ed to be
Achilles who sulked when I was at school; but it certainly never was
Gabriel Rossetti. Those who only knew him, after his constitution had
passed under the yoke of the drug which killed him, cannot judge of
his natural reserve from that artificial and morbid reserve which
embittered the last years of his life. The former was not connected
with any objection to new faces or dislike of cordial society, but
with the indomitable characteristic of the man, which made him give
out the treasures of the spirit, and never need to receive them. So
far from disliking society, it is my impression that he craved it as a
necessity, although he chose to select its constituents and narrow its
range.

He was born in 1828. The story of his parentage is well known, and has
been told in full detail since his death. He was born in London and
christened Gabriel Charles Rossetti; it was not, I am told, until he
was of age to appreciate the value of the name that he took upon
himself the cognomen which his father had borne, the Dante by which
the world, though not his friends, have known him. Living with his
father in Charlotte street, with two sisters and a brother no less
ardently trained in letters than himself, he seems to have been turned
to poetry, as he was afterward sustained in it, by the interior flame.
The household has been described to me by one who saw it in 1847: the
father, titular professor of Italian literature, but with no
professional duties, seated the livelong day, with a shade over his
eyes, writing devotional or patriotic poetry in his native tongue; the
girls reading Dante aloud with their rich maiden voices; Gabriel
buried here in his writing, or darting round the corner of the street
to the studio where he painted. From this seclusion he wrote to the
friend who has kindly helped me in preparing these notes, and whose
memories of the poet extend over a longer period than those of any
survivor not related to him.

Mr. W. B. Scott, now so well known in more arts than one, had then
but just published his first book, his mystical and transcendental
poem of "The Year of the World." This seems to have fallen under
Rossetti's notice, for on November 25, 1847, he wrote to the author, a
perfect stranger to himself, a letter of warm sympathy and
acknowledgment. Mr. Scott was living in Newcastle, and, instead of
meeting, the young poets at first made acquaintance with each other by
correspondence. Rossetti soon menti