n the night, under
circumstances which afterwards made necessary his (Swinburne's)
appearance and evidence at the inquest held on her remains. He dwells
upon the anguish of the widower, when next they met, under the roof
of the mother with whom he had sought refuge. He records how Rossetti
appealed to his friendship in the name of the dead lady's regard for
him--a regard such as she had felt for no other of Rossetti's
friends--to cleave to him in this time of sorrow, to come and keep
house with him as soon as a residence could be found.

Can there be a more convincing and a more beautiful testimony as to a
friend's sorrow and its cause?

Over and above the touching testimony of Swinburne, no one will deny
that if ever one man knew another too well to be his biographer, as
Mr. Benson says, the author of _Aylwin_ was that man with regard to
Rossetti. No one has ever ventured to challenge the assertion in the
article on Rossetti in the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_ that there was a
time when with the exception of his own family the poet-painter saw
scarcely any one save the writer of this book, whom he was never
tired of designating his friend of friends. There is no need to
multiply instances of this friendship, which has been enlarged upon
by Rossetti's brother, and by many others. Elizabeth Luther Gary, in
the best of all the books upon Rossetti, published by G. P. Putnam's
Sons two years after the first edition of _Aylwin_, speaks of
_D'Arcy_ as being 'the mouthpiece of Rossetti.'

It may be added that Rossetti's _Ballads and Sonnets_, published in
1882, were dedicated to the author in these words: 'To the Friend
whom my verse won for me, these few more pages are affectionately
inscribed.' When he drew his last breath at Birchington it was in
that friend's arms. It is necessary to dwell upon such facts as the
above to show how fully equipped is the author of _Aylwin_ for
understanding and depicting the great poet-painter, to whose memory
he addressed the sonnet at the head of this note.

As to the personality of Rossetti, to which Mr. Benson alludes, to
say that it was the one that stood out among the lives of the
Victorian poets is to state the case very feebly. It has been the
fortune of the delineator of D'Arcy to be thrown intimately across
several of the great poets of his time, not one of whom displayed a
personality so dominant as Rossetti's. Fine as is Rossetti's poetry
and fine as are his paintings, they but