be brought
in to complete the illustration.

Gabriel Charles Dante Rossetti, generally known as Dante Gabriel
Rossetti, was born in London on 12th May 1828. He was the son of an
Italian poet and critic of eminence, who, like so many of his countrymen
of literary tastes during the early part of the century, had fallen into
the Carbonaro movement, and who had to fly first to Malta and then to
England. Here he married Miss Polidori, whose mother was an
Englishwoman; and his four children--the two exquisite poets below dealt
with, Mr. W. M. Rossetti, a competent critic, and Maria Francesca, the
eldest daughter, who wrote an excellent introduction to Dante--all made
contributions, and two of them great contributions, to English
literature. The father himself, who was Professor of Italian at King's
College, London, was an enthusiastic though rather a fantastic Dantist,
and somewhat of a visionary generally, with wild notions about mediaeval
secret societies; but a man of the greatest honesty and honour, and a
brilliant contrast to the various patriot-charlatans, from Ugo Foscolo
downwards, who brought discredit on the Italian name in his time in
England. These particulars, of a kind seldom given in this book, are not
otiose; for they have much to do with the singular personality of our
English Rossetti himself.

He was educated at King's College School; but his leanings towards art
were so strong that at the age of fifteen he began the study of it,
leaving school to draw at the Royal Academy and elsewhere. His art
career and the formation of the P.R.B. (Prae-Raphaelite Brotherhood)
unfortunately fall outside our sphere. It is enough to say that for some
twenty years Rossetti, if he was known at all (and he was never known
very widely nor did he ever seek notoriety) was known as a painter only,
though many who only knew his poems later conceived the most passionate
admiration for his painting. Yet he wrote almost as early as he
painted, contributing to the famous Prae-Raphaelite magazine, the _Germ_,
in 1850, to the remarkable _Oxford and Cambridge Magazine_, which also
saw the early work of Mr. Morris, in 1856, and publishing some
translations from _The Early Italian Poets_ in 1861. He had married the
year before this last date and was about to publish _Poems_ which he had
been writing from an early age. But his wife died in 1862, and in a fit
of despair he buried his MSS. in her coffin. They were years afterwards
exhumed