was one of the marked years of my brother's life. The was growing into form and colour under his hand, and his volume entitled came out in the Spring, with his own design for the binding, just before he completed the forty-second year of his age.

The year opens with a letter from Mr. Shields, expressing satisfaction that Rossetti had again taken up his old picture , and had engaged a male model to sit for it; also that he had resolved to set about painting various subject-pictures already projected or designed. I have often—too often—had occasion to say before now that some important design by my brother, intended as the foundation for a picture, was never carried out in that form—as for instance the , the , the , &c. It may be as well here to offer a few remarks as to the reasons for these frequent miscarriages of his inventive projects. The first and most constantly operating reason was that my brother, as a non-exhibiting artist, had necessarily to rely upon a small and close circle of purchasers; and that these purchasers were in general more anxious to secure such specimens of his art as consisted of ideal female half-figures or heads than to commission work of any other class. Steadily occupied as he thus was, Rossetti had little time, though he had earnest inclination, to set-to upon work requiring a large amount of previous reflection and preparation. He often chafed to see the months and the years slipping away without adequate embodiment of his more elaborate and significant inventions; but so fate and opportunity willed it. Something should also be allowed for the fact that he had very little natural turn, and had never applied himself to the requisite technical discipline, for carrying out large scenic schemes, whether of open-air landscape or of interior combinations, such as would have been needed for his more crowded compositions, the , or the , or some others; and intensity of spiritual expression, even in a single face, had to his mind some counterbalancing claims, even against the moving and fascinating qualities of an epic or dramatic story, however vividly grouped, or whatever its depth of meaning. After making every allowance of this kind, the rarity of achievement of his larger projects in art must remain matter of regret, and to some extent of censure.

Mr. William Graham is again in 1870 an active correspondent. On the 10th of March he spoke of as being “nearly on the stocks;” and reminded Rossetti of a promise of his to paint soon as a companion to , which is the same small oil-picture that was exhibited, under the title of , at Burlington House in 1883. Later on, 29th June, Rossetti had offered Mr. Graham ten of the studies made in preparation for the painting of ; but for these Mr. Graham could not find the requisite space, so he proposed to take only four of them, for which £100 had been paid, or preferably four different female studies. In the middle of September the then in preparation for Mr. John Graham (the Uncle) is discussed. Rossetti was minded to enlarge it from three-quarters size to full-length: this suggestion was staved off by a proposal that William Graham would himself take a separate full-length version. The picture for Mr. John Graham was completed in February 1871. As to thestudies of heads made for the there is in one of Rossetti's letters the observation: “I have made careful studies of the heads, of a certain size; which should be adhered to in order to trace them, which is the only way of sure work in painting, I find.” “The different nude studies” for the same picture are likewise spoken of, and “the drapery-studies.” The following remarks on the oil-picture are also worth extracting:—“I am quite bent on making the picture thoroughly forcible and well relieved as a primary necessity, without which I could not endure its existence. This has been the case, I feel sure, with all work I have finished lately, and is rapidly becoming the case with this now. Only my habit is to leave these considerations absolutely alone in putting-in the materials of a picture, and to transform it completely afterwards in such respects. The outside parts are getting light again as I go on, and will be quite brilliant eventually.”

A letter from Mr. Gambart the picture-dealer may perhaps belong to this year. It shows that he had at some time bought a head by Rossetti named (I remember nothing of it, but regard it as not in any way closely related to the large oil-picture, , painted some years later), and the painter had now made an offer of another head as a pendent to the first. Mr. Gambart would have been disposed to take the head of Christ, executed towards 1859 in watercolour and oil, from sittings given by Mr. Burne Jones, as a study for the head to be introduced into the never-completed oil-picture of . This Rossetti was unwilling to part with: he offered instead a female head for no further payment, or finished with hands for £40.

continues the correspondence with Mr. Graham. Early in January the was completed. On the following day he asked Rossetti for a duplicate of the . This work, as I have already said, had been painted as a reminiscence of the artist's wife, and Rossetti showed no little reluctance to undertake a duplicate. He did not actually refuse, however. A beginning was made; and the work hung over, with weak and half-hearted endeavours, until, late in 1872, it was taken up with earnestness, and brought to completion. As a work of art, it could not be regarded as coming fully into competition with its original, the property of Lord Mount-Temple. The price fixed for the duplicate was £900, or up to £945. On 14th January Mr. Graham suggested to Rossetti his own poem of as a theme for a picture: as it turned out, the painter had himself projected doing this, and in due course the work was executed. Mr. Graham also enquired whether Rossetti would make a painting, to be offered to Mr. Hamilton, from the crayon-drawing named —one of his principal productions in that medium: this proposal did not take effect. In May Mr. Graham expressed a wish that his might be distinguished from its original by the addition of a predella, representing some incident such as the meeting of Beatrice and Dante in the Garden of Eden, a sketch of which subject was in the possession of Mr. Boyce: if such a predella were added to the , the other picture, , might be docked of a predella heretofore intended. But in point of fact both predellas were ultimately painted, the one for being priced at £157. Meanwhile the was advancing steadily, or even rapidly. On 17th July my brother was able to announce that, on his returning to London from Kelmscott in Oxfordshire (where for some years he tenanted the Manor-house, jointly with the Morris family), little would be needed for the completion of the picture; and by 7th November it is spoken of as actually finished. The purchaser (it appears) had not been invited or allowed to see it at any stage of its production: my brother being one of those artists who shrink from displaying work in an incomplete condition, when the ruling intention is only half expressed, and suggestions or objections are apt to be forthcoming, forestalled, or perhaps advisedly disregarded, by the painter himself.

