With this general division of the subject-matter of Rossetti’s poetry, the classification of its metrical cast and forms of diction will be singularly parallel. Most of his finest compositions might be distinguished as purely Saxon or pre-eminently Latin poems; and it is notable that the more intimately subjective and analytic the thought within, the more persistently does it assume the Latin garb; while as the imagination ranges from the introspection of the hyper-conscious self, and finds, on the heights of common human feeling and aspiration, a larger and a freer air, the mode passes into the more keen and rarified Saxon speech. No other English poet has resolved the breadth and simplicity of the Gothic, and the depth and intensity of the Italian habit of expression, into such distinctive poetic vehicles. But at the same time few have blended the diverse elements of the modern English tongue into the harmony and sonority with which Rossetti’s music thrills when he tempers the sharper Saxon with a deep undertone of polysyllabic song; or stirs the languorous pulses of a sonnet with some swift cadence of familiar words. He had the finest perception of national and racial properties of form and rhythm; and discerning the characteristics of the poetry of action in the literature of the north, and the poetry of reflection in the literature of the south, he cast his great historical lyrics in the highest narrative—that is to say, the ballad form; and chose the sonnet—the most remote, chastened, and exclusive vehicle—for the meditative, and yet sensuous, self-delineative love-poetry. These broad generalizations, however, cannot be closely pressed upon the entire sequence of Rossetti’s poems. The exigencies of the English language alone elude their literal application. They will rather serve to illustrate the duality of his endowments, and the singular power of his genius both to conserve and specialize the characteristics of his Italian heritage, and also to waive them in the Saxon mode as utterly as though the latter were more native to his tongue.