Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 49.djvu/289

 composition of devotional manuals, and works of religious edification. As sympathizing (at least in early years) with the Italian cause, she was averse from Roman catholicism; but her devotion assumed a high Anglican character. This had the unfortunate result of causing an estrangement between herself and a suitor to whom she was deeply attached. This circumstance explains much that would otherwise be obscure in her poetry, and accounts for the melancholy and even morbid character of most of it. Few have expressed the agonies of disappointed and hopeless love with equal poignancy, and much of the same spirit pervades her devotional poetry also. In her first published volume, ‘Goblin Market and other Poems,’ with two designs by D. G. Rossetti (Cambridge and London, 1862), she attained a height which she never reached afterwards. Her ‘Goblin Market’ is original in conception, style, and structure, as imaginative as the ‘Ancient Mariner,’ and comparable only to Shakespeare for the insight shown into unhuman and yet spiritual natures. ‘The Prince's Progress’ (1866) and ‘A Pageant’ (1881) are greatly inferior, but are, like ‘Goblin Market,’ accompanied by lyrical poems of great beauty. In many of these—perhaps most—the thought is either inadequate for a fine piece or is insufficiently wrought out; but when nature and art combine, the result is exquisite. ‘Dream Love,’ ‘An End,’ ‘L. E. L.,’ ‘A Birthday,’ ‘An Apple Gathering,’ may be cited as examples of the perfect lyric, and there are many others. She had also a special vocation for the sonnet, and her best examples rival her brother's, gaining in ease and simplicity what they lose in stately magnificence. Except in ‘Goblin Market,’ however, she never approaches his imaginative or descriptive power. Everywhere else she is, like most poetesses, purely subjective, and in no respect creative. This, no less than the comparative narrowness of her sympathies, sets her below Mrs. Browning, to whom she has been sometimes preferred. At the same time, though by no means immaculate, she greatly excels that very careless writer in artistic construction and purity of diction.

Mrs. Browning, however, went on improving to the last day of her life, and the same can by no means be said of Christina Rossetti. After producing ‘Commonplace’ (stories) in 1870, ‘Sing Song’ (nursery rhymes) in 1872, and ‘Speaking Likenesses’ (tales for children) in 1874, she devoted herself mainly to the composition of works of religious edification, meritorious in their way, but scarcely affecting to be literature. They obtained, nevertheless, a wide circulation, and probably did more to popularise her name than a second ‘Goblin Market’ could have done. They include ‘Annus Domini’ (prayers), 1874; ‘Seek and Find,’ 1879; ‘Called to be Saints: the Minor Festivals,’ 1881; ‘Letter and Spirit,’ notes on the Commandments, 1882; ‘Time Flies: a Reading Diary,’ 1885; ‘The Face of the Deep: a Commentary on the Revelation,’ 1892, and ‘Verses,’ 1893.

Christina Rossetti long led the life of an invalid. For two years—from 1871 to 1873—her existence hung by a thread, from the attack of a rare and mysterious malady, ‘exophthalmic bronchocele,’ and her health was never again good. She died of cancer after a long illness at her residence in Torrington Square, London, on 29 Dec. 1894, and was buried at Highgate cemetery on 2 Jan. 1895. Her portrait, with that of her mother, drawn in tinted crayons by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, is in the National Portrait Gallery, London.

Her unpublished poems, with many collected from periodicals, were printed by her surviving brother, Mr. W. M. Rossetti, in 1896 as ‘New Poems.’ Prefixed is a portrait of her at the age of eighteen, from a pencil sketch by her brother Dante. These verses are in most cases too slight in theme or too unfinished to add anything to her reputation. But Christina Rossetti's character was so interesting, and her feeling so intense, that few of even her most unimportant lyrics are devoid of some touch of genius worthy of preservation. At the same time her reputation would certainly have stood higher if she had produced less or burned more. No excision, however, could have removed the taint of disease which clings to her most beautiful poetry, whether secular or religious, ‘Goblin Market’ excepted.

Her sister,, (1827–1876), the oldest of the family, was born on 17 Feb. 1827. She was apparently the most practical of the group, and the most attentive to domestic concerns. She had a remarkable gift for educational work, and, besides two small Italian manuals, published ‘Letters to my Bible-Class on Thirty-nine Sundays,’ 1872. She was withheld in her early years from the religious life only by a strong sense of duty. According to her brother William she was ‘more warmly and spontaneously devotional than any person I have ever known.’ In 1873, the year preceding her brother William's marriage, she felt at liberty to follow her inclination by entering a religious [Anglican] sisterhood at All Saints' Home, Margaret Street. Her health soon failed, and she died there on 24 Nov. 1876, leaving, however, an