Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 20.djvu/894

Rh 860 R S R S The greatest movement that has occurred in later times was that which substituted for the didactic materialism of the 18th century the new romanticism of the 19th, the leaders of which movement, Coleridge and Scott, were admirably followed by Byron, Shelley, and Keats. Not that Wordsworth was a stranger to the romantic temper. The magnificent image of Time and Death under the yew tree is worthy of any romantic poet that ever lived, yet it cannot be said that he escaped save at moments from the comfortable 18th-century didactics, or that he was a spiritual writer in the sense that Coleridge, Blake, and Shelley were spiritual writers. Of the true romantic feeling, the ever present apprehen- sion of the spiritual world and of that struggle of the soul with earthly conditions which we have before spoken of, Rossetti's poetry is as full as his pictures so full indeed that it was misunderstood by certain critics, who found in the most spiritualistic of poets and painters the founder of a "fleshly school." Although it cannot be said that "The Blessed Damozel " or "Sister Helen" or "Rose Mary" reaches to the height of the masterpieces of Coleridge, the purely romantic temper was with Rossetti a more per- manent and even a more natural temper than with any other 19th-century poet, even including the authorof "Christabel" himself. As to the other 19th-century poets, though the Ettrick Shepherd in The Queen's Wake shows plenty of the true feeling, Hogg's verbosity is too great to allow of really successful work in the field of romantic ballad, where concentrated energy is one of the first requisites. And even DobelFs " Keith of Ravelston " has hardly been fused in the fine atmosphere of fairy land. Byron's " footlight bogies " and Shelley's metaphysical abstractions had of course but very little to do with the inner core of romance, and we have only to consider Keats, to Avhose " La Belle Dame sans Merci" and " Eve of St Mark " Rossetti always acknowledged himself to be deeply in- debted. In the famous close of the seventh stanza of the " Ode to a Nightingale " Charmed magic casements opening on the foam Of perilous seas in faery lands forlorn there is of course the true thrill of the poetry of wonder, and it is expressed with a music, a startling magic, above the highest reaches of Rossetti's poetry. But, with- out the evidence of Keats's two late poems, " La Belle Dame sans Merci " and the " Eve of St Mark," who could have said that Keats showed more than a passing appre- hension of that which is the basis of the romantic temper the supernatural 1 In contrasting Keats with Rossetti it must always be remembered that Keats's power over the poetry of wonder came to him at one flash, and that it was not (as we have said elsewhere) " till late in his brief life that his bark was running full sail for the enchanted isle where the old ballad writers once sang and where now sate the wizard Coleridge alone." Though outside Coleridge's work there had been nothing in the poetry of wonder comparable with Keats's "La Belle Dame sans Merci," he had previously in " Lamia " entirely failed in rendering the romantic idea of beauty as a malefi- cent power. The reader, owing to the atmosphere sur- rounding the dramatic action being entirely classic, does not believe for a moment in the serpent woman. The classic accessories suggested by Burton's brief narra- tive hampered Keats where to Rossetti (as we see in " Pandora," "Cassandra," and "Troy Town") they would simply have given birth to romantic ideas. It is perhaps with Coleridge alone that Rossetti can be compared as a worker in the Renascence of Wonder. Although his apparent lack of rhythmic spontaneity places him below the great master as a singer (for in these miracles of Coleridge's genius poetry ceases to appear as a fine art at all it is the inspired song of the changeling child " singing, dancing to itself "), in permanence of the romantic feeling, in vitality of belief in the power of the unseen, Rossetti stands alone. Even the finest portions of his historical ballad " The King's Tragedy " are those which deal with the supernatural. In the spring of 1860 Rossetti married Elizabeth Eleanor Siddall, who being very beautiful was constantly painted and drawn by him. She had one still-born child in 1861, and died in February 1862. Mrs Rossetti's own water-colour designs show an extraordinary genius for invention and a rare instinct for colour. He felt her death so acutely that in the first paroxysm of his grief he insisted upon his poems (then in manuscript) being buried with her. These were at a later period recovered, how- ever, and from this time to his death he continued to write poems and produce pictures, in the latter relying more and more upon his manipulative skill but exercising less and less, for the reasons above mentioned, his exhaustless faculty of invention. About 1868 the curse of the artistic and poetic tempera- ment, insomnia, attacked him. One of the most distress- ing effects of this malady is a nervous shrinking from personal contact with any save a few intimate and con- stantly seen friends. This peculiar kind of nervousness may be aggravated by the use of narcotics, and in his case was aggravated to a very painful degree ; at one time he saw scarcely any one save his own family and imme- diate family connexions and the present Avriter. During the time that his second volume of original poetry, Ballads and Sonnets, was passing through the press (in 1881) his health began to give way, and he left London for Cumber- land. A stay of a few weeks in the Vale of St John, how- ever, did nothing to improve his health, and he returned much shattered. He then went to Birchington-on-Sea, but received no benefit from the change, and, gradually sinking from a complication of disorders, he died on Sunday the 9th April 1882. In all matters of taste Rossetti's influence has been im- mense. The purely decorative arts he may be said to have rejuvenated directly or indirectly. And it is doubtful whether any other Victorian poet has left so deep an im- pression upon the poetic methods of his time. One of the most wonderful of Rossetti's endowments, however, was neither of a literary nor an artistic kind : it was that of a rare and most winning personality which attracted towards itself, as if by an unconscious magnetism, the love of all his friends, the love, indeed, of all who knew him. See T. Hall Caine, Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1882 ; and William Sharp, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, a Record and a Study, 1882. (T. W.) ROSSINI, GIOACHINO ANTONIO (1792-1868), Italian dramatic composer, was born at Pesaro, February 29, 1792. He first studied music under Angelo Tesei, and that so successfully that he was able to sing solos in church when only ten years old, and three years later to appear at the opera house as Adolfo, in Paer's Camilla. He was next placed under a retired tenor, named Babbini, and on the breaking of his voice he entered the Liceo at Bologna for the purpose of studying counterpoint under Mattei. On his departure from the school, Mattei, who was not pleased with his progress, told him that he knew enough counter- point to enable him to write in the free style, but that he was quite unfit for the composition of church music. " Do I know enough to write operas?" asked Rossini. " Quite enough," was the reply. " Then," said the boy, "I care to know no more." But in truth his wonderful instinct had taught him a great deal more than either he or Mattei suspected. Rossini's first opera, La Camliale di Matri-