(conceived years before) of the length of _The White Ship_, called _Jan
Van Hunks_, embodying an eccentric story of a Dutchman’s wager to smoke
against the devil. This was to appear in a miscellany of stories and
poems by himself and Mr. Watts, a project which had been a favourite one
of his for some years, and in which he now, in his last moments, took a
revived interest strange and strong.
About this time he derived great gratification from reading an article
on him and his works in _Le Livre_ by Mr. Joseph Knight, an old friend
to whom he was deeply attached, and for whose gifts he had a genuine
admiration. Perhaps the very last letter Rossetti penned was written to
Mr. Knight upon the subject of this article.
His intellect was as powerful as in his best days, and freer than ever
of hallucinations. But his bodily strength grew less and less. His sight
became feebler, and then he abandoned the many novels that had recently
solaced his idler hours, and Miss Rossetti read aloud to him. Among
other books she read Dickens’s _Tale of Two Cities_, and he seemed
deeply touched by Sidney Carton’s sacrifice, and remarked that he would
like to paint the last scene of the story.
On Wednesday morning, April 5th, I went into the bedroom to which he had
for some days been confined, and wrote out to his dictation two sonnets
which he had composed on a design of his called _The Sphinx_, and which
he wished to give, together with the drawing and the ballad before
described, to Mr. Watts for publication in the volume just mentioned.
On the Thursday morning I found his utterance thick, and his speech from
that cause hardly intelligible. It chanced that I had just been reading
Mr. Buchanan’s new volume of poems, and in the course of conversation
I told him the story of the ballad called _The Lights of Leith_, and
he was affected by the pathos of it. He had heard of that author’s
retractation{*} of the charges involved in the article published ten
years earlier, and was manifestly touched by the dedication of the
romance _God and the Man_. He talked long and earnestly that morning,
and it was our last real interview. He spoke of his love of early
English ballad literature, and of how when he first met with it he had
said to himself: “There lies your line.”
* The retractation, which now has a peculiar literary
interest, was made in the following verses, and should, I
think, be recorded here:
To an old Enemy.
I would have snatch’d a bay-leaf from thy brow,
Wronging the chaplet on an honoured head;
In peace and charity I bring thee now
A lily-flower instead.
Pure as thy purpose, blameless as thy song,
Sweet as thy spirit, may this offering be;
Forget the bitter blame that did thee wrong,
And take the gift from me!
In a later edition of the romance the following verses are
added to the dedication:
To Dante Gabriel Rossetti: