Christianity?" I wish that
these imperfect recollections may be of any avail to those who cherish
the memory of an extraordinary genius.

Besides his contributions to _The Germ_, and to _The Oxford and
Cambridge Magazine_, Rossetti contributed _Sister Helen_, in 1853, to a
German Annual. Beyond this he made little attempt to publish his poetry.
He had written it for the love of writing, or in obedience to the
inherent impulse compelling him to do so, but of actual hope of
achieving by virtue of it a place among English poets he seems to
have had none, or next to none. In later life he used to say that Mr.
Browning's greatness and the splendour of Mr. Tennyson's merited renown
seemed to him in those early years to render all attempt on his part
to secure rank by their side as hopeless as presumptuous. This, he
asserted, was the cause that operated to restrain him from publication
between 1853 and 1862, and after that (as will presently be seen),
another and more serious obstacle than self-depreciation intervened. But
in putting aside all hope of the reward of poetic achievement, he did
not wholly banish the memory of the work he had done. He made two or
more copies of the most noticeable of the poems he had written, and sent
them to friends eminent in letters. To Leigh Hunt he sent _The Blessed
Damozel_, and received in acknowledgment a letter full of appreciative
comment, and foretelling a brilliant future. His literary friends at
this time were Mr. Ruskin, Mr. and Mrs. Browning; he used to see Mr.
Tennyson and Carlyle at intervals, and was in constant intercourse with
the younger writers, Mr. Swinburne and Mr. Morris, whose reputations had
then to be made; Mr. Arnold, Sir Henry Taylor, Mr. Aubrey de Vere, Mr.
E. Brough, Mr. J. Hannay, and Mr. Monckton Milnes (Lord Houghton),
he met occasionally; Dobell he knew only by correspondence. Though
unpublished, his poems were not unknown, for besides the semi-publicity
they obtained by circulation "among his private friends," he was nothing
loath to read or recite them at request, and by such means a few of
them secured a celebrity akin in kind and almost equal in extent to that
enjoyed by Coleridge's _Christabel_ during the many years preceding
1816 in which it lay in manuscript. Like Coleridge's poem in another
important particular, certain of Rossetti's ballads, whilst still
unknown to the public, so far influenced contemporary poetry that when
they did at length appear th