ti speaks of, as well as
by a rather exasperating inequality. Perhaps the best piece in it is a
poem entitled _Thistle and Nettle_, treating with peculiar freshness of
a country courtship. The coming together of two such entirely opposite
natures was certainly curious, and only to be accounted for on the
ground of Rossetti's breadth of poetic sympathy. It would be interesting
to hear what the impressions were of such a rude son of toil upon
meeting with one whose life must have seemed the incarnation of artistic
luxury and indulgence. Later on I received the following:

Poor Skipsey! He has lost the friend who brought him to
London only the other day (T. Dixon), and who was his only
hold on intellectual life in his district. Dixon died
immediately on his return to the North, of a violent attack
of asthma to which he was subject. He was a rarely pure and
simple soul, and is doubtless gone to higher uses, though
few could have reached, with his small opportunities, to
such usefulness as he compassed here. He was Ruskin's
correspondent in a little book called (I think) _Work by
Tyne and Wear_. I got a very touching note from Skipsey on
the subject.

From Mr. Skipsey he received a letter only a little while before his
death, and to him he addressed one of the last epistles he penned.

The following letter explains itself, and is introduced as much for
the sake of the real humour which it displays, as because it affords an
excellent idea of Rossetti's view of the true function of prose:

I don't like your Shakspeare article quite as well as the
first _Supernatural_ one, or rather I should say it does not
greatly add to it in my (first) view, though both might gain
by embodiment in one. I think there is _some_ truth in the
charge of metaphysical involution--the German element as I
should call it--and surely you are strong enough to be
English pure and simple. I am sure I could write 100 essays,
on all possible subjects (I once did project a series under
the title, _Essays written in the intervals of
Elephantiasis, Hydro-phobia, and Penal Servitude_), without
once experiencing the "aching void" which is filled by such
words as "mythopoeic," and "anthropomorphism." I do not find
life long enough to know in the least what they mean. They
are both very long and very ugly indeed--the latter only
s