[253] 89. =Cham.= The Great Cham, or Khan, was the ruler of Tartary. Marco Polo, the Venetian traveller, gives an account of him. Dr. Johnson was called the Great Cham of literature. [254] 91. =Nizam=; a native ruler of Hyderabad, India. [255] 123, 126. =Julius Cæsar and his Commentary.= Julius Cæsar, the great Roman general and dictator, who wrote his _Commentaries_ on his wars in Gaul and Britain. [256] 169. =Poke=; pocket. [257] 182. =Stiver=; a small Dutch coin. [258] 188. =Piebald.= Cf. _pied_, line 79. [259] 260. =Needle's eye.= Cf. _Matthew_ xix. 24; _Mark_ x. 25; _Luke_ xviii. 25. HERVÉ RIEL (Page 168) [260] 1. =Hogue.= Cape La Hogue, on the east side of the same peninsula as Cape La Hague, was the scene, in 1692, of the defeat of the French by the united English and Dutch fleets. [261] 5. =Saint Malo on the Rance=; a town on a small island near the shore of France. The entrance to its fine harbor is very narrow and filled with rocks. At high tide there is forty-five to fifty feet of water, but at low tide this channel is dry. [262] 30. =Plymouth Sound.= Plymouth is on the southwestern coast of England. [263] 43. =Pressed=; forced into military or naval service. [264] 43. =Tourville=; the famous French admiral, who commanded at La Hogue. [265] 44. =Croisickese=; La Croisic, a small fishing village near the mouth of the Loire, which Browning often visited. DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI Dante Gabriel Rossetti was born in London, of Italian parentage, in 1828. He was educated at King's College School, but became very early a student of painting, in which art he attained considerable prominence. He was a member of the famous pre-Raphaelite group of artists and authors, and was largely responsible for the movement started by them. In 1861 he published _The Early Italian Poets_, a volume of translations; in 1870, _Poems_; and in 1881, _Ballads and Sonnets_. His last days were unhappy, his death in 1882 being hastened by overindulgence in narcotics. Rossetti's painting had a marked effect upon his poetry, chiefly in giving him the faculty of vivid and ornate description. Though essentially a lyric poet, he revived old English ballad forms with much success, and his narrative poems are vigorous and spirited. A good short life of Rossetti is that by Joseph Knight in the Great Writers Series. THE WHITE SHIP (Page 175) First published in 1881 in the volume called _Ballads and Sonnets_.