Such, then, is a synopsis of the hostile article of which the nucleus appeared in _The Contemporary Review_, and it were little less than childish to say that events so important as the publication of the article and subsequent pamphlet, and the controversy that arose out of them, should, from their unpleasantness and futility, from the bad pa.s.sions provoked by them, or yet from the regret that followed after them, be pa.s.sed over in sorrow and silence. For good or ill, what was written on both sides will remain. It has stood and will stand. Sooner or later the story of this literary quarrel will be told in detail and in cold blood, and perhaps with less than sufficient knowledge of either of the parties concerned in it, or sympathy with their aims. No better fate, one might think, could befall it than to be dealt with, however briefly, by a writer whose affections were warmly engaged on one side, while his convictions and bias of nature forced him to recognise the justice of the other--stripped, of course, of the cruelties with which literary error but too obviously enshrouded it.
Whatever the effect produced upon the public mind by the article in question (and there seems little reason to think it was at all material), the effect upon two of the writers attacked was certainly more than commensurate with the a.s.sault. Mr. Morris wisely attempted no reply to the few words of adverse criticism in which his name was specifically involved; but Mr. Swinburne retorted upon his adversary with the torrents of invective of which he has a measureless command.
Rossetti"s course was different. Greatly concerned at the bitterness, as well as startled by the unexpectedness of the attack, he wrote in the first moments of indignation a full and point-for-point rejoinder, and this he printed in the form of a pamphlet, and had a great number struck off; but with const.i.tutional irresolution (wisely restraining him in this case), he destroyed every copy, and contented himself with writing a temperate letter on the subject to _The Athenaeum_, December 16, 1871.
He said:
A sonnet, ent.i.tled _Nuptial Sleep_, is quoted and abused at page 338 of the Review, and is there dwelt upon as a "whole poem," describing "merely animal sensations." It is no more a whole poem in reality than is any single stanza of any poem throughout the book. The poem, written chiefly in sonnets, and of which this is one sonnet-stanza, is ent.i.tled _The House of Life_; and even in my first published instalment of the whole work (as contained in the volume under notice), ample evidence is included that no such pa.s.sing phase of description as the one headed _Nuptial Sleep_ could possibly be put forward by the author of _The House of Life_ as his own representative view of the subject of love.
In proof of this I will direct attention (among the love-sonnets of this poem), to Nos. 2, 8, 11, 17, 28, and more especially 13. [Here _Love Sweetness_ is printed.] Any reader may bring any artistic charge he pleases against the above sonnet; but one charge it would be impossible to maintain against the writer of the series in which it occurs, and that is, the wish on his part to a.s.sert that the body is greater than the soul. For here all the pa.s.sionate and just delights of the body are declared--somewhat figuratively, it is true, but unmistakeably--to be as naught if not enn.o.bled by the concurrence of the soul at all times.
Moreover, nearly one half of this series of sonnets has nothing to do with love, but treats of quite other life-influences. I would defy any one to couple with fair quotation of sonnets 29, 30, 31, 39, 40, 43, or others, the slander that their author was not impressed, like all other thinking men, with the responsibilities and higher mysteries of life; while sonnets 35, 36, and 37, ent.i.tled _The Choice_, sum up the general view taken in a manner only to be evaded by conscious insincerity. Thus much for _The House of Life_, of which the sonnet _Nuptial Sleep_ is one stanza, embodying, for its small const.i.tuent share, a beauty of natural universal function, only to be reprobated in art if dwelt on (as I have shown that it is not here), to the exclusion of those other highest things of which it is the harmonious concomitant.
It had become known that the article in the _Review_ was not the work of the unknown Thomas Maitland, whose name it bore, and on this head Rossetti wrote:
Here a critical organ, professedly adopting the principle of open signature, would seem, in reality, to a.s.sert (by silent practice, however, not by annunciation) that if the anonymous in criticism was--as itself originally indicated--but an early caterpillar stage, the nominate too is found to be no better than a homely transitional chrysalis, and that the ultimate b.u.t.terfly form for a critic who likes to sport in sunlight, and yet elude the grasp, is after all the pseudonymous.
