and particularly by "Artist and Model;"[1] but certainly Mr. Rossetti cannot be accused, as I have been accused, of maudlin sentiment and affected tenderness. The first two lines are perfect:—
"Lazy laughing languid Jenny,
Fond of a kiss and fond of a guinea;"
and the poem is a soliloquy of the poet—who has been spending the evening in dancing at a casino—over his partner, whom he has accompanied home to the usual style of lodgings occupied by such ladies, and who has fallen asleep with her head upon his knee, while he wonders, in a wretched pun—
"Whose person or whose purse may be
The lodestar of your reverie?"
The soliloquy is long, and in some parts beautiful, despite a very constant suspicion that we are listening to an emasculated Mr. Browning, whose whole tone and gesture, so to speak, is occasionally introduced with startling fidelity; and there are here and there glimpses of actual thought and insight, over and above the picturesque touches which belong to the writer's true profession, such as that where, at daybreak—
"lights creep in
Past the gauze curtains half drawn-to,
And the lamp's doubled shade grows blue."
What I object to in this poem is not the subject, which
- ↑ Commenting on this remark, Mr. Rossetti avers that he has "never read" my poems, and that, moreover, "Jenny" was written thirteen years ago.
