but it was not published until 1904; the reason for withholding it being, not anything involved in its real subject-matter, but the strong form of imagery and words in which this is clothed.

P. 206.-EVEN SO.-To the third stanza in this lyric, Mr. Coventry Patmore has awarded high praise, saying that it "seems scratched with an adamantine pen upon a slab of agate." He coupled the praise however with an observation that "in Rossetti, as in several other modern poets of great reputations, we are contantly being pulled up, in the professedly fiery course of a tale of passion, to observe the moss on a rock or the note of a chaffinch." I never could perceive the relevance of this objection, so far as Rossetti is concerned. To me it seems that there are very few passages of that kind in his poems. I should be curious to see a list of all such that could be picked out, but have never been at the pains of compiling one.

P. 208.-ON CERTAIN ELIZABETHAN REVIVALS.-I am not sure as to the date of this sonnet—perhaps towards 1860-nor as to the particular Elizabethan plays which had been revived on the stage. In early years-say 1848 to 1850-my brother often went to Sadler's Wells Theatre under Phelps's management, and witnessed and enjoyed the acting of such tragedies as Webster's "Duchess of Malfi." The sonnet would not apply to any drama of so high a rank as that. P. 208.-DANTIS TENEBRÆ.-Possibly no explanation of this sonnet is needed but, lest some reader should say that it is not intelligible, I may observe that the general purport of it is that our father Gabriele Rossetti was a diligent explorer of Dante's writings, and that Dante Gabriel Rossetti became the like. Our father, it is true, hunted for inner and covert significances, which my brother was far from doing: he looked to the primâ facie meaning of the works, and their poetic glory. Gabriele Rossetti died in 1854: the date of this sonnet is more like 1861.

P. 209.—THE Seed of David.-These lines form a concise explanation of the dominant intention in Rossetti's picture, painted for the reredos of Llandaff Cathedral. He wished to have them inscribed on the stone-work round the picture, a triptych, but I doubt whether this has been done. The lines appear to be the first that he wrote after his wife's death in 1862.

P. 209.-ASPECTA MEDUSA.-The drawing was intended to be carried out as a picture, and was even commissioned as such, but the project failed.

P. 210.-THE PASSOVER IN THE HOLY FAMILY.-The design was produced in 1855, and purchased by Mr. Ruskin when only partially completed. In that state it remained-highly valued by Ruskin, in whose possession it continued up to his death. The design re-appears in a stained glass window, the work of Mr. F. J. hields, in Birchington Church, as a memorial to Rossetti, who lies interred in the churchyard. The subject of the design had been fixed upon as far back as 1849. It was projected as a portion of a triptych: one of the other subjects being "The Virgin planting a Lily and a Rose," and the second "Mary in the House of John." The latter alone was painted.

P. 211.-A SEA-SPELL (for a Picture).-The sonnet, without the picture, may seem somewhat obscure. The idea is that of a Siren, or Sea-Fairy, seated in a tree, whose lute summons a sea-bird to listen, and whose song will soon prove fatal to some fascinated mariner.

P. 212.-ENGLISH MAY.-This sonnet was not published in Rossetti's lifetime.

P. 214.-MARY MAGDALENE.-The design was projected or begun in 1853, finished in 1858: Ruskin wrote of it as "magnificent to my mind in every possible way."

P. 214.-MICHAEL SCOTT'S WOOING.-My brother made two or three drawings of this subject of invention, diverse in composition. He contemplated carrying out the subject in a large picture, which was

never executed; I am not certain whether a water-colour of it was produced or not. He took some pains over the wording of the illustrative verse, but never published it. See also the prose narrative under the same title, p. 616.

P. 214.—TROY TOWN.-My brother, upon writing this ballad in 1869, called it "my best, I think." But he, like other poets, was rather prone to fancying, at the first blush, that the last performance was the best. The legend that Helen dedicated to Venus a cup moulded upon her breast-is an ancient one.

P. 217.-AFTER THE GERMAN SUBJUGATION OF FRANCE.-This energetic sonnet, a sequel to the one upon the French Liberation of Italy, was first published at the same date, 1904.

P. 218.-DOWN STREAM.-This was written in a punt on the Thames (near Kelmscott) in 1871, and was at first called "The River's Record." Madox Brown was asked to produce a design for a magazine named The Dark Blue, to serve as an illustration for something to be got out of my brother: so the latter, though not enamoured of magazines of a consumptive habit, consented to the insertion of this ballad. Writing to our mother, Dante Rossetti said: "I doubt not you will note the intention to make the first half of each verse, expressing the landscape, tally with the second expressing the emotion, even to repetition of phrases."

P. 219.-THE CLOUD CONFINES.-Rossetti wrote this poem (in 1871) in a highly serious mood of mind: he intended it to be a definite expression of his conceptions, indefinite as they were, upon problems which no amount of knowledge and experience can make other than mysterious and unfathomable. In writing to me he said that the lyric was not meant to be a trifle "; and he consulted me as to whether it might be better to leave the last four lines as they stand, or to substitute other lines " on the theory hardly of annihilation but of absorption." He also wrote to Mr. W. Bell Scott in the same connexion, saying: "I cannot suppose that any particle of life is 'extinguished,' though its permanent individuality may be more than questionable. Absorption is not annihilation; and it is even a real retributive future for the special atom of life to be re-embodied (if so it were) in a world which its own former identity had helped to fashion for pain or pleasure.' Franz Hueffer, who edited the Tauchnitz Edition of Rossetti's "Ballads and Sonnets," thought "The Cloud Confines his highest effort in the field of contemplative, not to say philosophic verse.'

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P. 220.-SUNSET WINGS.-This is one of the poems which show that my brother could take note of the appearances in nature when he chose and when they interested him. As usual, he at the end of the verses makes the appearance subserve an emotional purpose. The poem was written in August 1871, at Kelmscott Manorhouse, Oxfordshire. "It embodies," (as he wrote in a letter) a habit of the starlings which quite amounts to a local phenomenon, and is most beautiful and interesting daily towards sunset for months together in summer and autumn."

P. 221. SOOTHSAY.-Three verses of "Soothsay" (at first entitled "Commandments") came into Rossetti's head during a walk at Kelmscott in 1871 most of the poem was however much later, 188081. Mr. Walter Pater has written : "One monumental lyrical piece, 'Soothsay,' testifies-more clearly even than the 'Nineveh '—to the reflective force, the dry reason, always at work behind his imaginative creations, which at no time dispensed with a genuine intellectual structure." Some further trace of this Poem will be found among the "Versicles and Fragments."

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P. 221. Let thy soul strive," etc. This stanza on early friendship not ultimately maintained is worthy of note in relation to Rossetti's career. Most of his early friendships were severed: some indeed

by death, but others by the course of events. In more books than one I see the blame laid constantly on my brother. In certain instances this is just not by any means in all, as I think I have shown in my Memoir of him, prefixed to his Family letters.

P. 222.-" To God at best," etc. This thought, or it might rather be said this emotion, was often present to Dante Rossetti. He has worded it very tersely in a fragment

"Would God I knew there were a God to thank
When thanks rise in me!"

P. 223.-UNTIMELY LOST-Oliver Madox Brown.-It is perhaps needless to say that Oliver was the son of Ford Madox Brown; and, in his brief life of less than twenty years, had given promise of exceptionally good work as both painter and novelist, and in some degree as poet.

P. 224." This hour like a flower expands." Reverberation of sound, such as this, is very frequent in Rossetti's poems-as the reader of them will not proceed far without observing. He was fond of the chiming-perhaps overmuch so.

P. 225.-THREE SHADOWS.-This lyric has been rather frequently set to music-more frequently, I think, than any other poem by its author. The next in order might be "Love-Lily."

P. 227. CHIMES.-Some readers, it appears, vote this poem unintelligible, and others trivial. It may, however, less censoriously, be regarded from two points of view. 1, It is clearly an exercise in alliterative verse: if several I's or several h's can be got together with a fair amount of sequent significance, its end so far is attained. 2, It represents, rather than aught else, a number of thoughts and images passing through the writer's mind in dreary dimness, when he was only too prone to gloomy impressions. The title itself, "Chimes," prompts us that sound, as truly as sense, has been the guiding clue here. Sections 3, 4, 6, and 7, about the butterfly, love, the breakwater, and the hurricane, must mean very much what they say, and present no real difficulty. Sections 1 and 2, about the bee and the honeysuckle, must adumbrate love-making followed by desertion. Section 5, a trifle more intangible, suggests "the fatal gift of beauty," with its perils and its mortality. It would be a mistake to expect, in a poem of this description, anything closely knit and reasoned; and again a mistake to think that, lacking that, the poem is mere jingling incoherence.

P. 228.-To Philip Bourke MARSTON.-This sonnet was printed in Mr. William Sharp's book, " Dante Gabriel Rossetti, a Record and a Study." In line 4 he gives the word "sight." In the MS. in my own possession I find "light" instead; but I incline to think that Mr. Sharp's version is correct. I need hardly add that Mr. Marston was blind from a very early period of childhood-a point which the sonnet emphasizes.

P. 229.-THE Last Three from Trafalgar.—A lady well known to me by correspondence told me an incident (which pleased me much, and which I venture here to reproduce) regarding this sonnet. She read it to a celebrated General, now a Field-Marshal,-I ought not perhaps to mention the name: it struck him powerfully, and he exclaimed: "I did not think there was any poet of these days who would or could write such a sonnet."

P. 229.-MNEMOSYNE.-This couplet was inscribed on the frame of Rossetti's picture "Mnemosyne, or the Lamp of Memory."

P. 230.-JOHN KEATS, ETC.—I may make a few remarks applicable to the five sonnets collectively upon the "Five English Poets" (Rossetti's heading). 1. Chatterton: His writings (as I have said in my Preface) were known to Dante Rossetti to some extent at a very early date but it was only in his closing years that my brother paid minute

attention to these writings, and then he admired them enormously, and felt a remarkable degree of sympathy with Chatterton, his performances and his personality. Mr. Watts-Dunton cooperated actively to this end.-2, Blake: I need hardly dwell on my brother's early love and study of Blake's work in poetry and design, and on the part he took in connexion with Gilchrist's Life of Blake." The design by Mr. Shields, referred to in the heading of the sonnet, was reproduced in The Art-Journal in 1903. The sonnet refers to two several cupboards, but I can only see one in the design.-3, Coleridge, in certain of his poems-not many amid the entire number of them—was always most deeply admired by Rossetti, and, as years passed, increasingly so. Towards the close of his life he would perhaps have exalted a few of Coleridge's poems above all others produced in that period of our literature. The sonnet testifies to his love of Coleridge: I am not sure that it goes very far towards defining the quality of his excellence.-4, Keats's poetry became first known to Rossetti in 1844, or perhaps 1845. He delighted in it then, and ever afterwards; not however ignoring the imperfection of a large percentage of Keats's work. Perhaps, in his last few years, the poetry of Keats was more constantly present to my brother's thoughts than that of any one else, hardly excepting even Dante.-5, Shelley: According to its heading, this sonnet is an inscription for the Couch, still preserved, on which he passed the last night of his life." The couch in question is in my possession: it came to me from Edward John Trelawny, and to him from Barone Kirkup of Florence. That Shelley passed the last night of his life on this couch was distinctly affirmed by Trelawny. My brother, even before reading Keats, had read Shelley with the profoundest admiration—a feeling which it would not have been possible for him ever to lose. He was not however so unswervingly loyal to Shelley as to Keats; resenting at times those elements in Shelley's poetry where the abstract tends to lose sight of the concrete, or where revolutionary philanthropy, rather than the world of men and women, is the dominant note. poetic literature, anything of a didactic, hortatory, or expressly ethical quality was alien from my brother's liking. That it should be more or less implied was right, but that it should be propounded and preached was wrong: such was his view.

In all

P. 231. THE DAY-DREAM (For a Picture).-The picture of "The Day-Dream," one of my brother's latest works, is in the Ionides bequest to the Victoria and Albert Museum.

P. 231. Still bear young leaflets half the summer through." It has often been alleged that Rossetti's poems show no interest, and no observation or understanding, for the facts and appearances of external nature-landscape, vegetation, and the like. The whole beginning of this sonnet might be cited in disproof of the allegation and I could point out many other instances passim, were they wanted. The fact of the matter is that he constantly saw some appearance in the light of an idea, or in relation to human interest: but still he took count of the appearance.

