Præraphaelite diaries and letters

Dante Alighieri · en
At this moment I have received a letter from Genoa, from my
  friend Di Negro. He rejoices at the arrival of the _Arpa_.... He
  says that throughout Piedmont, and in Liguria and Sardinia, it is
  well received and generally admired; but that in the other parts
  of Italy the governments prohibit its entry, on account of the
  author’s name, which has become a veritable scarecrow to Kings.
  If you had to go to Italy, I would recommend you, my dear son,
  always to call yourself Dante Rossetti. But, before a time comes
  for that, I trust that affairs will have changed.

  I beg you to go frequently to visit your worthy grandfather. What
  an excellent old man!...

  Good-bye, my most lovable Gabriel, and believe in the constant
  affection of

                                           Your affectionate father,
                                                  GABRIELE ROSSETTI.

  P.S.--I perceive I have not spoken to you at all about the state
  of my health. And what can I say of it? It is the same as it was
  in London; betwixt life and death, but more tending to the latter
  than the former.


                             LETTER XXII.

               DANTE ROSSETTI TO MADOX BROWN, HAMPSTEAD.

My brother’s parody on Tennyson’s _Kraken_ is published in my Memoir
of him.

                                        [Chatham Place, London.
                                                   7 November 1853.]

  My dear Brown,

  ... I have had some news of Woolner (_i.e._, a letter to his
  father which was shown me). He and B[ernhard] Smith were seven
  months at the diggings (full accounts of which I have seen in
  letters from Bernhard Smith to his brother). Their work seems to
  have been something awful, and their result was the loss of £30
  apiece, as they each made £50 and spent £80. Bernhard Smith went
  after this to his brother’s farm and W[oolner] to Melbourne to
  try Art. Here he seems to be getting on well. He has done several
  medallions at £25 each--one of the Governor--and there seems to
  be a good prospect of his getting a statue of the Queen to do for
  Melbourne, in which case he will be back again next summer. He
  sent two Australian papers in which he is spoken of as quite a
  great fact, and a leading article given to him and the projected
  statue. I thought I would write to you all this, not knowing when
  I may see you, and now it suddenly strikes me that it was all
  jawed over that night at Deverell’s.

  I have made an admirable parody on Tennyson’s sonnet, _The
  Kraken_, which I enclose with the original for your ecstatic
  perusal.

                                                     Yours, D. G. R.


                             LETTER XXIII.

           GABRIELE ROSSETTI TO DANTE ROSSETTI--Translation.