Part 9 (1/2)

There is a poem of Vaughan's on Gombauld's _Endimion_, which might make one think it more fascinating than it really is.

Though rather prolix, however, it has attractions as a somewhat devious romantic treatment of the subject. The little book is one of the first I remember in this world, and I used to dip into it again and again as a child, but never yet read it through. I still possess it. I dare say it is not easily met with, and should suppose Keats had probably never seen it. If he had, he might really have taken a hint or two for his scheme, which is hardly so clear even as Gombauld's, though its endless digressions teem with beauty.... I do not think you would benefit at all by seeing Gombauld's _Endimion_. Vaughan's poem on it might be worth quoting as showing what attention the subject had received before Keats. I have the poem in Gilfillan's _Less-Known Poets_.

Rossetti took a great interest in the fund started for the relief of Mme. de Llanos, Keats's sister, whose circ.u.mstances were seriously reduced. He wrote:

By the bye, I don't know whether the subscription for Keats's old and only surviving sister (Madme de Llanos) has been at all ventilated in Liverpool. It flags sorely. Do you think there would be any chance in your neighbourhood? If so, prospectuses, etc., could be sent.

I did not view the prospect of subscriptions as very hopeful, and so conceived the idea of a lecture in the interests of the fund. On this project, Rossetti wrote:

I enclose prospectuses as to the Keats subscription. I may say that I did not know the list would accompany them--still less that contributions would be so low generally as to leave me near the head of the list--an unenviable sort of parade.... My own opinion about the lecture question is this. You know best whether such a lecture could be turned to the purposes of your Keats article (now in progress), or rather be so much deduction from the freshness of its resources: and this should be the _absolute_ test of its being done or not done.... I think, if it can be done without impoveris.h.i.+ng your materials, the method of getting Lord Houghton to preside and so raising as much from it as possible is doubtless the right one. Of course I view it as far more hopeful than mere distribution of any number of prospectuses.... Even 25 would be a great contribution to the fund.

The lecture project was not found feasible, and hence it was abandoned.

Meantime the kindness of friends enabled me to add to the list a good number of subscriptions, but feeling scarcely satisfied with any such success as I might be likely to have in that direction, I opened, by the help of a friend, a correspondence with Lord Houghton with a view to inducing him to apply for a pension for the lady. It then transpired that Lord Houghton had already applied to Lord Beaconsfield for a pension for Mme. Llanos, and would doubtless have got it, had not Mr.

Buxton Forman applied for a grant from the Royal Bounty, which was easier to give. I told Rossetti of this fact and he said:

I am not surprised about Lord H., and feel sure it is a pity he was not left to try Beaconsfield, but I judge the projectors on the other side knew nothing of his intentions.

However, _I_ was in no way a projector.

In the end Lord Houghton repeated to Mr. Gladstone the application he had made to Lord Beaconsfield, and succeeded.

Rossetti must have been among the earliest admirers of Keats. I remarked on one occasion that it was very natural that Lord Houghton should consider himself in a sense the first among men now living to champion the poet and establish his name, and Rossetti admitted that this was so, and was ungrudging in his tribute to Lord Houghton's services towards the better appreciation of Keats; but he contended, nevertheless, that he had himself been one of the first writers of the generation succeeding the poet's own to admire and uphold him, and that this was at a time when it made demand of some courage to cla.s.s him among the immortals, when an original edition of any of his books could be bought for sixpence on a bookstall, and when only Leigh Hunt, Cowden Clarke, Hood, Benjamin Haydon, and perhaps a few others, were still living of those who recognised his great gifts.

CHAPTER VI.

Rossetti's primary interest in Chatterton dates back to an early period, as I find by the date, 1848, in the copy he possessed of the poet's works. But throughout a long interval he neglected Chatterton, and it was not until his friend Theodore Watts, who had made Chatterton a special study, had undertaken to select from and write upon him in Ward's _English Poets_, that he revived his old acquaintance. Whatever Rossetti did he did thoroughly, and hence he became as intimate perhaps with the Rowley antiques as any other man had ever been. His letters written during the course of his Chatterton researches must, I think, prove extremely interesting. He says:

Glancing at your Keats MS., I notice (in a series of parallels) the names of Marlowe and Savage; but not the less ”marvellous” than absolutely miraculous Chatterton. Are you up in his work? He is in the very first rank! Theod. Watts is ”doing him” for the new selection of poets by Arnold and Ward, and I have contributed a sonnet to Watts's article....

I a.s.sure you Chatterton's name _must_ come in somewhere in the parallel pa.s.sage. He was as great as any English poet whatever, and might absolutely, had he lived, have proved the only man in England's theatre of imagination who could have bandied parts with Shakspeare. The best way of getting at him is in Skeat's Aldine edition (G. Bell and Co., 1875).

