Part 8 (1/2)
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 other aspects being to my apprehension mere bogies) I conceive the leading point about his work is its human love, and the leading point about his career, the sad fact of how little of it was devoted to that work. These are the points made in my sonnet, and the last is such as I (alas!) can sympathise with, though what has excluded more poetry with me (_mountains_ of it I don't want to heap) has chiefly been livelihood necessity. I 'll copy the sonnet on opposite page, only I 'd rather you kept it to yourself. _Five_ years of _good_ poetry is too long a tether to give his Muse, I know.
His Soul fared forth (as from the deep home-grove The father Songster plies the hour-long quest) To feed his soul-brood hungering in the nest; But his warm Heart, the mother-bird above Their callow fledgling progeny still hove With tented roof of wings and fostering breast Till the Soul fed the soul-brood. Richly blest From Heaven their growth, whose food was Human Love.
Tet ah! Like desert pools that shew the stars Once in long leagues--even such the scarce-s.n.a.t.c.hed hours Which deepening pain left to his lordliest powers:-- Heaven lost through spider-trammelled prison-bars!
Five years, from seventy saved! yet kindling skies Own 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 const.i.tutional procrastination, and to this objection Rossetti replied:
Line eleven in my first reading was ”deepening _sloth_;” but it seemed harsh--and--d.a.m.n it all! much too like the spirit of 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 of _Endymion_ which attracted the author of _Rose Mary_ as the perfect hold of the supernatural which is seen in _La Belle Dame Sans Merci_ and in the fragment of the _Eve of St. Mark_. At the time of our correspondence, I was engaged upon an essay on Keats, and _a propos_ of this Rossetti wrote:
I shall take pleasure in reading your Keats article when ready. He was, among all his contemporaries who established their names, the one true heir of Shakspeare. Another (unestablished then, but partly revived since) was Charles Wells. Did you ever read his splendid dramatic poem _Joseph and 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 t.i.tles 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 of _Joseph and his Brethren_. He told me the t.i.tle 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, probably _The 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 in _The Athenaeum_ of 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 publis.h.i.+ng it, and the poem went forth with the n.o.ble commendatory essay of the young author of _Atalanta_, whose reputation was already almost at its height, though it lacked (doubtless from a touch of his const.i.tutional 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 original work, a man does some of his best things by your time of life, though he only finds it out in a rage much later, at some date when he expected to know no longer that he had ever done them. Keats hardly died so much too early--not at all if there had been any danger of his taking to the modern habit eventually--treating material as product, and shooting it all out as it comes. Of course, however, he wouldn't; he was getting always choicer and simpler, and my favourite piece in his works is _La Belle Dame Sans Merci_--I suppose about his last. As to Sh.e.l.ley, it is really a mercy that he has not been hatching yearly universes till now. He might, I suppose; for his friend Trelawny still walks the earth without great-coat, stockings, or underclothing, this Christmas (1879). In criticism, matters are different, as to seasons of production.... I am writing hurriedly and horribly in every sense. Write on the subject again and I'll try to answer better. All greetings to you.
P.S.--I think your reference to Keats new, and on a high level It calls back to my mind an adaptation of his self- chosen epitaph which I made in my very earliest days of boyish rhyming, when I was rather proud to be as c.o.c.kney as Keats _could_ be. Here it is,--
Through one, years since d.a.m.ned and forgot Who stabbed backs by the Quarter, Here lieth one who, while Time's stream Still runs, as G.o.d hath taught her, Bearing man's fame to men, hath writ His name upon that water.
Well, the rhyme is not so bad as Keats's
Ear Of G.o.ddess of Theraea!--
nor (tell it not in Gath!) as---
I wove a crown before her For her I love so dearly, A garland for Lenora!
Is it possible the laurel crown should now hide a venerated and impeccable ear which was once the ear of a c.o.c.kney?
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 completed _Rose Mary_, and wrote _The King's Tragedy_ and _The White s.h.i.+p_, 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, ”Where can we look for more poetry per page than Keats furnishes?”
It is strange that there is not yet one complete edition of him. {*} No doubt the desideratum (so far as care and exhaustiveness go), will be supplied when
Forman's edition appears. He is a good appreciator too, as I have reason to say. You will think it strange that I have not seen the Keats love-letters, but I mean to do so.
However, I am told they add nothing to one's idea of his epistolary powers.... I hear sometimes from Buxton Forman, and was sending him the other day an extract (from a book called _The Unseen World_) which doubtless bears on the superst.i.tion which Keats intended to develope in his lovely _Eve of St. Mark_--a fragment which seems to me to rank with _La Belle Dame Sans Merci_, as a clear advance in direct simplicity.... You ought to have my recent Keats sonnet, so I send it. Your own plan, for one on the same subject, seems to me most beautiful. Do it at once. You will see that mine is again concerned with the epitaph, and perhaps my reviving the latter in writing you was the cause of the sonnet.
* Rossetti afterwards admitted in conversation that the Aldine Edition seemed complete, though I think he did not approve of the chronological arrangement therein adopted; at least he thought that arrangement had many serious disadvantages.
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 so _intimes_ should 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:
Forman gave me a copy of Keats's letters to f.a.n.n.y Brawne.
The silhouette given of the lady is sadly disenchanting, and may be the strongest proof existing of how much a man may know about abstract Beauty without having an artist's eye for the outside of it.