Book excerpt: Excerpt from A Survey of English Literature, Vol. 4 of 4: 1780-1880 Overwrought, as so often, in language, but perfect in strue ture. All these deviations from rule - the new rhyme in the second quatrain, the obscuration of the break, and the final couplet - are found together in the whimsical Match with the Moon. The °house of Life recalls Shakespeare rather than Dante in its frankness, its richness, and its many obscurities. The ar rangement of the sequence in the volume of 1881 by no means represents the order of composition, but is an artistic one; and perhaps the same is true of Shakespeare's Sonnets, suppos ing that he authorised the arrangement of 1609. But in The House of Life there is no drama and for this inveterate son of Romance only two persons in the world might seem to exist. And yet the world ofxmen is not forgotten. As in Shakespeare, there is a constant outlook on the mystery of evil, the pre sentiment of death and loss, and the passing of love and life. It is high metaphysical verse rooted in personal suffering and rapture. Rossetti certainly was not attracted by philosophical systems, but still he works with far-reaching ideas. Art and beauty, song and youth and age, sin and hope, he handles, not too abstractly, but with fidelity to the conditions of poetical expression. Such themes are more conspicuous in the second section, Change and Faith.' The first, Youth and Change, ' has less of the impersonal element, and a kind of plan may be traced in it, or rather a procession of the three figures Love, Death, and Hope. Love at first triumphs, so that Hope is at first needless. Later, Hope is clouded with the fear and foretaste of Death, who at last seizes the beloved. This series, though, is interrupted by many digressions. At the end of Change and Fate the same three figures loom again, and Hope remains dubious and illusive as to the fate of Love after Death has intervened. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.