y forerunner, and drew her inspiration
from her own experiences of thought and feeling. Many of her poems are
definitely religious in form; more are deeply imbued with religious
feeling and motive. In addition to her poems she wrote _Commonplace and
other Stories_, and _The Face of the Deep_, a striking and suggestive
commentary on the Apocalypse.

ROSSETTI, DANTE GABRIEL (1828-1882).--Poet and painter, was _b._ in
London. His _f._ was Gabriele Rossetti, an Italian scholar, who came to
England in 1824, and was Prof. of Italian in King's Coll., London. His
mother was Frances Polidori, English on her mother's side, so that the
poet was three-fourths Italian, and one-fourth English. He was _ed._ at
King's Coll. School, and began the systematic study of painting in 1842,
and in 1848, with Holman Hunt, Millais, and others, founded the
pre-Raphaelite school of painting. In 1849 he exhibited the "Girlhood of
Mary Virgin," and among his other pictures are "Beata Beatrix," "Monna
Vanna," and "Dante's Dream." Simultaneously with art he worked hard at
poetry, and by 1847 he had written _The Blessed Damozel_ and _Hand and
Soul_ (both of which appeared in the _Germ_, the magazine of the
pre-Raphaelites), _Retro me Sathanas_, _The Portrait_, and _The Choice_,
and in 1861 he brought out a vol. of translations from the early Italian
poets under the title of _Dante and his Circle_. The death of his wife in
1862, after a married life of less than two years, told heavily upon him,
as did various attacks upon his poetry, including that of Robert Buchanan
(_q.v._)--_The Fleshly School of Poetry_--to which he replied with _The
Stealthy School of Criticism_. His _Poems_ which, in the vehemence of his
grief, he had buried in the coffin of his wife, and which were afterwards
exhumed, appeared in 1870; and his last literary effort, _Ballads and
Sonnets_, containing the sonnets forming _The House of Life_, in 1881. In
his later years he suffered acutely from neuralgia, which led to the
habit of taking chloral. Rossetti was fastidious in composition; his
poems are as remarkable for condensation, finish, and exact expression of
the poet's thought as for their sumptuous colouring and rich concrete
imagery. In later years he was subject to depression, and became somewhat
embittered, and much of a recluse.

_Life_ by A.C. Benson (English Men of Letters). _Family Letters and
Memoir_ by W.M. Rossetti. Poetical Works with preface by the same, etc.