Another replica of —in this instance for Mr. Craven—is spoken of in some letters of this year; painted in watercolour after the original in oil—price some £350. In August my brother expected it to be ready for delivery within three months. Towards November Mr. Craven bought from Agnews the picture-dealers a water-colour of : he thought it wanting in luminosity, and proposed to consign it to the artist for some reworking. This proved to be impracticable, as the colour had been painted over Indian ink. An arrangement was also made that Rossetti should complete the , as companion to the watercolour of already belonging to Mr. Craven. But it was soon afterwards settled that the , price £236, should form a pendent to the , while something else should be painted as a pendent to . The was taken back by Rossetti from Mr. Craven, as the painter fancied that the purchaser was not quite satisfied with it.

In August my brother was getting on with a small picture having a river-background: no doubt this must be the half-figure of Mrs. Morris now entitled , which he regarded with predilection. It must be to this picture that a characteristic remark of his applies:—“I have painted the better part of a little picture, but don't know who is to buy it. I can't be bothered to stick idle names on things now—a head is a head; and fools won't buy heads on that footing.” He was also making drawings from the two daughters of Mrs. Morris, then children. A letter from Messrs. Pilgeram and Lefévre the picture-dealers, dated in November, shows that another watercolour of was in progress at that time for them.

The year closes with two letters from Mr. Leyland. They speak of some picture of which he appears to have owned; of , which Rossetti had in 1870 proposed to take back from him, but this arrangement was not carried out for some while yet; of , begun as far back as 1850; and of a picture to serve as a pendent to the , Mr. Leyland's property. At a later date three watercolour replicas of are referred to.

opens with a letter from Mr. William A. Turner, a Manchester manufacturer who in course of time bought two or three of Rossetti's leading pictures. This gentleman, between whom and the painter very amicable relations were established, died in 1886. He wrote on the present occasion to say that he was the owner of a small oil-picture of a girl, with a heart-shaped gem-trinket, , which he had bought from Mr. Ellis the publisher. The colour was tarnishing in parts, and he wished to know what remedy could be applied. This work, it appears, had at one time belonged to Mr. William Graham, and was mentioned by him in 1873 as the only Rossetti he had ever parted with.

At the beginning of the year Rossetti was minded to take up in earnest, as an oil-picture, his design of prophesying doom to Hector. He offered it to Mr. Leyland for some large price, which (as the correspondence shows) must have exceeded £2100: to this proposal Mr. Leyland did not assent, and he also resigned the idea of purchasing . He commissioned, for £840, the (the picture of a lady touching a violin in a note suggested by the lilt of a canary). An earlier commission for a similar price was —the subject from Dante's , begun perhaps as far back as 1868, and only finished towards 1880. was (as many of my readers will be aware) a Sienese lady, who was kept by her husband, through jealousy or some other motive of malignity, in the pestilential district of the Maremma, and there detained until the climate killed her. In the picture she is represented seated languidly on the battlements of the castle, and fingering her fatal wedding-ring.

A letter from Mr. McConnel, dated in May, shows that he was then the owner of the small oil-picture named , which is an offshoot from that very extensive composition after Browning, , which I have mentioned under the remote years 1849-50. The represents a mother and child before an image of the Madonna and the infant Jesus. It is painted on a small strip of the large canvas which had been destined for the Browning subject: and the head of the human mother is the very same head which, in the full composition, had been intended for a middle-aged lady of the court, reading to Queen Kate as she sits having her hair combed out.

In the same month of May Mr. Rae wrote observing that he then possessed a larger number of Rossetti's works than any other purchaser. He enumerated them as follows (my readers must be asked to pardon the repetition involved):— , , , , , ,, , , , , , , and . This makes thirteen subjects altogether—presumably all that Mr. Rae then possessed.

In June of this year my brother had a very serious illness, which will be more particularly mentioned when I come to speak of his writings. It compelled him to retreat from London, and for a while to drop all professional occupation whatsoever. He resumed work towards the close of August.

At some time in this year, perhaps September, Mr. Valpy wrote to him asking him to do a crayon portrait of Mrs. Valpy, and observing that he had seen some of his works of the like kind at the house of Mr. Stevenson in Tynemouth. At Trowan, in the Highlands of Scotland, Rossetti had already, towards the beginning of September, taken up (under urgent pressure from Mr. Madox Brown, who, with his usual warmth of friendship, had accompanied him out of London) the replica of his for Mr. William Graham, abandoned in the previous year as hopeless. It was finished before he left Scotland. He spoke of this as having been completed “tant bien que mal , or plus mal que bien . ” A later notice of this picture occurs in January 1873, when Rossetti varnished it, with most beneficial results in depth and transparency, and was able to pronounce “It looks almost tolerable.” There was still one drawback: the painting had been glazed with a mixture of Roberson's and Parris's mediums, and the varnishing produced here and there a sort of whitish soapy bloom. When finally the frame came in February, and the picture could be viewed complete with its predella, it was even dubbed ”quite satisfactory,“ and “up to his usual level.”

Rossetti regretted to learn that, during his absence from London, his crayon drawing named had been sold to Messrs. Heaton and Brayshay, of Bradford; he intended to paint it one day (which however he never did), and resolved to get it back, and this he succeeded in doing soon afterwards. The purchasers rated it at £250. This drawing was resold, towards the end of 1876, to Mr. Councillor Rowley, of Manchester.

On leaving Scotland, Rossetti returned to Kelmscott, and there he remained settled up to the summer or early autumn of 1874. He contemplated undertaking two pictures as soon as he should reach Kelmscott: (1) the subject named (or, in the first instance, ), which nevertheless was not seriously begun on the canvas till some years afterwards; and (2) a full-length , of small life-size; he considered that this subject would benefit much by being treated in full length, and by some changes of detail. He had also an idea of painting the noble subject of the suicide of , but of this no trace remains except a slight but expressivepencil-sketch. I question, moreover, whether he ever produced thefull-length . He had by him, in the house in Cheyne Walk, heads both for the and for the , and studies for the background of the latter were then being made at Trowan by Mr. Dunn. For each of these pictures he meant to charge a price of £1050, and he thought of offering either of them to Mr. Leathart. Before the end of September he had received at Kelmscott from Chelsea various drawings, including the two heads above-named, and ahead of Mrs. Zambaco, a Greek lady of his acquaintance, now known as a sculptress or medallist. Soon afterwards Rossetti got back from Mr. Leyland the picture of , with a view to making some alteration in it: he thought of refinishing the head from a then very childish sitter, Miss May Morris, who (as he wrote) ”has the right complexion.“ He re-consigned this picture to Mr. Leyland in December, and wrote to a friend: “I have made it, I think, a complete success, quite worthy to hang with the Fiddle-picture” (i.e., the ).

Notwithstanding these various projects and performances, it would seem that a different theme was the first which Rossetti worked upon after settling down at Kelmscott—the , which he always looked upon with more than wonted approval. His first experiment upon this subject (I call it the first provisionally, and for convenience sake, but there may have been some attempts even earlier) did not satisfy him; but he thought that it might sell as a separate thing, by cutting out the existing head, and substituting another. The subject was originally intended for Eve holding the apple: it was converted by afterthought into Proserpine holding the pomegranate. Then he began asecond , for which he received an offer of £577 from two acquaintances of old standing, Mr. Charles Augustus Howell and Mr. William Parsons, who acted as partners in some picture-buying speculations. By the beginning G of November thesecond promised to be soon completed. A careful chalk-drawing of Miss May Morris had also been done. Mr. Murray Marks, the dealer in works of art, who had been well known to Rossetti for some years past, procured this drawing, and sold it to Mr. Prange for £170, receiving in part-payment the smallish oil-picture of ; and he succeeded in re-selling this picture, for a like sum of £170, to Mr. Alderson Smith. In 1876 it passed into the hands of Mr. Rae: there is a letter to that gentleman from Rossetti, saying—“I must make all right for you now you have got it.” The oil-picture of is a single half-figure of a girl playing, quite different from an earlier watercolour bearing the same title.

My brother had first known Mr. Howell, an Anglo-Portuguese, then an extremely young man, towards 1857, and again, on his return from the Continent, in 1864. For some years following 1864 they were on terms of great intimacy. This had been interrupted for a year or two preceding our present date, the autumn of 1872. The familiarity was then resumed, and, up to the close of 1874 or thereabouts, Mr. Howell was not only a frequent visitor to Kelmscott, and a constant correspondent, but he became also a selling agent for Rossetti's pictures, and in that character did some very vigorous and successful strokes of work, being rich in versatile resource and in attractive personal qualities. The period of Rossetti's business-connection with Mr. Howell must be regarded as that when he was most prosperous as a professional man, with the least amount of trouble to himself. Providently concerting his plans with Mr. Howell, he was able to trust to that gentleman to carry them out with abundant savoir faire . In a letter from Mr. Howell, dated in August 1873, I observe the statement that he had readily sold sixty-eight pictures and drawings by Rossetti, which had passed through his hands in a period of six years. Ultimately both the business-connection and the personal intimacy ceased. Mr. Parsons, whom I have mentioned above, was by profession a portrait and landscape painter, who had afterwards taken to photography and also to picture-dealing. His partnership with Mr. Howell was (as I understand it) only partial, for in most of my brother's dealings with Howell Parsons had no share at all, and many such dealings ensued after Parsons had closed his business-transactions with my brother.

The first experimental version of , and the drawing of Miss May Morris, were in November bought by Messrs. Howell and Parsons for £300. In the same month Mr. Aldam Heaton asked Rossetti to do for a friend a watercolour head of Christ.

