Page:William Blake in his relation to Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1911).djvu/55

— 55 — of Wells called "Zara, the rich Man's Daughter"; but even when the stories are brought to an end, we feel the effort, which it cost the author, and more or less our delight is spoiled. When considering the influence of Blake's literary productions, I found that it was greatly surpassed by Blake's influence as a philosopher and also that the works of several other poets made as deep or perhaps a deeper impression on the mind of Rossetti. In the first place Dante must be named here, whose sonnets' sequel "Vita Nuova" was translated by Rossetti and greatly influenced the sonnets of The House of Life. Further I found the influence of the Italian poet Cavalcanti (namely in Rossetti's Italian songs); nor is it wonderful that Rossetti loved Italian poetry, when we consider that his father was a full-blooded Italian, a poet himself and a Dante commentator of some fame. Besides Dante we find Shakespeare (indeed which English poet is not influenced more or less by him!), Browning, Coleridge, and in the last period of his career Thomas Chatterton, who influenced Rossetti. (William M. Rossetti's Preface to the Collected Works of D. G. Rossetti. London 1906.)

It is not the place here to enter more into details concerning the further influences on Rossetti. I think I have shown sufficiently clearly in the foregoing pages that Blake already in the beginning of Rossetti's artistic career had a strong hold on his imagination and that it was Blake who inclined the bend of Rossetti's genius in the peculiar direction which through his long artistic career it was never to leave. It was indeed Blake who anticipated the Praeraphaelitic movement and might be called the spiritual father of this movement.

But though Blake stood up against untruth and conventionality in art, his too fantastical mind and the unfortunate outward