Chapter IV: Appendix (3)

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.

But, if I am condemned to days so black,
At least let Tyranny not therefor joy.
I, in this night to which no dawn ensues,
Record a vow to raise my chaunt ’gainst her
So long as life endures, and yet beyond--
For even when I am silent in the earth
To war on her in verse will I persist.
Great God, to whom I hymning wafted prayers
Of Italy--diseased, betrayed, unvenged--
Thou didst preserve me, I know, that I might wage
War on the wretch who in man insults Thyself.
Who knows, who knows but for my latest days
Thou mayest have held reserved a greater strength?
Perchance Thou hast reft mine eyes that I might turn
Back to that poesy which I had left;
Thought prompts me that for this supreme intent
Thou a blind instrument will’st me of Thine hand.
How haps it that the old man’s heart glows young,
And in him life and daring are re-greened?
How haps it that his soul’s a looking-glass,
So to reflect the future’s burst of flame?
A light of prophecy salutes his eyes,
A voice of prophecy salutes his lips.
Magnify, magnify the name of Him
Who knots the mighty bindings of events--
Him by whose hand I, an obscure young man,
Was drawn into the strife of politics.
I nought, He all. I comprehend His power,
And for my very ills I yield Him thanks.
All the less possible the victory seems
So much the greater is the glory of God![79]

To Thee, great God, I owe devoutest praise,
In that, before I sleep the eternal sleep,
In the Subalpine noble Realm I see
Already a liberal form of better rule.
If all has gone to wreckage in the storm,
At least this single plank remains to us.

And nigh to death I still can joy and chaunt,
And can foresee more favourable days.
From the two sees which they so much befouled
Refractory priests a pair have been dismissed;[80]
And without mitre on their tonsured scalps
One takes his way to France, and one to Rome.
Those desecrated altars wait you there
Whence Christ indignant has withdrawn his foot:
There full a thousand demons are your peers,--
Sole Bonaparte and Pius distance you.

Fair Kingdom which, to avenge that double scorn,
Art now expelling the two mitred fiends,
Wherefore dost thou retain a hateful cult
Which Petrarch called a “school of fallacies”?
Oh let the Man of Sin and Realm of Sin,
Pitiful God, come to their end at last!

Farewell, farewell for ever, land beloved,
To whom I joyed to vow my whole of life;
And, while thy foe remains upon the throne,
I evermore against him will to fight.
Yes, I will fight till underground I sink....
And yet I feel alas all vigour wanes:
What is the use of will bereft of strength?

Moaning I quit mine arms: and to the last
Of hours my daytime goes precipitant.
O land of Liberty, accept my thanks;
O hour of my repose, I greet thee well.
When he has footed a disastrous road,
And night without a star engirds him round,
The wearied traveller searches for repose,
Waiting until the dayspring rise anew:
Yes, sleep in quiet, you are tired indeed,
But nevermore the sun for you will rise.
If you have done your duty, happy you,
And for your dust your country prays for peace.
If, sleeping in the earth, you wake in heaven,
Amid the daylight without even and dawn,
Each of your sufferings here becomes a claim,
And in your garland like a jewel shines.
There you will hold, amid the angelic throng,
Fixed on the Eternal Sun insatiate eyes.
Where summer burns not nor doth winter chill,
I shall again embrace thee, O my wife,
Within that everlasting nuptial-bond
Which never hand of Death can sunder more.
There I await thee, thou art sure to come:
Who worthier than thou of that abode?
I know what sun will in thy pilgrimage
Serve as the guide to thine unswerving feet.
Be, in the zenith of thy life and path,
Be thou the escort of our children loved;
This duty when thou wholly hast fulfilled,
Well know’st thou who expects thee above the spheres.
When these my wearied eyelids shall be closed,
Her steps, beloved children, follow ye:
Of her be worthy--and of me perchance--
And unto us you four will all return.
Oh glad the day when seated ’mid you all,
I shall see Paradise for me complete!
Ah let not one of you be wanting there!
And, when you shall ascend to our embrace,
Speak to me of Italy, speak one by one,
For then her state will not endure the same.

Oh if in heaven one day the fame should spread
That she anew resurges free and grand!
Hosannah and hosannah ’mid the harps
Of gold a thousand toward the Eternal Breath
I shall intone: Hosannah in infinite
Chorus, Hosannah, shall the Saints resound:
And in the new augmented jubilee
Far lovelier to me Paradise will show.

Oh let the prison unclose where I am shut!
My penal period has fulfilled its term.

And here the versified Autobiography also fulfils its term.

The desire for death, expressed in verse, was genuinely present to Gabriele Rossetti’s mind. Ever since the break-up of his health--which came to a severe crisis in 1843, followed by partial blindness, and that by many and increasing infirmities, paralytic and other--he found life more burdensome than otherwise, and would willingly have resigned it but for his earnest wish to work for the benefit of his family. Even the power of remunerative work failed towards 1847, when he had to resign his professorship at King’s College. Troublous public events ensued; the tergiversation of Pope Pius IX., the defeat of the Piedmontese and other Italians by the Austrian armies, the crushing of the Roman Republic by a French expedition. These and other political occurrences greatly darkened the closing years of Rossetti; and yet he was unconquerably hopeful as to a more or less near future, and the result justified his hopes.

