By Christina Rossetti: “A Pause of Thought.” On the wrapper of “The Germ” the writer's name is given as “Ellen Alleyn”: this was my brother's concoction, as Christina did not care to figure under her own name. “A Pause of Thought” was written in February 1848, when she was but little turned of seventeen. Taken as a personal utterance (which I presume it to be, though I never inquired as to that, and though it was at first named “Lines in Memory of Schiller's Der Pilgrim”), it is remarkable; for it seems to show that, even at that early age, she aspired ardently after poetic fame, with a keen sense of “hope deferred.”
By F. G. Stephens (called “John Seward” on the wrapper): “The Purpose and Tendency of Early Italian Art.” This article speaks for itself as being a direct outcome of the Præraphaelite movement: its aim is to enforce personal independent endeavour, based upon close study of nature, and to illustrate the like qualities shown in the earlier school of art. It is more hortatory than argumentative, and is in fact too short to develop its thesis—it indicates some main points for reflection.
By W. Bell Scott: “Morning Sleep.” This poem delighted us extremely when Mr. Scott sent it in reply to a request for contributions. I still think it a noticeably fine thing, and one of his most equable pieces of execution. It was republished in his volume of “Poems,” 1875—with some verbal changes, and shortened, I think damaged.
By Patmore: “Stars and Moon.”
By Ford Madox Brown: “On the Mechanism of a Historical Picture”: Part 1, the Design. It is by this time a well-recognized fact that Brown was one of the men in England, or indeed in Europe, most capable of painting a historical picture, and it is a matter of regret that “The Germ” came to an end before he had an opportunity of continuing and completing this serviceable compendium of precepts. He had studied art in continental schools; but I do not think he imported into his article much of what he had been taught,—rather what he had thought out for himself, and had begun putting into practice.
By W. M. Rossetti: “Fancies at Leisure.” The first three of these were written to bouts-rimés. As to No. 1, “Noon Rest,” I have a tolerably clear recollection that the rhymes were prescribed to me by Millais, on one of the days in 1849 when I was sitting to him for the head of Lorenzo in his first Præraphaelite picture from Keats's “Isabella.” No. 4, “Sheer Waste,” was not a bouts-rimés performance. It was chiefly the outcome of an early afternoon spent lazily in Regent's Park.
By Walter H. Deverell: “The Light Beyond.” These sonnets are not of very finished execution, but they have a dignified sustained tone and some good lines. Had Deverell lived a little longer, he might probably have proved that he had some genuine vocation as a poet, no less than a decided pictorial faculty. He died young in February 1854.
By Dante G. Rossetti: “The Blessed Damozel.” As to this celebrated poem much might be said; but I shall not say it here, partly because I wrote an Introduction to a reprint (published by Messrs. Duckworth and Co. in 1898) of the “Germ” version of the poem, which is the earliest version extant, and in that Introduction I gave a number of particulars forestalling what I could now set down. I will however take this opportunity of correcting a blunder into which I fell in the Introduction above mentioned. I called attention to “calm” and “warm,” which make a “cockney rhyme” in stanza 9 of this “Germ” version; and I said that, in the later version printed in “The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine” in 1856, a change in the line was made, substituting “swam” for “calm,” and that the cockneyism, though shuffled, was not thus corrected. In “The Saturday Review,” June 25, 1898, the publication of Messrs. Duckworth was criticized; and the writer very properly pointed out that I had made a crass mistake. “Mr. Rossetti,” he said, “must be a very hasty reader of texts. What is printed [in ‘The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine’] is ‘swarm,’ not ‘swam,’ and the rhyme with ‘warm’ is perfect, stultifying the editor's criticism completely.” Probably the critic considered my error as unaccountable as it was serious; and yet it could be fully accounted for, though not fully excused. I had not been “a very hasty reader of texts” in the sense indicated by “The Saturday Review.” The fact is that, not possessing a copy of “The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine,” I had referred to the book brought out by Mr. William Sharp in 1882, “Dante Gabriel Rossetti: A Record and a Study,” in which are given (with every appearance of care and completeness) the passages of “The Blessed Damozel” as they appeared in “The Germ,” with the alterations printed in “The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine.” From the latter, the line in question is given by Mr. Sharp as “Waste sea of worlds that swam”; and I, supposing him to be correct (though I allow that memory ought to have taught me the contrary), reproduced that line to the same effect. “Always verify your references” is a precept to which editors and commentators cannot too carefully conform. Many thanks to the writer in “The Saturday Review” for showing that, while I, and also Mr. Sharp, had made a mistake, my brother had made none.
