doses of ten grains each,
and from it he received pleasant and refreshing sleep. He made no
concealment of his habit; like Coleridge under similar conditions, he
preferred to talk of it. Not yet had he learned the sad truth, too soon
to force itself upon him, that the fumes of this dreadful drug would
one day wither up his hopes and joys in life: deluding him with a
short-lived surcease of pain only to impose a terrible legacy of
suffering from which there was to be no respite. Had Rossetti been
master of the drug and not mastered by it, perhaps he might have
turned it to account at a critical juncture, and laid it aside when the
necessity to employ it had gradually been removed. But, alas! he gave
way little by little to the encroachments of an evil power with which,
when once it had gained the ascendant, he fought down to his dying day a
single-handed and losing fight.

It was not, however, for some years after he began the use of it that
chloral produced any sensible effects of an injurious kind, and meantime
he pursued as usual his avocation as a painter. Mention has been made
of the fact that Rossetti abandoned at an early age subject designs for
three-quarter-length figures. Of the latter, in the period of which we
are now treating, he painted great numbers: among them, produced at this
time and later, were _Sibylla Palmifera and The Beloved_ (the property
of Mr. George Rae), _La Pia and The Salutation of Beatrice_ (Mr. F. E.
Leyland), _The Dying Beatrice_ (Lord Mount Temple), _Venus Astarte_
(Mr. Fry), _Fiammetta_ (Mr. Turner), _Proserpina_ (Mr. Graham). Of these
works, solidity may be said to be the prominent characteristic. The
drapery of Rossetti's pictures is wonderfully powerful and solid; his
colour may be said to be at times almost matchable with that of certain
of the Venetian painters, though different in kind. He hated beyond most
things the "varnishy" look of some modern work; and his own oil pictures
had so much of the manner of frescoes in their lustreless depth, that
they were sometimes mistaken for water-colours, while, on the other
hand, his water-colours had often so much depth and brilliancy as
sometimes to be mistaken for oil. It is alleged in certain quarters
that Rossetti was deficient in some qualities of drawing, and this is
no doubt a just allegation; but it is beyond question that no English
painter has ever been a greater master of the human face, which in his
works (especially those pai