant reproach urged byThe Edinburghcritics and by the “Cockney Poets” against the poets of the Lake School, is splendidly hit off in the first sonnet; the low and creeping meanness, or say, simpleness, as contrasted with simplicity, of thought and expression, which was stealing into Wordsworth’s work at that period, is equally cleverly ridiculed in the second sonnet. In reproducing the sonnets, Coleridge claims only to have satirised types. As to Lamb’s letter, it is, indeed, hard to realise the fact that the “gentle-hearted Charles,” as Coleridge himself named him, could write a galling letter to the “inspired charity-boy,” for whom at an early period, and again at the end, he had so profound a reverence. Every word is an outrage, and every syllable must have hit Coleridge terribly. I called Rossetti’s attention to the surprising circumstance that in a letter written immediately after the date of the one in question, Loyd tells Cottle that he has never known Lamb (who is at the moment staying with him) so happy before asjust then!There can hardly be a doubt, however, that Rossetti’s conjecture is a just one as to the origin of the great passage in the second part ofChristabel. Touching that passage I called his attention to an imperfection that I must have perceived, or thought I perceived long before,—an imperfection of craftsmanship that had taken away something of my absolute enjoyment of its many beauties. The passage ends—
They parted, ne’er to meet again!But never either found anotherTo free the hollow heart from paining—They stood aloof, the scars remaining,Like cliffs which had been rent asunder;A dreary sea now flows between,But neither heat, nor frost, nor thunder,Shall wholly do away, I ween,The marks of that which once hath been.
This is, it is needless to say, in almost every respect, finely felt, but the words italicised appeared to display some insufficiency of poetic vision. First, nothing but an earthquake would (speaking within limits of human experience) unite the two sides of a ravine; and thoughfrostmight bring them together temporarily,heat and thundermust be powerless to make or to unmake themarksthat showed the cliffs to have once been one, and to have been violently torn apart. Next,heat(supposingfrostto be the root-conception) was obviously used merely as a balancing phrase, andthundersimply as the inevitable rhyme toasunder. I have not seen this matter alluded to, though it may have been mentioned, and it is certainly not important enough to make any serious deduction from the pleasure afforded by a passage that is in other respects so rich in beauty as to be able to endure such modest discounting. Rossetti replied:
Your geological strictures on Coleridge’s “friendship”passage are but too just, and I believe quite new. But Iwould fain think that this is “to consider too nicely.” I amcertainly willing to bear the obloquy of never having beenstruck by what is nevertheless obvious enough. {*}... Lamb’sletterisa teazer. The three sonnets inThe MonthlyMagazinewere signed “Nehemiah Higginbotham,” and weremeant to banter good-humouredly the joint vol. issued byColeridge, Lamb, and Lloyd,—C. himself being, of course,the most obviously ridiculed. I fancy you have really hitthe mark as regards Coleridge’s epigram and Sir VinegarSponge. He might have been worth two shillings after all....Ialso remember noting Lloyd’s assertion of Lamb’sexceptional happiness just after that letter. It is apuzzling affair. However C. and Lamb got over it (for Icertainly believe they were friends later in life) no oneseems to have recorded. The second vol. of Cottle, after theraciness of the first, is very disappointing.* In a note on this passage, Canon Dixon writes: What ismeant is that in cliffs, actual cliffs, the action of theseagents, heat, cold, thunder even, might have an obliteratingpower; but in the severance of friendship, there is nothing(heat of nature, frost of time, thunder of accident orsurprise) that can wholly have the like effect.
