Various
The Germ: Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art

INTRODUCTION

Of late years it has been my fate or my whim to write a good deal about the early days of the Præraphaelite movement, the members of the Præraphaelite Brotherhood, and especially my brother Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and my sister Christina Georgina Rossetti. I am now invited to write something further on the subject, with immediate reference to the Præraphaelite magazine “The Germ,” republished in this volume. I know of no particular reason why I should not do this, for certain it is that few people living know, or ever knew, so much as I do about “The Germ,”; and if some press-critics who regarded previous writings of mine as superfluous or ill-judged should entertain a like opinion now, in equal or increased measure, I willingly leave them to say so, while I pursue my own course none the less.

“The Germ” is here my direct theme, not the Præraphaelite Brotherhood; but it seems requisite to say in the first instance something about the Brotherhood—its members, allies, and ideas—so as to exhibit a raison d'être for the magazine. In doing this I must necessarily repeat some things which I have set forth before, and which, from the writings of others as well as myself, are well enough known to many. I can vary my form of expression, but cannot introduce much novelty into my statements of fact.

In 1848 the British School of Painting was in anything but a vital or a lively condition. One very great and incomparable genius, Turner, belonged to it. He was old and past his executive prime. There were some other highly able men—Etty and David Scott, then both very near their death; Maclise, Dyce, Cope, Mulready, Linnell, Poole, William Henry Hunt, Landseer, Leslie, Watts, Cox, J.F. Lewis, and some others. There were also some distinctly clever men, such as Ward, Frith, and Egg. Paton, Gilbert, Ford Madox Brown, Mark Anthony, had given sufficient indication of their powers, but were all in an early stage. On the whole the school had sunk very far below what it had been in the days of Hogarth, Reynolds, Gainsborough, and Blake, and its ordinary average had come to be something for which commonplace is a laudatory term, and imbecility a not excessive one.

There were in the late summer of 1848, in the Schools of the Royal Academy or barely emergent from them, four young men to whom this condition of the art seemed offensive, contemptible, and even scandalous. Their names were William Holman-Hunt, John Everett Millais, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, painters, and Thomas Woolner, sculptor. Their ages varied from twenty-two to nineteen—Woolner being the eldest, and Millais the youngest. Being little more than lads, these young men were naturally not very deep in either the theory or the practice of art: but they had open eyes and minds, and could discern that some things were good and other bad—that some things they liked, and others they hated. They hated the lack of ideas in art, and the lack of character; the silliness and vacuity which belong to the one, the flimsiness and make-believe which result from the other. They hated those forms of execution which are merely smooth and prettyish, and those which, pretending to mastery, are nothing better than slovenly and slapdash, or what the P.R.B.'s called “sloshy.” Still more did they hate the notion that each artist should not obey his own individual impulse, act upon his own perception and study of Nature, and scrutinize and work at his objective material with assiduity before he could attempt to display and interpret it; but that, instead of all this, he should try to be “like somebody else,” imitating some extant style and manner, and applying the cut-and-dry rules enunciated by A from the practice of B or C. They determined to do the exact contrary. The temper of these striplings, after some years of the current academic training, was the temper of rebels: they meant revolt, and produced revolution. It would be a mistake to suppose, because the called themselves Præraphaelites, that they seriously disliked the works produced by Raphael; but they disliked the works produced by Raphael's uninspired satellites, and were resolved to find out, by personal study and practice, what their own several faculties and adaptabilities might be, without being bound by rules and big-wiggeries founded upon the performance of Raphael or of any one. They were to have no master except their own powers of mind and hand, and their own first-hand study of Nature. Their minds were to furnish them with subjects for works of art, and with the general scheme of treatment; Nature was to be their one or their paramount storehouse of materials for objects to be represented; the study of her was to be deep, and the representation (at any rate in the earlier stages of self-discipline and work) in the highest degree exact; executive methods were to be learned partly from precept and example, but most essentially from practice and experiment. As their minds were very different in range and direction, their products also, from the first, differed greatly; and these soon ceased to have any link of resemblance.

The Præraphaelite Brothers entertained a deep respect and a sincere affection for the works of some of the artists who had preceded Raphael; and they thought that they should more or less be following the lead of those artists if they themselves were to develop their own individuality, disregarding school-rules. This was really the sum and substance of their “Præraphaelitism.” It may freely be allowed that, as they were very young, and fired by certain ideas impressive to their own spirits, they unduly ignored some other ideas and theories which have none the less a deal to say for themselves. They contemned some things and some practitioners of art not at all contemptible, and, in speech still more than in thought, they at times wilfully heaped up the scorn. You cannot have a youthful rebel with a faculty who is also a model head-boy in a school.

The P.R.B. was completed by the accession of three members to the four already mentioned. These were James Collinson, a domestic painter; Frederic George Stephens, an Academy-student of painting; and myself, a Government-clerk. These again, when the P.R.B. was formed towards September 1848, were all young, aged respectively about twenty-three, twenty-one, and nineteen.

This Præraphaelite Brotherhood was the independent creation of Holman-Hunt, Millais, Rossetti, and (in perhaps a somewhat minor degree) Woolner: it cannot be said that they were prompted or abetted by any one. Ruskin, whose name has been sometimes inaccurately mixed up in the matter, and who had as yet published only the first two volumes of “Modern Painters,” was wholly unknown to them personally, and in his writings was probably known only to Holman-Hunt. Ford Madox Brown had been an intimate of Rossetti since March 1848, and he sympathized, fully as much as any of these younger men, with some old-world developments of art preceding its ripeness or over-ripeness: but he had no inclination to join any organization for protest and reform, and he followed his own course—more influenced, for four or five years ensuing, by what the P.R.B.'s were doing than influencing them. Among the persons who were most intimate with the members of the Brotherhood towards the date of its formation, and onwards till the inception of “The Germ,” I may mention the following. For Holman-Hunt, the sculptor John Lucas Tupper, who had been a fellow Academy-student, and was now an anatomical designer at Guy's Hospital: he and his family were equally well acquainted with Mr. Stephens. For Millais, the painter Charles Allston Collins, son of the well-known painter of domestic life and coast-scenes William Collins; the painter Arthur Hughes; also his own brother, William Henry Millais, who had musical aptitudes and became a landscape-painter. For Rossetti, William Bell Scott (brother of David Scott), painter, poet, and Master of the Government School of Design in Newcastle-on-Tyne; Major Calder Campbell, a retired Officer of the Indian army, and a somewhat popular writer of tales, verses, etc.; Alexander Munro the sculptor; Walter Howell Deverell, a young painter, son of the Secretary to the Government Schools of Design; James Hannay, the novelist, satirical writer, and journalist; and (known through Madox Brown) William Cave Thomas, a painter who had studied in the severe classical school of Germany, and had earned a name in the Westminster Hall competitions for frescoes in Parliament. For Woolner, John Hancock and Bernhard Smith, sculptors; Coventry Patmore the poet, with his connections the Orme family and Professor Masson; also William North, an eccentric young literary man, of much effervescence and some talent, author of “Anti-Coningsby” and other novels. For Collinson, the prominent painter of romantic and biblical subjects John Rogers Herbert, who was, like Collinson himself, a Roman Catholic convert.

The Præraphaelite Brotherhood having been founded in September 1848, the members exhibited in 1849 works conceived in the new spirit. These were received by critics and by the public with more than moderate though certainly not unmixed favour: it had not as yet transpired that there was a league of unquiet and ambitious young spirits, bent upon making a fresh start of their own, and a clean sweep of some effete respectabilities. It was not until after the exhibitions were near closing in 1849 that any idea of bringing out a magazine came to be discussed. The author of the project was Dante Gabriel Rossetti. He alone among the P.R.B.'s had already cultivated the art of writing in verse and in prose to some noticeable extent (“The Blessed Damozel” had been produced before May 1847), and he was better acquainted than any other member with British and foreign literature. There need be no self-conceit in saying that in these respects I came next to him. Holman-Hunt, Woolner, and Stephens, were all reading men (in British literature only) within straiter bounds than Rossetti: not any one of them, I think, had as yet done in writing anything worth mentioning. Millais and Collinson, more especially the former, were men of the brush, not the pen, yet both of them capable of writing with point, and even in verse. By July 13 and 14, 1849, some steps were taken towards discussing the project of a magazine. The price, as at first proposed, was to be sixpence; the title, “Monthly Thoughts in Literature, Poetry, and Art”; each number was to have an etching. Soon afterwards a price of one shilling was decided upon, and two etchings per number: but this latter intention was not carried out.¹ All the P.R.B.'s were to be proprietors of the magazine: I question however whether Collinson was ever persuaded to assume this responsibility, entailing payment of an eventual deficit. We were quite ready also to have some other proprietors. Mr. Herbert was addressed by Collinson, and at one time was regarded as pretty safe. Mr. Hancock the sculptor did not resist the pressure put upon him; but after all he contributed nothing to “The Germ,” either in work or in money. Walter Deverell assented, and paid when the time came. Thus there seem to have been eight, or else seven, proprietors—not one of them having any spare cash, and not all of them much steadiness of interest in the scheme set going by Dante Rossetti.

With so many persons having a kind of co-equal right to decide what should be done with the magazine, it soon became apparent that somebody ought to be appointed Editor, and assume the control. I, during an absence from London, was fixed upon for this purpose by Woolner and my brother—with the express or tacit assent, so far as I know, of all the others, I received notice of my new dignity on September 23, 1849, being just under twenty years of age, and I forthwith applied myself to the task. It had at first been proposed to print upon the prospectus and wrappers of the magazine the words “Conducted by Artists,” and also (just about this time) to entitle it “The P.R.B. Journal.” I called attention to the first of these points as running counter to my assuming the editorship, and to the second as in itself inappropriate: both had in fact been already set aside. My brother had ere this been introduced to Messrs. Aylott and Jones, publishers in Paternoster Row (principally concerned, I believe, with books of evangelical religion), and had entered into terms with them, and got them to print a prospectus. “P.R.B.” was at first printed on the latter, but to this Mr. Holman-Hunt objected in November, and it was omitted. The printers were to be Messrs. Tupper and Sons, a firm of lithographic and general printers in the City, the same family to which John Lucas Tupper belonged. The then title, invented by my brother, was “Thoughts towards Nature,” a phrase which, though somewhat extra-peculiar, indicated accurately enough the predominant conception of the Præraphaelite Brotherhood, that an artist, whether painter or writer, ought to be bent upon defining and expressing his own personal thoughts, and that these ought to be based upon a direct study of Nature, and harmonized with her manifestations. It was not until December 19, when the issue of our No. 1 was closely impending, that a different title, “The Germ,” was proposed. On that evening there was a rather large gathering at Dante Rossetti's studio, 72 Newman Street; the seven P.R.B.'s, Madox Brown, Cave Thomas, Deverell, Hancock, and John and George Tupper. Mr. Thomas had drawn up a list of no less than sixty-five possible titles (a facsimile of his MS. of some of them appears in the “Letters of Dante Gabriel Rossetti to William Allingham,” edited by George Birkbeck Hill—Unwin, 1897). Only a few of them met with favour; and one of them, “The Germ,” going to the vote along with “The Seed” and “The Scroll,” was approved by a vote of six to four. The next best were, I think, “The Harbinger,” “First Thoughts,” “The Sower,” “The Truth-Seeker,” and “The Acorn.” Appended to the new title we retained, as a sub-title, something of what had been previously proposed; and the serial appeared as “The Germ. Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature, and Art.” At this same meeting Mr. Woolner suggested that authors' names should not be published in the magazine. I alone opposed him, and his motion was carried. I cannot at this distance of time remember with any precision what his reasons were; but I think that he, and all the other artists concerned, entertained a general feeling that to appear publicly as writers, and especially as writers opposing the ordinary current of opinions on fine art, would damage their professional position, which already involved uphill work more than enough.

“The Germ,” No. 1, came out on or about January 1, 1850. The number of copies printed was 700. Something like 200 were sold, in about equal proportions by the publishers, and by ourselves among acquaintances and well-wishers. This was not encouraging, so we reduced the issue of No. 2 to 500 copies. It sold less well than No. 1. With this number was introduced the change of printing on the wrapper the names of most of the contributors: not of all, for some still preferred to remain unnamed, or to figure under a fancy designation. Had we been left to our own resources, we must now have dropped the magazine. But the printing-firm—or Mr. George I.F. Tupper as representing it—came forward, and undertook to try the chance of two numbers more. The title was altered (at Mr. Alexander Tupper's suggestion) to “Art and Poetry, being Thoughts towards Nature, conducted principally by Artists”; and Messrs. Dickinson and Co., of New Bond Street, the printsellers, consented to join their name as publishers to that of Messrs. Aylott and Jones. Mr. Robert Dickinson, the head of this firm, and more especially his brother, the able portrait-painter Mr. Lowes Dickinson, were well known to Madox Brown, and through him to members of the P.R.B. I continued to be editor; but, as the money stake of myself and my colleagues in the publication had now ceased, I naturally accommodated myself more than before to any wish evinced by the Tupper family. No. 3, which ought to have appeared March 1, was delayed by these uncertainties and changes till March 31. No. 4 came out on April 30. Some small amount of advertising was done, more particularly by posters carried about in front of the Royal Academy (then in Trafalgar Square), which opened at the beginning of May. All efforts proved useless. People would not buy “The Germ,” and would scarcely consent to know of its existence. So the magazine breathed its last, and its obsequies were conducted in the strictest privacy. Its debts exceeded its assets, and a sum of £33 odd, due on Nos. 1 and 2, had to be cleared off by the seven (or eight) proprietors, conscientious against the grain. What may have been the loss of Messrs. Tupper on Nos. 3 and 4 I am unable to say. It is hardly worth specifying that neither the editor, nor any of the contributors whether literary or artistic, received any sort of payment. This was foreseen from the first as being “in the bond,” and was no grievance to anybody.

“The Germ,” as we have seen, was a most decided failure, yet it would be a mistake to suppose that it excited no amount of literary attention whatsoever. There were laudatory notices in “The Dispatch,” “The Guardian,” “Howitt's Standard of Freedom,” “John Bull,” “The Critic,” “Bell's Weekly Messenger,” “The Morning Chronicle,” and I dare say some other papers. A pat on the back, with a very lukewarm hand, was bestowed by “The Art Journal.” There were notices also—not eulogistic—in “The Spectator” and elsewhere. The editor of “The Critic,” Mr. (afterwards Serjeant) Cox, on the faith of doings in “The Germ,” invited me, or some other of the art-writers there, to undertake the fine-art department—picture-exhibitions, etc.—of his weekly review. This I did for a short time, and, on getting transferred to “The Spectator,” I was succeeded on “The Critic” by Mr. F.G. Stephens. I also received some letters consequent upon “The Germ,” and made some acquaintances among authors; Horne, Clough, Heraud, Westland Marston, also Miss Glyn the actress. I as editor came in for this; but of course the attractiveness of “The Germ” depended upon the writings of others, chiefly Messrs. Woolner, Patmore, and Orchard, my sister, and above all my brother, and, among the artist-etchers, Mr. Holman-Hunt.

I happen to be still in possession of the notices which appeared in “The Critic,” “Bell's Weekly Messenger,” and “The Guardian,” and of extracts (as given in our present facsimile) from those in “John Bull,” “The Morning Chronicle,” and “The Standard of Freedom”: I here reproduce the first three for the curious reader's perusal. First comes the review which appeared in “The Critic” on February 15, 1850, followed by a second review on June 1. The former was (as shown by the initials) written by Mr. Cox, and I presume the latter also. Major Calder Campbell must have called the particular attention of Mr. Cox to “The Germ.” My own first personal acquaintance with this gentleman may have been intermediate between 15 February and 1 June.

The Germ. Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature, and Art. Nos. I. and II. London: Aylott and Jones.

We depart from our usual plan of noticing the periodicals under one heading, for the purpose of introducing to our readers a new aspirant for public favour, which has peculiar and uncommon claims to attention, for in design and execution it differs from all other periodicals. The Germ is the somewhat affected and unpromising title give to a small monthly journal, which is devoted almost entirely to poetry and art, and is the production of a party of young persons. This statement is of itself, as we are well aware, enough to cause it to be looked upon with shyness. A periodical largely occupied with poetry wears an unpromising aspect to readers who have learned from experience what nonsensical stuff most fugitive magazine-poetry is; nor is this natural prejudice diminished by the knowledge that it is the production of young gentlemen and ladies. But, when they have read a few extracts which we propose to make, we think they will own that for once appearances are deceitful, and that an affected title and an unpromising theme really hides a great deal of genius; mingled however, we must also admit, with many conceits which youth is prone to, but which time and experience will assuredly tame.

That the contents of The Germ are the production of no common minds the following extracts will sufficiently prove, and we may add that these are but a small portion of the contents which might prefer equal claims to applause.

“My Beautiful Lady,” and “Of my Lady in Death,” are two poems in a quaint metre, full of true poetry, marred by not a few affectations—the genuine metal, but wanting to be purified from its dross. Nevertheless, it is pleasant to find the precious ore anywhere in these unpoetical times.

To our taste the following is replete with poetry. What a picture it is! A poet's tongue has told what an artist's eye has seen. It is the first of a series to be entitled “Songs of One Household.” [Here comes Dante Rossetti's poem, “My Sister's Sleep,” followed by Patmore's “Seasons,” and Christina Rossetti's “Testimony.”] We have not space to take any specimens of the prose, but the essays on art are conceived with an equal appreciation of its meaning and requirements. Being such, The Germ has our heartiest wishes for its success; but we scarcely dare to hope that it may win the popularity it deserves. The truth is that it is too good for the time. It is not material enough for the age.

Art and Poetry: being Thoughts towards Nature. Conducted principally by Artists. Nos. 3 and 4. London: Dickinson and Co.

Some time since we had occasion to direct the attention of our readers to a periodical then just issued under the modest title of The Germ. The surprise and pleasure with which we read it was, as we are informed, very generally shared by our readers upon perusing the poems we extracted from it; and it was manifest to every person of the slightest taste that the contributors were possessed of genius of a very high order, and that The Germ was not wantonly so entitled, for it abounded with the promise of a rich harvest to be anticipated from the maturity of those whose youth could accomplish so much.

But we expressed also our fear lest the very excellence of this magazine should be fatal to its success. It was too good—that is to say, too refined and of too lofty a class, both in its art and in its poetry—to be sufficiently popular to pay even the printer's bill. The name, too, was against it, being somewhat unintelligible to the thoughtless, and conveying to the considerate a notion of something very juvenile. Those fears were not unfounded, for it was suspended for a short time; but other journals after a while discovered and proclaimed the merit that was scattered profusely over the pages of The Germ, and, thus encouraged, the enterprise has been resumed, with a change of name which we must regard as an improvement. Art and Poetry precisely describes its character. It is wholly devoted to them, and it aims at originality in both. It is seeking out for itself new paths, in a spirit of earnestness, and with an undoubted ability which must lead to a new era. The writers may err somewhat at first, show themselves too defiant of prescriptive rules, and mistake extravagance for originality; but this fault (inherent in youth when, conscious of its powers, it first sets up for itself) will after a while work its own cure, and with experience will come soberer action. But we cannot contemplate this young and rising school in art and literature without the most ardent anticipations of something great to grow from it, something new and worthy of our age, and we bid them God speed upon the path they have adventured.

But our more immediate purpose here is with the poetry, of which about one-half of each number is composed. It is all beautiful, must of it of extraordinary merit, and equal to anything that any of our known poets could write, save Tennyson, of whom the strains sometimes remind us, although they are not imitations in any sense of the word. [The Reviewer next proceeds to quote, with a few words of comment, Christina Rossetti's “Sweet Death,” John Tupper's “Viola and Olivia,” Orchard's “Whit-Sunday Morn,” and (later on) Dante Rossetti's “Pax Vobis.”]

Almost one half of the April number is occupied with a “Dialogue on Art,” the composition of an Artist whose works are well known to the public. It was written during a period of ill health, which forbad the use of the brush, and, taking his pen, he has given to the world his thoughts upon art in a paper which the Edinburgh Review in its best days might have been proud to possess.

Sure we are that not one of our readers will regret the length at which we have noticed this work.

The short and unpretending critique which I add from “Bell's Weekly Messenger” was written, I believe, either by or at the instance of Mr. Bellamy, a gentleman who acted as secretary to the National Club. His son addressed me as editor of “The Germ,” in terms of great ardour, and through the son I on one occasion saw the father as well.

Art and Poetry. Nos. I., II., and III. London, Dickinson and Co.

The present numbers are the commencement of a very useful publication, conducted principally by artists, the design of which is to “express thoughts towards Nature.” We see much to commend in its pages, which are also nicely illustrated in the mediæval style of art and in outline. The paper upon Shakespeare's tragedy of “Macbeth,” in the third number, abounds with striking passages, and will be found to be well worthy of consideration.

I now proceed to “The Guardian.” The notice came out on August 20, 1850, some months after “The Germ” had expired. I do not now know who wrote it, and (so far as memory serves me) I never did know. The writer truly said that Millais “contributes nothing” to the magazine. This however was not Millais's fault, for he made an etching for a prose story by my brother (named “An Autopsychology,” or now “St. Agnes of Intercession”); and this etching, along with the story, had been expected to appear in a No. 5 of “The Germ” which never came out. The “very curious but very striking picture” by Rossetti was the “Annunciation,” now in the National British Gallery.

Art and Poetry. Being Thoughts towards Nature. Conducted principally by Artists. Dickinson and Co., and Aylott and Jones.

We are very sorry to find that, after a short life of four monthly numbers, this magazine is not likely to be continued. Independently of the great ability displayed by some of its contributors, we have been anxious to see the rising school of young and clever artists find a voice, and tell us what they are aiming at, and how they propose to reach their aim. This magazine was to a great extent connected with the Pre-Raffaelle Brethren, whose paintings have attracted this year a more than ordinary quantity of attention, and an amount of praise and blame perhaps equally extravagant. As might have been expected, the school has been identified with its cleverest manipulator, Mr. Millais, and his merits or defects have been made the measure of the admiration or contempt bestowed by the public upon those whom it chooses to class with him. This is not matter of complaint, but it is a mistake. As far as these papers enable us to judge, Mr. Millais is by no means the leading mind among his fraternity; and judged by the principles of some clever and beautiful papers upon art in the magazine before us, his pictures would be described by them as wanting in some of the very highest artistic qualities, although possessing many which entitle them to attention and respect. The chief contributors to this magazine (to which Mr. Millais contributes nothing) are other artists, as yet not greatly known, but with feeling and purpose about them such as must make them remarkable in time. Some of the best papers are by two brothers named Rossetti, one of whom, Mr. D. G. Rossetti, has a very curious but very striking picture now exhibiting in the Portland Gallery. Mr. Deverell, who has also a very clever picture in the same gallery, contributes some beautiful poetry. It is perhaps chiefly in the poetry that the abilities of these writers are displayed; for, with somewhat absurd and much that is affected, there is yet in the poetical pieces of these four numbers a beauty and grace of language and sentiment, and not seldom a vigour of conception, altogether above the common run. Want of purpose may be easily charged against them as a fault, and with some justice, but it is a very common defect of youthful poetry, which is sure to disappear with time if there be anything real and manly in the poet. The best pieces are too long to extracted in entire, and are not to be judged of fairly except as wholes. There is a very fine poem called “Repining” of which this is particularly true. [Next comes a quotation of Christina Rossetti's “Dream Land,” and of a portion of Dante Rossetti's “Blessed Damozel.”] The last number contains a remarkable dialogue on Art, written by a young man, John Orchard, who has since died. It is well worth study. Kalon, Kosmon, Sophon, and Christian, whose names, of course, represent the opinions they defend, discuss a number of subjects connected with the arts. Each character is well supported, and the wisdom and candour of the whole piece is very striking, especially when we consider the youth and inexperience of the writer. Art lost a true and high-minded votary in Mr. Orchard. [A rather long extract from the “Dialogue” follows here.]

It is a pity that the publication is to stop. English artists have hitherto worked each one by himself, with too little of common purpose, too little of mutual support, too little of distinct and steadily pursued intellectual object. We do not believe that they are one whit more jealous than the followers of other professions. But they are less forced to be together, and the little jealousies which deform the natures of us all have in their case, for this reason, freer scope, and tend more to isolation. Here, at last, we have a school, ignorant it may be, conceited possibly, as yet with but vague and unrealised objects, but working together with a common purpose, according to certain admitted principles, and looking to one another for help and sympathy. This is new in England, and we are very anxious it should have a fair trial. Its aim, moreover, however imperfectly attained as yet, is high and pure. No one can walk along our streets and not see how debased and sensual our tastes have become. The saying of Burke (so unworthy of a great man), that vice loses half its evil by losing all its grossness, is practically acted upon, and voluptuous and seductive figures, recommended only by a soft effeminacy, swarm our shop-windows and defile our drawing-rooms. It is impossible to over-state the extent to which they minister to, and increase the foul sins of, a corrupt and luxurious age. A school of artists who attempt to bring back the popular taste to the severe draperies and pure forms of early art are at least deserving of encouragement. Success in their attempt would be a national blessing.

