old,
Baron of Twisell and of Ford,
And Captain of the Hold."

A few copies of this were printed for family circulation by his fond
grandfather, G. Polidori. Among French writers he had no modern
favourites beyond Hugo, Musset, and Dumas. But like all the
neo-romanticists, he was strongly attracted by Francois Villon, that
strange Parisian poet, thief, and murderer of the fifteenth century. He
made three translations from Villon, the best known of which is the
famous "Ballad of Dead Ladies" with its felicitous rendering of the
refrain--

"But where are the snows of yester year?"
(Mais ou sont les neiges d'antan?)

There are at least three good English verse renderings of this ballad of
Villon; one by Andrew Lang; one by John Payne, and doubtless innumerable
others, unknown to me or forgotten. In fact, every one translates it
nowadays, as every one used to translate Buerger's ballad. It is the
"Lenore" of the neo-romanticists. Rossetti was a most accomplished
translator, and his version of Dante's "Vita Nuova" and of the "Early
Italian Poets" (1861)--reissued as "Dante and His Circle" (1874)--is a
notable example of his skill. There are two other specimens of old
French minstrelsy, and two songs from Victor Hugo's "Burgraves" among his
miscellaneous translations; and William Sharp testifies that Rossetti at
one time thought of doing for the early poetry of France what he had
already done for that of Italy, but never found the leisure for it.[16]
Rossetti had no knowledge of Greek, and "the only classical poet," says
his brother, "whom he took to in any degree worth speaking of was Homer,
the 'Odyssey' considerably more than the 'Iliad.'" This, I presume, he
knew only in translation, but the preference is significant, since, as we
have seen, the "Odyssey" is the most romantic of epics. Among English
poets, he preferred Keats to Shelley, as might have been expected.
Shelley was a visionary and Keats was an artist; Shelley often abstract,
Keats always concrete. Shelley had a philosophy, or thought he had;
Keats had none, neither had Rossetti. It is quite comprehensible that
the sensuous element in Keats would attract a born colourist like
Rossetti beyond anything in the English poetry of that generation; and I
need not repeat that the latest Gothic or romantic schools have all been
taking Keats' direction rather than Scott's, or even than Coleridge's.
Rossetti's work, I should say, _e.g._, in such a p