TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE:
—Obvious print and punctuation errors were corrected.
This Edition consists of1000 Copies only, of whichthis is
GABRIELE ROSSETTI
DRAWING BY GABRIELE ROSSETTI
Pen and Sepia
GABRIELE ROSSETTI
A VERSIFIED AUTOBIOGRAPHY
TRANSLATED
AND SUPPLEMENTED BY
WILLIAM MICHAEL ROSSETTI
Così dall’arpa opposti suoni ei desta
Pel suol che gli diè culla un suon d’affanno
Di gioia un suon per quel che asil gli presta
G R
SANDS & CO
12 BURLEIGH STREET STRAND
LONDON
1901
DEDICATED TO
ANTONIO AND OLIVIA AGRESTI
WHOSE MARRIAGE HAS RESTORED
TO ITALIAN NATIONALITY
A GRAND-DAUGHTER OF
GABRIELE ROSSETTI
PREFACE
In Italy the poems of Gabriele Rossetti have enjoyed alarge amount of celebrity, and they are still held in honouredremembrance; his prose works are there known rather byrumour than in perusal. In England the case of the proseworks is much the same, while the poems are as good as unknown.His life has never been written on any very completescale. In Italian there are some Memoirs, more or lessdetailed and accurate—perhaps the most solid is that writtenby my cousin Teodorico Pietrocola-Rossetti; in English, thenearest approach to an account of him may be what appearsin the course of my Memoir of Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1895).There is also some important information in the book, JohnHookham Frere and his Friends, mentioned on p. 132 of thepresent volume.
The name of Gabriele Rossetti has in this country securedsome amount of respectful regard, but rather on adventitiousthan on strictly personal grounds. He is contemplated in hispaternal relation—the father of Dante Gabriel and ChristinaRossetti. Dr Garnett, in his History of Italian Literature,has expressed the point neatly, and in terms stronger thanit would behove me to use: “Rossetti assuredly will not beforgotten by England, for which he has done what no other[x]inhabitant of these isles ever did, in begetting two greatpoets.”
On me it can be no less than a filial obligation to do whatI can for the memory of my patriotic, highly gifted, laborious,and loving father. I therefore offer to