Shrivelling in the Spring of 1850, “The Germ” showed no further sign of sprouting for many years, though I suppose it may have been known to the promoters of “The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine,” produced in 1856, and may have furnished some incitement towards that enterprise—again an unsuccessful one commercially. Gradually some people began to take a little interest in the knowledge that such a publication had existed, and to inquire after stray copies here and there. This may perhaps have commenced before 1870, or at any rate shortly afterwards, as in that year the “Poems” of Dante Rossetti were brought out, exciting a great amount of attention and admiration, and curiosity attached to anything that he might have published before. One heard of such prices as ten shillings for a set of the “The Germ,” then £2, £10, £30, etc., and in 1899 a copy handsomely bound by Cobden-Saunderson was sold in America for about £104. Will that high-water mark ever be exceeded? For the sake of common-sense, let us hope not.

I will now go through the articles in “The Germ” one by one. Wherever any of them may seem to invite a few words of explanation I offer such to the reader; and I give the names of the authors, when not named in the magazine itself. Those articles which do not call for any particular comment receive none here.

On the wrapper of each number is to be found a sonnet, printed in a rather aggressively Gothic type, beginning, “When whoso merely hath a little thought.” This sonnet is my performance; it had been suggested that one or other of the proprietors of the magazine should write a sonnet to express the spirit in which the publication was undertaken. I wrote the one here in question, which met with general acceptance; and I do not remember that any one else competed. This sonnet may not be a good one, but I do not see why it should be considered unintelligible. Mr. Bell Scott, in his “Autobiographical Notes,” expressed the opinion that to master the production would almost need a Browning Society's united intellects. And he then gave his interpretation, differing not essentially from my own. What I meant is this: A writer ought to think out his subject honestly and personally, not imitatively, and ought to express it with directness and precision; if he does this, we should respect his performance as truthful, even though it may not be important. This indicated, for writers, much the same principle which the P.R.B. professed for painters,—individual genuineness in the thought, reproductive genuineness in the presentment.

By Thomas Woolner: “My Beautiful Lady,” and “Of My Lady in Death.” These compositions were, I think, nearly the first attempts which Mr. Woolner made in verse; any earlier endeavours must have been few and slight. The author's long poem “My Beautiful Lady,” published in 1863, started from these beginnings. Coventry Patmore, on hearing the poems in September 1849, was considerably impressed by them: “the only defect he found” (as notified in a letter from Dante Rossetti) “being that they were a trifle too much in earnest in the passionate parts, and too sculpturesque generally. He means by this that each stanza stands too much alone, and has its own ideas too much to itself.”

By Ford Madox Brown: “The Love of Beauty: Sonnet.”

By John L. Tupper: “The Subject in Art.” Two papers, which do not complete the important thesis here undertaken. Mr. Tupper was, for an artist, a man of unusually scientific mind; yet he was not, I think, distinguished by that power of orderly and progressive exposition which befits an argumentation. These papers exhibit a good deal of thought, and state several truths which, even if partial truths, are not the less deserving of attention; but the dissertation does not produce a very clear impression, inasmuch as there is too great a readiness to plunge, in medias res, checked by too great a tendency to harking back, and re-stating some conclusion in modified terms and with insecure corollaries. Two points which Mr. Tupper chiefly insists upon are: (1) that the subject in a work of art affects the beholder in the same sort of way as the same subject, occurring as a fact or aspect of Nature, affects him; and thus whatever in Nature excites the mental and moral emotion of man is a right subject for fine art; and (2), that subjects of our own day should not be discarded in favour of those of a past time. These principles, along with others bearing in the same direction, underlie the propositions lately advanced by Count Leo Tolstoy in his most interesting and valuable (though I think one-sided) book entitled “What is Art?”—and the like may be said of the principles announced in the “Hand and Soul” of Dante Rossetti, and in the “Dialogue on Art” by John Orchard, through the mouths of two of the speakers, Christian and Sophon. I have once or twice seen these papers by Mr. Tupper commented upon to the effect that he wholly ignores the question of art-merit in a work of art, the question whether it is good or bad in form, colour, etc. But this is a mistake, for in fact he allows that this is a relevant consideration, but declines to bring it within his own lines of discussion. There is also a curious passage which has been remarked upon as next door to absurd; that where, in treating of various forms of still life as inferior subjects for art, he says that “the dead pheasant in a picture will always be as ‘food,’ while the same at the poulterer's will be but a dead pheasant.” I do not perceive that this is really absurd. At the poulterer's (and Mr. Tupper has proceeded to say as much in his article) all the items are in fact food, and therefore the spectator attends to the differences between them; one being a pheasant, one a fowl, one a rabbit, etc. But, in a varied collection of pictures, most of the works representing some subject quite unconnected with food; and, if you see among them one, such as a dead pheasant, representing an article of food, that is the point which primarily occurs to your mind as distinguishing this particular picture from the others. The views expressed by Mr. Tupper in these two papers should be regarded as his own, and not by any means necessarily those upheld by the Præraphaelite Brotherhood. The members of this body must however have agreed with several of his utterances, and sympathized with others, apart from strict agreement.

By Patmore: “The Seasons.” This choice little poem was volunteered to “The Germ” in September, after the author had read our prospectus, which impressed him favourably. He withheld his name, much to our disappointment, having resolved to do so in all instances where something of his might be published pending the issue of a new volume.

By Christina Rossetti: “Dream Land.” Though my sister was only just nineteen when this remarkable lyric was printed, she had already made some slight appearance in published type (not to speak of the privately printed “Verses” of 1847), as two small poems of hers had been inserted in “The Athenæum” in October 1848. “Dream Land” was written in April 1849, before “The Germ” was thought of; and it may be as well to say that all my sister's contributions to this magazine were produced without any reference to publication in that or in any particular form.

By Dante G. Rossetti: “My Sister's Sleep.” This purports to be No. 1 of “Songs of One Household.” I do not much think that Dante Rossetti ever wrote any other poem which would have been proper to such a series. “My Sister's Sleep” was composed very soon after he emerged from a merely juvenile stage of work. I believe that it dates before “The Blessed Damozel,” and therefore before May 1847. It is not founded upon any actual event affecting the Rossetti family, nor any family of our acquaintance. As I have said in my Memoir of my brother (1895), the poem was shown, perhaps early in 1848, by Major Calder Campbell to the editress of the “Belle Assemblée,” who heartily admired it, but, for one reason or another, did not publish it. This composition is somewhat noticeable on more grounds than one; not least as being in a metre which was not much in use until it became famous in Tennyson's “In Memoriam,” published in 1850, and of course totally unknown to Rossetti when he wrote “My Sister's Sleep.” In later years my brother viewed this early work with some distaste, and he only reluctantly reprinted it in his “Poems,” 1870. He then wholly omitted the four stanzas 7, 8, 12, 13, beginning: “Silence was speaking,” “I said, full knowledge,” “She stood a moment,” “Almost unwittingly”; and he made some other verbal alterations.² It will be observed that this poem was written long before the Præraphaelite movement began. None the less it shows in an eminent degree one of the influences which guided that movement: the intimate intertexture of a spiritual sense with a material form; small actualities made vocal of lofty meanings.

By Dante G. Rossetti: “Hand and Soul.” This tale was, I think, written with an express view to its appearing in No. 1 of our magazine, and Rossetti began making for it an etching, which, though not ready for No. 1, was intended to appear in some number later than the second. He drew it in March 1850; but, being disgusted with the performance, he scratched the plate over, and tore up the prints. The design showed Chiaro dell' Erma in the act of painting his embodied Soul. Though the form of this tale is that of romantic metaphor, its substance is a very serious manifesto of art-dogma. It amounts to saying, The only satisfactory works of art are those which exhibit the very soul of the artist. To work for fame or self-display is a failure, and to work for direct moral proselytizing is a failure; but to paint that which your own perceptions and emotions urge you to paint promises to be a success for yourself, and hence a benefit to the mass of beholders. This was the core of the “Præraphaelite” creed; with the adjunct (which hardly came within the scope of Rossetti's tale, and yet may be partly traced there) that the artist cannot attain to adequate self-expression save through a stern study and realization of natural appearances. And it may be said that to this core of the Præraphaelite creed Rossetti always adhered throughout his life, greatly different though his later works are from his earlier ones in the externals of artistic style. Most of “Hand and Soul” was written on December 21, 1849, day and night, chiefly in some five hours beginning after midnight. Three currents of thought may be traced in this story: (1) A certain amount of knowledge regarding the beginnings of Italian art, mingled with some ignorance, voluntary or involuntary, of what was possible to be done in the middle of the thirteenth century; (2) a highly ideal, yet individual, general treatment of the narrative; and (3) a curious aptitude at detailing figments as if they were facts. All about Chiaro dell' Erma himself, Dresden and Dr. Aemmster, D'Agincourt, pictures at the Pitti Gallery, the author's visit to Florence in 1847, etc., are pure inventions or “mystifications”; but so realistically put that they have in various instances been relied upon and cited as truths. I gave some details as to this in my Memoir of Dante Rossetti. The style of writing in “Hand and Soul” is of a very exceptional kind. My brother had at that time a great affection for “Stories after Nature,” written by Charles Wells (author of “Joseph and his Brethren”), and these he kept in view to some extent as a model, though the direct resemblance is faint indeed. In the conversation of foreign art-students, forming the epilogue, he may have been not wholly oblivious of the scene in Browning's “Pippa Passes” (a prime favourite of his), where some “foreign students of painting and sculpture” are preparing a disagreeable surprise for the French sculptor Jules. There is, however, no sort of imitation; and Rossetti's dialogue is the more markedly natural of the two. In re-reading “Hand and Soul,” I am struck by two passages which came true of Rossetti himself in after-life: (1) “Sometimes after nightfall he would walk abroad in the most solitary places he could find—hardly feeling the ground under him because of the thoughts of the day which held him in fever.” (2) “Often he would remain at work through the whole of a day, not resting once so long as the light lasted.” When Rossetti, in 1869, was collecting his poems, and getting them privately printed with a view to after-publication, he thought of including “Hand and Soul” in the same volume, but did not eventually do so. The privately-printed copy forms a small pamphlet, which has sometimes been sold at high prices—I believe £10 and upwards. At this time I pointed out to him that the church at Pisa which he named San Rocco could not possibly have borne that name—San Rocco being a historical character who lived at a later date: the Church was then re-named “San Petronio,” and this I believe is the only change of the least importance introduced into the reprint. In December 1870 the tale was published in “The Fortnightly Review.” The Rev. Alfred Gurney (deceased not long ago) was a great admirer of Dante Rossetti's works. He published in 1883 a brochure named “A Dream of Fair Women, a Study of some Pictures by Dante Gabriel Rossetti”; he also published an essay on “Hand and Soul,” giving a more directly religious interpretation to the story than its author had at all intended. It is entitled “A Painter's Day-dream.”

By W. M. Rossetti: “Review of Clough's Bothie of Toper-na-fuosich.” The only remark which I need to make on this somewhat ponderous article is that I, as Editor of “The Germ,” was more or less expected to do the sort of work for which other “proprietors” had little inclination—such especially as the regular reviewing of new poems.

By W. M. Rossetti: “Her First Season: Sonnet.” As I have said elsewhere, my brother and I were at one time greatly addicted to writing sonnets together to bouts-rimés: the date may have been chiefly 1848, and the practice had, I think, quite ceased for some little while before “The Germ” commenced in 1850. This sonnet was one of my bouts-rimés performances. I ought to have been more chary than I was of introducing into our seriously-intended magazine such hap-hazard things as bouts-rimés poems: one reason for doing so was that we were often at a loss for something to fill a spare page.

By John L. Tupper: “A Sketch from Nature.” The locality indicated in these very spirited descriptive lines is given as “Sydenham Wood.” When I was compiling the posthumous volume of John Tupper's “Poems” which came out in 1897, I should, so far as merit is concerned, have wished to include this little piece: it was omitted solely on the ground of its being already published.

By Christina Rossetti: “An End.” Written in March 1849.

