s are said to have been
ignorant of Mr. Ruskin's writings when they began their revolt against
the current classicism. It is a fact however, that, after perhaps a
couple of years, Mr. Ruskin came to the rescue of the little brotherhood
(then much maligned) by writing in their defence a letter in the
_Times_. It is easy to make too much of these early endeavours of
a company of young men, exceptionally gifted though the reformers
undoubtedly were, and inspired by an ennobling enthusiasm. In later
years Rossetti was not the most prominent of those who kept these
beginnings of a movement constantly in view; indeed, it is hardly rash
to say that there were moments when he seemed almost to resent the
intrusion of them upon the maturity of aim and handling which, in common
with his brother artists, he ultimately compassed. But it would be folly
not to recognise the essential germs of a right aspiration which grew
out of that interchange of feeling and opinion which, in its concrete
shape, came to be termed pre-Raphaelitism. Rossetti is acknowledged to
have taken the most prominent part in the movement, supplying, it is
alleged, much of the poetic impulse as well as knowledge of mediaeval
art. He occupied himself in these and following years mainly in the
making of designs for pictures--the most important of them being
_Dante's Dream, Hamlet and Ophelia, Cassandra, Lucretia Borgia, Giotto
painting Dante's Portrait, The First Anniversary of the Death of
Beatrice Mary Magdalene at the Door of Simon the Pharisee, The Death
of Lady Macbeth, Desdemona's Death-song_ and a great subject entitled
_Found_, designed and begun at twenty-five, but left incomplete at
death.

All this occurred between the years 1849-1856, but three years before
the earlier of these dates Rossetti, as a painter, had come under an
influence which he was never slow to acknowledge operated powerfully
on his art. In 1846, Mr. Ford Madox Brown exhibited designs in the
Westminster competition, and his cartoons deeply impressed Rossetti The
young painter, then nineteen years of age, wrote to the elder one, his
senior by no more than seven years, begging to be permitted to become a
pupil. An intimacy sprang up between the two, and for a while Rossetti
worked in Brown's studio; but though the friendship lasted throughout
life the professional relationship soon terminated. The ardour of the
younger man led him into the-brotherhood just referred to, but Brown
never jo