his proscription has been frequently told since the death of his son, so that only a brief recapitulation is now necessary. He was one of the small band of patriotic Neapolitans who extorted by their determined persistence a fairly satisfactory constitution from King Ferdinand, who, having first left Naples under cover of a lie, treacherously returned with an Austrian army, and ere long stamped his foot upon the newly-gained constitution and proscribed those concerned in the forcible formation thereof. Gabriele Rossetti was in especial disfavour and eagerly sought after by the Austrian soldiery and mercenary police, for not only had he been one of the most urgent in his claims for an honourable constitution but also his songs and patriotic hymns had taken root in the hearts and expression upon the lips of the excitable populace; and it would indeed in all probability have gone. badly with him if it had not been for timely and secret foreign intervention. A portion of the English fleet was at the time stationed in the Bay of Naples, the admiral in command being Sir Graham Moore; and it was this gentleman who was instrumental in rescuing the proscribed patriot. Sir Graham had been persuaded to attempt rescuing Rossetti by the solicitations of Lady Moore, who was an ardent admirer of the poet's compositions and political opinions; so one afternoon the admiral and a brother officer, dressed in the uniform that required no other passport, reached the hiding-place of the poet, where they disguised him in a uniform similar to their own, thereafter making their way in a carriage unchallenged till they reached the shore. According to one account, Rossetti was then conveyed on board Sir Graham Moore's own ship

for the night; according to another he was put at once on board a steamer bound for Malta, which place he in any case arrived at ere long. These events took place in 1821, and Rossetti remained in Malta for about four years, finally settling in London early in 1825. His means were at first extremely limited, for his income had hitherto been mainly derived from his position as director at the Museo Borbonico in Naples, a post of course forfeited by his political "misdemeanours," but in a comparatively short time he found himself able to support a wife whom he chose in the person of Frances Polidori, sister of the Dr. Polidori who travelled with Lord Byron, and daughter of Sgr. Polidori, secretary to Alfieri. Married in 1826, one year after he had settled in London, he in 1831 obtained the post of Professor of Italian Literature at King's College, which he occupied till 1845 when he practically lost his sight, and in consequence resigned the chair; but though partially deprived of the use of his eyes he retained his health for a considerable time, his death not taking place till 1854, the recorded date being the 26th of April. Mrs. Rossetti still lives, beloved by all her friends and looked up to by her surviving family, and to her influence each of her four children owed much more than is recordable. The chief prose productions of Gabriele Rossetti are the Comento Analitico Sulla Divina Commedia (published in 1826-7), Sullo Spirito Anti-papale (1832), Il Mistero dell' amor platonico svelato (1840), and La Beatrice di Dante (1852): the drift of the best known of these works being an endeavour to prove that the special poetic vehicle chosen for expression by Dante and his contemporaries was selected as being the most

suitable to veil their aversion to the papacy, while they introduced a "lady of love" (in Dante's caseBeatrice) as the symbol of true Christianity and the special object of their love and adoration. The bestknown collections of his poetic work are Dio e l'uomo (1840), Il reggente in solitudine (1846), Poesie (1847), and L'Arpa Evangelica (1852). Of the four children of this marriage the eldest, Maria Francesca, was born. in 1827; the next child was the subject of this memoir; the third, William Michael, was born in 1829, and in December of the following year Christina Georgina. The eldest of these children became soon deeply imbued with the spirit animating the Divine Comedy, and, following in the footsteps of her father, wrote an elaborate and interesting commentary or analysis of Dante's great poem, the volume being called A Shadow of Dante, and representing, so far as I am aware, the only published matter by Miss Maria Rossetti.1 In later life she joined a sisterhood attached to the Anglican Church, and died in earnest fulfilment of her self-imposed duties some few years. ago. William Michael Rossetti from his earliest youth showed marked critical ability, his essays and reviews in The Germ being in every way noticeable as the work of one in his twenty-first year; and not reviews only did he contribute to the famous but shortlived magazine of which he was editor, but also poems marked by a strong and sympathetic love of nature if also by somewhat crude expression. The high rank

1 That is, original matter. Miss Rossetti compiled a useful volume of Exercises for securing Idiomatic Italian by means of Literal Translation from the English, and the Key to the same, entitled Anedot Italiani: One Hundred Italian Anecdotes, selected from "Il Compa del Passeggio Campestre."

as critic in both literature and art which Mr. W. M. Rossetti has attained is too well known to require further mention here, and the same may be said of Miss Christina Rossetti, who has achieved a fame that no poetess since Mrs. Browning has equalled, and whose lovely lyrics are known to thousands both in England and the Colonies as well as to her large public in the United States. Altogether a family that is unique in the chronicles of Art and Literature, surpassing in variety and importance of gifts even that other famous household who made the name of Brontë so significant to all lovers of literature.

The elder son and second child of Gabriele and Frances Rossetti was born on the 12th of May 1828, and was christened with three names, Gabriel Charles Dante the first being after his father, the second after Mr. Charles Lyell (father of the wellknown Sir Charles Lyell, the geologist), a frequent visitor and friend at 38 Charlotte Street, Portland Place, where Mr. and Mrs. Rossetti had fixed their residence and where their four children were born, while the third name of the future poet-artist was that of the greatest of Italian writers whose influence affected every member of the Rossetti family to a marked degree. The household was indeed such an one that it would have been strange if the children belonging to it had not fostered at least one strongly intellectual life, for not only did both father and mother dwell in an atmosphere of study, poetry, and national aspirations, but also their house was the resort of many who could not fail to leave a more or less definite impress upon sensitive minds however young. I remember having heard that amongst those

visitors was one swarthy Italian republican, with the odour of a political assassination about his name, who possessed both an awe and a fascination for the young Rossettis, especially for the impressible Gabriel, who many years later wrought partly from imagination and partly from memory the tragic dramatic poem A Last Confession. It is a fact of great significance that the earliest educational influences upon Dante Gabriel Rossetti were the writings of Dante and Shakespeare, for long before ordinary children reach the point where mere rudimentary instruction is left behind he had made the acquaintance of Hamlet in Retzsch's Outlines, and was familiar with the sound of the vowelled Italian as written by the great Florentine and often quoted by the child's father. Reference has frequently been made since the poet's death to an early dramatic attempt called The Slave, but what the author has himself said frequently in private is doubtless the case, that the production has been absurdly overrated and was marked by nothing that was manifestly other than the efforts of a precocious child. The Slave, written at the age of five years, was no drama," but consisted of some rough passages childishly set down, as was but natural; the characters were two, one called "Slave" and one "Tyrant," and the diction of the

play" was just such as a precocious child would commit to paper. This understood, the significance of the early production can be estimated at its true value, and we can recognise fully the promise embodied in the fact of a child of five years attempting original composition and the intellectual awakening and creative impulse so early manifested. Considerably later, when in his thirteenth or fourteenth year (and not in 1844,