encourage other
patrons.

"He seems in a mood to make my fortune," said Rossetti in the spring of
1854; and early in 1855 Ruskin wrote:

"It seems to me that, of all the painters I know, you on the whole
have the greatest genius; and you appear to me also to be--as far
as I can make out--a very good sort of person, I see that you are
unhappy, and that you can't bring out your genius as you should.
It seems to me then the proper and _necessary_ thing, if I can, to
make you more happy; and that I shall be more really useful in
enabling you to paint properly, and keep your room in order, than
in any other way."

He did his best to keep that room in order in every sense. Anxious to
promote the painter's marriage with Miss Siddal--"Princess Ida," as
Ruskin called her--he offered a similar arrangement to that which he had
made with Rossetti; and began in 1855 to give her L150 a year in
exchange for drawings up to that value. Rossetti's poems also found a
warm admirer and advocate. In 1856, "The Burden of Nineveh" was
published anonymously in the _Oxford and Cambridge Magazine_; Ruskin
wrote to Rossetti that it was "glorious" and that he wanted to know who
was the author,--perhaps not without a suspicion that he was addressing
the man who could tell. In 1861 he guaranteed, or advanced, the cost of
"The Early Italian Poets," up to L100, with Smith and Elder; and
endeavoured, but unsuccessfully, to induce Thackeray to find a place for
other poems in _The Cornhill Magazine._

Mr. W.M. Rossetti, in his book on his brother "as Designer and Writer"
and in his "Family Letters," draws a pleasant picture of the intimacy
between the artist and the critic. "At one time," he says, "I am sure
they even loved one another." But in 1865 Rossetti, never very tolerant
of criticism and patronage, took in bad part his friend's remonstrances
about the details of "Venus Verticordia." Eighteen months later, Ruskin
tried to renew the old acquaintance. Rossetti did not return his call;
and further efforts on Ruskin's part, up to 1870, met with little
response. But the lecture on Rossetti in "The Art of England" shows that
on one side at least "their parting," as Mr. W.M. Rossetti says, "was
not in anger;" and the portrait of 1861, now in the Oxford University
Galleries, will remain as a memorial of the ten years' friendship of the
two famous men.

At Red Lion Square, during Lent term, 1855, the three tea