I will summarize very briefly the events of his life subsequent to the date of the Autobiography, say 1850.

Rossetti being now, by failure of health and eyesight, debarred from professional work--though he always continued diligent in no common degree as a writer, principally in verse--the support of the family devolved in large part on our mother, who went out teaching, and at one time conducted a small day-school in London. The four children were, at the end of 1850, in this position:--Maria, aged twenty-three, a teacher of Italian, French, etc.; Dante Gabriel, aged twenty-two, a painter struggling to sell his pictures and make a position; Christina, aged just twenty, assisting our mother when the day-school was going on, otherwise without regular employment; myself, aged twenty-one, a clerk in the Inland Revenue Office and art-critic of _The Spectator_--my earnings of course scanty, but on the whole the least precarious among the slender resources of the family. As the day-school in London brought in no income worth speaking of, Mrs Rossetti, seeing some prospect of an opening at Frome-Selwood, Somerset, started another day-school there in the spring of 1853; her husband and Christina accompanied her. This school proved no more successful than its predecessor; and, as by the end of 1853 I was beginning to advance a little in my office, I got the family to re-unite in London from Lady-day 1854, and had the satisfaction of housing my suffering father in his last days. The house was named 45 Upper Albany Street, Regent’s Park--later on, 166 Albany Street. The end came very soon, 26th April 1854.

I subjoin here two obituary notices. The first was written by Conte Giuseppe Ricciardi, on 1st May 1854, and published in the _Opinione_ of Turin. The second was written by myself, and published in _The Spectator_, 6th May. In the latter there are a few details (of dates etc.) which I now know to be not absolutely correct, but I leave them as they stand. I could cite a great number of other eulogistic tributes, more especially since 1882, but need not launch out upon these.

(_a_) “Italian emigrants, and with the emigrants all Italy, are constrained to mourn another loss. The earliest, the most venerable, of the exiles, the illustrious Gabriele Rossetti, died in London on the evening of 26th April, after a banishment of thirty-three years--all of them spent in upholding the sacred Italian cause....

“Rossetti, an extemporaneous poet already known and valued by the public at the date, 1820, when in Naples the revolution broke out which came to such a wretched end in the following year, composed, among other lyrics, the splendid hymn, ’Sei pur bella cogli astri sul crine,’ to which I find nothing to be compared except the other lyric brought out by himself in London in 1831, beginning ‘Sù brandisci la lancia di guerra’; and this too records another hapless revolution!...

“It is needless to say that not a few writings of the highly distinguished author remain unpublished; pre-eminent among which are Parts II. and III. of his Comment on the _Divine Comedy_. For this (shall I say it?) I have in vain, up to the present date, sought out a publisher--so miserable are the conditions of Italian literature.

“Rossetti, besides being, as all know, an eminent poet and renowned scholar, was a fervent patriot, always most constant to his principles, and a man of unsullied virtue, so that he was revered even by his political enemies, and no one ever ventured to assail his reputation in the least degree; while all who came to have a little knowledge of him soon got to love him.”

(_b_) “Gabriele Rossetti, the most daringly original of the commentators on Dante, died on the 26th ultimo, in London, in his seventy-second year.

“Born on the 28th February 1783, in Vasto, a sea-coast town in the Kingdom of Naples, he first visited the capital in the capacity of secretary to the Marquis of Vasto, but for the purpose of following, under the auspices of that nobleman, the profession of a painter. His tastes soon took a more decided bent, however, towards literature. He developed a particular talent as a poetical improvisatore; and his poems, both recited and written, gained him considerable reputation. For some while he held the official post of poet to the Theatre of San Carlo. He afterwards entered the Museo Borbonico, as sub-director of the collection generally, and curator of the splendid sculptural department,--a position which led him to devote especial attention to the then fresh explorations at Pompeii and Herculaneum. Here he remained for fifteen years; with an interval of seven months, ending with the Pope’s return in 1813, during which he was at Rome, summoned thither by Murat as a member of the Provisional Government. Courses of lectures and literary instruction also occupied his time. With the restoration of King Ferdinand came the spread of Carbonarism; and Rossetti enrolled himself as a member of that society of national reformers. The short-lived constitution of 1821 succeeded--to expire in nine months; leaving those who, like Rossetti, had hailed its advent with enthusiasm, exposed to the rancour of tyrannic reaction. His patriotic verses were his crime, and proved his rescue. The wife of Admiral Sir Graham Moore had read and admired them: the Admiral was then in Naples; and he prevailed on the poet to terminate by flight the cruel suspense of three months’ concealment, and to embark on board an English vessel in the disguise of a lieutenant. His first asylum was Malta, where he enjoyed and appreciated the intimate friendship of the Right Honourable J. Hookham Frere; two years afterwards he proceeded to England.

