before
described, to Mr. Watts for publication in the volume just mentioned.
On the Thursday morning I found his utterance thick, and his speech from
that cause hardly intelligible. It chanced that I had just been reading
Mr. Buchanan's new volume of poems, and in the course of conversation
I told him the story of the ballad called _The Lights of Leith_, and
he was affected by the pathos of it. He had heard of that author's
retractation{*} of the charges involved in the article published ten
years earlier, and was manifestly touched by the dedication of the
romance _God and the Man_. He talked long and earnestly that morning,
and it was our last real interview. He spoke of his love of early
English ballad literature, and of how when he first met with it he had
said to himself: "There lies your line."

* The retractation, which now has a peculiar literary
interest, was made in the following verses, and should, I
think, be recorded here:

To an old Enemy.

I would have snatch'd a bay-leaf from thy brow,
Wronging the chaplet on an honoured head;
In peace and charity I bring thee now
A lily-flower instead.
Pure as thy purpose, blameless as thy song,
Sweet as thy spirit, may this offering be;
Forget the bitter blame that did thee wrong,
And take the gift from me!

In a later edition of the romance the following verses are
added to the dedication:

To Dante Gabriel Rossetti:

Calmly, thy royal robe of death around thee,
Thou Bleekest, and weeping brethren round thee stand--
Gently they placed, ere yet God's angel crown'd thee,
My lily in thy hand!
I never knew thee living, O my brother!
But on thy breast my lily of love now lies;
And by that token, we shall know each other,
When God's voice saith "Arise!"

"Can you understand me?" he asked abruptly, alluding to the thickness of
his utterance.

"Perfectly."

"Nurse Abrey cannot: what a good creature she is!"

That night we telegraphed to Mr. Marshall, to Mr. W. M. Rossetti, and
Mr. Watts, and wrote next morning to Mr. Shields, Mr. Scott, and Mr.
Madox Brown. It had been found by the resident medical man, Dr. Harris,
that in Rossetti's case kidney disease had supervened. His dear mother
and I sat up until early morning with him, and wh