By W. M. Rossetti: “Review of the Strayed Reveller and other Poems, by A.” As we all now know, “A.” was Matthew Arnold, and this was his first published volume; but I, at the time of writing the review, knew nothing of the identity of “A.,” and even had I been told that he was Matthew Arnold, that would have carried the matter hardly at all further. I remember that, after I had written the whole or most of this admiring review, I found that the volume had been abused in “Blackwood's Magazine”; a fact of sweet savour to myself and other P.R.B.'s, as we entertained a hearty detestation of that magazine, with its blustering “Christopher North,” and its traditions of truculency against Keats, Shelley, Leigh Hunt, Tennyson, Ruskin, and some others. I read “A.'s” volume with great attention, and piqued myself somewhat upon having introduced into my review some reference (detailed or cursory) to every poem in it. Possibly (but I hardly think so) the critique was afterwards shortened, so as to bereave it of this merit.
By Madox Brown (the etching) and by W. M. Rossetti (the verses): “Cordelia.” For the belated No. 3 of “The Germ” we were much at a loss for an illustration. Mr. Brown offered to accommodate us by etching this design, one of a series from “King Lear” which he had drawn in Paris in 1844. That series, though not very sightly to the eye, is of extraordinary value for dramatic insight and energy. We gladly accepted, and he produced this etching with very little self-satisfaction, so far as the technique of execution is concerned. Dante Rossetti was to have furnished some verses for the etching; but for this he did not find time, so I was put in as a stopgap, and I am not sure that any reader of “The Germ” has ever thanked me for my obedience to the call of duty.
By Patmore: “Essay on Macbeth.” In this interesting and well-considered paper Mr. Patmore assumes that he was the first person to put into writing the opinion that Macbeth, before meeting with the witches, had already definitely conceived and imparted the idea of obtaining the crown of Scotland by wrongful means. I have always felt some uncertainty whether Mr. Patmore was really the first; if he was, it certainly seems strange that the train of reasoning which he furnishes in this essay—forcible, even if we do not regard it as unanswerable—should not have presented itself to the mind and pen of some earlier writer. The Essay appears to have been left incomplete in at least one respect. In speaking of “the fifth scene,” the author refers to “postponement of comment” upon Macbeth's letter to his wife, and he “leaves it for the present.” But the comment never comes.
By Christina Rossetti: “Repining.” This rather long poem, written in December 1847 on a still broader scale, was never republished by the authoress, although all her other poems in “The Germ” were so. She did not think that its deservings were such as to call for republication. I apprehend that herein she exercised a wise discretion: none the less, when I was compiling the volume of her “New Poems,” issued in 1896, I included “Repining”—for I think that some of the considerations which apply to the works of an author while living do not remain in anything like full force after death.
By Dante G. Rossetti: “The Carillon, Antwerp and Bruges.” These verses, and some others further on in “The Germ,” were written during the brief trip, in Paris and Belgium, which my brother made along with Holman-Hunt in the autumn of 1849. He did not republish “The Carillon”; but he left in MS. an abridged form of it, with the title “Antwerp and Bruges,” and this I included in his “Collected Works,” 1886. The only important change was the omission of stanzas 1 and 4.
By Dante G. Rossetti: “From the Cliffs, Noon.” Altering some phrases in this lyric, and adding two stanzas, Rossetti republished it under the name of “The Sea-limits.”
By W. M. Rossetti: “Fancies at Leisure.” The first four were written to bouts-rimés: not the fifth, “The Fire Smouldering,” which is, I think, as old as 1848, or even 1847.
By John L. Tupper: “Papers of the MS. Society; No. 1, An Incident in the Siege of Troy.” This grotesque outburst, though sprightly and clever, was not well-suited to the pages of “The Germ.” My attention had been called to it at an earlier date, when my editorial power was unmodified, but I then staved it off, and indeed John Tupper himself did not deem it appropriate. It will be observed that “MS. Society” is said not to mean “Manuscript Society.” I forget what it did mean—possibly “Medical Student Society.” The whole thing is replete with semi-private sous-entendus, and banter at Free Trade, medical and anatomical matters, etc. The like general remarks apply to No. 4, “Smoke,” by the same writer. It is a rollicking semi-intelligible chaunt, a forcible thing in its way, proper in the first instance (I believe) to a sort of club of medical students, Royal Academy students, and others—highly-seasoned smokers most of them—in which John Tupper exercised a quasi-privacy, and was called (owing to his thinness, much over-stated in the poem) “The Spectro-cadaveral King.” No. 5, “Rain,” is again by John Tupper, and is the only item in “The Papers of the MS. Society” which seems, in tone and method, to be reasonably appropriate for “The Germ.”
By Alexander Tupper: No. 2, “Swift's Dunces.”
By George I. F. Tupper: No. 3, “Mental Scales.” This also, in the scrappy condition which it here presents, reads rather as a joke than as a serious proposition: I believe it was meant for the latter.
