ng--work coming on the heels of work--and that your
time cannot long be deferred as regards your place as a
writer.

The ballad of which Rossetti here speaks as dealing trivially with a
base amour is entitled _Dennis Shand_. Though an early work, it affords
perhaps the best evidence extant of the poet's grasp of the old ballad
style: it runs easiest of all his ballads, and is in some respects his
best. Mr. J. A. Symonds has, in my judgment, made the error of speaking
of Rossetti as incapable of reproducing the real note of such ballads
as _Chevy Chase_ and _Sir Patrick Spens_. Mr. Symonds was right in his
eloquent comments (_Macmillan's Magazine_, February 1882), so far as
they concern the absence from _Rose Mary, The King's Tragedy, and The
White Ship_ of the sinewy simplicity of the old singers. But in those
poems Rossetti attempted quite another thing. There is a development of
the English ballad that is entirely of modern product, being far more
complex than the primitive form, and getting rid to some extent of the
out-worn notion of the ballad being actually sung to set music, but
retaining enough of the sweep of a free rhythm to carry a sensible
effect as of being chanted when read. This is a sort of ballad-romance,
such as _Christabel_ and _The Lay of the Last Minstrel_; and this, and
this only, was what Rossetti aimed after, and entirely compassed in his
fine works just mentioned. But (as Rossetti himself remarked to me in
conversation when I repeated Mr. Symonds's criticism, and urged my own
grounds of objection to it), that the poet was capable of the directness
and simplicity which characterise the early ballad-writers, he had
given proof in _The Staff and Scrip and Stratton Water. Dennis Shand_
is valuable as evidence going in the same direction, but the author's
objection to it, on ethical grounds, must here prevail to withhold it
from publication.

The Shakspeare sonnet, spoken of in the letter as being withheld on
account of its incongruity with the rest of the poems, was published
in an early _Academy_, notwithstanding its jocose allusion to the
worshipful body of tailors. As it is little known, and really very
powerful in itself, and interesting as showing the author's power over
words in a new direction, I print it in this place.

ON THE SITE OF A MULBERRY TREE.

Planted by Wm. Shakspeare; felled by the Rev. F. Gastrell.
This tree, here fall'n, no common birth or de