Dante Gabriel Rossetti, being the son of an Italian who was greatly immersed in the study of Dante Alighieri, and who produced a Comment on the Inferno, and other books relating to Dantesque literature, was from his earliest childhood familiar with the name of the stupendous Florentine, and to some extent aware of the range and quality of his writings. Nevertheless—or perhaps indeed it may have been partly on that very account—he did not in those opening years read Dante to any degree worth mentioning: he was well versed in Shakespeare, Walter Scott, Byron, and some other writers, years before he applied himself to Dante. He may have been fourteen years of age, or even fifteen (May 1843), before he took seriously to the author of the Divina Commedia. He then read him eagerly, and with the profoundest admiration and delight; and from the Commedia he proceeded [6]to the lyrical poems and the Vita Nuova. I question whether he ever read—unless in the most cursory way—other and less fascinating writings of Alighieri, such as the Convito and the De Monarchiâ.
