MR. D. G. ROSSETTI'S BALLADS AND SONNETS.* TEN years have

passed since Mr. Rossetti published his maiden Poems; and it would seem that in certain quarters his muse has; "won by her rareness such solemnity" as the politic Bolingbroke said that his " state " did. Bat although one splendid "ballad" in it makes Mr. Rossetti's new volume superior to its predecessor, we do not think that it has materi- ally altered.his position in the hierarchy of nineteenth-century English poets. To assign to Mr. Rossetti the exact place which he is entitled to claim among the di minorum gentiuni would be a hard, ungrateful, and invidious task. Luckily, we are not now called upon to attempt it. All that we have to do is to describe the impression which these Ballads and Sonnets have made upon ourselves, and to judge them as best we can on their own intrinsic merits.

Unsympathetic criticism—a very different thing, by the way. from hostile criticism, which nothing hinders from being both genial and profitable—is wintry work at any time, and in matters of taste is intolerable. As the hundred sonnets, then, which make up the " House of Life" entirely fail to move us, it would be best, perhaps, to pass them over in silence. But it seems hardly right not to explain such a statement. We shall do so with the utmost brevity, and falling back upon Milton's well-worn epithets, in his letter to Master Hartlib, " On Education," we protest that the poetry of these Sonnets is neither " simple, sensuous, nor passionate." That the language is too often fraught with what Sir Hugh Evans would call " affectations" is a matter of small moment, and verbal criticism just now is as far as possible from our thoughts. But the ideas are, for nine-tenths of the subject-matter, far too fine and subtle. Love strong as death is, rightly and naturally enough, the staple of such a series ; and with Mr. Rossetti, love is lord of all. He " sighs like a furnace,"—there is no mistake at all about that; but are his sonnets really " passionate ?" In our belief, they are not.

There is another formidable objection to these Sonnets. Were their quality much higher than in our opinion it is, not one of them stands out from the rest. Each is as good as its fellow, and what is far worse, of every line in each the same thing may be pretty accurately predicated. But fancy what dull reading even Shakespeare's Sonnets would be, if they were all of uniform excellence, and if the monotonous " motive " of most of them were not broken incessantly by a" sally and rash" of breathing thoughts expressed in burning words. Show us a single line in any of Mr. Rossetti's which has the ghost of a chance of becoming a " quotation," and we will confess that our criticism, in the words of poor baited. Holofernes, is "neither generous, nor just, nor humble." One striking phrase, indeed, does occur to us,— "Beauty like hers is genius !" Unfortunately, the sonnet which begins with this trumpet-note ends flatly.

Very little need be said about "The Lyrics," &c., which follow the " House of Life ;" nothing at all, perhaps, as regards their texture. But they suggest One or two questions, matters of fact rather than taste, on which our own opinion differs so widely from Mr. Rossetti's, that we feel bound to record it. A man must be a brute, indeed, who would cast a stone at hapless Chatterton's memory ; but why, in the name of all that is won- derful, why call him the "noble Chatterton ?" The curiosa infelicitas of such an epithet is amazing. Poor Blake, again ! What son of Adam would not be saddened at the thought of genius marred and blurred so piteously? Why then should Mr. Rossetti jar that sadness into some- thing like contemptuous indignation, by calling Blake's work-

room a "Holy of Holies." What thoughtful reader will not feel that there is much to be said on the other side, in answer to the sonnet on Coleridge, and that Mr. Rossetti, we will not say ought to have pointed the moral of Coleridge's self-indul- gence, but ought not to have left it to be inferred from his sonnet that there was no such moral to be pointed? If, we linger, too, for a moment on "The Last Three from Trafalgar," it is not for the sake of disparaging that sonnet—Mr. Rossetti

has put it out of the power of any critic to do that—it is to express our wonder that a battle, which seems, if a • Ballads and Socnetr. By 1 ante Gabriel Iteasetti. London: Ellis and White. 1881.

battle ever did, to lend itself to poetical treatment has never yet been treated otherwise than nnpoetically P When we remember how much the pathetic element in Nelson's death was heightened by the pathetic fate of the idolised woman whose image filled his dying breast—remember, also, that the tie which linked him and her together was of a kind that, though it might have deterred others, mast have attracted rather than repelled the most popular poet of the age, it does seem strange and passing wonderful that Byron, of all men, should have neglected a subject from every point of view so tempting to a poet of his temperament as Trafalgar. Of the three fine " ballads " which stand in the forefront of this volume, and give it, from our point of view, its great and lasting value, we cannot spare even a word for the " White Ship." And on the "King's Tragedy," the only remark we have to make—a very trivial one—is that Mr. Rossetti has murdered James I. of Scotland's beautiful poem, " The King's Qnair," by shortening the lines to suit the exigencies of his own metre. He would have done far better to have written an original song for the King,—especially as he has chosen to follow legend instead of history, and in so doing has minimised the foul and ghastly horrors of that monarch's murder. The King's hiding- place was a cesspool, and Elizabeth Douglas, one of the Queen's waiting-women, fell into it, while trying "to draw him out of that unclean place" with a sheet ; so that when the murderers " lift up the plank, and with a torch looking in, they saw the King there beneath, and a woman with him." Add these horrors to the fight, which is so graphically described by Mr. Rossetti, and it must be admitted that there are few scenes even in the Inferno which are more hideously appalling: liorret animus meminisse !

