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ber, not merely legislated for, but gov- In that soft land, in that soft clime, erned must break with Napoleon, must In the crimson evening weatheras their first step denounce the dynasty, revelled in the mellow and lustrous light of the must surrender either their cherished politi-Venetian Archipelago. Though the world scarcecal ideas or their dread of radical change.ly knows or honours him rightly yet, it will That is an immense force gained for the come to do so before we die. There is a St. CathRevolution; for although the Liberals may erine or St. Cecilia of his which actually glows not be men willing to descend into the with colour with such a glow of gold and amestreets; they will not when once convinced thyst as sometimes burns upon the sunset Atlanthat compromise is impossible help to defend tic. But he is great, not alone as a colourist. the throne which is thus left to be protected He has drawn, with exquisite feeling, that vision by bayonets alone, a protection which of Queen Guinevere, which arrests Launcelot as has never availed any master of France, and he seeks the San Greal. The sad woman comes certainly will not avail a boy Emperor. head is not averted; the look is still and passionbetween the knight and the mystic guest. The However long it lasted, a military Govern- less, though sad. Passion is buried and dead, ment could not be perpetual in France, and and it is only a sad spectre who warns the warthe effect of this plebiscitum has been to rior back. It would be difficult to express in make any peaceful method of transition words all that that visioned face expresses. There almost unworkable. The Emperor and his is none of the old love and tenderness (that was minister may try one; but they have by over when she turned away from his caress at this appeal deprived any possible govern- Arthur's grave); there is the sense of the inevment, except that of the Emperor himself itable sorrow, of the incurable shame; and yet, or of the Republic, of the one necessity of through it all, in those calm pitiful eyes, a profound and womanly compassion for the man who governments, stability. had shared her guilt, and partakes her punishment. Such a look straight from the inmost soul as that - is greater than any victory of colour.

From Fraser's Magazine. THE POEMS OF DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI.

BY SHIRLEY.

THE name of Dante Gabriel Rossetti has been long familiar to a select minority of the public as that of a remarkable painter, critic, and translator, who from one of the quaintly built and quaintly furnished old brick houses at Chelsea which overlook the river, and date from the days of Queen Anne, has sent out a series of works which in certain respects have hardly been rivalled in our generation.

The paintings of Mr. Rossetti are not known at the Exhibition of the Royal Academy. The sort of fame that is acquired upon that fashionable promenade is not apparently the fame to which this artist aspires. But above the altars of country churches, in the magnificent galleries of the Lancashire merchants, on the walls of Oxford debating-rooms, one occasionally encounters a rare piece of delicate work in which the intensity of the colour is only equalled by the intensity of the expression, and which bears upon it the unmistakable imprint of a master's hand.

Of the merits of these paintings a foreign critic, writing some years ago, thus delivers himself:

He is a very great painter; perhaps as a colourist, he has had no rival since Titian and Veronese

I have sometimes deemed it strange that this man can turn from his Hebrew kings, and his old romance, and his prostrate angels, and his golden skies, to the commonest and most simple first, as though we were to find Angelico and aspect of this mean, modern life. It startles at Hogarth working together. Here, David, the kingly minstrel, amid orange and golden blossoms, strings his harp, and Arthur sleeps beneath the yellow leaves; there, between the sun and shade, the wounded woman revels in a ghastly festival, or on the cold London pave ment, in the chill London dawn, shivers drearily, as the peasant fresh from the breezy meadowlands among which the child played in her innocent girlhood-drives his team into the sleepng city. And yet there is nothing discordant in this; both aspects are consistent with plain truth. One is drawn from the deep fountains of historical and religious feeling, where the boldest and most unreserved conventionalisms may be admitted; the other from the present, where nothing but the simple transcript is possible. In the antique, all the suggestions of the imagination may be introduced under abstracts and formal forms-like the chorus in the Greek drama, an embodied commentary upon the passing transaction; while, in the modern, the same law dictates the frankest and most conscientious adherence to reality. "Signs and

wonders" were familiar in the old ages of faith; but we have no creditable witches or miracle workers now; no angels resting on the rosy clouds; no 66 spears arrayit" upon the menacing heaven. Our story must be related, as it relates itself in the life, and from the hidden face and the averted gesture alone can the shame,