By John L. Tupper: “Viola and Olivia.” The verses are not of much significance. The etching by Deverell, however defective in technique, claims more attention, as the Viola was drawn from Miss Elizabeth Eleanor Siddal, whom Deverell had observed in a bonnet-shop some few months before the etching was done, and who in 1860 became the wife of Dante Rossetti. This face does not give much idea of hers, and yet it is not unlike her in a way. The face of Olivia bears some resemblance to Christina Rossetti: I think however that it was drawn, not from her, but from a sister of the artist.
By John Orchard: “A Dialogue on Art.” The brief remarks prefacing this dialogue were written by Dante Rossetti. The diction of the dialogue itself was also, at Orchard's instance, revised to some minor extent by my brother, and I dare say by me. Orchard was a painter of whom perhaps no memory remains at the present day: he exhibited some few pictures, among which I can dimly remember one of “The Flight of Archbishop Becket from England.” His age may, I suppose, have been twenty-seven or twenty-eight years at the date of his death. In our circle he was unknown; but, conceiving a deep admiration for Rossetti's first exhibited picture (1849), “The Girlhood of Mary Virgin,” he wrote to him, enclosing a sonnet upon the picture—a very bad sonnet in all executive respects, and far from giving promise of the spirited, if unequal, poetic treatment which we find in the lines in “The Germ,” “On a Whit-Sunday Morn in the Month of May.” This led to a call from Orchard to Rossetti. I think there was only one call, and I, as well as my brother, saw him on that occasion. Afterwards, he sent this dialogue for “The Germ.” The dialogue has always, and I think justly, been regarded as a remarkable performance. The form of expression is not impeccable, but there is a large amount of eloquence, coming in aid of definite and expansive thought. From what is here said it will be understood that Orchard was quite unconnected with the P.R.B. He expressed opinions of his own which may indeed have assimilated in some points to theirs, but he was not in any degree the mouthpiece of their organization, nor prompted by any member of the Brotherhood. In the dialogue, the speaker whose opinions appear manifestly to represent those of Orchard himself is Christian, who is mostly backed up by Sophon. Christian forces ideas of purism or puritanism to an extreme, beyond anything which I can recollect as characterizing any of the P.R.B. His upholding of the painters who preceded Raphael as the best men for nurturing new and noble developments of art in our own day was more in their line. In my brother's prefatory note a question is raised of publishing any other writings which Orchard might have left behind. None such, however, were found. Dr. W. C. Bennett (afterwards known as the author of “Songs for Sailors,” etc.), who had been intimate with Orchard, aided my brother in his researches.
By F. G. Stephens (called “Laura Savage” on the wrapper): “Modern Giants.”
By Dante G. Rossetti: “Pax Vobis.” Republished by the author, with some alterations, under the title of “World's Worth.”
By Dante G. Rossetti: “Sonnets for Pictures.” No. 1, “A Virgin and Child, by Hans Memmeling,” was not reprinted by Rossetti, but is included (with a few verbal alterations made by him in MS.) in his “Collected Works.” No. 2, “A Marriage of St. Katherine, by the same.” A similar observation. No. 3, “A Dance of Nymphs, by Andrea Mantegna,” was republished by Rossetti, with some verbal alterations. No. 4, “A Venetian Pastoral, by Giorgione”—the like. The alterations here are of considerable moment. Rossetti, in a published letter of October 8, 1849, referred to the Giorgione picture as follows: “A Pastoral—at least, a kind of Pastoral—by Giorgione, which is so intensely fine that I condescended to sit down before it and write a sonnet. You must have heard me rave about the engraving before, and, I fancy, have seen it yourself. There is a woman, naked, at one side, who is dipping a glass vessel into a well, and in the centre two men and another naked woman, who seem to have paused for a moment in playing on the musical instruments which they hold.” Nos. 5 and 6, “Angelica Rescued from the Sea-Monster, by Ingres,” were also reprinted by the author, with scarcely any alteration. Patmore, on reading these two sonnets, was much struck with their truthfulness of quality, as being descriptive of paintings. As to some of the other sonnets, Mr. W. M. Hardinge wrote in “Temple Bar,” several years ago, an article containing various pertinent and acute remarks.
By W. M. Rossetti: “Review of Browning's Christmas Eve and Easter Day.” The only observation I need make upon this review—which was merely intended as introductory to a fuller estimate of the poem, to appear in an ensuing number of “The Germ”—is that it exemplifies that profound cultus of Robert Browning which, commenced by Dante Rossetti, had permeated the whole of the Præraphaelite Brotherhood, and formed, not less than some other ideas, a bond of union among them. It will be readily understood that, in Mr. Stephens's article, “Modern Giants,” the person spoken of as “the greatest perhaps of modern poets” is Browning.