Note 79 — GABRIELE ROSSETTI (continued 2)

Rossetti here, and in some other parts of the Autobiography, speaks of himself in an exalté tone, as imbued with a spirit of prophecy, an instrument in the divine hand for combating despotism, etc. All this would have seemed forced and presumptuous to a reader of his own day; yet it was not a mere distempered dream. In less than ten years from the date of his writing, the thunderbolt had fallen, and Italian despots and Papal temporal dominion were in the agonies of dissolution.—W.