“In this country, occupied in teaching Italian, and holding the Professorship at King’s College, he engaged deeply in studies of the letter and spirit of Dante’s imperishable works. The first-fruits of his labours appeared in the ‘Analytic Comment’ on Dante, of which the opening part only, the _Hell_, published in 1826 and 1827, has yet seen the light. Rossetti’s leading idea (indicated in this work, and enforced in subsequent productions with the fervour of a discoverer, vast literary diligence, and indefatigable minuteness of criticism) is that Dante, in common with numberless other great authors, wrote in a language of secret allegory, which embodies, in the form now of love, now of mythology, now of alchemy, now of freemasonry, the most daring doctrines in metaphysics and politics. In 1832 was published his work ‘On the Anti-Papal Spirit which produced the Reformation, and on the secret influence which it exercised over the Literature of Europe, and especially of Italy, as is proved by many of her Classics, Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, in particular,’ (_Sullo Spirito Antipapale_, etc.), a treatise which was translated into English; in 1840, ‘The Mystery of the Platonic Love of the Middle Ages, derived from the Ancient Mysteries,’ (_Il Mistero dell’Amor Platonico_, etc.), in five volumes; and in 1842, ‘A Critical Essay on Dante’s Beatrice’ (_La Beatrice di Dante_), the concluding parts of which remain in manuscript, but have recently, we understand, been worked up into a Frenchified concoction, issued, or to be issued, under the flaring title, _Dante Hérétique, Républicain, et Socialiste_. Rossetti’s criticisms have been much criticized. Fraticelli and Schlegel have been his unmitigated opponents: Delécluze, in his _Amour du Dante_, and the German philosopher Mendelssohn, promulgated, without entirely committing themselves to, his views; an Italian writer of credit, Vecchioni, has taken them up in labours of his own; and Arthur Hallam, immortalized by Tennyson’s _In Memoriam_, has left a respectful though adverse essay on the subject. In addition to these works, and others of minor account, four poetical volumes attest both the constancy and the versatility of Rossetti’s powers,--_Il Tempo_, _Salterio_, _Il Veggente in Solitudine_, _Versi_, and _L’Arpa Evangelica_; the last published not many months ago. Italy is not unmindful of his name.

“In private life Rossetti was thoroughly domestic and warm-hearted. His family and literature formed his world, whence the talents for society of which he possessed an ample share could not withdraw him. No political exile leaves a memory more highly above the whisper of public or private shame.”

Rossetti lies buried in Highgate Cemetery, with the following inscription: “To the dear memory of my husband, Gabriele Rossetti; born at Vasto d’Ammone in the Kingdom of Naples, 28th February 1783; died in London, 26th April 1854.” “He shall return no more nor see his native country.”--Jer. xxii. 10. “Now they desire a better country, that is an heavenly.”--Heb. xi. 16. “Ah Dio ajutami Tu.”

The concluding phrase formed the last emphatic words which Rossetti pronounced in a loud voice, in the evening of 25th April, after some hours of approximate loss of speech. The remains of my mother, my brother’s wife, and my sister Christina, are now interred in the same grave. Towards 1871 a proposal was pressed upon us for transporting my father’s remains to Italy, for ceremonial re-interment there; but the feeling of most members of the family was adverse, and the project was not carried out.

The tone of the versified Autobiography--which is a very genuine document of his character and feelings--shows pretty well what manner of man Gabriele Rossetti was; and in my Memoir of Dante Rossetti I have given some details as to family-life and personal habits. Here, therefore, I shall barely touch the fringe of the subject. It is not for me to spy out every infirmity in my father’s character; and, even were I to try to do so, I should find nothing worse to allege than a phase of self-esteem which at times trenched upon self-complacency, a disregard of externals in point of dress, etc., and an honourable (and, in the circumstances which affected himself in England and his family, a truly very requisite) habit of thriftiness which made him count the cost of every personal indulgence, while nothing expedient was stinted to his wife and children. I know him to have been diligent, indefatigable, upright, high-minded, affectionate, grateful, placable, eminently good-natured, vivacious, cheerful for the most part, friendly, companionable: whether patriotic I need not say. Our excellent friend Dr Adolf Heimann (Professor of German in University College), writing to my brother a letter of condolence on our father’s death, made the following observations, which I consider just:--“I have never seen a more devoted man of letters; endowed with some of the rarest gifts of a literary character, real love for literature, unworldliness, perseverance, and warmth of interest both in writing and reading at an advanced time of life. He might indeed have been a model to all of us. When I look at all the great scholars and men of science whom I have known, I do not remember one who was so little satisfied with show as your father, who was so content with a comparatively humble situation, and so wonderfully patient in times of affliction.”

_From a Photograph_

C. 1855.]

In person Gabriele Rossetti was barely up to middle height, fleshy and full in contour until his health failed. His eyes were dark and expressive, and did not alter when his sight was damaged; his brow fine and well-rounded; his nose, though not specially large, more than commonly prominent, with wide nostrils. His mouth was pleasant and nicely moulded, with a winning smile, and on occasion a laugh of the heartiest.