To this it is merely necessary to add that we find in his later work the same qualities that distinguished, his earlier, a purely realistic treatment combined with high imagination, - -as in The Beloved," the impressive drawing of "Hamlet and Ophelia," and that captivating picture of " Venus," where through a tangled wilderness of real roses and honeysuckles - splendid as an Arabian dream-the Goddess of Love looks out.

from this the reader may place more confidence in a work not carelessly undertaken, though produced in the spare-time of other pursuits told that it has occupied the leisure moments of more closely followed. He should perhaps be not a few years, thus affording, often at long intervals, every opportunity for consideration and revision; and that, on the score of care at least, he has no need to mistrust it.

The translation of the Vita Nuova occu

pies the central place in the volume, and is an admirable specimen of that difficult art, superior even in certain respects to. Mr. Theodore Martin's very brilliant version. Mr. Rossetti has kept more of the

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Mr. Rossetti has proved the fine temper of his critical faculty in the introductions prefixed to his Translations from the Ital-original metal than Mr. Martin has sucian Poets, and in the final chapter supplied ceeded in doing. The Vita Nuova is a piece by him to Mr. Gilchrist's Life of William of medieval poetry and feeling. Now, Blake the Artist. These chapters should be read by all who are anxious to learn what close, exact, delicate and thoroughly genuine and exhaustive criticism means,

-a

knowledge which they will hardly acquire if they confine their reading to the Saturday

Review or the Athenæum. It is thus for instance that he determines the relation between the earlier and the later work of Dante :

the old forms of poetic construction are not preserved by sticking in at random a few words spelt and pronounced as Chaucer or Spenser spelt and pronounced them. Mr. Martin, however, is rather inclined to do in sentiment and expression, the old words, this and as the rest is essentially modern

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like Queen Elizabeth's ruffles on a modern beauty, look awkward, and out of place and keeping. In Mr. Rossetti's, also, there is more literalness of thought as well as more literalness of language. Poetic language is always to some extent materialistic; and the materialism of Dante's lan

It may be noted here, how necessary a knowledge of the Vita Nuova is to the full comprehension of the part borne by Beatrice in the Commedia. Moreover, it is only from the perusal of its earliest and then undivulged self-com-guage (being united with profound awe and munings, that we can divine the whole bitter- passionate emotion) is more marked than ness of wrong to such a soul as Dante's; its any other poet's. It is only the critic who poignant sense of abandonment, or its deep and reads carefully, and weighs attentively what jealous refuge in memory. Above all, it is here he reads, who will detect what is not a suthat we find the first manifestations of that wis- perficial difference merely but such a one dom of obedience, that natural breath of duty, will be disposed to say that the sustained which afterwards, in the Commedia, lifted up and weighty music of Rossetti's lines, his a mighty voice for warning and testimony. gravity and singleness of purpose, are more Throughout the Vita Nuova, there is a strain in unison with Dante's grave and reflective like the first falling murmur which reaches the passion than the dash and verbal dexterity ear in some remote meadow and prepares us to and idiomatic elegance of Mr. Martin. He look upon the sea. has followed out- here pen in hand as elsewhere pencil in hand the intricacies of Dante's language and Dante's thoughts with a quiet and persistent conscientiousness: a conscientiousness exactly like that of an old monk working with gold and silver and blue and crimson dyes on the initial letters of the Vulgate.

The volume of translations from the Italian poets is one of the best translations in the language. To the illustration of Dante, Mr. Rossetti was attracted by hereditary sympathies.

In relinquishing this work (he says), which small as it is, is the only contribution I expect to make to our English knowledge of old Italy, I feel as it were divided from my youth. The first associations I have are connected with my father's devoted studies, which, from his own point of view, have done so much towards the general investigation of Dante's writing. Thus, in those early days, all around me partook of the influence of the great Florentine till, from viewing it as a national element, I also, growing older, was drawn within the circle. I trust that

The following passages will give a fair idea of Mr. Rossetti's treatment of Dante:

I was ware of one, hoarse and tired out,
Who ask'd of me: "Hast thou not heard it said?
Thy lady, she that was so fair, is dead."

Then lifting up mine eyes, as the tears came,
I saw the angels, like a rain of manna,

In a long flight flying back heavenward;
Having a little cloud in front of them,

na!"

And if they had said more you should have

heard.

Then Love spoke thus: "Now all shall be

made clear:

Come and behold our lady where she lies; "
These idle phantasies

Then carried me to see my lady dead;
And standing at her head

After the which they went and said "Hosan- | perhaps, the most sustained power, but in rendering the difficult and brilliant trifles of the lesser Italian poets most arduous of any to a translator - Mr. Rossetti achieves his most remarkable success. The impressive effect of a massive work of art may be conveyed to a foreign reader, even through the medium of an indifferent translation; but when the whole excellence of a poem lies in its dexterity and adroitness of movement, in the delicacy of its form and the fragility of its workmanship, a translation is absolutely worthless unless the translator's hand be as light, trenchant, and dexterous as the hand of the man who wrote the original. These delicious trifles, these fitful emanations of the fancy are apt to suffer irreparable injury when rudely handled. Yet see how Mr. Rossetti succeeds. This is a sonnet by Boccaccio:

Her ladies put a white veil over her; And with her was such very humbleness, That she appeared to say, "I am at peace."

I call on Death

Even as on Sleep one calleth after strife,
Saying, Come unto me. Life showeth grim

And bare; and if one dies, I envy him.'

For ever, among all my sighs which burn,
There is a piteous speech

That clamours upon death continnally;
Yea, unto him doth my whole spirit turn
Since first his hand did reach

My lady's life with most foul cruelty.
But from the height of woman's fairness,
she,

Going up from us with the joy we had,
Grew perfectly and spiritually fair;
That so she spreads even there

A light of love which makes the angels glad,
And even unto their subtle minds can bring
A certain awe of profound marvelling.

Beatrice is gone up into high heaven,

The kingdom where the angels are at peace; And lives with them; and to her friends is dead.

Not by the frost of winter was she driven

Away, like others; nor by summer-heats,
But through a perfect gentleness, instead,
For from the lamp of her meek lowlihead,
Such an exceeding glory went up hence

That it woke wonder in the Eternal Sire,
Until a sweet desire

Enter'd him for that lovely excellence,

So that He bade her to Himself aspire:
Counting this weary and most evil place
Unworthy of a thing so full of grace.
Wonderfully out of the beautiful form
Soar'd her clear spirit, waxing glad the while;

And is in its first home, there where it is.
Who speaks thereof, and feels not the tears warm
Upon his face, must have become so vile

As to be dead to all sweet sympathies.
Out upon him! An abject wretch like this
May not imagine anything of her,

He needs no bitter tears for his relief.
But sighing comes, and grief,
And the desire to find no comforter

(Save only Death, who makes all sorrow

brief),

To him who for a while turns in his thought
How she hath been among us, and is not.

With a soft wind for ever stirr'd and still'd
After a little while one of them said,

(I heard her) "Think! If, ere the next hour
struck,

Each of our lovers should come here to-day,
Think you that we should fly or feel afraid?
To whom the others answered, "From such
luck

A girl would be a fool to run away."

These catches are by Francho Sacchette:
ON A FINE DAY.