We now come to " Rose Mary," a noble " ballad " indeed, since the author pleases so to call it, and the poem on which, in our opinion, if he writes no more, Mr. Rossetti's fame will ulti- mately have to rest. We shall apply to it the words which the Duchess of Gordon applied to Burns. It has fairly " carried us off our legs," but we shall spare ourselves and our readers any further words of eulogy. A brief " argument" is necessary to show the highly dramatic " situations " which Mr. Rossetti's genius has secured ; and he has used his advantages to the uttermost.

Sir James, of Heronhaye, Rose Mary's lover, has to ride to Holy Cross for a " heavy shrift." It is known that an ambush lies in wait for him, on the hill or in the vale. The Beryl-stone cannot but reveal the truth to the eye that is pure.

To the eye that is not pure, it will remain a blank, or reveal "the truth by contraries." Rose Mary, whose eye, alas ! is not pure, for she has already loved Sir James too well, knows nothing of this last quality. To her intense relief, therefore, when she looks, at her mother's bidding, on the Beryl-stone, she sees that the ambush is set in the vale, and not on the hill. The corpse of Sir James, brought to her house next day, tells the unhappy mother everything. She has to break the piteous news to her still more unhappy daughter, and the heartrending scene in which she does so is a master-piece. When the first keen pang of learning that her shame is known, abates a little, Rose Mary comforts herself with the thought that, unloved and scorned of all but one, as she must now be for ever, " her wedding music will still fetch her home :"—

" The mother looked on the daughter still, As on a hurt thing that's yet to kill; Then wildly at length the pent tears came; The love swelled high with the swollen shame, And their hearts' tempest burst on them.

Closely locked, they clung without speech, And the mirrored souls shook each to each, As the cloud-moon and the water-moon Shake face to face, when the dim stars swoon In stormy bowers of the night's mid-noon.

They swayed together, shuddering sore, Till the mother's heart could bear no more. 'Twas death to feel her own breast shake, Even to the very throb and ache Of the burdened heart she still must break."

She essays the dreadful task with questions ; but the grief- dazed brain of Rose Mary fails, at first, to grasp their scope and dire import :-

"' 0 mother !' she cried, ` but still I saw.'

0 child, my child, why held you apart From my great love your hidden heart ? Said I not that all sin must chase From the spell's sphere the spirits of grace, And yield their rue to the evil race ? Ah ! would to God I had clearly told How strong those powers, accurst of old ?

Their heart is the ruined house of lies.

O girl, they can seal the sinful eyes, Or show the truth by contraries !'

The daughter sat as cold as a stone, And spoke no word, but gazed alone, Nor moved, though her mother strove a space To clasp her round in a close embrace, Because she dared not see her face.

Oh !' at last did the mother cry, 'Be sure, as he loved you, so will I!

Ah ! still and dumb is the bride, I trow ; But cold and stark as the winter snow Is the bridegroom's heart, laid dead below !

Daughter, daughter, remember you That cloud in the hills by Holycleugh P 'Twas a Hell-screen, hiding truth away : There, not. P the vale, the ambush lay, And thence was the dead borne home to-day.'

Deep the flood and heavy the shock, When sea meets sea in the riven rock :

But calm is the pulse that shakes the sea

To the prisoned tide of doom set free In the breaking heart of Rose Mary.

Once she sprang as the heifer springs With the wolf's teeth at its red heart-strings : First 'twas fire in her breast and brain, And then scarce hers, but the whole world's pain,

As she gave one shriek and sank again."

We must now, without attempting to complete the " argument," which, for the rest is no longer needed, bring the mother face to face with the corpse of Sir James, when,—

" She signed all folk from the threshold stone,

And gazed in the dead man's face alone.

The fight for life found record yet In the clenched lips and the teeth hard-set; The wrath from the bent brow was not gone, And stark in the eyes the hate still shone Of that they last had looked upon.

The blazoned coat was rent on his breast, Where the golden field was goodliest ; But the shivered sword, close-gripped, could tell That the blood shed round him where he fell Was not all his in the distant dell.

The lady reeked of the corpse no whit, But saw the soul, and spoke to it :

A light there was in her steadfast eyes,—

The fire of mortal tears and sighs That pity and love immortalise.

By thy death have I learnt to-day Thy deed, 0 James of Heronhaye !

Great wrong thou haat done to me and mine ; And haply God bath wrought for a sign By our blind deed this doom of thine.

Thy shrift, alas ! thou west not to win; But may death shrive thy soul herein !

Full well do I know thy love should be

Even yet—had life but stayed with thee—

Oar honour's strong security.' "

We should omit, out of fairness to the poet, even if we had space

to insert it, any explanation of what produced the awful change,

in the mother's feeling ; but,-

" She rose upright, with a long, low moan

And stared in the dead man's face new-known.

Had it lived indeed, she scarce could tell : 'Twas a cloud where fiends had come to dwell,— A mask that hung on the gate of hell.

She lifted the lock of gleaming hair, And smote the lips and left it there.

Here's gold that hell shall take for thy toll : Full well bath thy treason found its goal, O then dead body and damned soul!' "

The third part of this magnificent poem, which describes the destruction of the Beryl-stone, is inferior—it could not but be so- -to the first and second parts. We need scarcely say that our extracts do no sort of justice to the merits of " Rose Mary." It must be read as a whole to be appreciated, and will be read with pleasure again and again,—elecies repetita placebit. H we add, as a rider to this, that no one will read the Spirit Songs more than once, or at all, if he be wise, we have said all we can, by no means all we could, to induce our readers to give themselves the pleasure of making acquaintance with this remarkable and, in some respects, unique contribution to English literature.