Hunt, also contributed.
And here were all the new talents whom Rossetti had attracted around
him during the last seven years: Mr. Madox Brown, with his fine genius
for history; Mr. J. D. Watson, with his strong mediaeval affinities;
Mr. Boyce, with his delicate portraiture of rustic scenes; Mr. Brett,
the finest of our students of the sea; Mr. W. B. Scott himself;
besides one or two others, Mr. Charles Collins, Mr. Campbell, Mr.
Halliday, Mr. Martineau, whom death or adverse fortune removed before
they had quite fulfilled their promise. Gabriel Rossetti contributed
to this interesting and historic exhibition five or six of those
marvellous drawings of which mention has just been made. "Dante's
Dream," the famous vision of June 9, 1290, with its counterpart, "The
Anniversary of the Dream," in 1291, were the most prominent of these.
A "Mary Magdalene" was perhaps the most moving and exciting. This
extremely original design showed the Magdalene pursued by her lovers,
but turning away from them all to seek Jesus in the house of Simon the
Pharisee. The architecture in this drawing was almost childish; the
wall of Simon's house is not three inches thick, and there is not room
for a grown-up person on the stairs that lead to it; but the tender
imagination of the whole, the sweet persuasiveness of Christ, who
looks out of a window, the passion of the awakened sinner, who tears
the roses out of her hair, the curious novelty of treatment in the
heads and draperies, all these combine to make it one of those works,
the moral force and directness of which appeal to the heart at once.
Perhaps the most brilliant piece of color at the Russell Place Gallery
may have been Rossetti's "Blue Closet," a picture which either
illustrated or, as I should rather suppose, suggested Mr. Morris's
wonderful poem published two years later.

The same year that displayed him to the public already surrounded by a
brilliant phalanx of painter-friends, discovered him also, to the
judicious, as a centre of poetic light and heat. The circumstances
connected with Rossetti's visit to Oxford a little earlier than this
are too recent, are fresh in the memories of too many living persons
of distinction, to be discussed with propriety by one who was not
present. But certain facts are public, and may be mentioned. The
Oxford Union still shows around the interior of its cupola strange,
shadowy frescoes, melting into nothingness, which are the work of six
men, of