nfidence in what the future may
legitimately hold for one is united to earnest and rightly directed
endeavour in the present, it is often a good thing for the man who
stands on the threshold of life (to whom, nevertheless, the path passed
seems ever to stretch out of sight backwards) to be told the extent
to which, little enough at the most, his clasp (to use a phrase of Mr.
Browning) may be equal to his grasp.

My residing, as I did, at a distance from London, was at once the
difficulty which for a time prevented our coming together and the
necessity for correspondence by virtue of which these letters exist.
As I failed, however, from hampering circumstance, to meet at once with
himself, Rossetti invariably displayed a good deal of friendly anxiety
to bring me into contact with his friends as frequently as occasion
rendered it feasible to do so. In this way I met with Mr. Madox
Brown, who was at the moment engaged on his admirable frescoes in the
Manchester Town Hall, and in this way also I met with other friends
of his resident in my neighbourhood. When I came to know him more
intimately I perceived that besides the kindliness of intention which
had prompted him to bring me into what he believed to be agreeable
associations, he had adopted this course from the other motive of
desiring to be reassured as to the comparative harmlessness of my
personality, for he usually followed the introduction to a friend by a
private letter of thanks for the reception accorded me, and a number of
dexterously manipulated allusions, which always, I found, produced the
desired result of eliciting the required information (to be gleaned
only from personal intercourse) as to my manner and habits. Later in our
acquaintance, I found that he, like all meditative men, had the greatest
conceivable dread of being taken unawares, and that there was no safer
way for any fresh acquaintance to insure his taking violently against
him, than to take the step of coming down upon him suddenly, and
without appointment, or before a sufficient time had elapsed between the
beginning of the friendship and the actual personal encounter, to admit
of his forming preconceived ideas of the manner of man to expect. The
agony he suffered upon the unexpected visit of even the most ardent of
well-wishers could scarcely be realised at the moment, from the apparent
ease, and assumed indifference of his outward bearing, and could only
be known to those who were with him