itable compass, and with every gradation of tone
at command, for the recitation or reading of poetry. The studio was a
large room probably measuring thirty feet by twenty, and structurally as
puzzling as the other parts of the house. A series of columns and arches
on one side suggested that the room had almost certainly been at some
period the site of an important staircase with a wide well, and on the
other side a broad mullioned window reaching to the ceiling, seemed
certainly to bear record of the occupant's own contribution to the
peculiarities of the edifice. The fireplace was at an end of the room,
and over and at each side of it were hung a number of fine drawings
in chalk, chiefly studies of heads, with here and there a water-colour
figure piece, all from Rossetti's hand. At the opposite end of the room
hung some symbolic designs in chalk, _Pandora_ and _Proserpina_ being
among the number, and easels of various sizes, some very large, bearing
pictures in differing stages of completion, occupied positions on
all sides of the floor, leaving room only for a sofa, with a bookcase
behind, two old cabinets, two large low easy chairs, and a writing desk
and chair at a window at the side, which was heavily darkened by the
thick foliage of the trees that grew in the garden beyond.

Dropping down on the sofa with his head laid low and his feet thrown up
in a favourite attitude on the back, which must, I imagine, have been at
least as easy as it was elegant, he began the conversation by bantering
me upon what he called my "robustious" appearance compared with what he
had been led to expect from gloomy reports of uncertain health. After a
series of playful touches (all done in the easiest conceivable way,
and conveying any impression on earth save the right one, that a first
meeting with any man, however young and harmless, was little less than a
tragic event to Rossetti) he glanced one by one at certain of the topics
that had arisen in the course of our correspondence. I perceived that he
was a ready, fluent, and graceful talker, with a remarkable incisiveness
of speech, and a trick of dignifying ordinary topics in words which,
without rising above conversation, were so exactly, though freely
enunciated, as would have admitted of their being reported exactly as
they fell from his lips. In some of these respects I found his brother
William resemble him, though, if I may describe the talk of a dead
friend by contrasting it wi