It seems that about this time a so-called (which I infer to be an oil-sketch of the frequently mentioned design, ) was in the hands of Mr. Clabburn, a Norwich manufacturer and art-collector, whom my brother had known for several years, and it was likely to be sold off by auction. In this and in most other cases my brother regarded the chances of an auction-room as likely to serve his interests amiss: he was therefore well pleased when Mr. Howell purchased the work from Mr. Clabburn, and sent it to Bradford to find another buyer. Messrs. Heaton and Brayshay became the purchasers, at a price of £220, on the understanding that G 2 the painter would re-touch the work. Mr. Rae was inclined to buy it in the autumn of 1874: but Rossetti wrote of it in discouraging terms, both as to its then actual value, and as to the sum which would be needed for fully working it up, and the project was dropped. Two auction-sales of works belonging to Miss Bell, a schoolmistress with whom Mr. Ruskin was on friendly terms, took place about the same time. At the first of these sales Mr. Howell bought up for a friend all the Rossetti specimens of minor account, excepting two which had been done at Hastings, representing Miss Siddal: these two (and probably also a , which fetched £10) were purchased, for about £15 each, by Mr. F. S. Ellis, the publisher of Rossetti's poems, and his esteemed personal friend. One subject, termed , was bought by Mr. Leyland, acting through Howell. On the other hand, Howell had purchased from Leyland a design which his letter names “the Dante,” and the other well-known composition, (two lovers startled by encountering their own wraiths in a forest); and Leyland was desirous that Rossetti should take back from him, at £200 or £250, the . The subjects thus obtained by Howell are specified as follows: ; , a drawing for a water-colour belonging to Mr. Leyland; , in pencil and ink, £11; a man who is being knighted, the head done from Benjamin Woodward, the architect of the Museum and the Union building in Oxford; (a slight specimen); a female sketch. No doubt all these works, sold by Miss Bell, had originally belonged to Ruskin. The latter, according to Mr. Howell's account, had some years before sent the (portrait of Mrs. Dante Rossetti) to America, and now only retained , and the .

This year opens with a letter (3rd January) from Mr. William Graham, who expresses regret at having missed buying from Rossetti the picture (mentioned aforetime) named . Mr. Gambart, who had been concerned in purchasing it from Rossetti, had now offered it to Graham for £1000, or at lowest £900. This tender was declined, and Mr. Dunlop had then become the purchaser. is here again mentioned—in terms which indicate that Rossetti proposed to execute the subject on a large scale for Mr. Leyland, and on a smaller scale for Mr. Graham. Neither project (as already indicated) took effect. Later on, three of the pictures belonging to Graham were in the hands of Rossetti, who apparently wished to do some additional work on all three. was one; also (now in the National Gallery), on which Graham asked Rossetti to do as little as possible; also the (a smaller replica from the oil-picture), which Graham wished to receive back unaltered. The returned to him in June. He had bought for £425, from Messrs. Agnew.

On the 17th January Rossetti wrote: “I have pleased myself at last with the , having begun an entirely new one, which I feel sure is the best picture I have painted.” All the figure-part was by this time done, and only the drapery remained over. Proserpine is depicted as in Hades, holding the fateful pomegranate which debarred her from returning to the living world, with a faint reflection behind her from the light of day. This I regard as No. 3 (and may at times find it convenient thus to designate it); the painter had an idea of getting it introduced to the notice of Sir William (now Lord) Armstrong, who was understood to be forming a large collection of pictures; but this idea came to nothing. The two previous essays at were now rated as only fit to be made into “little head-pictures,” and the painter counted upon realizing £1050 out of the three. No. 3 was nearly finished by 15th May. One of the others was in the hands of Mr. Parsons by June. Mr. Leyland was willing to buy No. 3 for £840, and offered a similar price for another picture which now first comes in for mention, . This latter was not perhaps begun until some little while further on; and the final completion of the was delayed till August, or indeed later.

Early in March Rossetti wrote of having had down at Kelmscott a female model, found for him by Mr. Dunn; and of having made from her a drawing, nearly down to the knees, of a naked Siren playing on an extraordinary lute—“certainly one of my best things.” This was completed by the end of the month, named , and valued by the artist at £210, as, though in strictness only a crayon-drawing, it ranked as “quite an elaborate picture.”

A letter from Mr. Valpy, dated in April, refers to the works by Rossetti which he then possessed. These were the heads of Miss Wilding (the lady who sat for the head of , and of , and for various other pictures); a portrait of ; (more correctly called ); ; ; (a drawing which the owner wished to get draped); ; and (who was by this time Mrs. Stillman). Most of these, or probably all of them, must have been crayon-drawings. Another drawing, belonging to Mr. Leyland, is mentioned in a letter from Rossetti dated 15th May. This was —the subject being, of course, from the artist's own poem so named. The crayon-drawing thus spoken of was nearly, yet not absolutely, the first instance in which the theme had been transferred by him from language into form. He referred to the drawing as “a very complete thing,” and added that he was minded to paint a picture right off from it, “as I really believe such pictures have more unity if one does not do them from nature but from cartoons”—an important indication of the growing bent of his mind, at this period, in matters of artistic invention and execution. It would seem that was soon afterwards begun on canvas—or even on two canvases successively.

The large picture named was commenced in the early summer of 1873. On 1st July Rossetti wrote of it:—“My new picture of Miss Wilding goes on swimmingly, in spite of two November days created on purpose for the start of it.” The two heads of angels were painted from Miss May Morris. Mr. Graham was willing to give £840 for this picture, or £1000 for the and the together. By the close of August the former was far advanced towards completion, and was about finished in September. The name may be translated “The Garlanded Lady,” or “The Lady of the Wreath.” The personage is represented singing, as she plays on a musical instrument; two youthful angels listen. The flowers which are prominent in the picture were intended by my brother for the poisonous monkshood: I believe he made a mistake, and depicted larkspur instead. I never heard him explain the underlying significance of this picture: I suppose he purposed to indicate, more or less, youth, beauty, and the faculty for art worthy of a celestial audience, all shadowed by mortal doom.

Some of Mr. Howell's letters of this year speak of “the snowdrop head”—“the white-flower picture” (priced at £210)— . These I take to be different designations of one and the same performance; it lay for a while in Mr. Howell's own house.

With the end of the summer the large picture of becomes again a prominent subject of consideration. This work, the property of Mr. William Graham, had always been too large to find convenient housing on his walls, and it remained hung upon a staircase. Consequently Mr. Graham was disposed to relinquish the large picture, and to obtain from the painter a smaller (though still well-sized) replica of it, at the same price, to which was to be added a sum of £300 for a double predella, Mr. Graham's own suggestion; and Mr. Valpy showed a strong inclination to become the purchaser of the large picture, at the same amount which Mr. Graham had given for it. The original was replaced in Rossetti's house in Cheyne Walk, in order that Mr. Dunn might make the preparation for the replica—outlining the subject, and laying-in the background; Rossetti himself undertaking to do the figures throughout, and the entire colouring. The Typo: on page 88, the third sentence in the third paragraph begins with the phrase "He laid it all in in green," rather than “He laid it all in green.” replica was to be got ready, if possible, within eighteen months; but in fact this limit of time was considerably exceeded. Mr. Howell secured Mr. Valpy as purchaser of the larger picture, and he claimed a commission of £200 upon the sale-price of £1575. To this Rossetti assented, but preferred to deliver works of art rather than £200 in cash; and , along with the (I presume the original drawing of ) were agreed upon as an equivalent for £200.

In October Mr. Leyland undertook to send off as soon as Rossetti might wish to re-work upon it.

Towards the end of October the subject is again in the ascendant. My brother had now begun a new (No. 4) from the same design. He laid it all in in green, and expected, when he wrote, to get it finished in about ten days; and he regarded this as very greatly the best version of the subject. He had been induced to undertake it because, upon recurring to No. 3, destined for Mr. Leyland, in order to give it a last finishing, he was again mortified by observing in the face some rucks, caused by the lining process. “This design,” he wrote, “is a favourite one with me, and so I determined to have another tussle to make it my best, which I hope it is now sure to be. The head is much better, both in expression and as a likeness [of Mrs. William Morris], than the others; and the whole thing, done in this way, has a unity which is the right thing for a work of the kind.” As this new , No. 4, was destined to supersede No. 3 as Mr. Leyland's property, No. 3 was now reduced in price to £500; and Rossetti thought of offering it to Mr. Rae in lieu of the earlier and much less satisfactory version which had previously been in the hands of Mr. Parsons, but which had by this time, after some rather irritating correspondence, returned unsold to Rossetti. But this project was also for a while set aside, for, continuing to work at No. 3 simultaneously with No. 4, Rossetti made No. 3 “so completely” (as he expressed it) “of my best work” that he once more decided to consign it to Mr. Leyland as the fulfilment of his £840 commission.

By the end of the year—12th December—Rossetti had agreed to paint as an oil-picture for Mr. Graham , at the price of £1157, including a predella. He also wrote of a “little stained-glass sketch” of , which was shortly to go to Mr. Graham; and offered to re-work upon , one of the watercolour replicas which had been made after the original oil-picture belonging to Mr. Leyland. Mr. Graham also suggested that the oil-picture of should be brightened; but Rossetti did not regard this as a judicious proposal, and the remained, I believe, fortunately untouched. Having assigned the original , Rossetti thought of undertaking a second version of that subject, and he offered it to Mr. Rae for £630, but without effect. A letter from Mr. Graham, dated in the same month of December, details the various works by Rossetti which he then possessed. Some of them have been sufficiently mentioned here already. Others are a , the water-colour of , , , and (both as a watercolour and also on panel—this is the design of two lovers kissing, which had been originally drawn to serve as a frontispiece to the volume of translations, ). Rossetti had also lately sent Graham a chalk head, “in payment of the unfinished Miss Macbeth,” a phrase which I fail to understand.

Towards Christmas the reached Mr. Leyland's hands; not after all No. 3, but the version which I have termed No. 4. In transit the glass and other accessories got much damaged: the picture itself, save for a slight scratch on neck and cheek, escaped scatheless. It was returned to Rossetti, who easily set it to rights. He gives, in one of his letters, a curious catalogue of the numerous repetitions and recurrent disasters of the design. It was begun on seven different canvases, to say nothing of mere drawings. Three, after being brought well forward, were rejected; next came the one which had ill-success with Mr. Parsons. That which I have called No. 3 had its glass twice smashed and renewed, and twice it was lined to prevent accidents. No. 4 had its frame smashed twice, and its glass once, besides the last disaster which nearly destroyed it, and it had been nearly spoiled while under transfer to a fresh strainer. My brother had a strong spice of superstition in his character; and I should not be at all surprised if he suspected that there was a “fate” against the pictures, germane to their grievous theme.

A letter to Mr. Rae, dated in November, shows in a rather amusing light the dislike with which Rossetti regarded any clumsiness of subsidiary detail in connection with his pictures. It had been proposed to add an inscription upon the frame of .“An inscription,” he replied, “is much more difficult to do properly than a picture. If it is a bit too large or too black, the picture goes to the devil; and, if you have not some one to do it who has an elective affinity for commas and pauses, I will ask you to spare my poor sonnet. I will get it done myself one day.”

At the beginning of this year, 15th January, Rossetti was again occupied with the picture which he had commenced in the preceding spring, entitled —a girl in a room with a pot of marigolds and a black cat. It was painted from “little Annie” (a cottage-girl and house-assistant at Kelmscott), and it “goes on” (to quote the words of one of his letters) “like a house on fire. This is the only kind of picture one ought to do—just copying the materials, and no more: all others are too much trouble.” It is not difficult to understand that the painter of a and a would occasionally feel the luxury of a mood intellectually lazy, and would be minded to give voice to it—as in this instance—in terms wilfully extreme; keeping his mental eye none the less steadily directed to a or a in the near future. As a matter of fact, my brother painted very few things, at any stage of his career, as mere representations of reality, unimbued by some inventive or ideal meaning: in the rare instances when he did so, he naturally felt an indolent comfort, and made no scruple of putting the feeling into words— highly suitable for being taken cum grano salis . Nothing was more alien from his nature or habit than “tall talk” of any kind about his aims, aspirations, or performances. It was into his work—not into his utterances about his work—that he infused the higher and deeper elements of his spirit. was finished early in February, and sold to Mr. Graham for £682, after it had been offered to Mr. Leyland at a rather higher figure, and declined. It has also passed under the names of , , and . After the had been disposed of, other work was taken up—more especially , bearing the alternative title of , which was in an advanced stage by the month of May, and was completed in June or July. It was finished with little or no glazing. The Roman widow is a lady still youthful, in a grey fawn-tinted drapery, with a musical instrument in each hand; she is in the sepulchral chamber of her husband, whose stone urn appears in the background. I possess the antique urn which my brother procured, and which he used for the painting. For graceful simplicity, and for depth of earnest but not strained sentiment, he never, I think, exceeded . The two instruments seem to repeat the two mottoes on the urn, i“Ave Domine—Vale Domine.” The head was painted from Miss Wilding, already mentioned; but it seems to me partly associated with the type of Mrs. Stillman's face as well. There are many roses in this picture—both wild and garden roses; they kept the artist waiting a little after the work was otherwise finished. “I really think it looks well,” he wrote on one occasion; “its fair luminous colour seems to melt into the gold frame (which has only just come) like a part of it.” He feared that the picture might be “too severe and tragic” for some tastes; but could add (not perhaps with undue confidence) “I don't think Géricault or Régnault would have quite scorned it.”

In the summer of 1874 a head of my wife (Lucy Madox Brown) was executed in coloured chalks, as a wedding-gift (one out of many) to ourselves; also , a triplicate version of the head of Miss May Morris, purchased by Mr. Craven for £196.

Towards the end of the autumn another oil-picture was finished, , bought for £500 by Mr. Rae, who already possesseda watercolour bearing the same title. Mr. Rae also purchased for £126 the watercolour of which had previously belonged to Mr. Leyland. The latter gentleman had towards 1870 sold off by auction all the small pictures in his possession, except the , and he now preferred to part with this also. The sale of the (at the same price which it had cost to Mr. Leyland), and of the , were, I think, the last money transactions of any importance which passed between Mr. Rae and my brother.

A letter written by a friend in March of this year refers to two designs by my brother, then no doubt of recent date— and , called also ; the former in pencil, the latter in pen-and-ink. was one of my brother's most important inventions; he wished to carry it out as a picture, but found no feasible opportunity of doing so. On his death-bed he composed two sonnets, as yet unpublished, to illustrate the same idea. In this design the Sphinx represents the mystery of existence, or the destiny of man, unfathomable by himself. Three personages—a youth, a man of mature age, and an old man —are shown as coming to the secret haunt of the Sphinx, to consult her as to the arcana of fate. The man is putting his question; the greybeard toils upward towards the spot; the youth, exhausted with his journey, sinks and dies, unable so much as to give words to the object of his quest. With upward and inscrutable eyes the Sphinx remains impenetrably silent. It may be worthy of mention that, in representing the dying stripling, Rossetti was thinking of the premature fate of Oliver Madox Brown, the youth of singular promise, both as painter and as writer, who had ended his brief life of less than twenty years in the November of 1874—a bitter grief to his father, Rossetti's lifelong friend, Ford Madox Brown. This design Rossetti characteristically wrote of as being meant to be a sort of painted (the name will be recognized as that of one of his poems). “I don't know,” he added, “whether it would do to paint, being moonlight.” The other design referred to, , was soon afterwards taken up as the subject of one of my brother's leading pictures.

Mr. Howell negotiated for the sale of the forthcoming , and he induced Mr. Clarence Fry, the eminent photographer, to commission the picture for a sum of £2100, exclusive of the copyright, which the artist retained; although, as the latter explained to Mr. Fry, this reservation was intended, not really for the purpose of preventing the purchaser from getting the work engraved, were he so minded, but in order to provide against any mischance of a bad engraving apart from the painter's own control. My brother's constant practice, in all his later years, was to sell his pictures with reservation of the copyright to himself, and he took certain precautions which he supposed at the time to be sufficient for this object; but, as it turned out eventually, the method which he adopted did not fulfil the requirements of the complicated copyright-law, and the result (as I have been given to understand) is that at the present date no copyright, available either to his representatives or to the owners of the pictures, attaches to them, and they remain destitute of legal protection. I gather that the was begun on the canvas towards the commencement of November 1875—a full-scale outline of it having been prepared by the middle of October.

The first reference which I find to the oil-picture entitled —or rather to the preparatory work for it—is in a letter from Mr. Howell, dated in June. He speaks of three drawings by Rossetti which he has bought, price £150; one of them being a figure of a Cupid, clearly applicable to . The picture itself must have been begun many months before this date, for in August it seems to have been in a completed state. Mr. Ellis the publisher became eventually its purchaser; but from its artist's hands the work had passed into those of the dealer Mr. Murray Marks. —a lady washing her hands, waited on by two Cupids—is one of my brother's most mature and finished works of execution, although many exceed it in strength or depth of meaning.

By the middle of August another oil-picture was advancing—the head and shoulders, with the arms and hands, being then nearly finished. This was —which was as yet intended to bear a different title, consisting of the quotation from Coleridge: “A damsel with a dulcimer In a vision once I saw.” This was painted from Miss Wilding, who had sat for the , and it was intended to serve as a pendent or companion to that. In the there was a player on a musical instrument listening to a bird (a canary); so in the there was a bird (a dove as at first intended, but finally a sea-gull) flitting fascinated towards the player. Rossetti offered this picture to the owner of the , Mr. Leyland, who closed with the proposal—the price being, as in some previous instances, £840.

In the autumn of this year, my brother, with a view to health and quietude, went down to Bognor, where he remained some few months. The was with him to be worked upon, and also .

This matter of is elucidated in a letter from Rossetti to Mr. William Graham, dated 5th April 1876. He says that he began a picture of this subject years ago; afterwards worked upon a second such picture; and is now near to completing a third, which is intended for Graham. Among several other details, aiming to show how large a portion of the painter's time had been given for years past to work commissioned by Graham, it is mentioned that the replica of is now more than half done, and that some attention, by way of re-work, had been given to picture ( ) since it came into Graham's possession. For this re-work no charge had been made. This is a somewhat interesting point, considering that the picture in question is now in the National Gallery. I am not H well aware what the recent re-touching may have been, but should say that it was (in accordance with the request made by the owner, as noted under the date of 1873) not by any means extensive, nor of such a kind as to interfere with the genuineness of the picture as representing Rossetti in his early or expressly “Præraphaelite” period. I think the lily in the angel's hand was one of the alterations—or rather an addition.

Nearly at the same date, 11th April, comes a letter from Sir Joseph Noel Paton, always a most generous estimator of Rossetti's art. He says that the picture (I presume the oil sketch) of was then owned by Mr. Laurie, a picture-dealer in Glasgow; and that the painting of was among the works displayed in the Glasgow Exhibition.

During this same month of April Mr. Fry consulted Rossetti about a drawing which he had purchased of Mr. Howell, and of which he now sent the painter a sketch. Rossetti replied that the drawing represented , a lady to whom Dante in his exile addressed a celebrated little poem in the peculiar form named Sestina . The crystal globe in the hand of the figure was intended to present the reflection of a rocky landscape, symbolizing the lady's pitiless heart. In the study, the figure was nude; but in the projected picture she would have been chiefly draped, and her upper hand was to have been holding some of the drapery. Rossetti added that he still proposed to paint the subject, but in a different action: this project remained unfulfilled. In June Rossetti mentioned to Mr. Fry that he had lately finished an oil-picture named , or (also at times termed ), and he offered it to this gentleman for £500. This work did not, however, pass into Mr. Fry's hands. It lingered a long while in Rossetti's studio, and was at last, towards 1881, sold to Mr. Leyland.

From Bognor my brother returned to his house in Cheyne Walk; and in the summer he paid a visit to two of his kindest and most considerate friends, Lord and Lady Mount-Temple, at their seat of Broadlands in Hampshire. He executed there a portrait in chalks of Lady Mount-Temple. He went on also with the picture of . For the head of an infant angel which appears in the front of this picture he made drawings from two children—one being the baby of the Rev. H. C. Hawtrey, and the other a workhouse infant. The former sketch was presented to the parents of the child, andthe latter to Lady Mount-Temple; and the head with its wings was painted on to the canvas at Broadlands. Here he made the acquaintance also of Mrs. Sumner, a lady of commanding presence, who, after his return to London, favoured him with sittings for various heads. One of them was named .

It was towards the beginning of this year, say in the final days of January, that the large picture of was brought to a conclusion. I think that my brother was always wont to regard this as his most exalted performance; ranking it, in a certain proportionate scale, along with the and the . The —in point of dimensions, and as a composition of several figures telling a moving story, and moreover from its relation to the supreme H 2 poet of his special and lifelong homage—naturally took the first place; but he probably accounted it to be less developed in style and execution. The , an invention of his own, satisfied him best as a thing achieved—an adequate realization of his conception: it was, however, smaller in size and simpler in subject than either of the others. Into the he had put his utmost intensity of thinking, feeling, and method—he had aimed to make it equally strong in abstract sentiment and in physical grandeur—an ideal of the mystery of beauty, offering a sort of combined quintessence of what he had endeavoured in earlier years to embody in the two several types of and , or (as he ultimately named them in the respective sonnets) and . It may be well to remark that, by the time when he completed the , or , he had got into a more austere feeling than of old with regard to colour and chiaroscuro; and the charm of the picture has, I am aware, been less, to many critics and spectators of the work, than he would have deemed to be its due, as compared with some of his other performances of more obvious and ostensible attraction. Mr. Fry, who purchased the , became also the owner of the original and very finished pen-and-ink design of the same composition. He was minded to exhibit the picture in the Grosvenor Gallery, then a new enterprise: but Rossetti raised a decided objection to this proposal, and referred Mr. Fry to a letter which the painter had recently published in regarding his non-appearance in exhibitions generally, and in the Grosvenor Gallery in particular. This letter is certainly not the writing of a self-conceited man; for it substantially amounts to saying that Rossetti withheld his pictures from the eyes of the public in exhibition-rooms because they never rightly satisfied his own eye in his studio.

