ve been effaced. The second
of these pieces has been brought with great skill into regular form by
transposition: but again one repines to find several touches gone that
once were there. The last of them, _The Staff and Scrip_, is, in my
judgment, the finest of all Rossetti's poems, and one of the most
glorious writings in the language. It exhibits in flawless perfection
the gift that he had above all other writers, absolute beauty and pure
action. Here again it is not possible to see without regret some of the
verbal alterations that have been made in the poem as it now stands,
although the chief emendation, the omission of one stanza and the
insertion of another, adds clearness, and was all that was wanted to
make the poem perfect in structure.

I saw Rossetti for the first time in his lodgings over Blackfriars
Bridge. It was impossible not to be impressed with the freedom and
kindness of his manner, not less than by his personal appearance. His
frank greeting, bold, but gentle glance, his whole presence, produced a
feeling of confidence and pleasure. His voice had a great charm, both
in tone, and from the peculiar cadences that belonged to it I think that
the leading features of his character struck me more at first than
the characteristics of his genius; or rather, that my notion of the
character of the man was formed first, and was then applied to his
works, and identified with them. The main features of his character
were, in my apprehension, fearlessness, kindliness, a decision that
sometimes made him seem somewhat arbitrary, and condensation or
concentration. He was wonderfully self-reliant. These moral qualities,
guiding an artistic temperament as exquisite as was ever bestowed on
man, made him what he was, the greatest inventor of abstract beauty,
both in form and colour, that this age, perhaps that the world, has
seen. They would also account for some peculiarities that must be
admitted in some of his works, want of nature, for instance. I heard him
once remark that it was "astonishing how much the least bit of nature
helped if one put it in;" which seemed like an acknowledgment that he
might have gone more to nature. Hence, however, his works always seem
abstract, always seem to embody some kind of typical aim, and acquire a
sort of sacred character.

I saw a good deal of Rossetti in London, and afterwards in Oxford,
during the painting of the Union debating-room. In later years our
personal intercourse wa