By Collinson: “The Child Jesus, a Record Typical of the Five Sorrowful Mysteries.” Collinson, as I have already said, was hardly a writing man, and I question whether he had produced a line of verse prior to undertaking this by no means trivial task. The poem, like the etching which he did for it, is deficient in native strength, nor is there much invention in the symbolical incidents which make it up: but its general level, and several of its lines and passages, always appeared to me, and still appear, highly laudable, and far better than could have been reckoned for. Here and there a telling line was supplied by Dante Rossetti. Millais, when shortly afterwards in Oxford, found that the poem had made some sensation there. It is singular that Collinson should, throughout his composition, speak of Nazareth as being on the sea-shore—which is the reverse of the fact. The Præraphaelites, with all their love of exact truth to nature, were a little arbitrary in applying the principle; and Collinson seems to have regarded it as quite superfluous to look into a map, and see whether Nazareth was near the sea or not. Or possibly he trusted to Dante Rossetti's poem “Ave,” in which likewise Nazareth is a marine town. My brother advisedly stuck to this in 1869, when I pointed out the error to him: he replied, “I fear the sea must remain at Nazareth: you know an old painter would have made no bones if he wanted it for his background.” I cannot say whether Collinson, if put to it, would have pleaded the like arbitrary and almost burlesque excuse: at any rate he made the blunder, and in a much more detailed shape than in Rossetti's lyric. “The Child Jesus” is, I think, the poem of any importance that he ever wrote.

By Christina Rossetti: “A Pause of Thought.” On the wrapper of “The Germ” the writer's name is given as “Ellen Alleyn”: this was my brother's concoction, as Christina did not care to figure under her own name. “A Pause of Thought” was written in February 1848, when she was but little turned of seventeen. Taken as a personal utterance (which I presume it to be, though I never inquired as to that, and though it was at first named “Lines in Memory of Schiller's Der Pilgrim”), it is remarkable; for it seems to show that, even at that early age, she aspired ardently after poetic fame, with a keen sense of “hope deferred.”

By F. G. Stephens (called “John Seward” on the wrapper): “The Purpose and Tendency of Early Italian Art.” This article speaks for itself as being a direct outcome of the Præraphaelite movement: its aim is to enforce personal independent endeavour, based upon close study of nature, and to illustrate the like qualities shown in the earlier school of art. It is more hortatory than argumentative, and is in fact too short to develop its thesis—it indicates some main points for reflection.

By W. Bell Scott: “Morning Sleep.” This poem delighted us extremely when Mr. Scott sent it in reply to a request for contributions. I still think it a noticeably fine thing, and one of his most equable pieces of execution. It was republished in his volume of “Poems,” 1875—with some verbal changes, and shortened, I think damaged.

By Patmore: “Stars and Moon.”

By Ford Madox Brown: “On the Mechanism of a Historical Picture”: Part 1, the Design. It is by this time a well-recognized fact that Brown was one of the men in England, or indeed in Europe, most capable of painting a historical picture, and it is a matter of regret that “The Germ” came to an end before he had an opportunity of continuing and completing this serviceable compendium of precepts. He had studied art in continental schools; but I do not think he imported into his article much of what he had been taught,—rather what he had thought out for himself, and had begun putting into practice.

By W. M. Rossetti: “Fancies at Leisure.” The first three of these were written to bouts-rimés. As to No. 1, “Noon Rest,” I have a tolerably clear recollection that the rhymes were prescribed to me by Millais, on one of the days in 1849 when I was sitting to him for the head of Lorenzo in his first Præraphaelite picture from Keats's “Isabella.” No. 4, “Sheer Waste,” was not a bouts-rimés performance. It was chiefly the outcome of an early afternoon spent lazily in Regent's Park.

By Walter H. Deverell: “The Light Beyond.” These sonnets are not of very finished execution, but they have a dignified sustained tone and some good lines. Had Deverell lived a little longer, he might probably have proved that he had some genuine vocation as a poet, no less than a decided pictorial faculty. He died young in February 1854.

By Dante G. Rossetti: “The Blessed Damozel.” As to this celebrated poem much might be said; but I shall not say it here, partly because I wrote an Introduction to a reprint (published by Messrs. Duckworth and Co. in 1898) of the “Germ” version of the poem, which is the earliest version extant, and in that Introduction I gave a number of particulars forestalling what I could now set down. I will however take this opportunity of correcting a blunder into which I fell in the Introduction above mentioned. I called attention to “calm” and “warm,” which make a “cockney rhyme” in stanza 9 of this “Germ” version; and I said that, in the later version printed in “The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine” in 1856, a change in the line was made, substituting “swam” for “calm,” and that the cockneyism, though shuffled, was not thus corrected. In “The Saturday Review,” June 25, 1898, the publication of Messrs. Duckworth was criticized; and the writer very properly pointed out that I had made a crass mistake. “Mr. Rossetti,” he said, “must be a very hasty reader of texts. What is printed [in ‘The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine’] is ‘swarm,’ not ‘swam,’ and the rhyme with ‘warm’ is perfect, stultifying the editor's criticism completely.” Probably the critic considered my error as unaccountable as it was serious; and yet it could be fully accounted for, though not fully excused. I had not been “a very hasty reader of texts” in the sense indicated by “The Saturday Review.” The fact is that, not possessing a copy of “The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine,” I had referred to the book brought out by Mr. William Sharp in 1882, “Dante Gabriel Rossetti: A Record and a Study,” in which are given (with every appearance of care and completeness) the passages of “The Blessed Damozel” as they appeared in “The Germ,” with the alterations printed in “The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine.” From the latter, the line in question is given by Mr. Sharp as “Waste sea of worlds that swam”; and I, supposing him to be correct (though I allow that memory ought to have taught me the contrary), reproduced that line to the same effect. “Always verify your references” is a precept to which editors and commentators cannot too carefully conform. Many thanks to the writer in “The Saturday Review” for showing that, while I, and also Mr. Sharp, had made a mistake, my brother had made none.

By W. M. Rossetti: “Review of the Strayed Reveller and other Poems, by A.” As we all now know, “A.” was Matthew Arnold, and this was his first published volume; but I, at the time of writing the review, knew nothing of the identity of “A.,” and even had I been told that he was Matthew Arnold, that would have carried the matter hardly at all further. I remember that, after I had written the whole or most of this admiring review, I found that the volume had been abused in “Blackwood's Magazine”; a fact of sweet savour to myself and other P.R.B.'s, as we entertained a hearty detestation of that magazine, with its blustering “Christopher North,” and its traditions of truculency against Keats, Shelley, Leigh Hunt, Tennyson, Ruskin, and some others. I read “A.'s” volume with great attention, and piqued myself somewhat upon having introduced into my review some reference (detailed or cursory) to every poem in it. Possibly (but I hardly think so) the critique was afterwards shortened, so as to bereave it of this merit.

By Madox Brown (the etching) and by W. M. Rossetti (the verses): “Cordelia.” For the belated No. 3 of “The Germ” we were much at a loss for an illustration. Mr. Brown offered to accommodate us by etching this design, one of a series from “King Lear” which he had drawn in Paris in 1844. That series, though not very sightly to the eye, is of extraordinary value for dramatic insight and energy. We gladly accepted, and he produced this etching with very little self-satisfaction, so far as the technique of execution is concerned. Dante Rossetti was to have furnished some verses for the etching; but for this he did not find time, so I was put in as a stopgap, and I am not sure that any reader of “The Germ” has ever thanked me for my obedience to the call of duty.

By Patmore: “Essay on Macbeth.” In this interesting and well-considered paper Mr. Patmore assumes that he was the first person to put into writing the opinion that Macbeth, before meeting with the witches, had already definitely conceived and imparted the idea of obtaining the crown of Scotland by wrongful means. I have always felt some uncertainty whether Mr. Patmore was really the first; if he was, it certainly seems strange that the train of reasoning which he furnishes in this essay—forcible, even if we do not regard it as unanswerable—should not have presented itself to the mind and pen of some earlier writer. The Essay appears to have been left incomplete in at least one respect. In speaking of “the fifth scene,” the author refers to “postponement of comment” upon Macbeth's letter to his wife, and he “leaves it for the present.” But the comment never comes.

By Christina Rossetti: “Repining.” This rather long poem, written in December 1847 on a still broader scale, was never republished by the authoress, although all her other poems in “The Germ” were so. She did not think that its deservings were such as to call for republication. I apprehend that herein she exercised a wise discretion: none the less, when I was compiling the volume of her “New Poems,” issued in 1896, I included “Repining”—for I think that some of the considerations which apply to the works of an author while living do not remain in anything like full force after death.

By Dante G. Rossetti: “The Carillon, Antwerp and Bruges.” These verses, and some others further on in “The Germ,” were written during the brief trip, in Paris and Belgium, which my brother made along with Holman-Hunt in the autumn of 1849. He did not republish “The Carillon”; but he left in MS. an abridged form of it, with the title “Antwerp and Bruges,” and this I included in his “Collected Works,” 1886. The only important change was the omission of stanzas 1 and 4.

By Dante G. Rossetti: “From the Cliffs, Noon.” Altering some phrases in this lyric, and adding two stanzas, Rossetti republished it under the name of “The Sea-limits.”

By W. M. Rossetti: “Fancies at Leisure.” The first four were written to bouts-rimés: not the fifth, “The Fire Smouldering,” which is, I think, as old as 1848, or even 1847.

By John L. Tupper: “Papers of the MS. Society; No. 1, An Incident in the Siege of Troy.” This grotesque outburst, though sprightly and clever, was not well-suited to the pages of “The Germ.” My attention had been called to it at an earlier date, when my editorial power was unmodified, but I then staved it off, and indeed John Tupper himself did not deem it appropriate. It will be observed that “MS. Society” is said not to mean “Manuscript Society.” I forget what it did mean—possibly “Medical Student Society.” The whole thing is replete with semi-private sous-entendus, and banter at Free Trade, medical and anatomical matters, etc. The like general remarks apply to No. 4, “Smoke,” by the same writer. It is a rollicking semi-intelligible chaunt, a forcible thing in its way, proper in the first instance (I believe) to a sort of club of medical students, Royal Academy students, and others—highly-seasoned smokers most of them—in which John Tupper exercised a quasi-privacy, and was called (owing to his thinness, much over-stated in the poem) “The Spectro-cadaveral King.” No. 5, “Rain,” is again by John Tupper, and is the only item in “The Papers of the MS. Society” which seems, in tone and method, to be reasonably appropriate for “The Germ.”

By Alexander Tupper: No. 2, “Swift's Dunces.”

By George I. F. Tupper: No. 3, “Mental Scales.” This also, in the scrappy condition which it here presents, reads rather as a joke than as a serious proposition: I believe it was meant for the latter.

By John L. Tupper: “Viola and Olivia.” The verses are not of much significance. The etching by Deverell, however defective in technique, claims more attention, as the Viola was drawn from Miss Elizabeth Eleanor Siddal, whom Deverell had observed in a bonnet-shop some few months before the etching was done, and who in 1860 became the wife of Dante Rossetti. This face does not give much idea of hers, and yet it is not unlike her in a way. The face of Olivia bears some resemblance to Christina Rossetti: I think however that it was drawn, not from her, but from a sister of the artist.

By John Orchard: “A Dialogue on Art.” The brief remarks prefacing this dialogue were written by Dante Rossetti. The diction of the dialogue itself was also, at Orchard's instance, revised to some minor extent by my brother, and I dare say by me. Orchard was a painter of whom perhaps no memory remains at the present day: he exhibited some few pictures, among which I can dimly remember one of “The Flight of Archbishop Becket from England.” His age may, I suppose, have been twenty-seven or twenty-eight years at the date of his death. In our circle he was unknown; but, conceiving a deep admiration for Rossetti's first exhibited picture (1849), “The Girlhood of Mary Virgin,” he wrote to him, enclosing a sonnet upon the picture—a very bad sonnet in all executive respects, and far from giving promise of the spirited, if unequal, poetic treatment which we find in the lines in “The Germ,” “On a Whit-Sunday Morn in the Month of May.” This led to a call from Orchard to Rossetti. I think there was only one call, and I, as well as my brother, saw him on that occasion. Afterwards, he sent this dialogue for “The Germ.” The dialogue has always, and I think justly, been regarded as a remarkable performance. The form of expression is not impeccable, but there is a large amount of eloquence, coming in aid of definite and expansive thought. From what is here said it will be understood that Orchard was quite unconnected with the P.R.B. He expressed opinions of his own which may indeed have assimilated in some points to theirs, but he was not in any degree the mouthpiece of their organization, nor prompted by any member of the Brotherhood. In the dialogue, the speaker whose opinions appear manifestly to represent those of Orchard himself is Christian, who is mostly backed up by Sophon. Christian forces ideas of purism or puritanism to an extreme, beyond anything which I can recollect as characterizing any of the P.R.B. His upholding of the painters who preceded Raphael as the best men for nurturing new and noble developments of art in our own day was more in their line. In my brother's prefatory note a question is raised of publishing any other writings which Orchard might have left behind. None such, however, were found. Dr. W. C. Bennett (afterwards known as the author of “Songs for Sailors,” etc.), who had been intimate with Orchard, aided my brother in his researches.

By F. G. Stephens (called “Laura Savage” on the wrapper): “Modern Giants.”

By Dante G. Rossetti: “Pax Vobis.” Republished by the author, with some alterations, under the title of “World's Worth.”

By Dante G. Rossetti: “Sonnets for Pictures.” No. 1, “A Virgin and Child, by Hans Memmeling,” was not reprinted by Rossetti, but is included (with a few verbal alterations made by him in MS.) in his “Collected Works.” No. 2, “A Marriage of St. Katherine, by the same.” A similar observation. No. 3, “A Dance of Nymphs, by Andrea Mantegna,” was republished by Rossetti, with some verbal alterations. No. 4, “A Venetian Pastoral, by Giorgione”—the like. The alterations here are of considerable moment. Rossetti, in a published letter of October 8, 1849, referred to the Giorgione picture as follows: “A Pastoral—at least, a kind of Pastoral—by Giorgione, which is so intensely fine that I condescended to sit down before it and write a sonnet. You must have heard me rave about the engraving before, and, I fancy, have seen it yourself. There is a woman, naked, at one side, who is dipping a glass vessel into a well, and in the centre two men and another naked woman, who seem to have paused for a moment in playing on the musical instruments which they hold.” Nos. 5 and 6, “Angelica Rescued from the Sea-Monster, by Ingres,” were also reprinted by the author, with scarcely any alteration. Patmore, on reading these two sonnets, was much struck with their truthfulness of quality, as being descriptive of paintings. As to some of the other sonnets, Mr. W. M. Hardinge wrote in “Temple Bar,” several years ago, an article containing various pertinent and acute remarks.

By W. M. Rossetti: “Review of Browning's Christmas Eve and Easter Day.” The only observation I need make upon this review—which was merely intended as introductory to a fuller estimate of the poem, to appear in an ensuing number of “The Germ”—is that it exemplifies that profound cultus of Robert Browning which, commenced by Dante Rossetti, had permeated the whole of the Præraphaelite Brotherhood, and formed, not less than some other ideas, a bond of union among them. It will be readily understood that, in Mr. Stephens's article, “Modern Giants,” the person spoken of as “the greatest perhaps of modern poets” is Browning.

By W. M. Rossetti: “The Evil under the Sun: Sonnet.” This sonnet was composed in August 1849, when the great cause of the Hungarian insurrection against Austrian tyranny was, like revolutionary movements elsewhere, precipitating towards its fall. My original title for the sonnet was, “For the General Oppression of the Better by the Worse Cause, Autumn 1849.” When the verses had to be published in “The Germ,” a magazine which did not aim at taking any side in politics, it was thought that this title was inappropriate, and the other was substituted. At a much later date the sonnet was reprinted with yet another and more significant title, “Democracy Down-trodden.”

Having now disposed of “The Germ” in general, and singly of most of the articles in it, I have very little to add. The project of reprinting the magazine was conceived by its present publisher, Mr. Stock, many years ago—perhaps about 1883. At that time several contributors assented, but others declined, and considerations of copyright made it impracticable to proceed with the project. It is only now that lapse of time has disposed of the copyright question, and Mr. Stock is free to act as he likes. I was from the first one of those (the majority) who assented to the republication, acting herein on behalf of my brother, then lately deceased, as well as of myself. I am quite aware that some of the articles in “The Germ” are far from good, and some others, though good in essentials, are to a certain extent juvenile; but juvenility is anything but uninteresting when it is that of such men as Coventry Patmore and Dante Rossetti. “The Germ” contains nothing of which, in spirit and in purport, the writers need be ashamed. If people like to read it without paying fancy prices for the original edition, they were and are, so far as I am concerned, welcome to do so. Before Mr. Stock's long-standing scheme could be legally carried into effect, an American publisher, Mr. Mosher, towards the close of 1898, brought out a handsome reprint of “The Germ” (not in any wise a facsimile), and a few of the copies were placed on sale in London.³ Mr. Mosher gave as an introduction to his volume an article by the late J. Ashcroft Noble which originally appeared in an English magazine in May 1882. This article is entitled “A Pre-Raphaelite Magazine.” It is written in a spirit of generous sympathy, and is mostly correct in its facts. I may here mention another article on “The Germ,” also published, towards 1868, in some magazine. It is by John Burnell Payne (originally a Clergyman of the Church of England), who died young in 1869. He wrote a triplet of articles, named “Præraphaelite Poetry and Painting,” of which Part I. is on “The Germ.” He expresses himself sympathetically enough; but his main drift is to show that the Præraphaelite movement, after passing through some immature stages, developed into a quasi-Renaissance result. A perusal of his paper will show that Mr. Payne was one of the persons who supposed Chiaro dell'Erma, the hero of “Hand and Soul,” to have been a real painter, author of an extant picture.

Mr. Stock's reprint is of the facsimile order, and even faults of print are reproduced. I am not called upon to say with any precision what there are. On page 45 I observe “ear,” which should be “car”; on page 62, Angilico, and Rossini (for Rosini). On page 155 the words, “I believe that the thought-wrapped philosopher,” ought to begin a new sentence. On page 159 “Phyrnes” ought of course to be “Phrynes.” The punctuation could frequently be improved.

I will conclude by appending a little list (it makes no pretension to completeness) of writings bearing upon the Præraphaelite Brotherhood and its members. Writings of that kind are by this date rather numerous; but some readers of the present pages may not well know where to find them, and might none the less be inclined to read up the subject a little. I give these works in the order (as far as I know it) of their dates, without any attempt to indicate the degree of their importance. That is a question on which I naturally entertain opinions of my own, but I shall not intrude them upon the reader.

• Ruskin: Pre-Raphaelitism, 1854, and other later writings.

• F. G. Stephens: William Holman-Hunt and his Works, 1860.

• William Sharp: Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1882.

• Hall Caine: Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1882.

• Walter Hamilton: The Æsthetic Movement in England, 1882.

• T. Watts-Dunton: The Truth about Rossetti, 1883, and other writings.

• W. Holman-Hunt: The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, 1884 (?).

• Earnest Chesneau: La Peinture Anglaise, 1884 (?).

• Joseph Knight: Life of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1887.

• W. M. Rossetti: Dante Gabriel Rossetti as Designer and Writer, 1889.

• Harry Quilter: Preferences in Art, 1892.

• W. Bell Scott: Autobiographical Notes, 1892.

• Esther Wood: Dante Rossetti and the Pre-Raphaelite Movement, 1894.

• Robert de la Sizeranne: La Peinture Anglaise Contemporaine, 1895.

• Dante G. Rossetti: Family Letters, with Memoir by W. M. Rossetti, 1895.

• Richard Muther: The History of Modern Painting, vols. ii. and iii., 1896.

• Ford H. M. Hueffer: Ford Madox Brown, 1896.

• Dante G. Rossetti: Letters to William Allingham, edited by Dr. Birkbeck Hill, 1897.

• M. H. Spielmann: Millais and his Works, 1898.

• Antonio Agresti: Poesie di Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Traduzione con uno Studio su la Pittura Inglese, etc., 1899.

• Fraulein Wilmersdoerffer: Dante Gabriel Rossetti und sein Einflusz, 1899.

• Edited by W. M. Rossetti: Ruskin, Rossetti, Præraphaelitism, 1899.

• J. Guille Millais: Life and Letters of Sir John Everett Millais, 1899.

• Percy H. Bate: The English Præraphaelite Painters, 1899.

• H. C. Marillier: Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1899.

• Edited by W. M. Rossetti: Præraphaelite Diaries and Letters, 1899.

There are also books on Burne-Jones and Willaim Morris with which I am not accurately acquainted. It seems strange that no memoir of Thomas Woolner has yet been published; a fine sculptor and remarkable man known to and appreciated by all sorts of people, and certain to have figured extensively in correspondence. He died in October 1892. Mr. Holman-Hunt is understood to have been engaged for a long while past upon a book on Præraphaelitism which would cast into the shade most of the earlier literature on the subject.

W. M. ROSSETTI

London, July 1899.

N.B.—When the third number of the magazine was about to appear, with a change of title from “The Germ” to “Art and Poetry,” two fly-sheets were drawn up, more, I think, by Messrs. Tupper the printing-firm than by myself. They contain some “Opinions of the Press,” already referred to in this Introduction, and an explanation as to the change of title. The fly-sheets appear in facsimile as follows:

“The Germ”

The Subscribers to this Periodical are respectfully informed that in future it will appear under the title of “Art and Poetry” instead of the original arbitrary one, which occasioned much misapprehension—This alteration will not be productive of any ill consequence, as the title has never occurred in the work itself, and Label will be supplied for placing on the old wrappers, so as to make them conformable to the new—

It should also be noticed that the Numbers will henceforward be published on the last day of the Month for which they are dated—

Town Subscribers will oblige by filling up & returning the accompanying form, which will ensure the Numbers being duly forwarded as directed.—

Country Subscribers may obtain their copies by kindly forwarding their orders to any Booksellers in their respective Neighborhoods.—

Opinions of the press

“… Original Poems, stories to develop thought and principle, essays concerning Art & other subjects, are the materials which are to compose this unique addition to our periodical literature Among the poetry, there are some rare gems of poetic conception; among the prose essays, we notice “the Subject in Art” which treats of Art itself in a noble and lofty tone, with the view which he must take of it who would, in the truest sense of the word, be an Artist, and another paper, not less interesting, on “the Purpose and Tendency of Early Italian Art” A well executed Etching in the medieval style, accompanies each number”

John Bull.

“… There are so many original and beautiful thoughts in these pages—indeed some of the poems & tales are in themselves so beautiful in spirit & form—that we have hopes of the writers, when they shall have got rid of those ghosts of mediæval art which now haunt their every page. The essay ‘On the Mechanism of a Historical Picture’ is a good practical treatise, and indicates the hand of writing which is much wanted among artists”

Morning Chronicle.

“We depart from our usual plan of noticing the periodicals under one heading, for the purpose of introducing to our readers a new aspirant for public favour, which has pecu liar and uncommon claims to attention, for in design & execution it differs from all other periodicals … A periodical largely occupied with poetry wears an unpromising aspect to readers who have learned from experience what nonsensical stuff most fugitive Magazine poetry is.... But, when they have read a few extracts which we propose to make, we think they will own that for once appearances are deceitful.... That the contents of this work are the productions of no common minds, the following extracts will sufficiently prove.... We have not space to take any specimens of the prose; but the essays on Art are conceived with an equal appreciation of its meaning & requirements. Being such, this work has our heartiest wishes for its success, but we scarcely dare to hope that it may win the popularity it deserves. The truth is that it is too good for the time. It is not material enough for the age”

Critic.

“… It bears unquestionable evidences of true inspirations and, in fact, is so thoroughly spiritual that it is more likely to find ‘the fit audience though few’ than to attract the multitude … The prose articles are much to our taste … We know, however, of no periodical of the time which is so genuinely poetical and artistic in its tone.”

Standard of Freedom.

The Germ: Thoughts towards Nature In Poetry, Literature, and Art.
No. 1. January, 1850

With an Etching by W. HOLMAN HUNT

When whoso merely hath a little thought
Will plainly think the thought which is in him,—
Not imaging another's bright or dim,
Not mangling with new words what others taught;
When whoso speaks, from having either sought
Or only found,—will speak, not just to skim
A shallow surface with words made and trim,
But in that very speech the matter brought:
Be not too keen to cry—“So this is all!—
A thing I might myself have thought as well,
But would not say it, for it was not worth!”
Ask: “Is this truth?” For is it still to tell
That, be the theme a point or the whole earth,
Truth is a circle, perfect, great or small?

My Beautiful Lady

I love my lady; she is very fair;
Her brow is white, and bound by simple hair;
Her spirit sits aloof, and high,
Altho' it looks thro' her soft eye
Sweetly and tenderly.

As a young forest, when the wind drives thro',
My life is stirred when she breaks on my view.
Altho' her beauty has such power,
Her soul is like the simple flower
Trembling beneath a shower.

As bliss of saints, when dreaming of large wings,
The bloom around her fancied presence flings,
I feast and wile her absence, by
Pressing her choice hand passionately—
Imagining her sigh.

My lady's voice, altho' so very mild,
Maketh me feel as strong wine would a child;
My lady's touch, however slight,
Moves all my senses with its might,
Like to a sudden fright.

A hawk poised high in air, whose nerved wing-tips
Tremble with might suppressed, before he dips,—
In vigilance, not more intense
Than I; when her word's gentle sense
Makes full-eyed my suspense.

Her mention of a thing—august or poor,
Makes it seem nobler than it was before:
As where the sun strikes, life will gush,
And what is pale receive a flush,
Rich hues—a richer blush.

My lady's name, if I hear strangers use,—
Not meaning her—seems like a lax misuse.
I love none by my lady's name;
Rose, Maud, or Grace, are all the same,
So blank, so very tame.

My lady walks as I have seen a swan
Swim thro' the water just where the sun shone.
There ends of willow branches ride,
Quivering with the current's glide,
By the deep river-side.

Whene'er she moves there are fresh beauties stirred;
As the sunned bosom of a humming-bird
At each pant shows some fiery hue,
Burns gold, intensest green or blue:
The same, yet ever new.

What time she walketh under flowering May,
I am quite sure the scented blossoms say,
“O lady with the sunlit hair!
“Stay, and drink our odorous air—
“The incense that we bear:

“Your beauty, lady, we would ever shade;
“Being near you, our sweetness might not fade.”
If trees could be broken-hearted,
I am sure that the green sap smarted,
When my lady parted.

This is why I thought weeds were beautiful;—
Because one day I saw my lady pull
Some weeds up near a little brook,
Which home most carefully she took,
Then shut them in a book.

A deer when startled by the stealthy ounce,—
A bird escaping from the falcon's trounce,
Feels his heart swell as mine, when she
Stands statelier, expecting me,
Than tall white lilies be.

The first white flutter of her robe to trace,
Where binds and perfumed jasmine interlace,
Expands my gaze triumphantly:
Even such his gaze, who sees on high
His flag, for victory.

We wander forth unconsciously, because
The azure beauty of the evening draws:
When sober hues pervade the ground,
And life in one vast hush seems drowned,
Air stirs so little sound.

We thread a copse where frequent bramble spray
With loose obtrusion from the side roots stray,
(Forcing sweet pauses on our walk):
I'll lift one with my foot, and talk
About its leaves and stalk.

Or may be that the prickles of some stem
Will hold a prisoner her long garment's hem;
To disentangle it I kneel,
Oft wounding more than I can heal;
It makes her laugh, my zeal.

Then on before a thin-legged robin hops,
Or leaping on a twig, he pertly stops,
Speaking a few clear notes, till nigh
We draw, when quickly he will fly
Into a bush close by.

A flock of goldfinches may stop their flight,
And wheeling round a birchen tree alight
Deep in its glittering leaves, until
They see us, when their swift rise will
Startle a sudden thrill.

I recollect my lady in a wood,
Keeping her breath and peering—(firm she stood
Her slim shape balanced on tiptoe—)
Into a nest which lay below,
Leaves shadowing her brow.

I recollect my lady asking me,
What that sharp tapping in the wood might be?
I told her blackbirds made it, which,
For slimy morsels they count rich,
Cracked the snail's curling niche:

She made no answer. When we reached the stone
Where the shell fragments on the grass were strewn,
Close to the margin of a rill;
“The air,” she said, “seems damp and chill,
“We'll go home if you will.”

“Make not my pathway dull so soon,” I cried,
“See how those vast cloudpiles in sun-glow dyed,
“Roll out their splendour: while the breeze
“Lifts gold from leaf to leaf, as these
“Ash saplings move at ease.”

Piercing the silence in our ears, a bird
Threw some notes up just then, and quickly stirred
The covert birds that startled, sent
Their music thro' the air; leaves lent
Their rustling and blent,

Until the whole of the blue warmth was filled
So much with sun and sound, that the air thrilled.
She gleamed, wrapt in the dying day's
Glory: altho' she spoke no praise,
I saw much in her gaze.

Then, flushed with resolution, I told all;—
The mighty love I bore her,—how would pall
My very breath of life, if she
For ever breathed not hers with me;—
Could I a cherub be,

How, idly hoping to enrich her grace,
I would snatch jewels from the orbs of space;—
Then back thro' the vague distance beat,
Glowing with joy her smile to meet,
And heap them round her feet.

Her waist shook to my arm. She bowed her head,
Silent, with hands clasped and arms straightened:
(Just then we both heard a church bell)
O God! It is not right to tell:
But I remember well

Each breast swelled with its pleasure, and her whole
Bosom grew heavy with love; the swift roll
Of new sensations dimmed her eyes,
Half closing them in ecstasies,
Turned full against the skies.

The rest is gone; it seemed a whirling round—
No pressure of my feet upon the ground:
But even when parted from her, bright
Showed all; yea, to my throbbing sight
The dark was starred with light.

Of My Lady In Death

All seems a painted show. I look
Up thro' the bloom that's shed
By leaves above my head,
And feel the earnest life forsook
All being, when she died:—
My heart halts, hot and dried
As the parched course where once a brook
Thro' fresh growth used to flow,—
Because her past is now
No more than stories in a printed book.

The grass has grown above that breast,
Now cold and sadly still,
My happy face felt thrill:—
Her mouth's mere tones so much expressed!
Those lips are now close set,—
Lips which my own have met;
Her eyelids by the earth are pressed;
Damp earth weighs on her eyes;
Damp earth shuts out the skies.
My lady rests her heavy, heavy rest.

To see her slim perfection sweep,
Trembling impatiently,
With eager gaze at me!
Her feet spared little things that creep:—
“We've no more right,” she'd say,
“In this the earth than they.”
Some remember it but to weep.
Her hand's slight weight was such,
Care lightened with its touch;
My lady sleeps her heavy, heavy sleep.

My day-dreams hovered round her brow;
Now o'er its perfect forms
Go softly real worms.
Stern death, it was a cruel blow,
To cut that sweet girl's life
Sharply, as with a knife.
Cursed life that lets me live and grow,
Just as a poisonous root,
From which rank blossoms shoot;
My lady's laid so very, very low.

Dread power, grief cries aloud, “unjust,”—
To let her young life play
Its easy, natural way;
Then, with an unexpected thrust,
Strike out the life you lent,
Just when her feelings blent
With those around whom she saw trust
Her willing power to bless,
For their whole happiness;
My lady moulders into common dust.

Small birds twitter and peck the weeds
That wave above her head,
Shading her lowly bed:
Their brisk wings burst light globes of seeds,
Scattering the downy pride
Of dandelions, wide:
Speargrass stoops with watery beads:
The weight from its fine tips
Occasionally drips:
The bee drops in the mallow-bloom, and feeds.

About her window, at the dawn,
From the vine's crooked boughs
Birds chirupped an arouse:
Flies, buzzing, strengthened with the morn;—
She'll not hear them again
At random strike the pane:
No more upon the close-cut lawn,
Her garment's sun-white hem
Bend the prim daisy's stem,
In walking forth to view what flowers are born.

No more she'll watch the dark-green rings
Stained quaintly on the lea,
To image fairy glee;
While thro' dry grass a faint breeze sings,
And swarms of insects revel
Along the sultry level:—
No more will watch their brilliant wings,
Now lightly dip, now soar,
Then sink, and rise once more.
My lady's death makes dear these trivial things.

Within a huge tree's steady shade,
When resting from our walk,
How pleasant was her talk!
Elegant deer leaped o'er the glade,
Or stood with wide bright eyes,
Staring a short surprise:
Outside the shadow cows were laid,
Chewing with drowsy eye
Their cuds complacently:
Dim for sunshine drew near a milking-maid.

Rooks cawed and labored thro' the heat;
Each wing-flap seemed to make
Their weary bodies ache:
The swallows, tho' so very fleet,
Made breathless pauses there
At something in the air:—
All disappeared: our pulses beat
Distincter throbs: then each
Turned and kissed, without speech,—
She trembling, from her mouth down to her feet.

My head sank on her bosom's heave,
So close to the soft skin
I heard the life within.
My forehead felt her coolly breathe,
As with her breath it rose:
To perfect my repose
Her two arms clasped my neck. The eve
Spread silently around,
A hush along the ground,
And all sound with the sunlight seemed to leave.

By my still gaze she must have known
The mighty bliss that filled
My whole soul, for she thrilled,
Drooping her face, flushed, on my own;
I felt that it was such
By its light warmth of touch.
My lady was with me alone:
That vague sensation brought
More real joy than thought.
I am without her now, truly alone.

We had no heed of time: the cause
Was that our minds were quite
Absorbed in our delight,
Silently blessed. Such stillness awes,
And stops with doubt, the breath,
Like the mute doom of death.
I felt Time's instantaneous pause;
An instant, on my eye
Flashed all Eternity:—
I started, as if clutched by wild beasts' claws,

Awakened from some dizzy swoon:
I felt strange vacant fears,
With singings in my ears,
And wondered that the pallid moon
Swung round the dome of night
With such tremendous might.
A sweetness, like the air of June,
Next paled me with suspense,
A weight of clinging sense—
Some hidden evil would burst on me soon.

My lady's love has passed away,
To know that it is so
To me is living woe.
That body lies in cold decay,
Which held the vital soul
When she was my life's soul.
Bitter mockery it was to say—
“Our souls are as the same:”
My words now sting like shame;
Her spirit went, and mine did not obey.

It was as if a fiery dart
Passed seething thro' my brain
When I beheld her lain
There whence in life she did not part.
Her beauty by degrees,
Sank, sharpened with disease:
The heavy sinking at her heart
Sucked hollows in her cheek,
And made her eyelids weak,
Tho' oft they'd open wide with sudden start.

The deathly power in silence drew
My lady's life away.
I watched, dumb with dismay,
The shock of thrills that quivered thro'
And tightened every limb:
For grief my eyes grew dim;
More near, more near, the moment grew.
O horrible suspense!
O giddy impotence!
I saw her fingers lax, and change their hue.

Her gaze, grown large with fate, was cast
Where my mute agonies
Made more sad her sad eyes:
Her breath caught with short plucks and fast:—
Then one hot choking strain.
She never breathed again:
I had the look which was her last:
Even after breath was gone,
Her love one moment shone,—
Then slowly closed, and hope for ever passed.

Silence seemed to start in space
When first the bell's harsh toll
Rang for my lady's soul.
Vitality was hell; her grace
The shadow of a dream:
Things then did scarcely seem:
Oblivion's stroke fell like a mace:
As a tree that's just hewn
I dropped, in a dead swoon,
And lay a long time cold upon my face.

Earth had one quarter turned before
My miserable fate
Pressed on with its whole weight.
My sense came back; and, shivering o'er,
I felt a pain to bear
The sun's keen cruel glare;
It seemed not warm as heretofore.
Oh, never more its rays
Will satisfy my gaze.
No more; no more; oh, never any more.

The Love of Beauty

John Boccaccio, love's own squire, deep sworn
In service to all beauty, joy, and rest,—
When first the love-earned royal Mary press'd,
To her smooth cheek, his pale brows, passion-worn,—
'Tis said, he, by her grace nigh frenzied, torn
By longings unattainable, address'd
To his chief friend most strange misgivings, lest
Some madness in his brain had thence been born.
The artist-mind alone can feel his meaning:—
Such as have watched the battle-rank'd array
Of sunset, or the face of girlhood seen in
Line-blending twilight, with sick hope. Oh! they
May feed desire on some fond bosom leaning:
But where shall such their thirst of Nature stay?

The Subject in Art

(No. 1.)

If Painting and Sculpture delight us like other works of ingenuity, merely from the difficulties they surmount; like an ‘egg in a bottle,’ a tree made out of stone, or a face made of pigment; and the pleasure we receive, is our wonder at the achievement; then, to such as so believe, this treatise is not written. But if, as the writer conceives, works of Fine Art delight us by the interest the objects they depict excite in the beholder, just as those objects in nature would excite his interest; if by any association of ideas in the one case, by the same in the other, without reference to the representations being other than the objects they represent:—then, to such as so believe, the following upon ‘SUBJECT’ is addressed. Whilst, at the same time, it is not disallowed that a subsequent pleasure may and does result, upon reflecting that the objects contemplated were the work of human ingenuity.

Now the subject to be treated, is the ‘subject’ of Painter and Sculptor; what ought to be the nature of that ‘subject,’ how far that subject may be drawn from past or present time with advantage, how far the subject may tend to confer upon its embodiment the title, ‘High Art,’ how far the subject may tend to confer upon its embodiment the title ‘Low Art;’ what is ‘High Art,’ what is ‘Low Art’?

To begin then (at the end) with ‘High Art.’ However we may differ as to facts, the principle will be readily granted, that ‘High Art,’ i. e. Art, par excellence, Art, in its most exalted character, addresses pre-eminently the highest attributes of man, viz.: his mental and his moral faculties.

‘Low Art,’ or Art in its less exalted character, is that which addresses the less exalted attributes of man, viz.: his mere sensory faculties, without affecting the mind or heart, excepting through the volitional agency of the observer.

These definitions are too general and simple to be disputed; but before we endeavour to define more particularly, let us analyze the subject, and see what it will yield.

All the works which remain to us of the Ancients, and this appears somewhat remarkable, are, with the exception of those by incompetent artists, universally admitted to be ‘High Art.’ Now do we afford them this high title, because all remnants of the antique world, by tempting a comparison between what was, and is, will set the mental faculties at work, and thus address the highest attributes of man? Or, as this is owing to the agency of the observer, and not to the subject represented, are we to seek for the cause in the subjects themselves!

Let us examine the subjects. They are mostly in sculpture; but this cannot be the cause, unless all modern sculpture be considered ‘High Art.’ This is leaving out of the question in both ages, all works badly executed, and obviously incorrect, of which there are numerous examples both ancient and modern.

The subjects we find in sculpture are, in “the round,” mostly men or women in thoughtful or impassioned action: sometimes they are indeed acting physically; but then, as in the Jason adjusting his Sandal, acting by mechanical impulse, and thinking or looking in another direction. In relievo we have an historical combat, such as that between the Centaurs and Lapithæ; sometimes a group in conversation, sometimes a recitation of verses to the Lyre; a dance, or religious procession.

As to the first class in “the round,” as they seem to appeal to the intellectual, and often to the moral faculties, they are naturally, and according to the broad definition, works of ‘High Art.’ Of the relievo, the historical combat appeals to the passions; and, being historical, probably to the intellect. The like may be said of the conversational groups, and lyrical recitation which follow. The dance appeals to the passions and the intellect; since the intellect recognises therein an order and design, her own planning; while the solemn, modest demeanour in the religious procession speaks to the heart and the mind. The same remarks will apply to the few ancient paintings we possess, always excluding such merely decorative works as are not fine art at all.

Thus it appears that all these works of the ancients might rationally have been denominated works of ‘High Art;’ and here we remark the difference between the hypothetical or rational, and the historical account of facts; for though here is reason enough why ancient art might have been denominated ‘High Art,’ that it was so denominated on this account, is a position not capable of proof: whereas, in all probability, the true account of the matter runs thus—The works of antiquity awe us by their time-hallowed presence; the mind is sent into a serious contemplation of things; and, the subject itself in nowise contravening, we attribute all this potent effect to the agency of the subject before us, and ‘High Art,’ it becomes then and for ever, with all such as “follow its cut.” But then as this was so named, not from the abstract cause, but from a result and effect; when a new work is produced in a similar spirit, but clothed in a dissimilar matter, and the critics have to settle to what class of art it belongs,—then is the new work dragged up to fight with the old one, like the poor beggar Irus in front of Ulysses; then are they turned over and applied, each to each, like the two triangles in Euclid; and then, if they square, fit and tally in every quarter—with the nude to the draped in the one, as the nude to the draped in the other—with the standing to the sitting in the one, as the standing to the sitting in the other—with the fat to the lean in the one, as the fat to the lean in the other—with the young to the old in the one, as the young to the old in the other—with head to body, as head to body; and nose to knee, as nose to knee, &c. &c., (and the critics have done a great deal)—then is the work oracularly pronounced one of ‘High Art;’ and the obsequious artist is pleased to consider it is.

But if, per contra, as in the former case, the works are not to be literally reconciled, though wrought in the self-same spirit; then this unfortunate creature of genius is degraded into a lower rank of art; and the artist, if he have faith in the learned, despairs; or, if he have none, he swears. But listen, an artist speaks: “If I have genius to produce a work in the true spirit of high art, and yet am so ignorant of its principles, that I scarce know whereon the success of the work depends, and scarcely whether I have succeeded or no; with this ignorance and this power, what needs your knowledge or your reasoning, seeing that nature is all-sufficient, and produces a painter as she produces a plant?” To the artist (the last of his race), who spoke thus, it is answered, that science is not meant for him, if he like it not, seeing he can do without it, and seeing, moreover, that with it alone he can never do. Science here does not make; it unmakes, wonderingly to find the making of what God has made—of what God has made through the poet, leading him blindly by a path which he has not known; this path science follows slowly and in wonder. But though science is not to make the artist, there is no reason in nature that the artist reject it. Still, science is properly the birthright of the critic; 'tis his all in all. It shows him poets, painters, sculptors, his fellow men, often his inferiors in their want of it, his superiors in the ability to do what he cannot do; it teaches him to love them as angels bringing him food which he cannot attain, and to venerate their works as a gift from the Creator.

But to return to the critical errors relating to ‘High Art.’ While the constituents of high art were unknown, whilst its abstract principles were unsought, and whilst it was only recognized in the concrete, the critics, certainly guilty of the most unpardonable blindness, blundered up to the masses of ‘High Art,’ left by antiquity, saying, “there let us fix our observatory,” and here came out perspective glass, and callipers and compasses; and here they made squares and triangles, and circles, and ellipses, for, said they, “this is ‘High Art,’ and this hath certain proportions;” then in the logic of their hearts, they continued, “all these proportions we know by admeasurement, whatsoever hath these is ‘High Art,’ whatsoever hath not, is ‘Low Art.’” This was as certain as the fact that the sun is a globe of glowing charcoal, because forsooth they both yield light and heat. Now if the phantom of a then embryon-electrician had arisen and told them that their “high art marbles possessed an electric influence, which, acting in the brain of the observer, would awake in him emotions of so exalted a character, that he forthwith, inevitably nodding at them, must utter the tremendous syllables ‘High Art;’” he, the then embryon-electrician, from that age withheld to bless and irradiate the physiology of ours, would have done something more to the purpose than all the critics and the compasses.

Thus then we see, that the antique, however successfully it may have wrought, is not our model; for, according to that faith demanded at setting out, fine art delights us from its being the semblance of what in nature delights. Now, as the artist does not work by the instrumentality of rule and science, but mainly by an instinctive impulse; if he copy the antique, unable as he is to segregate the merely delectable matter, he must needs copy the whole, and thereby multiply models, which the casting-man can do equally well; whereas if he copy nature, with a like inability to distinguish that delectable attribute which allures him to copy her, and under the same necessity of copying the whole, to make sure of this “tenant of nowhere;” we then have the artist, the instructed of nature, fulfilling his natural capacity, while his works we have as manifold yet various as nature's own thoughts for her children.

But reverting to the subject, it was stated at the beginning that ‘Fine Art’ delights, by presenting us with objects, which in nature delight us; and ‘High Art’ was defined, that which addresses the intellect; and hence it might appear, as delight is an emotion of the mind, that ‘Low Art,’ which addresses the senses, is not Fine Art at all. But then it must be remembered, that it was neither stated of ‘Fine Art,’ nor of ‘High Art,’ that it always delights; and again, that delight is not entirely mental. To point out the confines of high and low art, where the one terminates and the other commences, would be difficult, if not impracticable without sub-defining or circumscribing the import of the terms, pain, pleasure, delight, sensory, mental, psychical, intellectual, objective, subjective, &c. &c.; and then, as little or nothing would be gained mainly pertinent to the subject, it must be content to receive no better definitions than those broad ones already laid down, with their latitude somewhat corrected by practical examples. Yet before proceeding to give these examples, it might be remarked of ‘High Art,’ that it always might, if it do not always excite some portion of delight, irrespective of that subsequent delight consequent upon the examination of a curiosity; that its function is sometimes, with this portion of delight, to commingle grief or distress, and that it may, (though this is not its function,) excite mental anguish, and by a reflex action, actual body pain. Now then to particularize, by example; let us suppose a perfect and correct painting of a stone, a common stone such as we walk over. Now although this subject might to a religious man, suggest a text of scripture; and to the geologist a theory of scientific interest; yet its general effect upon the average number of observers will be readily allowed to be more that of wonder or admiration at a triumph over the apparently impossible (to make a round stone upon a flat piece of canvass) than at aught else the subject possesses. Now a subject such as this belongs to such very low art, that it narrowly illudes precipitation over the confines of Fine Art; yet, that it is Fine Art is indisputable, since no mere mechanic artisan, or other than one specially gifted by nature, could produce it. This then shall introduce us to “Subject.” This subject then, standing where fine art gradually confines with mechanic art, and almost midway between them; of no use nor beauty; but to be wondered at as a curiosity; is a subject of scandalous import to the artist, to the artist thus gifted by nature with a talent to reproduce her fleeting and wondrous forms. But if, as the writer doubts, nature could afford a monster so qualified for a poet, yet destitute of poetical genius; then the scandal attaches if he attempt a step in advance, or neglect to join himself to those, a most useful class of mechanic artists, who illustrate the sciences by drawing and diagram.

But as the subject supposed is one never treated in painting; only instanced, in fact, to exemplify an extreme; let us consider the merits of a subject really practical, such as ‘dead game,’ or ‘a basket of fruit;’ and the first general idea such a subject will excite is simply that of food, ‘something to eat.’ For though fruit on the tree, or a pheasant in the air, is a portion of nature and properly belongs to the section, ‘Landscape,’ a division of art intellectual enough; yet gather the fruit or bring down the pheasant, and you presently bring down the poetry with it; and although Sterne could sentimentalize upon a dead ass; and though a dead pheasant in the larder, or a dead sheep at a butcher's, may excite feelings akin to anything but good living; and though they may there be the excitive causes of poetical, nay, or moral reflexion; yet, see them on the canvass, and the first and uppermost idea will be that of ‘Food,’ and how, in the name of decency, they ever came there. It will be vain to argue that gathered fruit is only nature under a certain phase, and that a dead sheep or a dead pheasant is only a dead animal like a dead ass—it will be pitiably vain and miserable sophistry, since we know that the dead pheasant in a picture will always be as food, while the same at he poulterer's will be but a dead pheasant.

For we have not one only, but numerous general ideas annexed to every object in nature. Thus one of the series may be that that object is matter, one that it is individual matter, one that it is animal matter, one that it is a bird, one that it is a pheasant, one that it is a dead pheasant, and one that it is food. Now, our general ideas or notions are not evoked in this order as each new object addresses the mind; but that general idea is first elicited which accords with the first or principle destination of the object: thus the first general idea of a cowry, to the Indian, is that of money, not of a shell; and our first general idea of a dead pheasant is that of food, whereas to a zoologist it might have a different effect: but this is the exception. But it was said, that a dead pheasant in a picture would always be as food, while the same at the poulterer's would be but a dead pheasant: what then becomes of the first general idea? It seems to be disposed of thus: at the first sight of the shop, the idea is that of food, and next (if you are not hungry, and poets never are), the mind will be attracted to the species of animal, and (unless hunger presses) you may be led on to moralize like Sterne: but, amongst pictures, where there is nothing else to excite the general ideas of food, this, whenever adverted to, must over re-excite that idea; and hence it appears that these esculent subjects might be poetical enough if exhibited all together, i.e., they must be surrounded with eatables, like a possibly-poetical-pheasant in a poulterer's shop.

Longer stress has been laid upon this subject, “Still Life,” than would seem justified by its insignificance, but as this is a branch of art which has never aspired to be ‘High Art,’ it contains something definite in its character which makes it better worth the analysis than might appear at first sight; but still, as a latitude has been taken in the investigation which is ever unavoidable in the handling of such mercurial matter as poetry (where one must spread out a broad definition to catch it wherever it runs), and as this is ever incomprehensible to such as are unaccustomed to abstract thinking, from the difficulty of educing a rule amidst an infinite array of exceptions, and of recognising a principle shrouded in the obscurity of conflicting details; it appears expedient, before pursuing the question, to reinforce the first broad elementary principles with what definite modification they may have acquired in their progress to this point in the argument, together with the additional data which may have resulted from analytic reference to other correlative matter.