On one occasion Rossetti wrote, saying he had written a sonnet on Coleridge, and I was curious to learn what note he struck in dealing with so complex a subject. The keynote of a man’s genius or character should be struck in a poetic address to him, just as the expressional individuality of a man’s features (freed of the modifying or emphasising effects of passing fashions of dress), should be reproduced in his portrait; but Coleridge’s mind had so many sides to it, and his character had such varied aspects—from keen and beautiful sensibility to every form of suffering, to almost utter disregard of the calls of domestic duty—that it seemed difficult to think what kind of idea, consistent with the unity of the sonnet and its simplicity of scheme, would call up a picture of the entire man. It goes against the grain to hint, adoring the man as we must, that Coleridge’s personal character was anything less than one of untarnished purity, and certainly the persons chiefly concerned in the alleged neglect, Southey and his own family, have never joined in the strictures commonly levelled against him: but whatever Coleridge’s personal ego may have been, his creative ego was assuredly not single in kind or aim. He did some noble things late in life (instance the passage on “Youth and Age,” and that on “Work without Hope”), but his poetic genius seemed to desert him when Kant took possession of him as a gigantic windmill to do battle with, and it is now hard to say which was the deeper thing in him: the poetry to which he devoted the sunniest years of his young life, or the philosophy which he firmly believed it to be the main business of his later life to expound. In any discussion of the relative claims of these two to the gratitude of the ages that follow, I found Rossetti frankly took one side, and constantly said that the few unequal poems Coleridge had left us, were a legacy more stimulating, solacing, and enduring, than his philosophy could have been, even if he had perfected that attempt of his to reconcile all learning and revelation, and if, when perfected, the whole effort had not proved to be a work of supererogation. I doubt if Rossetti quite knew what was meant by Coleridge’s “system,” as it was so frequently called, and I know that he could not be induced by any eulogiums to do so much as look at theBiographia Literaria, though once he listened whilst I read a chapter from it. He had certainly little love of the German elements in Coleridge’s later intellectual life, and hence it is small matter for surprise that in his sonnet he chose for treatment the more poetic side of Coleridge’s genius. Nevertheless, I think it remains an open question whether the philosophy of the author ofThe Ancient Marinerwas more influenced by his poetry, or his poetry by his philosophy; for the philosophy is always tinged by the mysticism of his poetry, and his poetry is always adumbrated by the disposition, which afterwards become paramount, to dig beneath the surface for problems of life and character, and for “suggestions of the final mystery of existence.” I have heard Rossetti say that what came most of all uppermost in Coleridge, was his wonderful intuitive knowledge and love of the sea, whose billowy roll, and break, and sibilation, seemed echoed in the very mechanism of his verse. Sleep, too, Rossetti thought, had given up to Coleridge her utmost secrets; and perhaps it was partly due to his own sad experience of the dread curse of insomnia, as well as to keen susceptibility to poetic beauty, that tears so frequently filled his eyes, and sobs rose to his throat when he recited the lines beginning
O sleep! it is a gentle thing—
affirming, meantime, that nothing so simple and touching had ever been written on the subject. As to the sonnet, he wrote:
About Coleridge (whom I only view as a poet, his otheraspects being to my apprehension mere bogies) I conceive theleading point about his work is its human love, and theleading point about his career, the sad fact of how littleof it was devoted to that work. These are the points made inmy sonnet, and the last is such as I (alas!) can sympathisewith, though what has excluded more poetry with me(mountainsof it I don’t want to heap) has chiefly beenlivelihood necessity. I ‘ll copy the sonnet on oppositepage, only I ‘d rather you kept it to yourself.Fiveyearsofgoodpoetry is too long a tether to give his Muse, Iknow.His Soul fared forth (as from the deep home-groveThe father Songster plies the hour-long quest)To feed his soul-brood hungering in the nest;But his warm Heart, the mother-bird aboveTheir callow fledgling progeny still hoveWith tented roof of wings and fostering breastTill the Soul fed the soul-brood. Richly blestFrom Heaven their growth, whose food was Human Love.Tet ah! Like desert pools that shew the starsOnce in long leagues—even such the scarce-snatched hoursWhich deepening pain left to his lordliest powers:—Heaven lost through spider-trammelled prison-bars!Five years, from seventy saved! yet kindling skiesOwn them, a beacon to our centuries.
As a minor point I called Rossetti’s attention to the fact that Coleridge lived to be scarcely more than sixty, and that his poetic career really extended over six good years; and hence the thirteenth line was amended to
Six years from sixty saved.
I doubted if “deepening pain” could be charged with the whole burden of Coleridge’s constitutional procrastination, and to this objection Rossetti replied:
Line eleven in my first reading was “deepeningsloth;” butit seemed harsh—and—damn it all! much too like the spiritof Banquo!
Before Coleridge, however, as to warmth of admiration, and before him also as to date of influence, Keats was Rossetti’s favourite among modern English poets. Our friend never tired of writing or talking about Keats, and never wearied of the society of any one who could generate a fresh thought concerning him. But his was a robust and masculine admiration, having nothing in common with the effeminate extra-affectionateness that has of late been so much ridiculed. His letters now to be quoted shall speak for themselves as to the qualities in Keats whereon Rossetti’s appreciation of him was founded: but I may say in general terms that it was not so much the wealth of expression in the author ofEndymionwhich attracted the author ofRose Maryas the perfect hold of the supernatural which is seen inLa Belle Dame Sans Merciand in the fragment of theEve of St. Mark. At the time of our correspondence, I was engaged upon an essay on Keats, andà proposof this Rossetti wrote:
I shall take pleasure in reading your Keats article whenready. He was, among all his contemporaries who establishedtheir names, the one true heir of Shakspeare. Another(unestablished then, but partly revived since) was CharlesWells. Did you ever read his splendid dramatic poemJosephand his Brethren?
In this connexion, as a better opportunity may not arise, I take occasion to tell briefly the story of the revival of Wells. The facts to be related were communicated to me by Rossetti in conversation years after the date of the letter in which this first allusion to the subject was made. As a boy, Rossetti’s chief pleasure was to ransack old book-stalls, and the catalogues of the British Museum, for forgotten works in the bye-ways of English poetry. In this pursuit he became acquainted with nearly every curiosity of modern poetic literature, and many were the amusing stories he used to tell at that time, and in after life, of the titles and contents of the literary oddities he unearthed. If you chanced at any moment to alight upon any obscure book particularly curious from its pretentiousness and pomposity, from the audacity of its claim, or the obscurity and absurdity of its writing, you might be sure that Rossetti would prove familiar with it, and be able to recapitulate with infinite zest its salient features; but if you happened to drop upon ever so interesting an edition of a book (not of verse) which you supposed to be known to many a reader, the chances were at least equal that Rossetti would prove to know nothing of it but its name. In poring over the forgotten pages of the poetry of the beginning of the century, Rossetti, whilst still a boy, met with the scriptural drama ofJoseph and his Brethren. He told me the title did not much attract him, but he resolved to glance at the contents, and with that swiftness of insight which throughout life distinguished him, he instantly perceived its great qualities. I think he said he then wrote a letter on the subject to one of the current literary journals, probablyThe Literary Gazette, and by this means came into correspondence with Charles Wells himself. Rather later a relative of Wells’s sought out the young enthusiast in London, intending to solicit his aid in an attempt to induce a publisher to undertake a reprint, but in any endeavours to this end he must have failed. For many years a copy of the poem, left by the author’s request at Rossetti’s lodgings, lay there untouched, and meantime the growing reputation of the young painter brought about certain removals from Blackfriars Bridge to other chambers, and afterwards to the house in Cheyne Walk. In the course of these changes the copy got hidden away, and it was not until numerous applications for it had been made that it was at length ferreted forth from the chaos of some similar volumes huddled together in a corner of the studio. Full of remorse for having so long abandoned a laudable project, Rossetti then took up afresh the cause of the neglected poem, and enlisted Mr. Swinburne’s interest so warmly as to prevail with him to use his influence to secure its publication. This failed however; but inThe Athenæumof April 8, 1876, appeared Mr. Watts’s elaborate account of Wells and the poem and its vicissitudes, whereupon Messrs. Chatto and Windus offered to take the risk of publishing it, and the poem went forth with the noble commendatory essay of the young author ofAtalanta, whose reputation was already almost at its height, though it lacked (doubtless from a touch of his constitutional procrastination) the appreciative comment of the discerning critic who first discovered it. To return to the Keats correspondence:
I am truly delighted to hear how young you are. In originalwork, a man does some of his best things by your time oflife, though he only finds it out in a rage much later, atsome date when he expected to know no longer that he hadever done them. Keats hardly died so much too early—not atall if there had been any danger of his taking to the modernhabit eventually—treating material as product, and shootingit all out as it comes. Of course, however, he wouldn’t; hewas getting always choicer and simpler, and my favouritepiece in his works isLa Belle Dame Sans Merci—I supposeabout his last. As to Shelley, it is really a mercy that hehas not been hatching yearly universes till now. He might, Isuppose; for his friend Trelawny still walks the earthwithout great-coat, stockings, or underclothing, thisChristmas (1879). In criticism, matters are different, as toseasons of production.... I am writing hurriedly andhorribly in every sense. Write on the subject again and I’lltry to answer better. All greetings to you.P.S.—I think your reference to Keats new, and on a highlevel It calls back to my mind an adaptation of his self-chosen epitaph which I made in my very earliest days ofboyish rhyming, when I was rather proud to be as cockney asKeatscouldbe. Here it is,—Through one, years since damned and forgotWho stabbed backs by the Quarter,Here lieth one who, while Time’s streamStill runs, as God hath taught her,Bearing man’s fame to men, hath writHis name upon that water.Well, the rhyme is not so bad as Keats’sEarOf Goddess of Theræa!—nor (tell it not in Gath!) as—-I wove a crown before herFor her I love so dearly,A garland for Lenora!Is it possible the laurel crown should now hide a veneratedand impeccable ear which was once the ear of a cockney?
This letter was written in 1879, and the opening clauses of it were no doubt penned under the impression, then strong on Rossetti’s mind, that his first volume of poems would prove to be his only one; but when, within two years afterwards he completedRose Mary, and wroteThe King’s TragedyandThe White Ship, this accession of material dissipated the notion that a man does much his best work before twenty-five. It can hardly escape the reader that though Rossetti’s earlier volume displayed a surprising maturity, the subsequent one exhibited as a whole infinitely more power and feeling, range of sympathy, and knowledge of life. The poet’s dramatic instinct developed enormously in the interval between the periods of the two books, and, being conscious of this, Rossetti used to say in his later years that he would never again write poems as from his own person.
You say an excellent thing [he writes] when you ask, “Wherecan we look for more poetry per page than Keats furnishes?”It is strange that there is not yet one complete edition ofhim. {*} No doubt the desideratum (so far as care andexhaustiveness go), will be supplied whenForman’s edition appears. He is a good appreciator too, as Ihave reason to say. You will think it strange that I havenot seen the Keats love-letters, but I mean to do so.However, I am told they add nothing to one’s idea of hisepistolary powers.... I hear sometimes from Buxton Forman,and was sending him the other day an extract (from a bookcalledThe Unseen World) which doubtless bears on thesuperstition which Keats intended to develope in his lovelyEve of St. Mark—a fragment which seems to me to rank withLa Belle Dame Sans Merci, as a clear advance in directsimplicity.... You ought to have my recent Keats sonnet, soI send it. Your own plan, for one on the same subject, seemsto me most beautiful. Do it at once. You will see that mineis again concerned with the epitaph, and perhaps my revivingthe latter in writing you was the cause of the sonnet.* Rossetti afterwards admitted in conversation that theAldine Edition seemed complete, though I think he did notapprove of the chronological arrangement therein adopted; atleast he thought that arrangement had many seriousdisadvantages.
Rossetti formed a very different opinion of Keats’s love-letters, when, a year later, he came to read them. At first he shared the general view that letters sointimesshould never have been made public. Afterwards the book had irresistible charms for him, from the first page whereon his old friend, Mr. Bell Scott, has vigorously etched Severn’s drawing of the once redundant locks of rich hair, dank and matted over the forehead cold with the death-dew, down to the last line of the letterpress. He thought Mr. Forman’s work admirably done, and as for the letters themselves, he believed they placed Keats indisputably among the highest masters of English epistolary style. He considered that all Keats’s letters proved him to be no weakling, and that whatever walk he had chosen he must have been a master. He seemed particularly struck with the apparently intuitive perception of Shakspeare’s subtlest meanings, which certain of the letters display. In a note he said: