s country
or the consummation we have witnessed of that great movement founded
upon the principles for which he fought and suffered. His present
position in Italy as a poet and patriot is a high one, a medal having
been struck in his honour. An effort is even now afoot to erect a statue
to him in his native place, and one of the last occasions upon which
the son put pen to paper was when trying to make a reminiscent rough
portrait for the use of the sculptor. Gabriele Rossetti spent his last
years in the study of Dante, and his works on the subject are unique,
exhibiting a peculiar view of Dante's conception of Beatrice, which
he believed to be purely ideal, and employed solely for purposes of
speculative and political disquisition. Something of this interpretation
was fixed undoubtedly upon the personage by Dante himself in his later
writings, but whether the change were the result of a maturer and more
complicated state of thought, and whether the real and ideal characters
of Beatrice may not be compatible, are questions which the poetic mind
will not consider it possible to decide. Coleridge, no doubt, took a
fair view of Rossetti's theory when he said: "Rossetti's view of Dante's
meaning is in great part just, but he has pushed it beyond all bounds of
common sense. How could a poet--and such a poet as Dante--have written
the details of the allegory as conjectured by Rossetti? The boundaries
between his allegory and his pure picturesque are plain enough, I think,
at first reading." It was, doubtless, due to his devotion to studies of
the Florentine that Gabriele Rossetti named after him his eldest son.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti, whose full baptismal name was Gabriel Charles
Dante, was educated principally at King's College School, London, and
there attained to a moderate proficiency in the ordinary classical
school-learning, besides a knowledge of French, which throughout life he
spoke well. He learned at home some rudimentary German; Italian he had
acquired at a very early age. There has always been some playful mention
of certain tragedies and translations upon which he exercised himself
from the ages of five to fifteen years; but it is hardly necessary
to say that he himself never attached value to these efforts of his
precocity; he even displayed, occasionally, a little irritation upon
hearing them spoken of as remarkable youthful achievements.

One of these productions of his adolescence, Sir Hugh the Heron, has