"Be stirring, girls! we ought to have a run
Look, did you ever see so fine a day?
Fling spindles right away,

And rocks, and reels, and wools;
Now don't be fools,

To-day your spinning's done.
Up with you, up with you! So one by one,
Then singing, singing to the river they ran,
They caught hands, catch who can,
They ran, they ran

To the river, the river;
And the merry go-round
Carries them in a bound
To the mill o'er the river.
"Miller, miller, miller,
And this other. Now steady!"
Weigh me this lady
"You weigh a hundred, you,
And this one weighs two."

The translation of the Vita Nuova shows,"

Why dear, you do get stout!"
You think so, dear, no doubt."

"Are you in a decline?"

"Keep your temper, and I'll keep mine."
"Come, girls." ("O thank you, miller!")
"We'll go home when you will.”

So, as we crossed the hill,

A clown came down in great grief
Crying, "Stop thief! stop thief!
O what a wretch I am!"
"Well, fellow, here's a clatter!
Well, what's the matter!"

“O Lord, O Lord, the wolf has got my lamb!"
Now at that word of woe,

The beauties came and clung about me so
That if wolf had but shown himself, may be
I too had caught a lamb that fled to me.

ON A WET DAY.

As I walk'd thinking through a little grove,
Some girls that gather'd flowers kept passing

me,

Saying, "Look here! look there!" delightedly. "Oh here it is!" "What's that?" "A lily,

love,

And these are violets!"

"Further for roses! Oh the lovely pets,

The darling beauties! Oh the nasty thorn!
Look here, my hand's all torn!"
"What's that that jumps?"

a grasshopper!

"Come run, come run,

"Oh don't! it's

Here's bluebells!" "Oh what fun!"

"Not that way! stop her!"

Yes, this way!

"Pluck them, then! "

"Oh, I've found mushrooms! oh look here!'

Quite sure that further on we'll get wild thyme."

"Oh we shall stay too long, it's going to rain!
There's lightning, oh there's thunder!"
"Oh sha'n't we hear the vesper-bell, I

der?

The wreaths of flowers are scattered on the ground,

And still as screaming, hustling without rest
They run this way and that, and round and
round,

She thinks herself in luck who runs the best.
I stood quite still to have a perfect view,
And never noticed till I got wet through.

Mr. Rossetti has at length published a small volume of original poetry. We may be sure that it will excite considerable controversy that there will be much said in praise and dispraise that it will be vehemently admired, and perhaps even more vehemently assailed. My own opinion is that the volume is lighted by the authentic fire of the imagination, and that the poems of which it consists are almost without exception products of the high poetic faculty in certain of its highest and most intense moods. This cardinal fact being conceded, I am ready to own if required that-not free from quaintness, eccentricity, mysticism of a sort-it is a publication in certain aspects fitted to startle and perplex that British Philistine with whose features Mr. Matthew Arnold has made us familiar.

What is the highest faculty exercised in poetic composition? The question is not difficult to answer when we keep steadily in view what is its essential aim. In the sister art of painting, neither the landscape painter nor the portrait painter can be held to reach the level of the men who painted the “Transfiguration" and the "Last Judgment." The same observation may be applied to the poet. He may be a master of won-description, he may be a master of metaphor, he may be a master of colour, but all these avail him nothing if he has not vision. Form, colour, metaphor, are secondary, and not essential - they clothe but do not The true use of an constitute being. image or metaphor, for instance, is to represent or suggest through a material object a spiritual fact. A poet uses colour, too, and form, just as certain of the conditions under which being is made manifest. Life in its essence cannot be apprehended even by philosophy. The science of Onto

They scream, and then all run and ecream again,
And then in heavy drops down comes the rain.logy is a misnomer. It is in the spiritual

The real pre-eminence of a poet lies however, commonly uses metaphor with therefore in his capacity to grasp the idea quite another result with the result, -in other words, in his power absolutely namely, of making the emotion more spirto realize the spirit. The poet who can itual, of investing it with a more intellectual come most directly in contact with the idea character, of translating it into a subtler or emotion without the intervention, or speech of the spirit.