Laws of reading

Christina Rosetti wrote a number of books dealing with biblical and spiritual themes. In one, Letter and Spirit , she suggests that it is “a genuine though not a glaring breach of the Second commandment, when instead of learning the lesson plainly set down for us in Holy Writ, we protrude mental feelers in all directions above, beneath, around it, grasping, clinging to every imaginable particular except the main point.” She also discerned violations of the first commandment in “the dread of appearing old fashioned” by searching the Scriptures for examples and warnings.

More positively, she offers a symbolic sensibility that expressed the “mind of Christ” that discerns the invisible in the visible “double against each other”: “on occasion sparrow and lily recall God’s providence, seed His Word, earthly bread the Bread of Heaven, a plough the danger of drawing back; to fill a basin and take a towel will preach a sermon on self-abasement; boat, fishing-net, flock or fold of sheep, each will convey an allusion; wind, water, fire, the sun, a star, a vine, a door, a lamb, will shadow forth mysteries.”