P. 232.-FOR SPRING, by Sandro Botticelli.-My brother wrote: The same lady, here surrounded by the masque of Spring, is evidently the subject of a portrait by Botticelli formerly in the Pourtalès collection in Paris. This portrait is inscribed "Smeralda Bandinelli."— My brother bought the portrait in question. He afterwards sold it to Mr. Constantine Ionides, from whom it passed to the Victoria and Albert Museum. Leading critics will now have it that the portrait is not the work of Botticelli himself, but of some one for whom they have invented the name "Amico di Sandro."

P. 233.-TIBER, NILE, AND THAMES.-Was at first named "Cleopatra's Needle in London." Was written in January 1881, and sent by Dante Rossetti to Christina, with the message, "With me, sonnets

mean insomnia.”

P. 233.-" FOUND."-The facts about the picture named "Found" have often been stated. The work shows how a young woman, inured to vice and sinking into penury, was “found ” in the streets of London by her old rustic lover, a drover on his way to market. The subject was designed perhaps as early as 1852, and the painting of it begun in 1854. but never brought to entire completion. The sonnet, on the other hand, is quite a late composition-February 1881.

P. 239.-GOD'S GRAAL.-Rossetti must have projected writing a somewhat long poem thus entitled. The verses come in a notebook in connexion with several pages of prose detail abstracted from the "Mort Arthur."-The Versicles and Fragments generally are also collected out of notebooks etc. I need not dwell upon them beyond saying that I think them worthy of preservation on one ground or another.

P. 239.-THE ORCHARD-PIT.-This is all that I can find written of a poem which was long and seriously thought of the argument of the poem is printed among the prose works.

P. 241.-"I hate' says over and above, etc."-This stanza, and the one which follows, must have been at first intended to figure in the poem "Soothsay.' Likewise the verses The bitter stage of life" etc. correspond to a passage in the same poem.

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P. 242.-"The winter Garden-beds, etc."-This is used, but with very different diction, in the sonnet Winter."

P. 243. Thou that beyond thy real self, etc."-Is versified from a prose phrase, p. 607.

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P. 245.-ON THE TWO BRIDAL-BIERS.—Such is the title, although bridal-bed comes in the couplet itself. There may have been an intention of writing other couplets wherein the death-bier would figure. P. 245.-JOAN OF ARC.-These three stanzas are all that I find written of my brother's projected ballad upon the glorious heroine of France.

P. 245." Or, stamped with the snake's coil, etc."-Probably this fragment had been intended to be embodied in Rossetti's sonnet on "The Sonnet."

P. 246.-Dîs MANIBUS.-Flaubert became so bloated latterly that he could hardly move, and had to wear a special loose costume.-D.G.R. -This sardonic epitaph for Flaubert was written by Rossetti in full consciousness of the literary greatness of the deceased author. He had read "Salammbô" with strong admiration, but with a sense of its being so steeped in cruelty and horror as to be an abnormal and a hardly permissible effort of the historic imagination.

P. 246.-"No ship came near, etc."-The peculiar rhyme-structure of this stanza shows that it was intended to come into "The Bride's Prelude."

P. 249.-MOTTO TO THE CARD-DEALER.-In the first published version of The Card-dealer," 1852, this quatrain was supplied as a motto. Though I cannot speak with absolute certainty, I fully believe that the quatrain is Rossetti's own invention. Am not aware that there is any such book as the "Calendrier de la Vie, 1630.”

P. 249.-MESSER DANTE A MESSER BRUNO.-This sonnet, sent to Madox Brown in a letter of October 24, 1867, is simply a joke-not perhaps a very good one. Brown had written an Italian letter to Rossetti, speaking of Mr. Henry Treffry Dunn, Rossetti's art-assistant; and taking the surname as if it were "Done," he translated it into Fatto." Rossetti replies, joking on Brown's name, Ford Mad-ox Brown, and Italianizing it as "Guado Pazzobue Bruno." He also speaks of Mr. Dunn as a dun," a creditor; possibly with truth, or possibly for the mere pun on the name.

P. 249. CON MANTO D'ORO, etc.-This Italian triplet, and the French couplet, with their translations, were written for a portrait of Mrs. Frederick Leyland painted by Rossetti.