It transpired, in subsequent correspondence (of which there was more than enough), that the actual writer was Mr. Robert Buchanan, then a young author who had risen into distinction as a poet, and who was consequently suspected, by the writers and disciples of the Rossetti school, of being actuated much more by feelings of rivalry than by desire for the public good. Mr. Buchanan"s reply to the serious accusation of having a.s.sailed a brother-poet pseudonymously was that the false signature was affixed to the article without his knowledge, "in order that the criticism might rest upon its own merits, and gain nothing from the name of the real writer."
It was an unpleasant controversy, and what remains as an impartial synopsis of it appears to be this: that there was actually manifest in the poetry of certain writers a tendency to deviate from wholesome reticence, and that this dangerous tendency came to us from France, where deep-seated unhealthy pa.s.sion so gave shape to the glorification of gross forms of animalism as to excite alarm that what had begun with the hideousness of _Femmes d.a.m.nees_ would not even end there; finally, that the unpleasant truth demanded to be spoken--by whomsoever had courage enough to utter it--that to deify mere l.u.s.t was an offence and an outrage. So much for the justice on Mr. Buchanan"s side; with the mistaken criticism linking the writers of Dante"s time with French writers of the time of Baudelaire it is hardly necessary to deal. On the other hand, it must be said that the sum-total of all the English poetry written in imitation of the worst forms of this French excess was probably less than one hundred lines; that what was really reprehensible in the English imitation of the poetry of the French School was, therefore, too inconsiderable to justify a wholesale charge against it of an endeavour to raise the banner of a black ambition whose only aim was to ruin society; that Rossetti, who was made to bear the brunt of attack, was a man who never by direct avowal, or yet by inference, displayed the faintest conceivable sympathy with the French excesses in question, and who never wrote a line inspired by unwholesome pa.s.sion.
As the pith of Mr. Buchanan"s accusation of 1871 lay here, and as Mr.
Buchanan has, since then, very manfully withdrawn it, {*} we need hardly go further; but, as more recent articles in prominent places, _The Edinburgh Review, The British Quarterly Review, and again The Contemporary Review_, have repeated what was first said by him on the alleged unwholesomeness of Rossetti"s poetic impulses, it may be as well to admit frankly, and at once (for the subject will arise in the future as frequently as this poetry is under discussion) that love of bodily beauty did underlie much of the poet"s work. But has not the same pa.s.sion made the back-bone of nine-tenths of the n.o.blest English poetry since Chaucer? If it is objected that Rossetti"s love of physical beauty took new forms, the rejoinder is that it would have been equally childish and futile to attempt to prescribe limits for it. All this we grant to those unfriendly critics who refuse to see that spiritual beauty and not sensuality was Rossetti"s actual goal.
* Writing to me on this subject since Rossetti"s death, Mr.
Buchanan says:--"In perfect frankness, let me say a few words concerning our old quarrel. While admitting freely that my article in the C. R. was unjust to Rossetti"s claims as a poet, I have ever held, and still hold, that it contained nothing to warrant the manner in which it was received by the poet and his circle. At the time it was written, the newspapers were full of panegyric; mine was a mere drop of gall in an ocean of _eau sucree_. That it could have had on any man the effect you describe, I can scarcely believe; indeed, I think that no living man had so little to complain of as Rossetti, on the score of criticism. Well, my protest was received in a way which turned irritation into wrath, wrath into violence; and then ensued the paper war which lasted for years. If you compare what I have written of Rossetti with what his admirers have written of myself, I think you will admit that there has been some cause for me to complain, to shun society, to feel bitter against the world; but happily, I have a thick epidermis, and the courage of an approving conscience. I was unjust, as I have said; most unjust when I impugned the purity and misconceived the pa.s.sion of writings too hurriedly read and reviewed currente calamo; but I was at least honest and fearless, and wrote with no personal malignity. Save for the action of the literary defence, if I may so term it, my article would have been as ephemeral as the mood which induced its composition. I make full admission of Rossetti"s claims to the purest kind of literary renown, and if I were to criticise his poems now, I should write very differently.
But nothing will shake my conviction that the cruelty, the unfairness, the pusillanimity has been on the other side, not on mine. The amende of my Dedication in G.o.d and the Man was a sacred thing; between his spirit and mine; not between my character and the cowards who have attacked it. I thought he would understand,--which would have been, and indeed is, sufficient. I cried, and cry, no truce with the horde of slanderers who hid themselves within his shadow. That is all. But when all is said, there still remains the pity that our quarrel should ever have been. Our little lives are too short for such animosities. Your friend is at peace with G.o.d,--that G.o.d who will justify and cherish him, who has dried his tears, and who will turn the shadow of his sad life-dream into full sunshine. My only regret now is that we did not meet,--that I did not take him by the hand; but I am old-fashioned enough to believe that this world is only a prelude, and that our meeting may take place--even yet."
To Rossetti, the poet, the accusation of extolling fleshliness as the distinct and supreme end of art was, after all, only an error of critical judgment; but to Rossetti, the man, the charge was something far more serious. It was a cruel and irremediable wound inflicted upon a fine spirit, sensitive to attack beyond all sensitiveness. .h.i.therto known among poets. He who had withheld his pictures from exhibition from dread of the distracting influences of popular opinion, he who for fifteen years had withheld his poems from print in obedience first to an extreme modesty of personal estimate and afterwards to the commands of a mastering affection was likely enough at forty-two years of age (after being loaded by the disciples that idolised him with only too much of the "frankincense of praise and myrrh of flattery") to feel deeply the slander that he had unpacked his bosom of unhealthy pa.s.sions. But to say that Rossetti felt the slander does not express his sense of it. He had replied to his reviewer and had acted unwisely in so doing; but when one after one--in the _Quarterly Review, the North American Review_, and elsewhere, in articles more or less ignorant, uncritical, and stupid--the accusations he had reb.u.t.ted were repeated with increased bitterness, he lost all hope of stemming the torrent of hostile criticism. He had, as we have seen, for years lived in partial retirement, enjoying at intervals a garden party behind the house, or going about occasionally to visit relatives and acquaintances, but now he became entirely reclusive, refusing to see any friends except the three or four intimate ones who were constantly with him. Nor did the mischief end there. We have spoken of his habitual use of chloral, which was taken at first in small doses as a remedy for insomnia and afterwards indulged in to excess at moments of physical prostration or nervous excitement. To that false friend he came at this time with only too great a.s.siduity, and the chloral, added to the seclusive habit of life, induced a series of terrible though intermittent illnesses and a morbid condition of mind in which for a little while he was the victim of many painful delusions. It was at this time that the soothing friendship of Dr. Gordon Hake, and his son Mr. George Hake, was of such inestimable service to Rossetti. Having appeared myself on the scene much later I never had the privilege of knowing either of these two gentlemen, for Mr. George Hake was already gone away to Cyprus and Dr.
Hake had retired very much into the bosom of his own family where, as is rumoured, he has been engaged upon a literary work which will establish his fame. But I have often heard Mr. Theodore Watts speak with deep emotion and eloquent enthusiasm of the tender kindness and loyal zeal shown to Rossetti during this crisis by Mr. Bell Scott, and by Dr. Hake and his son. As to Mr. Theodore Watts, whose brotherly devotion to him, and beneficial influence over him from that time forward are so well known, this must be considered by those who witnessed it to be almost without precedent or parallel even in the beautiful story of literary friendships, and it does as much honour to the one as to the other. No light matter it must have been to lay aside one"s own long-cherished life-work and literary ambitions to be Rossetti"s closest friend and brother, at a moment like the present, when he imagined the world to be conspiring against him; but through these evil days, and long after them down to his death, the friend that clung closer than a brother was with him, as he himself said, to protect, to soothe, to comfort, to divert, to interest, and inspire him--asking, meantime, no better reward than the knowledge that a n.o.ble mind and nature was by such sacrifice lifted out of sorrow. Among the world"s great men the greatest are sometimes those whose names are least on our lips, and this is because selfish aims have been so subordinate in their lives to the welfare of others as to leave no time for the personal achievements that win personal distinction; but when the world comes to the knowledge of the price that has been paid for the devotion that enables others to enjoy their renown, shall it not reward with a double meed of grat.i.tude the fine spirits to whom ambition has been as nothing against fidelity of friendship? Among the latest words I heard from Rossetti was this: "Watts is a hero of friendship;" and indeed he has displayed his capacity for partic.i.p.ation in the n.o.blest part of comradeship, that part, namely, which is far above the mere traffic that too often goes by the name, and wherein self-love always counts upon being the gainer. If in the end it should appear that he has in his own person done less than might have been hoped for from one possessed of his splendid gifts, let it not be overlooked that he has influenced in a quite incalculable degree, and influenced for good, several of the foremost among those who in their turn have influenced the age. As Rossetti"s faithful friend, and gifted medical adviser, Mr. John Marshall has often declared, there were periods when Rossetti"s very life may be said to have hung upon Mr.
Watts"s power to cheer and soothe.
Efforts were afoot about the year 1872 to induce Rossetti to visit Italy--a journey which, strangely enough, he had never made--but this he could not be prevailed upon to do. In the hope of diverting his mind from the unwholesome matters that too largely engaged it, his brother and friends, prominent among whom at this time were Mr. Bell Scott, Mr.
Ford Madox Brown, Mr. W. Graham, and Dr. Gordon Hake, as well as his a.s.sistant and friend, Mr. H. T. Dunn, and Mr. George Hake, induced him to seek a change in Scotland, and there he speedily recovered tone.
Immediately upon the publication of his first volume, and incited thereto by the early success of it, he had written the poem _Rose Mary_, as well as two lyrics published at the time in _The Fortnightly Review_; but he suffered so seriously from the subsequent a.s.saults of criticism, that he seemed definitely to lay aside all hope of producing further poetry, and, indeed, to become possessed of the delusion that he had for ever lost all power of doing so. It is an interesting fact, well known in his own literary circle, that his taking up poetry afresh was the result of a fortuitous occurrence. After one of his most serious illnesses, and in the hope of drawing off his attention from himself, and from the gloomy forebodings which in an invalid"s mind usually gather about his own too absorbing personality, a friend prevailed upon him, with infinite solicitation, to try his hand afresh at a sonnet. The outcome was an effort so feeble as to be all but unrecognisable as the work of the author of the sonnets of _The House of Life_, but with more shrewdness and friendliness (on this occasion) than frankness, the critic lavished measureless praise upon it, and urged the poet to renewed exertion. One by one, at longer or shorter intervals, sonnets were written, and this exercise did more towards his recovery than any other medicine, with the result besides that Rossetti eventually regained all his old dexterity and mastery of hand. The artifice had succeeded beyond every expectation formed of it, serving, indeed, the twofold end of improving the invalid"s health by preventing his brooding over unhealthy matters, and increasing the number of his accomplished works. Encouraged by such results, the friend went on to induce Rossetti to write a ballad, and this purpose he finally achieved by challenging the poet"s ability to compose in the simple, direct, and emphatic style, which is the style of the ballad proper, as distinguished from the elaborate, ornate, and condensed diction which he had hitherto worked in. Put upon his mettle, the outcome of this second artifice practised upon him, was that he wrote _The White Ship_, and afterwards _The King"s Tragedy_.
Thus was Rossetti already immersed in this revived occupation of poetic composition, and had recovered a healthy* tone of body, before he became conscious of what was being done with him. It is a further amusing fact that one day he requested to be shown the first sonnet which, in view of the praise lavished upon it by the friend on whose judgment he reposed, had encouraged him to renewed effort. The sonnet was bad: the critic knew it was bad, and had from the first hour of its production kept it carefully out of sight, and was now more than ever unwilling to show it.
Eventually, however, by reason of ceaseless importunity, he returned it to its author, who, upon reading it, cried: "You fraud! you said this sonnet was good, and it"s the worst I _ever_ wrote." "The worst ever written would perhaps be a truer criticism," was the reply, as the studio resounded with a hearty laugh, and the poem was committed to the flames. It would appear that to this occurrence we probably owe a large portion of the contents of the volume of 1881.
As we say, _Rose Mary_ was the first to be written of the leading poems that found places in his final volume. This ballad (or ballad romance, for ballad it can hardly be called) is akin to _Sister Helen_ in _motif_. The superst.i.tion involved owes something in this case as in the other to the invention and poetic bias of the poet. It has, however, less of what has been called the Catholic element, and is more purely Pagan. It is, therefore, as entirely undisturbed by animosity against heresy, and is concerned only with an ultimate demoniacal justice visiting the wrongdoer. The main point of divergency lies in the circ.u.mstance that Rose Mary, unlike Helen, is the undesigning instrument of evil powers, and that her blind deed is the means by which her own and her lover"s sin and his treachery become revealed. A further material point of divergency lies in the fact that unlike Helen, who loses her soul (as the price of revenge, directed against her betrayer), Rose Mary loses her life (as the price of vengeance directed against the evil race), whilst her soul gains rest. The superst.i.tion is that a.s.sociated with the beryl stone, wherein the pure only may read the future, and from which sinful eyes must chase the spirits of grace and leave their realm to be usurped by the spirits of fire, who seal up the truth or reveal it by contraries. Rose Mary, who has sinned with her lover, is bidden to look in the beryl and learn where lurks the ambush that waits to take his life as he rides at break of day. Hiding, but remembering her transgression, she at first shrinks, but at length submits, and the blessed spirits by whom the stone has been tenanted give place to the fiery train. The stone is not sealed to her; and the long spell being ministered, she is satisfied. But she has read the stone by contraries, and her lover falls into the hand of his enemy.
By his death is their secret sin made known. And then a newer shame is revealed, not to her eyes, but to her mother"s: even the treachery of the murdered man. Ignorant of this to the end, Eose Mary seeks to work a twofold ransoming by banishing from the beryl the evil powers. With the sword of her father (by whom the accursed gift had been brought from Palestine), she cleaves the heart of the stone, and with the broken spell her own life breaks.
It will readily be seen that the scheme of the ballad does not afford opportunity for a memorable incursion in the domain of character. Rose Mary herself as a creation is not comparable with Helen. But the ballad throughout is nevertheless a triumph of the higher imagination. Nowhere else (to take the lowest ground) has Rossetti displayed so great a gift of flashing images upon the mind at once by a single expression.
Closely locked, they clung without speech, And the mirrored souls shook each to each, As the cloud-moon and the water-moon Shake face to face when the dim stars swoon In stormy bowers of the night"s mid-noon.
Deep the flood and heavy the shock When sea meets sea in the riven rock: But calm is the pulse that shakes the sea To the prisoned tide of doom set free In the breaking heart of Rose Mary.
She knew she had waded bosom-deep Along death"s bank in the sedge of sleep.
And now in Eose Mary"s lifted eye "Twas shadow alone that made reply To the set face of the soul"s dark shy.
Nor has Rossetti anywhere displayed a more sustained picturesqueness.
One episode stands forth vividly even among so many that are conspicuous. The mother has left her daughter in a swoon to seek help of the priest who has knelt unweariedly by the dead body of her daughter"s lover, now lying on the ingle-bench in the hall. When the priest has gone and the castle folk have left her alone, the lady sinks to her knees beside the corpse. Great wrong the dead man has done to her and hers, and perhaps G.o.d has wrought this doom of his for a sign; but well she knows, or thinks she knows, that if life had remained with him his love would have been security for their honour. She stoops with a sob to kiss the dead, but before her lips touch the cold brow she sees a packet half-hidden in the dead man"s breast. It is a folded paper about which the blood from a spear-thrust has grown clotted, and inside is a tress of golden hair. Some pledge of her child"s she thinks it, and proceeds to undo the paper"s folds, and then learns the treachery of the fallen knight and suffers a bitterer pang than came of the knowledge of her daughter"s dishonour. It is a love-missive from the sister of his foe and murderer.
She rose upright with a long low moan, And stared in the dead man"s face new-known.
Had it lived indeed? she scarce could tell: "Twas a cloud where fiends had come to dwell,-- A mask that hung on the gate of h.e.l.l.
She lifted the lock of gleaming hair, And smote the lips and left it there.
"Here"s gold that h.e.l.l shall take for thy toll!
Full well hath thy treason found its goal, O thou dead body and d.a.m.ned soul!"
Anything finer than this it would be hard to discover in English narrative poetry. Every word goes to build up the story: every line is quintessential: every flash of thought helps to heighten the emotion.
Indeed the closing lines rise entirely above the limits of ballad poetry into the realm of dramatic diction. But perhaps the crowning glory and epic grandeur of the poem comes at the close. Awakened from her swoon, Rose Mary makes her way to the altar-cell and there she sees the beryl-stone lying between the wings of some sculptured beast. Within the fated gla.s.s she beholds Death, Sorrow, Sin and Shame marshalled past in the glare of a writhing flame, and thereupon follows a scene scarcely less terrible than Juliet"s vision of the tomb of the Capulets. But she has been told within this hour that her weak hand shall send hence the evil race by whom the stone is possessed, and with a stern purpose she reaches her father"s dinted sword. Then when the beryl is cleft to the core, and Rose Mary lies in her last gracious sleep--
With a cold brow like the snows ere May, With a cold breast like the earth till spring, With such a smile as the June days bring-- A clear voice p.r.o.nounces her beat.i.tude:
Already thy heart remembereth No more his name thou sought"st in death: For under all deeps, all heights above,-- So wide the gulf in the midst thereof,-- Are h.e.l.l of Treason and Heaven of Love.
Thee, true soul, shall thy truth prefer To blessed Mary"s rose-bower: Warmed and lit is thy place afar With guerdon-fires of the sweet love-star, Where hearts of steadfast lovers are.
The White Ship was written in 1880; _The King"s Tragedy_ in the spring of 1881. These historical ballads we must briefly consider together. The memorable events of which Rossetti has made poetic record are, in _The White Ship_, those a.s.sociated with the wreck of the ship in which the son and daughter of Henry I. of England set sail from France, and in _The King"s Tragedy_, with the death of James the First of Scots. The story of the one is told by the sole survivor, Herold, the butcher of Rouen; and of the other by Catherine Douglas, the maid of honour who received popularly the name of Kate Barla.s.s, in recognition of her heroic act when she barred the door with her arm against the murderers of the King. It is scarcely possible to conceive in either case a diction more perfectly adapted to the person by whom it is employed.
If we compare the language of these ballads with that of the sonnets or other poems spoken in the author"s own person, we find it is not first of all gorgeous, condensed, emphatic. It is direct, simple, pure and musical; heightened, it is true, by imagery acquired in its pa.s.sage through the medium of the poet"s mind, but in other respects essentially the language of the historical personages who are made to speak. The diction belongs in each case to the period of the ballad in which it is employed, and yet there is no wanton use of archaisms, or any disposition manifested to resort to meretricious artifices by which to impart an appearance of probability to the story other than that which comes legitimately of sheer narrative excellence. The characterisation is that of history with the features softened that const.i.tuted the prose of real life, and with the salient, moral, and intellectual lineaments brought into relief. Herein the ballad may do that final justice which history itself withholds. Thus the King Henry of _The White Ship_ is governed by l.u.s.t of dominion more than by parental affection; and the Prince, his son, is a lawless, shameless youth; intolerant, tyrannical, luxurious, voluptuous, yet capable of self-sacrifice even amidst peril of death.
When he should be King, he oft would vow, He "d yoke the peasant to his own plough.
O"er him the ships score their furrows now.
G.o.d only knows where his soul did wake, But I saw him die for his sister"s sake.
The King James of _The King"s Tragedy_ is of a righteous and fearless nature, strong yet sensitive, unbending before the pride and hate of powerful men, resolute, and ready even where fate itself declares that death lurks where his road must lie; his beautiful Queen Jane is sweet, tender, loving, devoted--meet spouse for a poet and king. The incidents too are those of history: the choice and final collocation of them, and the closing scene in which the queen mourns her husband, being the sum of the author"s contribution. And those incidents are in the highest degree varied and picturesque. The author has not achieved a more vivid pictorial presentment than is displayed in these latest ballads from his pen. It would be hard to find in his earlier work anything bearing more clearly the stamp of reality than the descriptions of the wreck in _The White Ship_, of the two drowning men together on the mainyard, of the morning dawning over the dim sea-sky--
At last the morning rose on the sea Like an angel"s wing that beat towards me--
and of the little golden-haired boy in black whose foot patters down the court of the king. Certainly Rossetti has never attained a higher pictorial level than he reaches in the descriptions of the summoned Parliament in _The King"s Tragedy_, of the journey to the Charterhouse of Perth, of the woman on the rock of the black beach of the Scottish sea, of the king singing to the queen the song he made while immured by Bolingbroke at Windsor, of the knock of the woman at the outer gate, of her voice at night beneath the window, of the death in _The Pit of Fortune"s Wheel_. But all lesser excellencies must make way in our regard before a distinguishing spiritualising element which exists in these ballads only, or mainly amongst the author"s works. Natural portents are here first employed as factors of poetic creation.
Presentiment, foreboding, omen become the essential tissue of works that are lifted by them into the higher realm of imagination. These supernatural const.i.tuents penetrate and pervade _The White Ship_; and _The King"s Tragedy_ is saturated in the spirit of them. We do not speak of the incidents a.s.sociated with the wraith that haunts the isles, but of the less palpable touches which convey the scarce explicable sense of a change of voice when the king sings of the pit that is under fortune"s wheel:
And under the wheel, beheld I there An ugly Pit as deep as h.e.l.l, That to behold I quaked for fear: And this I heard, that who therein fell Came no more up, tidings to tell: Whereat, astound of the fearful sight, I wot not what to do for fright.
(The King"s Quair.)
It is the shadow of the supernatural that hangs over the king, and very soon it must enshroud him. One of the most subtle and impressive of the natural portents is that which presents itself to the eyes of Catherine when the leaguers have first left the chamber, and the moon goes out and leaves black the royal armorial shield on the painted window-pane:
And the rain had ceased, and the moonbeams lit The window high in the wall,-- Bright beams that on the plank that I knew Through the painted pane did fall And gleamed with the splendour of Scotland"s crown And shield armorial.
But then a great wind swept up the skies, And the climbing moon fell back; And the royal blazon fled from the floor, And nought remained on its track; And high in the darkened window-pane The shield and the crown were black.
It has been said that _Sister Helen_ strikes the keynote of Rossetti"s creative gift; it ought to be added that _The King"s Tragedy_ touches his highest reach of imagination.
Having in the early part of 1881 brought together a sufficient quant.i.ty of fresh poetry to fill a volume, Rossetti began negotiations for publishing it. Antic.i.p.atory announcements were at that time constantly appearing in many quarters, not rarely accompanied by an outspoken disbelief in the poet"s ability to achieve a second success equal to his first. In this way it often happens to an author, that, having achieved a single conspicuous triumph, the public mind, which has spontaneously offered him the tribute of a generous recognition, forthwith gravitates towards a disposition to become silently but unmistakeably sceptical of his power to repeat it. Subsequent effort in such a case is rarely regarded with that confidence which might be looked for as the reward of achievement, and which goes far to prepare the mind for the ready acceptance of any genuine triumph. Indeed, a jealous att.i.tude is often unconsciously adopted, involving a demand for special qualities, for which, perchance, the peculiar character of the past success has created an appet.i.te, or obedience to certain arbitrary tests, which, though pa.s.sively present in the recognised work, have grown mainly out of critical a.n.a.lysis of it, and are neither radical nor essential. Where, moreover, such conspicuous success has been followed by an interval of years distinguished by no signal effort, the sceptical bias of the public mind sometimes complacently settles into a conviction (grateful alike to its pride and envy, whilst consciously hurtful to its more generous impulses), that the man who made it lived once indeed upon the mountains, but has at length come down to dwell finally upon the plain.
Literary biography furnishes abundant examples of this imperfection of character, a foible, indeed, which in its multiform manifestations, probably goes as far as anything else to interfere with the formation of a just and final judgment of an author"s merit within his own lifetime.
When it goes the length of affirming that even a great writer"s creative activity usually finds not merely central realisation, but absolute exhaustion within the limits of some single work, to reason against it is futile, and length of time affords it the only satisfying refutation.
One would think that it could scarcely require to be urged that creative impulse, once existent within a mind, can never wholly depart from it, but must remain to the end, dependent, perhaps, for its expression in some measure on external promptings, variable with the variations of physical environments, but always gathering innate strength for the hour (silent perchance, or audible only within other spheres), when the inventive faculty shall be harmonised, animated, and lubricated to its utmost height. Nevertheless, Coleridge encountered the implied doubtfulness of his contemporaries, that the gift remained with him to carry to its completion the execution of that most subtle mid-day witchery, which, as begun in _Christabel_, is probably the most difficult and elusive thing ever attempted in the field of romance.
Goethe, too, found himself face to face with outspoken distrust of his continuation of _Faust_; and even Cervantes had perforce to challenge the popular judgment which long refused to allow that the second part of _Don Quixote_, with all its added significance, was adequate to his original simple conception. Indeed that author must be considered fortunate who effects a reversal of the public judgment against the completion of a fragment, and the repet.i.tion of a complete and conspicuous success.
When Rossetti published his first volume of poems in 1870, he left only his _House of Life_ incomplete; but amongst the readers who then offered spontaneous tribute to that series of sonnets, and still treasured it as a work of all but faultless symmetry, built up by aid of a blended inspiration caught equally from Shakspeare and from Dante, with a superadded psychical quality peculiar to its author, there were many, even amongst the friendliest in sympathy, who heard of the completed sequence with a sense of doubt. Such is the silent and unreasoning and all but irrevocable edict of all popular criticism against continuations of works which have in fragmentary form once made conquest of the popular imagination. Moreover, Rossetti"s first volume achieved a success so signal and unexpected as to subject this second and maturer book to the preliminary ordeal of such a questioning att.i.tude of mind as we speak of, as the unfailing and ungracious reward of a conspicuous triumph. In the interval of eleven years, Rossetti had essayed no notable achievement, and his name had been found attached only to such fugitive efforts as may have lived from time to time a brief life in the pages of the _Athenaeum_ and _Fortnightly_. Of the works in question two only come now within our province to mention. The first and most memorable was the poem _Cloud Confines_. Inadequate as the critical attention necessarily was which this remarkable lyric obtained, indications were not wanting that it had laid unconquerable siege to the sympathies of that section of the public in whose enthusiasm the life of every creative work is seen chiefly to abide. There was in it a lyrical sweetness scarcely ever previously compa.s.sed by its author, a cadent undertoned symphony that first gave testimony that the poet held the power of conveying by words a sensible eflfect of great music, even as former works of his had given testimony to his power of conveying a sensible eflfect by great painting. But to these metrical excellencies was added an element new to Rossetti"s poetry, or seen here for the first time conspicuously. Insight and imagination of a high order, together with a poetic instinct whose promptings were sure, had already found expression in more than one creation moulded into an innate chasteness of perfected parts and wedded to nature with an unerring fidelity. But the range of nature was circ.u.mscribed, save only in the one exception of a work throbbing with the sufferings and sorrows of a shadowed side of modern life. To this lyric, however, there came as basis a fundamental conception that made aim to grapple with the pro-foundest problems compa.s.sed by the mysteries of life and death, and a temper to yield only where human perception fails. Abstract indeed in theme the lyric is, but few are the products of thought out of which imagination has delved a more concrete and varied picturesqueness: