while he was admitted to the school of the Royal Academy, but never proceeded beyond its antique section. In 1848 Rossetti co-operated with two of his fellow-students in painting,- John Everett Millais and William Holman Hunt, — and with the sculptor Thomas Woolner, in forming the so-called Præraphaelite Brotherhood. There were three other members of the Brotherhood,― James Collinson (succeeded after two or three years by Walter Howell Deverell), Frederic George Stephens, and the present writer. Ford Madox Brown, the historical painter, was known to Rossetti much about the same time when the Præraphaelite scheme was started, and bore an important part both in directing his studies and in upholding the movement, but he did not think fit to join the Brotherhood in any direct or complete sense. Through Deverell, Rossetti came to know Elizabeth Eleanor Siddal, daughter of a Sheffield cutler, herself a milliner's assistant, gifted with some artistic and some poetic faculty; and in the spring of 1860, after a long engagement, they married. Their wedded life was of short duration, as she died in February, 1862, having meanwhile given birth to a still-born child. For several years up to this date Rossetti, designing and painting many works, in oil-color or as yet more frequently in water-color, had resided at No. 14 Chatham Place, Blackfriars Bridge, a line of street now demolished. In the autumn of 1862 he removed to No. 16 Cheyne Walk, Chelsea. At first certain apartments in the house were occupied by Mr. George Meredith the novelist, Mr. Swinburne the poet, and myself. This arrangement did not last long, although I myself remained a partial inmate of the house up to 1873. My brother continued domiciled in Cheyne Walk until his death; but from about 1869 he was frequently away at Kelmscot manorhouse, in Oxfordshire, not far from Lechlade, occupied jointly by himself and by the poet Mr. William

Morris, with his family. From the autumn of 1872 till the summer of 1874 he was wholly settled at Kelmscot, scarcely visiting London at all. He then returned to London, and Kelmscot passed out of his ken.

In the early months of 1850 the members of the Præraphaelite Brotherhood, with the co-operation of some friends, brought out a short-lived magazine named The Germ (afterwards Art and Poetry); here appeared the first verses and the first prose published by Rossetti, including The Blessed Damozel and Hand and Soul. In 1856 he contributed a little to The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine, printing there The Burden of Nineveh. In 1861, during his married life, he published his volume of translations, The Early Italian Poets, now entitled Dante and his Circle. By the time therefore of the death of his wife he had a certain restricted yet far from inconsiderable reputation as a poet, along with his recognized position as a painter, a non-exhibiting painter, it may here be observed, for, after the first two or three years of his professional course, he adhered with practical uniformity to the plan of abstaining from exhibition altogether. He had contemplated bringing out in or about 1862 a volume of original poems; but in the grief and dismay which overwhelmed him in losing his wife, he determined to sacrifice to her memory this long-cherished project, and he buried in her coffin the manuscripts which would have furnished forth the volume. With the lapse of years he came to see that as a final settlement of the matter this was neither obligatory nor desirable; so in 1869 the manuscripts were disinterred, and in 1870 his volume named Poems was issued. For some considerable while it was hailed with general and lofty praise, checkered by only moderate stricture or demur; but late in 1871 Mr. Robert Buchanan published under a pseudonym, in the Contemporary Review, a

