Morning journal and courier., 1883-03-24
Rossettt and ohIoraI-DrInking.


 X Aphesabiect of Rosssttia chioraf- drinking has been so mixed up with the question of his art that it is, am sorry to say, impossible to leave it untouched. Even so sympathetic a critic us MT. Quilter speaks of the fatal influence of chloral whitening Rossetti's pow CTS, and in this he gives expression to very common, 8 very natural, but very erron- eous notion. Rossetti's poetry is evidence that up to the last his genius remained unim- paired by chloral. For instance, in style the most direct and masculine of his poetic work is his very latest, as will be found refer ring to his second volume, published just before he died. Pictorial as is the language in the first volume it is not absolutely 'the incarnation of the thought" Language and thought do not seem each born of the other, as is so often the case in Shakespeare's Ian guage, in Coleridge's, in Keats and in MT. Tennyson's. Like Shelley's language, it is rather to be compared to lovely gauge be- hind which the thought is seen iridescent and alive like fish in net No doubt the answer to this may be that in the beginning of the century the greatest poetic writing exhibited something which, save in MT. Tennyson's best work, has never existed since, as if the lucidity of the common sense poetry of the eighteenth century remained alongside of the richness and glamor of the neoromantic style. In Wadsworth's master pieces, such as "Laodamia' and the two great odes, this is seen, though often with him purity of style is disturbed by idiosyn- crasy. But it is in Keats odes, and in Col eridge's best work, such as "Kubla Khan, 1" t'Christable. "Love,'' and especially in s'Work Without Hope" where is more clear ly seen this combination of the best qualities of eighteenth century style and the best qual- ities of nineteenth century style Those poets who followed these, save in the one case have indicated, got further away no doubt from the prosaic style of the eight T, n~,l poetic, but at the sacrifice of directness and lueidity. In Rossetti's first volume his Ian guage is never this large utterance, though it gleams with color and is alive with subtle suggestions of mystic passion. But in the best writing in the second volume-in such poems as "Withous Her," parts of the Kings Tragedy" parts of Rose Mary" and especially in such sonnets as 'sThe Last Three at Trafalgar" and ''True Woman"- his style assumes new quality, becoming as lucid, and at the same time as poetic, as that of the great writers I have named. Such lines as theses for instance, are far from rare in the second volume:
 'The sunrise blooms and withers the hill
 Like any hill flower and the noblest troth
 Dies here to dust"
 Therefore it is wrong to suppose that ''the fatal influence of chloral withered Rossetti's powers" Indeed, the remarkable thing about chloral is, that while it produces mel pASRASASo5AAC@o sions, it can leave all the executive functions untouched. Even at the time Mir. Caine de- picts, when Rossetti was ill, his intellectual brilliance showed as little real abatement as did his genius. Late in the night when the exhaustion of production was recovered from, he would, even to the last, brighten up into his old self, self that had hardly a match, I should imagine among his con- temporaries. The rapidity of his perceptive powers was sometimes bewildering. Before his interlocutor had well begun his sentence, Rossetti had taken in the idea and was ready with his answer an answer clothed, always, in language so apt and so perfect, that no after revision could have improved it. His wit though not abundant and not of ''the rarest water" was quite unique. It always had an intellectual basis, and seemed 8 sin gular combination of those real analogiss sought by the logician and the superficial and and fanciful analogies which are the quest of the mere wit. There is, however, the great est ignorance shoat as to the nature Of this new drug, chloral In Rossetti's case the drug was very nearly conquered, (once by Madox Brown, and several times by myself aided by his faithful friend MT. Treffry Dunn ) but to have succeeded, friend hay ing the kind of influence over him that some of us had must have lived in the house with him. must have devoted a life to him.