54
��NOTES BY THE WAY.
��Gabriel Rossetti.
��Mr. Richard H. Thornton contributes a
list of
deceased con- tributors and ' A Jubilee Greeting.'
��in 1848, at which time he was about thirty, and would hardly talk on any other subject but Chartism. His poems (the ' Studies of Sensa- tion and Event ' ) had been published some five years before my meeting him, and are full of vivid, disorderly power. I was little more than a lad at the time I first chanced on them, but they struck me greatly, though I was not blind to their glaring defects and even to the ludicrous side of their wilful ' newness ' ; attempting, as they do, to deal reck- lessly with those almost inaccessible combinations in nature and feeling which only intense and oft-renewed effort may perhaps at last approach. For all this, these ' Studies ' should be, and one day will be, disinterred from the heaps of verse deservedly buried. Some years after meeting Jones, I was much pleased to hear the great poet Robert Browning speak in warm terms of the merit of his work ; and I have understood that Monckton Milnes (Lord Houghton) admired the ' Studies ' and interested himself on their author's behalf."
Notes and Queries contains frequent references to the Rossettis, as Dante Rossetti was a contributor as well as his brother William, from whom we still have occasional communications. The two following notes will be read with interest. On November 24th, 1866, Lord Howden refers to having had the honour of being taught Italian by Mr. Gabriel Rossetti at Malta forty years ago ; and Mr. William Rossetti, on the 15th of December, says that his father escaped to Malta by the friendly aid of Admiral Sir Graham Moore. Mr. Rossetti in his reply quotes the first line " from the most famous, perhaps, of all " his father's " national lyrics, com- posed for the day when the Constitution was proclaimed " by " the faithless Ferdinand I. in 1820 ":
Sei pur bella con gli astri sul crine.
I will conclude with the wish expressed by our founder. Long may his offspring occupy the position it so worthily fills, and long may the contributors to " dear old ' N. & Q.' " join in the greeting Floreat! Floreat! Floreat!
It had been my intention to include obituary notices of our late contributors ; but while I was preparing these, one of those many friendly messages we are constantly receiving from that land dear to us all, America, came, and informed me that Mr. Richard H. Thornton, of Portland, Oregon, was compiling a similar list. This was printed in ' N. & Q.' for November 4th.
Mr. Thornton also contributed the following ' Jubilee Greeting,' which appeared on the llth of November. By his kind permission I am able to reprint it :
A JUBILEE GREETING.
Who wrote " Of making many books
There is no end " ? To us it looks
As though he grappled truth with hooks. The feeble flesh much study wearies.
None know it better than the men
Of quite encyclopaedic ken,
Whose hands have held the ready pen
Through fifty years of Notes and Queries.
�� �
