he gave me that cheery, hearty greeting which I came to
recognise as his alone, perhaps, in warmth and unfailing geniality among
all the men of our circle. It was Italian in its spontaneity, and yet it
was English in its manly reserve, and I remember with much tenderness of
feeling that never to the last (not even when sickness saddened him,
or after an absence of a few days or even hours) did it fail him when
meeting with those friends to whom to the last he was really attached.
Leading the way into the studio, he introduced me to his brother, who
was there upon one of the evening visits, which at intervals of a week
he was at that time making, with unfailing regularity. I should have
described Rossetti, at this time, as a man who looked quite ten years
older than his actual age, which was fifty-two, of full middle height
and inclining to corpulence, with a round face that ought, one thought,
to be ruddy but was pale, large grey eyes with a steady introspecting
look, surmounted by broad protrusive brows and a clearly-pencilled ridge
over the nose, which was well cut and had large breathing nostrils. The
mouth and chin were hidden beneath a heavy moustache and abundant beard,
which grew up to the ears, and had been of a mixed black-brown and
auburn, and were now streaked with grey. The forehead was large, round,
without protuberances, and very gently receding to where thin black
curls, that had once been redundant, began to tumble down to the ears.
The entire configuration of the head and face seemed to me singularly
noble, and from the eyes upwards, full of beauty. He wore a pair of
spectacles, and, in reading, a second pair over the first: but these
took little from the sense of power conveyed by those steady eyes,
and that "bar of Michael Angelo." His dress was not conspicuous, being
however rather negligent than otherwise, and noticeable, if at all, only
for a straight sack-coat buttoned at the throat, descending at least to
the knees, and having large pockets cut into it perpendicularly at the
sides. This garment was, I afterwards found, one of the articles of
various kinds made to the author's own design. When he spoke, even in
exchanging the preliminary courtesies of an opening conversation, I
thought his voice the richest I had ever known any one to possess.
It was a full deep barytone, capable of easy modulation, and with
undertones of infinite softness and sweetness, yet, as I afterwards
found, with almost illim