First then, as Fine Art delights in proportion to the delectating interest of the objects it depicts, and, as subsequently stated, grieves or distresses in proportion as the objects are grievous or distressing, we have this resultant: “Fine Art excites in proportion to the excitor influence of the object;” and then, that “fine art excites either the sensory or the mental faculties, in a like proportion to the excitor properties of the objects respectively.” Thus then we have, definitely stated, the powers or capabilities of Fine Art, as regulated and governed by the objects it selects, and the objects it selects making its subject. Now the question in hand is, “what the nature of that subject should be,” but the subject must be according to what Fine Art proposes to effect; all then must depend upon this proposition. For if you propose that Fine Art shall excite sensual pleasure, then such objects as excite sensual pleasure should form the subject of Fine Art; and those which excite sensual pleasure in the highest degree, will form the highest subject—‘High Art.’ Or if you propose that Fine Art shall excite a physical energetic activity, by addressing the sensory organism, which is a phase of the former proposition, (for what are popularly called sensual pleasures, are only particular sensory excitements sought by a physical appetite, while this sensory-organic activity is physically appetent also,) then the subjects of art ought to be draw form such objects as excite a general activity, such as field-sports, bull-fights, battles, executions, court pageants, conflagrations, murders; and those which most intensely excite this sensory-organic activity, by expressing most of physical human power or suffering, such as battles, executions, regality, murder, would afford the highest subject of Fine Art, and consequently these would be “High Art.” But if you propose (with the writer) that Fine Art shall regard the general happiness of man, but addressing those attributes which are peculiarly human, by exciting the activity of his rational and benevolent powers (and the writer would add, man's religious aspirations, but omits it as sufficiently evolvable from the proposition, and since some well-willing men cannot at present recognize man as a religious animal), then the subject of Fine Art should be drawn from objects which address and excite the activity of man's rational and benevolent powers, such as:—acts of justice—of mercy—good government—order—acts of intellect—men obviously speaking or thinking abstract thoughts, as evinced by one speaking to another, and looking at, or indicating, a flower, or a picture, or a star, or by looking on the wall while speaking—or, if the scene be from a good play, or story, or another beneficent work, then not only of men in abstract thought or meditation, but, it may be, in simple conversation, or in passion—or a simple representation of a person in a play or story, as of Jacques, Ferdinand, or Cordelia; or, in real life, portraits of those who are honestly beautiful; or expressive of innocence, happiness, benevolence, or intellectuality, but not of gluttony, wantonness, anger, hatred, or malevolence, unless in some cases of justifiable satire—of histrionic or historic portraiture—landscape—natural phenomena—animals, not indiscriminately—in some cases, grand or beautiful buildings, even without figures—any scene on sea or land which induces reflection—all subjects from such parts of history as are morally or intellectually instructive or attractive—and therefore pageants—battles—and even executions—all forms of thought and poetry, however wild, if consistent with rational benevolence—all scenes serious or comic, domestic or historical—all religious subjects proposing good that will not shock any reasonable number of reasonable men—all subjects that leave the artist wiser and happier—and none which intrinsically act otherwise—to sum all, every thing or incident in nature which excites, or may be made to excite, the mind and the heart of man as a mentally intelligent, not as a brute animal, is a subject for Fine Art, at all times, in all places, and in all ages. But as all these subjects in nature affect our hearts or our understanding in proportion to the heart and understanding we have to apprehend and to love them, those will excite us most intensely which we know most of and love most. But as we may learn to know them all and to love them all, and what is dark to-day may be luminous to-morrow, and things, dumb to-day, to-morrow grow voiceful, and the strange voice of to-day be plain and reproach us to-morrow; who shall adventure to say that this or that is the highest? And if it appear that all these subjects in nature may affect us with equal intensity, and that the artist's representations affect as the subjects affect, then it follows, with all these subjects, Fine Art may affect us equally; but the subjects may all be high; therefore, all Fine Art may be High Art.

The Seasons

The crocus, in the shrewd March morn,
Thrusts up its saffron spear;
And April dots the sombre thorn
With gems, and loveliest cheer.

Then sleep the seasons, full of might;
While slowly swells the pod,
And rounds the peach, and in the night
The mushroom bursts the sod.

The winter falls: the frozen rut
Is bound with silver bars;
The white drift heaps against the hut;
And night is pierced with stars.

Dream Land

Where sunless rivers weep
Their waves into the deep,
She sleeps a charmed sleep;
Awake her not.
Led by a single star,
She came from very far,
To seek where shadows are
Her pleasant lot.

She left the rosy morn,
She left the fields of corn,
For twilight cold and lorn,
And water-springs.
Thro' sleep, as thro' a veil,
She sees the sky look pale,
And hears the nightingale,
That sadly sings.

Rest, rest, a perfect rest,
Shed over brow and breast;
Her face is toward the west,
The purple land.
She cannot see the grain
Ripening on hill and plain;
She cannot feel the rain
Upon her hand.

Rest, rest, for evermore
Upon a mossy shore,
Rest, rest, that shall endure,
Till time shall cease;—
Sleep that no pain shall wake,
Night that no morn shall break,
Till joy shall overtake
Her perfect peace.

Songs of One Household

No. 1

My Sister's Sleep

She fell asleep on Christmas Eve.
Upon her eyes' most patient calms
The lids were shut; her uplaid arms
Covered her bosom, I believe.

Our mother, who had leaned all day
Over the bed from chime to chime,
Then raised herself for the first time,
And as she sat her down, did pray.

Her little work-table was spread
With work to finish. For the glare
Made by her candle, she had care
To work some distance from the bed.

Without, there was a good moon up,
Which left its shadows far within;
The depth of light that it was in
Seemed hollow like an altar-cup.

Through the small room, with subtle sound
Of flame, by vents the fireshine drove
And reddened. In its dim alcove
The mirror shed a clearness round.

I had been sitting up some nights,
And my tir'd mind felt weak and blank;
Like a sharp strengthening wine, it drank
The stillness and the broken lights.

Silence was speaking at my side
With an exceedingly clear voice:
I knew the calm as of a choice
Made in God for me, to abide.

I said, “Full knowledge does not grieve:
This which upon my spirit dwells
Perhaps would have been sorrow else:
But I am glad 'tis Christmas Eve.”

Twelve struck. That sound, which all the years
Hear in each hour, crept off; and then
The ruffled silence spread again,
Like water that a pebble stirs.

Our mother rose from where she sat.
Her needles, as she laid them down,
Met lightly, and her silken gown
Settled: no other noise than that.

“Glory unto the Newly Born!”
So, as said angels, she did say;
Because we were in Christmas-day,
Though it would still be long till dawn.

She stood a moment with her hands
Kept in each other, praying much;
A moment that the soul may touch
But the heart only understands.

Almost unwittingly, my mind
Repeated her words after her;
Perhaps tho' my lips did not stir;
It was scarce thought, or cause assign'd.

Just then in the room over us
There was a pushing back of chairs,
As some who had sat unawares
So late, now heard the hour, and rose.

Anxious, with softly stepping haste,
Our mother went where Margaret lay,
Fearing the sounds o'erhead—should they
Have broken her long-watched for rest!

She stooped an instant, calm, and turned;
But suddenly turned back again;
And all her features seemed in pain
With woe, and her eyes gazed and yearned.

For my part, I but hid my face,
And held my breath, and spake no word:
There was none spoken; but I heard
The silence for a little space.

My mother bowed herself and wept.
And both my arms fell, and I said:
“God knows I knew that she was dead.”
And there, all white, my sister slept.

Then kneeling, upon Christmas morn
A little after twelve o'clock
We said, ere the first quarter struck,
“Christ's blessing on the newly born!”

Hand and Soul

“Rivolsimi in quel lato
Là 'nde venia la voce,
E parvemi una luce
Che lucea quanto stella:
La mia mente era quella.”

Bonaggiunta Urbiciani, (1250.)

Before any knowledge of painting was brought to Florence, there were already painters in Lucca, and Pisa, and Arezzo, who feared God and loved the art. The keen, grave workmen from Greece, whose trade it was to sell their own works in Italy and teach Italians to imitate them, had already found rivals of the soil with skill that could forestall their lessons and cheapen their crucifixes and addolorate, more years than is supposed before the art came at all into Florence. The pre-eminence to which Cimabue was raised at once by his contemporaries, and which he still retains to a wide extent even in the modern mind, is to be accounted for, partly by the circumstances under which he arose, and partly by that extraordinary purpose of fortune born with the lives of some few, and through which it is not a little thing for any who went before, if they are even remembered as the shadows of the coming of such an one, and the voices which prepared his way in the wilderness. It is thus, almost exclusively, that the painters of whom I speak are now known. They have left little, and but little heed is taken of that which men hold to have been surpassed; it is gone like time gone—a track of dust and dead leaves that merely led to the fountain.

Nevertheless, of very late years, and in very rare instances, some signs of a better understanding have become manifest. A case in point is that of the tryptic and two cruciform pictures at Dresden, by Chiaro di Messer Bello dell' Erma, to which the eloquent pamphlet of Dr. Aemmster has at length succeeded in attracting the students. There is another, still more solemn and beautiful work, now proved to be by the same hand, in the gallery at Florence. It is the one to which my narrative will relate.

This Chiaro dell' Erma was a young man of very honorable family in Arezzo; where, conceiving art almost, as it were, for himself, and loving it deeply, he endeavored from early boyhood towards the imitation of any objects offered in nature. The extreme longing after a visible embodiment of his thoughts strengthened as his years increased, more even than his sinews or the blood of his life; until he would feel faint in sunsets and at the sight of stately persons. When he had lived nineteen years, he heard of the famous Giunta Pisano; and, feeling much of admiration, with, perhaps, a little of that envy which youth always feels until it has learned to measure success by time and opportunity, he determined that he would seek out Giunta, and, if possible, become his pupil.

Having arrived in Pisa, he clothed himself in humble apparel, being unwilling that any other thing than the desire he had for knowledge should be his plea with the great painter; and then, leaving his baggage at a house of entertainment, he took his way along the street, asking whom he met for the lodging of Giunta. It soon chanced that one of that city, conceiving him to be a stranger and poor, took him into his house, and refreshed him; afterwards directing him on his way.

When he was brought to speech of Giunta, he said merely that he was a student, and that nothing in the world was so much at his heart as to become that which he had heard told of him with whom he was speaking. He was received with courtesy and consideration, and shewn into the study of the famous artist. But the forms he saw there were lifeless and incomplete; and a sudden exultation possessed him as he said within himself, “I am the master of this man.” The blood came at first into his face, but the next moment he was quite pale and fell to trembling. He was able, however, to conceal his emotion; speaking very little to Giunta, but, when he took his leave, thanking him respectfully.

After this, Chiaro's first resolve was, that he would work out thoroughly some one of his thoughts, and let the world know him. But the lesson which he had now learned, of how small a greatness might win fame, and how little there was to strive against, served to make him torpid, and rendered his exertions less continual. Also Pisa was a larger and more luxurious city than Arezzo; and, when in his walks, he saw the great gardens laid out for pleasure, and the beautiful women who passed to and fro, and heard the music that was in the groves of the city at evening, he was taken with wonder that he had never claimed his share of the inheritance of those years in which his youth was cast. And women loved Chiaro; for, in despite of the burthen of study, he was well-favoured and very manly in his walking; and, seeing his face in front, there was a glory upon it, as upon the face of one who feels a light round his hair.

So he put thought from him, and partook of his life. But, one night, being in a certain company of ladies, a gentleman that was there with him began to speak of the paintings of a youth named Bonaventura, which he had seen in Lucca; adding that Giunta Pisano might now look for a rival. When Chiaro heard this, the lamps shook before him, and the music beat in his ears and made him giddy. He rose up, alleging a sudden sickness, and went out of that house with his teeth set.

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1

Many of the particulars here given regarding “The Germ” appear in the so-called “P.R.B. Journal,” which was published towards December 1899, in the volume named “Preraphaelite Diaries and Letters, edited by W.M. Rossetti.” At the date when I wrote the present introduction, that volume had not been offered for publication.

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2

I may call attention to Stanza 16, “She stooped an instant.” The word is “stooped” in “The Germ,” and in the “Poems” of 1870. This is undoubtedly correct; but in my brother's re-issue of the “Poems,” 1881, the word got mis-printed “stopped”; and I find the same mis-print in subsequent editions.

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3

I have seen in the “Irish Figaro”, May 6, 1899, a very pleasant notice, signed “J. Reid,” of this reprint.

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