ry
with the torrents of invective of which he has a measureless command.
Rossetti's course was different. Greatly concerned at the bitterness,
as well as startled by the unexpectedness of the attack, he wrote in the
first moments of indignation a full and point-for-point rejoinder, and
this he printed in the form of a pamphlet, and had a great number struck
off; but with constitutional irresolution (wisely restraining him in
this case), he destroyed every copy, and contented himself with writing
a temperate letter on the subject to _The Athenaeum_, December 16, 1871.
He said:

A sonnet, entitled _Nuptial Sleep_, is quoted and abused at page 338
of the Review, and is there dwelt upon as a "whole poem," describing
"merely animal sensations." It is no more a whole poem in reality than
is any single stanza of any poem throughout the book. The poem, written
chiefly in sonnets, and of which this is one sonnet-stanza, is entitled
_The House of Life_; and even in my first published instalment of the
whole work (as contained in the volume under notice), ample evidence
is included that no such passing phase of description as the one headed
_Nuptial Sleep_ could possibly be put forward by the author of _The
House of Life_ as his own representative view of the subject of love.
In proof of this I will direct attention (among the love-sonnets of this
poem), to Nos. 2, 8, 11, 17, 28, and more especially 13. [Here _Love
Sweetness_ is printed.] Any reader may bring any artistic charge he
pleases against the above sonnet; but one charge it would be impossible
to maintain against the writer of the series in which it occurs, and
that is, the wish on his part to assert that the body is greater than
the soul. For here all the passionate and just delights of the body are
declared--somewhat figuratively, it is true, but unmistakeably--to be
as naught if not ennobled by the concurrence of the soul at all times.
Moreover, nearly one half of this series of sonnets has nothing to do
with love, but treats of quite other life-influences. I would defy any
one to couple with fair quotation of sonnets 29, 30, 31, 39, 40, 43, or
others, the slander that their author was not impressed, like all other
thinking men, with the responsibilities and higher mysteries of life;
while sonnets 35, 36, and 37, entitled _The Choice_, sum up the general
view taken in a manner only to be evaded by conscious insincerity. Thus
much for _The House of Life_, of which the s