lads and Sonnets,’ which was unanimously recognised as equal in all respects to that of 1870. Some of its beauties, indeed, were borrowed from its predecessor, a number of sonnets being transferred to its pages to complete the century entitled ‘The House of Life,’ the gap thus occasioned in the former volume being made good by the publication of the ‘Bride's Prelude,’ an early poem of considerable length. About the same time Rossetti, who had been a contributor to the first edition of Gilchrist's ‘Life of Blake’ in 1863, interested himself warmly in the second edition of 1880. His letters of this period to Mr. Hall Caine, Mr. William Sharp, and others show excellent critical judgment and undiminished enthusiasm for literature. He also, very shortly before his death, completed the still unpublished ‘Jan van Hunks,’ a metrical tale of a smoking Dutchman (originally composed at a very early date). His painting, having never been intermitted, could not experience the same marvellous revival as his poetry, but four single figures, ‘La Bella Mano’ (1875), ‘Venus Astarte’ (1877), and, still later, ‘The Vision of Fiammetta’ and ‘A Day Dream,’ rank high among his work of that class. His last really great picture, ‘Dante's Dream,’ was painted in oil in 1869–71, at the beginning of the hapless chloral period; he had treated the same subject in watercolour in 1855.
Mr. Hall Caine was an inmate of Rossetti's house from July 1881 to his death, and did much to soothe the inevitable misery of the entire break-up of his once powerful constitution. One last consolation was the abandonment of chloral in December 1881, under the close supervision of his medical attendant, Mr. Henry Maudsley. He died at Birchington, near Margate, 9 April 1882, attended by his nearest relatives, Mr. Watts-Dunton, Mr. Caine, and Mr. F. Shields. He was interred at Birchington under a tomb designed by Madox Brown, bearing an epitaph written by his brother.
Rossetti is a unique instance of an Englishman who has obtained equal celebrity as a poet and as a painter. It has been disputed in which class he stands higher; but as his mastery of the poetic art was consummate, while he failed to perfectly acquire even the grammar of painting, there should seem no reasonable doubt that his higher rank is as a poet. His inability to grapple with the technicalities of painting was especially unfortunate, inasmuch as it encouraged him to evade them by confining himself to single figures, whose charm was mainly sensuous, while his power, apart from the magic of his colour, resided principally in his representation of spiritual emotion. The more spiritual he was the higher he rose, and highest of all in his Dante pictures, where every accessary and detail aids in producing the impression of almost supernatural pathos and purity. More earthly emotion is at the same time expressed with extraordinary force in his ‘Cassandra’ and other productions; and even when he is little else than the colourist, his colour is poetry. The same versatility is conspicuous in his poems, the searing passion of ‘Sister Helen’ or the breathless agitation of the ‘King's Tragedy’ being not more masterly in their way than the intricate cadences and lingering dalliance with thought of ‘The Portrait’ and ‘The Stream's Secret,’ the stately magnificence of the best sonnets, and the intensity of some of the minor lyrics. Everywhere he is daringly original, intensely passionate, and ‘of imagination all compact.’ His music is as perfect as the music can be that always produces the effect of studied artifice, never of spontaneous impulse; his glowing and sumptuous diction is his own, borrowed from none, and incapable of successful imitation. Than him young poets can find few better inspirers, and few worse models. His total indifference to the political and religious struggles of his age, if it limited his influence, had at all events the good effect of eliminating all unpoetical elements from his verse. He is a poet or nothing, and everywhere a poet almost faultless from his own point of view, wanting no charm but the highest of all, and the first on Milton's list—simplicity. Notwithstanding this defect, he must be placed very high on the roll of English poets.
Rossetti the man was, before all things, an artist. Many departments of human activity had no existence for him. He was superstitious in grain and anti-scientific to the marrow. His reasoning powers were hardly beyond the average; but his instincts were potent, and his perceptions keen and true. Carried away by his impulses, he frequently acted with rudeness, inconsiderateness, and selfishness. But if a thing could be presented to him from an artistic point of view, he apprehended it in the same spirit as he would have apprehended a subject for a painting or a poem. Hence, if in some respects his actions and expressions seem deficient in right feeling, he appears in other respects the most self-denying and disinterested of men. He was unsurpassed in the filial and fraternal relations; he was absolutely superior to jealousy or envy, and none felt a keener delight in noticing and aiding a youthful writer of merit. His acquaintance with literature was almost entirely confined