very hostile article named The Fleshly School of Poetry, attacking the poems on literary and more especially on moral grounds. The article, in an enlarged form, was afterwards reissued as a pamphlet. The assault produced on Rossetti an effect altogether disproportionate to its intrinsic importance; indeed, it developed in his character an excess of sensitiveness and of distempered brooding which his nearest relatives and friends had never before surmised, — for hitherto he had on the whole had an ample sufficiency of high spirits, combined indeed with a certain underlying gloominess or abrupt moodiness of nature and outlook. Unfortunately there was in him already only too much of morbid material on which this venom of detraction was to work. For some years the state of his eyesight had given very grave cause for apprehension, he himself fancying from time to time that the evil might end in absolute blindness, a fate with which our father had been formidably threatened in his closing years. From this or other causes insomnia had ensued, coped with by far too free a use of chloral, which may have begun towards the end of 1869. In the summer of 1872 he had a dangerous crisis of illness; and from that time forward, but more especially from the middle of 1874, he became secluded in his habits of life, and often depressed, fanciful, and gloomy. Not indeed that there were no intervals of serenity, even of brightness; for in fact he was often genial and pleasant, and a most agreeable companion, with as much bonhomie as acuteness for wiling an evening away. He continued also to prosecute his pictorial work with ardor and diligence, and at times he added to his product as a poet. The second of his original volumes, Ballads and Sonnets, was published in the autumn of 1881. About the same time he sought change of air and scene in the vale of St. John, near Keswick, Cumberland; but he returned to

town more shattered in health and in mental tone than he had ever been before. In December a shock of a quasiparalytic character struck him down. He rallied sufficiently to remove to Birchington-on-Sea, near Margate. The hand of death was then upon him, and was to be relaxed no more. The last stage of his maladies was uræmia. Tended by his mother and his sister Christina, with the constant companionship at Birchington of Mr. Hall Caine, and in the presence likewise of Mr. Theodore Watts, Mr. Frederick Shields, and myself, he died on Easter Sunday, April 9, 1882. His sister-in-law, the daughter of Madox Brown, arrived immediately after his latest breath had been drawn. He lies buried in the churchyard of Birchington.

Few brothers were more constantly together, or shared one another's feelings and thoughts more intimately, in childhood, boyhood, and well on into mature manhood, than Dante Gabriel and myself. I have no idea of limning his character here at any length, but will define a few of its leading traits. He was always and essentially of a dominant turn, in intellect and in temperament a leader. He was impetuous and vehement, and necessarily therefore impatient; easily angered, easily appeased, although the embittered feelings of his later years obscured this amiable quality to some extent; constant and helpful as a friend where he perceived constancy to be reciprocated; free-handed and heedless of expenditure, whether for himself or for others; in family affection warm and equable, and (except in relation to our mother, for whom he had a fondling love) not demonstrative. Never on stilts in matters of the intellect or of aspiration, but steeped in the sense of beauty, and loving, if not always practising, the good; keenly alive also (though many people seem to discredit this now) to the laughable as well as the grave or solemn side of things; superstitious in

grain, and anti-scientific to the marrow. Throughout his youth and early manhood I considered him to be markedly free from vanity, though certainly well equipped in pride: the distinction between these two tendencies was less definite in his closing years. Extremely natural and therefore totally unaffected in tone and manner, with the naturalism characteristic of Italian blood; good-natured and hearty, without being complaisant or accommodating; reserved at times, yet not haughty; desultory enough in youth, diligent and persistent in maturity; self-centred always, and brushing aside whatever traversed his purpose or his bent. He was very generally and very greatly liked by persons of extremely diverse character; indeed, I think it can be no exag geration to say that no one ever disliked him. Of course I do not here confound the question of liking a man's personality with that of approving his conduct out-and-out.

Of his manner I can perhaps convey but a vague impression. I have said that it was natural; it was likewise eminently easy, and even of the free-and-easy kind: there was a certain British bluffness streaking the finely poised Italian suppleness and facility. As he was thoroughly unconventional, caring not at all to fall in with the humors or prepossessions of any particular class of society, or to conciliate or approximate the socially distinguished, there was little in him of any veneer or varnish of elegance. None the less he was courteous and well-bred, meeting all sorts of persons upon equal terms, — that is, upon his own terms; and I am satisfied that those who are most exacting in such matters found in Rossetti nothing to derogate from the standard of their requirements. In habit of body he was indolent and lounging, disinclined to any prescribed or trying exertion of any sort, and very difficult to stir out of his ordinary groove, yet not wanting in active promptitude whenever it suited his