the independent creation of
Holman-Hunt, Millais, Rossetti, and (in perhaps a somewhat minor
degree) Woolner: it cannot be said that they were prompted or abetted
by any one. Ruskin, whose name has been sometimes inaccurately mixed
up in the matter, and who had as yet published only the first two
volumes of "Modern Painters," was wholly unknown to them personally,
and in his writings was probably known only to Holman-Hunt. Ford
Madox Brown had been an intimate of Rossetti since March 1848, and he
sympathized, fully as much as any of these younger men, with some
old-world developments of art preceding its ripeness or
over-ripeness: but he had no inclination to join any organization for
protest and reform, and he followed his own course--more influenced,
for four or five years ensuing, by what the P.R.B.'s were doing than
influencing them. Among the persons who were most intimate with the
members of the Brotherhood towards the date of its formation, and
onwards till the inception of "The Germ," I may mention the
following. For Holman-Hunt, the sculptor John Lucas Tupper, who had
been a fellow Academy-student, and was now an anatomical designer at
Guy's Hospital: he and his family were equally well acquainted with
Mr. Stephens. For Millais, the painter Charles Allston Collins, son
of the well-known painter of domestic life and coast-scenes
William Collins; the painter Arthur Hughes; also his own brother,
William Henry Millais, who had musical aptitudes and became a
landscape-painter. For Rossetti, William Bell Scott (brother of David
Scott), painter, poet, and Master of the Government School of Design
in Newcastle-on-Tyne; Major Calder Campbell, a retired Officer of the
Indian army, and a somewhat popular writer of tales, verses, etc.;
Alexander Munro the sculptor; Walter Howell Deverell, a young
painter, son of the Secretary to the Government Schools of Design;
James Hannay, the novelist, satirical writer, and journalist; and
(known through Madox Brown) William Cave Thomas, a painter who had
studied in the severe classical school of Germany, and had earned a
name in the Westminster Hall competitions for frescoes in Parliament.
For Woolner, John Hancock and Bernhard Smith, sculptors; Coventry
Patmore the poet, with his connections the Orme family and Professor
Masson; also William North, an eccentric young literary man, of much
effervescence and some talent, author of "Anti-Coningsby" and other
novels. For Collinson, the