Dante Rossetti's published works were as follows:
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My brother said so, in a letter published by Mr. Caine. Hemust presumably have been correct; otherwise I should havethought that his twentieth year, or even his twenty-first, wouldbe nearer the mark. PREFACE. jDdi (i*) The Early Italian Poets from Ciullo d'Alcamo toDante Alighieri (iioo — 1200 — 1300) in the OriginalMetres. Together with Dante's Vita Nuova. 1861. (i*) Dante and his Circle, with the Italian Poets pre-ceding him (i 100— 1200 — 1300). A Collection of Lyrics,edited, and translated in the original metres. Revisedand rearranged edition. 1874. (2») Poems. 1870. (a**) Poems. A new edition. 1881. (3) Ballads and Sonnets. 1881. The reader will understand that i* is essentially thesame book as 1% but altered in arrangement, chieflyby inverting the order in which the poems of Danteand of the Dantesque epoch, and tho^e of an earlierperiod, are printed. The volume 2* is to a great extentthe same as 2*, yet by no means identical with it2* contained a section named Sonnets and Songs, towardsa work to be called " The House o/Li/eJ* In 1881, when2** and 3 were published simultaneously. The House ofLife was completed, was made to consist solely ofsonnets, and was transferred to 3 ; while the gap thusleft in 2*' was filled up by other poems. The reader who inspects my table of contents will bereadily able to follow the method of arrangement whichis here adopted. I have divided the materials intoPrincipal Poems, Miscellaneous Poems, and some minorheadings; and have in each section arranged the com-positions in some approximate order of date. The orderof date is certainly not very far from correct ; but I couldnot make it absolute, having frequently no distinct infor-mation to go by. Dante Rossetti was a very fastidious writer, and, Imight add, a very fastidious painter. He did not indeed m PREFACE, ''cudgel his brains'' for the idea of a poem or thestructure or diction of a stanza. He wrote out of alarge fund or reserve of thought and consideration,which would culminate in a clear impulse or (as wesay) an inspiration. In the execution he was alwaysheedful and reflective from the first, and he spared noafter-pains in clarifying and perfecting. He abhorredanything straggling, slipshod, profuse, or uncondensed.He often recurred to his old poems, and was reluctant toleave them merely as they were. A natural concomitantof this state of mind was a great repugnance to thenotion of publishing, or of having published after hisdeath, whatever he regarded as juvenile, petty, orinadequate. The amount of unpublished work whichhe left behind him was by no means large ; out of themoderate bulk I have been careful to select only suchexamples as I suppose that he would himself haveapproved for the purpose, or would, at any rate, notgravely have objected to. I have not unfrequently heard my brother say thathe considered himself more essentially a poet than apainter. To vary the form of expression, he thought thathe had mastered the means of embodying poetical concep-tions in the verbal and rhythmical vehicle more thoroughlythan in form and design, perhaps more thoroughly thanin colour.
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