CHAPTER VIII.

English Sonnets--Sonnet Structure--Shakspeare's Sonnets--Wells's
Sonnet--Charles Whitehead--Ebenezer Jones--Mr. W. M. Rossetti--A New
Sonnet--Mr. W. Davies--Canon Dixon--Miss Christina Rossetti--The Bride's
Prelude--The Supernatural in Poetry

CHAPTER IX.

Last Days--Vale of St John--In the Lake Country--Return to
London--London--Birchington

RECOLLECTIONS OF DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI

CHAPTER I.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti was the eldest son of Gabriele Rossetti and
Frances Polidori, daughter of Alfieri's secretary, and sister of the
young physician who travelled with Lord Byron. Gabriele Rossetti was a
native of Yasto, in the district of the Abruzzi, kingdom of Naples.
He was a patriotic poet of very considerable distinction; and, as a
politician, took a part in extorting from Ferdinand I. the Constitution
of 1820. After the failure of the Neapolitan insurrection, owing to
the treachery of the King (who asked leave of absence on a pretext
of ill-health, and returned with an overwhelming Austrian army), the
insurrectionists were compelled to fly. Some of them fell victims;
others lay long in concealment. Rossetti was one of the latter; and,
while he was in hiding, Sir Graham Moore, the English admiral, was lying
with an English fleet in the bay. The wife of the admiral had long been
a warm admirer of the patriotic hymns of Rossetti, and, when she learned
his danger, she prevailed with her husband to make efforts to save him.
Sir Graham thereupon set out with another English officer to the place
of concealment, habited the poet in an English uniform, placed him
between them in a carriage, and put him aboard a ship that sailed next
day to Malta, where he obtained the friendship of the governor, John
Hookham Frere, by whose agency valuable introductions were procured, and
ultimately Rossetti established himself in England. Arrived in London
about 1823, he lived a cheerful life as an exile, though deprived of the
advantages of his Italian reputation. He married in 1826, and his eldest
son was born May 12, 1828, in Charlotte Street, Portland Place, London.
He was appointed Professor of Italian at King's College, and died in
1854. His house was for years the constant resort of Italian refugees;
and the son used to say that it was from observation of these visitors
of his father that he depicted the principal personage of his _Last
Confession_. He did not live to see the returning glories of hi