Read him carefully, and you will find his acknowledged work essentially as powerful as his antiques, though less evenly successful--the Rowley work having been produced in Bristol leisure, however indigent, and the modern poetry in the very fangs of London struggle. Strong derivative points are to be found in Keats and Coleridge from the study of Chatterton. I feel much inclined to send the sonnet (on Chatterton) as you wish, but really think it is better not to ventilate these things till in print. I have since written one on Blake. Not to know Chatterton is to be ignorant of the _true_ day- spring of modern romantic poetry.... I believe the 3d vol.

of Ward's _Selections of English Poetry_, for which Watts is selecting from Chatterton, will soon be out,--but these excerpts are very brief, as are the notices. The rendering from the Rowley antique will be much better than anything formerly done. Skeat is a thorough philologist, but no hand at all when subst.i.tution becomes unavoidable in the text....

Read the _Ballad of Charity, the Eclogues, the songs in aella_, as a first taste. Among the modern poems _Narva and Mared_, and the other _African Eclogues_. These are alone in that section _poetry absolute_, and though they are very unequal, it has been most truly said by Malone that to throw the _African Eclogues_ into the Rowley dialect would be at once a satisfactory key to the question whether Chatterton showed in his own person the same powers as in the person of Rowley. Among the satirical and light modern pieces there are many of a first-. rate order, though generally unequal.

Perfect specimens, however, are _The Revenge, a Burletta, Skeat, vol i; Verses to a Lady, p. 84; Journal Sixth, p. 33; The Prophecy, p. 193; and opening of Fragment, p. 132._ I would advise you to consult the original text.

Mr. Watts, it seems, with all his admiration of Chatterton, finding that he could not go to Rossetti's length in comparing him with Shakspeare, did not in the result consider the sonnet on Chatterton referred to in the foregoing letter, and given below, suitable to be embodied in his essay:

With Shakspeare's manhood at a boy's wild heart,-- Through Hamlet's doubt to Shakspeare near allied, And kin to Milton through his Satan's pride,-- At Death's sole door he stooped, and craved a dart; And to the dear new bower of England's art,-- Even to that shrine Time else had deified, The unuttered heart that soared against his side,-- Drove the fell point, and smote life's seals apart.

Thy nested home-loves, n.o.ble Chatterton, The angel-trodden stair thy soul could trace Up Redcliffe's spire; and in the world's armed s.p.a.ce Thy gallant sword-play:--these to many an one Are sweet for ever; as thy grave unknown, And love-dream of thine unrecorded face.

Some mention was made in this connection of Rossetti's young connection, Oliver Madox Brown, who wrote _Gabriel Denver_ (otherwise _The Black Swan_) at seventeen years of age. I mentioned the indiscreet remark of a friend who said that Oliver had enough genius to stock a good few Chattertons, and thereupon Rossetti sent me the following outburst:

You must take care to be on the right tack about Chatterton.

I am very glad to find the gifted Oliver M. B. already an embryo cla.s.sic, as I always said he would be; but those who compare net results in such cases as his and Chatterton's cannot know what criticism means. The nett results of advancing epochs, however permanent on acc.u.mulated foundation-work, are the poorest of all tests as to relative values. Oliver was the product of the most teeming hot-beds of art and literature, and even of compulsory addiction to the art of painting, in which nevertheless he was rapidly becoming as much a proficient as in literature. What he would have been if, like the ardent and heroic Chatterton, he had had to fight a single-handed battle for art and bread together against merciless mediocrity in high places,--what he would _then_ have become, I cannot in the least calculate; but we know what Chatterton became. Moreover, C.

at his death, was two years younger than Oliver--a whole lifetime of advancement at that age frequently--indeed always I believe in leading cases. There are few indeed whom the facile enthusiasm for contemporary models does not deaden to the truly balanced claims of successful efforts in art. However, look at Watts's remodelled extracts when the vol comes out, and also at what he says in detail as to Chatterton, Coleridge, and Keats.

Of course Rossetti was right in what he said of comparative criticism when brought to bear in such cases as those of Chatterton and Oliver Madox Brown. Net results are certainly the poorest tests of relative values where the work done belongs to periods of development. We cannot, however, see or know any man except through and in his work, and net results must usually be accepted as the only concrete foundation for judging of the quality of his genius. Such judgment will always be influenced, nevertheless, by considerations such as Rossetti mentions.

Touching Chatterton's development, it were hardly rash to say that it appears incredible that the _African Eclogues_ should have been written by a boy of seventeen, and, in judging of their place in poetry, one is apt to be influenced by one's first feeling of amazement. Is it possible that the Rowley poems may owe much of their present distinction to the early astonishment that a boy should have written them, albeit they have great intrinsic excellencies such as may insure them a high place when the romance, intertwined with their history, has been long forgotten?