say, a further batch of letters to introduce, but as these
were, for the most part, written after an event which forms a land-mark
in our acquaintance (I mean the occasion of our first meeting), I judge
it is best to reserve them for a later section of this book. There are
two forms, and, so far as I know, two only, in which a body of letters
can be published with justice to the writer. Of these the first and most
obvious form is to offer them chronologically _in extenso_ or with only
such eliminations as seem inevitable, and the second is to tabulate them
according to subject-matter, and print them in the order not of date but
substance. There are advantages attending each method, and corresponding
disadvantages also. The temptation to adopt the first of these was, in
this case of Rossetti's letters, almost insurmountable, for nothing can
be more charming in epistolary style than the easy grace with which the
writer passes from point to point, evolving one idea out of another,
interlinking subject with subject, and building up a fabric of which the
meaning is everywhere inwoven. In this respect Rossetti's letters are
almost as perfect as anything that ever left his hand; and, in freedom
of phrase, in power of throwing off parenthetical reflections always
faultlessly enunciated, in play of humour, often in eloquence (never
becoming declamatory, and calling on "Styx or Stars"), sometimes
in pathos, Rossetti's letters are, in a word, admirable. They
are comparable in these respects with the best things yet done in
English,--as pleasing and graceful as Cowper's letters, broader in range
of subject than the letters of Keats, easier and more colloquial than
those of Coleridge, and with less appearance of being intended for the
public eye than is the case with the letters of Byron and of Shelley.
Rossetti's letters have, moreover, a value quite apart from the merits
of their epistolary style, in so far as they contain almost the only
expression extant of his opinions on literary questions. And this is
the circumstance that has chiefly weighed with me to offer them
in fragmentary form interspersed with elucidatory comment bearing
principally upon the occasions that called them forth.

Such then as I have described was the nature of my intercourse with
Rossetti during the first year and a half of our correspondence, and now
the time had come when I was to meet my friend for the first time face
to face. The elasticity of sympathy