ne
from _Othello_, and cast himself for the principal _role_. The scene
selected was the closing one of the play, and began with the speech
delivered to Lodovico, Montano, and Gratiano, when they are about to
take Othello prisoner. Rossetti used to say that he delivered the lines
in a frenzy of boyish excitement, and coming to the words--

Set you down this:
And say, besides,--that in Aleppo once,
Where a malignant and a turban'd Turk
Beat a Venetian, and traduced the state,
I took by the throat the circumcised dog,
And smote him--thus!--

he snatched up an iron chisel, that lay somewhere at hand, and, to the
consternation of his companions, smote himself with all his might on the
chest, inflicting a wound from which he bled and fainted.

He is described by those who remember him, at this period, as a boy of
a gentle and affectionate nature, albeit prone to outbursts of
masterfulness. The earliest existent portraits represent a comely youth,
having redundant auburn hair curling all round the head, and eyes and
forehead of extraordinary beauty. It is said that he was brave and
manly of temperament, courageous as to personal suffering, eminently
solicitous of the welfare of others, and kind and considerate to*such
as he had claims upon. This is no doubt true portraiture, but it must
be stated (however open to explanation, on grounds of laudable
self-depreciation), that it is not the picture which he himself used
to paint of his character as a boy. He often described himself as being
destitute of personal courage when at school, as shrinking from the
amusements of schoolfellows, and fearful of their quarrels; not wholly
without generous impulses, but, in the main, selfish of nature and
reclusive in habit of life. He was certainly free from the meaningless
affectation--for such it too frequently is--of representing his
school-days as the happiest of his life. If, after so much undervaluing
of himself, it were possible to trust his estimate of his youthful
character, he would have had you believe that school was to him a place
of semi-purgatorial probation,--which nothing but love of his mother,
and desire to meet her wishes, prevented him, as an irreclaimable
antischoliast, from obstinately renouncing at a time when he had learned
little Latin, and less Greek.

Having from childhood shown a propensity towards painting, the strong
inclination was fostered by his parents, a