had heard a report of what passed at a time when
my name was unknown to him, as also was that of his assailant. Being
forewarned by William Rossetti of his brother's peculiar sensitiveness
to critical attack, and having, moreover, observed something of the kind
myself, I tried to avoid a circumstantial statement of what passed. But
Rossetti was, as has been said by one who knew him well, "of imagination
all compact," and my obvious desire to shelve the subject suggested to
his mind a thousand inferences infinitely more damaging than the fact.
To avoid such a result I told him all, and there was little in the
way of attack to repeat beyond a few unwelcome strictures on his poem
_Jenny_. He listened but too eagerly to what I was saying, and then in a
voice slower, softer, and more charged, perhaps, with emotion than I had
heard before, said it was the old story, which began ten years before,
and would go on until he had been hunted and hounded to his grave.
Startled, and indeed, appalled by so grave a view of what to me had
seemed no more than an error of critical judgment, coupled perhaps, with
some intemperance of condemnation, I prayed of him to think no more of
the matter, reproached myself with having yielded to his importunity,
and begged him to remember that if one man held the opinions I had
repeated, many men held contrary ones.

"It was right of you to tell me when I asked you," he said, "though my
friends usually keep such facts from my knowledge. As to _Jenny_, it is
a sermon, nothing less. As I say, it is a sermon, and on a great world,
to most men unknown, though few consider themselves ignorant of it. But
of this conspiracy to persecute me--what remains to say but that it is
widespread and remorseless--one cannot but feel it."

I assured him there existed no conspiracy to persecute him: that he had
ardent upholders everywhere, though it was true that few men had found
crueller critics. He shook his head, and said I knew that what he had
alleged was true, namely that an organised conspiracy existed, having
for its object to annoy and injure him. Growing a little impatient of
this delusion, so tenaciously held, against all show of reason, I told
him that it was no more than the fever of an oppressed brain brought
about by his reclusive habits of life, by shunning intercourse with all
save some half dozen or more friends. "You tell me," I said, "that you
have rarely been outside these walls for some years, and