In February one of Rossetti's large chalk heads, the (or , fromDante's ), was being autotyped for sale; and it was soon afterwards followed by the , and by the , a study for the figure in the picture of . In April mention is made of a large watercolour painted as far back as 1868, and resembling to a great extent the small oil-picture named . The watercolour, entitled , belonged to Sir William Bowman, who wrote that he would like Rossetti to re-inspect it, as some change had occurred in the pigments. In the same month begins an interchange of letters with Mr. Valpy concerning certain works by Rossetti which this gentleman had received from Mr. Howell. It may suffice here to say thatan oil head of Beatrice is named as among the works; also a figure termed , which had at one time been erroneously regarded as a study for ; two or three of the studies for the picture of ; and a chalk-drawing of two boy-Cupids for the , which drawing, as being a nudity, was distasteful to Mr. Valpy.

The oil-picture of the , commissioned by Mr. Graham, was finished about the end of April.

A letter from Mr. Leyland, dated 31st July, bears record of one of the subjects which my brother intended to paint, but which in fact he never executed—I even think he never began it. This subject is termed ; and the picture was, I believe, to have represented Hero standing with her torch to give light to her wave-buffeting lover Leander, perhaps on that very night of storm and doom when the Hellespont engulfed him. It was to have been of like size and price with other pictures for each of which Mr. Leyland had paid £840. A similar sum was indeed actually paid for the , and must have been afterwards transferred to the account for some other picture. I cannot but regret that this work, which seemed highly suited to my brother's powers, was not carried out. The idea of executing it seems to have been finally abandoned—or at least indefinitely postponed—in the autumn of 1880.

In the late summer of 1877, in consequence of an infirmity for which surgical treatment had been required, my brother fell into a state of great languor and prostration; and, under the more than fraternal escort of Madox Brown, he removed to Hunter's Forestal, near Herne Bay, and for some few weeks appeared incapable of resuming the implements of his art. Our mother and our sister Christina were soon with him; and at last, with an uncertain hand and great misgivings as to the result, he made an attempt at a life-sized chalk-portrait group of the two—head and shoulders. Fortunately the experiment turned out a complete success; and he perceived at once that nothing but an effort of will was needed to enable him to continue working at his art with undiminished faculty of head and hand. Two separate chalk heads of Christina were done about the same time, and with a result equally reassuring. His mind now reverted to a head which he had previously done from Mrs. Stillman, as a preliminary to a picture of ; and, not long after returning to London in the autumn, he was favoured with some further sittings from Mrs. Stillman, and made the picture one of his principal concerns. It seems to have been brought to some degree of completion before the end of the year, but was not finally sent off to its owner—Mr. Turner—until October 1878. , her head encircled (as Boccaccio describes it) by a mystical flame, is shown standing, parting with her hand the bloom-laden boughs of an apple-tree. As had long previously been the case with the roses and honeysuckles in the , Rossetti found a great deal of trouble in satisfying his feeling as an artist in procuring good apple-blossom to paint from in the . At last he called in the friendly aid of Mr. Shields as a caterer, writing more than one letter on the subject, and averring that he “would of course be glad to pay anything for good blossom.”

In the autumn another of Rossetti's chalk-drawings was autotyped, entitled . I hardly think it was placed on sale along with the other subjects previously mentioned.

Mr. Turner bought two more pictures in 1877. One was the small oil-painting entitled . The female figure in this painting is (as Rossetti defined it in a letter to Mr. Turner), “as it were, speaking to you, and embodying in her expression the penetrating sweetness of the scene and season.” The second picture was a —the same which I have in a previous instance spoken of as No. 3. I have more than once found that opinions differ as to the comparative merits of this No. 3 and the No. 4 disposed of at an earlier date to Mr. Leyland—some persons preferring the one version, and some the other. My own suffrage is for Mr. Leyland's picture; but at any rate the question of superiority has to be weighed in a nice balance. My brother finally preferred No. 3. He had, before effecting the sale to Mr. Turner, offered to Mr. Rae both this picture and the . In doing so he wrote that the —which, although begun earlier than Mr. Leyland's version of the subject, had been still worked on to some extent towards the opening of 1877—was “unquestionably the finer of the two, and is the very flower of my work.” The prices named to Mr. Rae were £315 for , and £1050 for . Probably enough Mr. Turner disbursed the same sums. After a while a question arose of sending to a public exhibition in Manchester, got up in aid of the Art-Schools building-fund, some of the pictures by Rossetti belonging to Mr. Turner. As usual, the painter expressed a great reluctance to this proposal; finally he waived his objection so far as the was concerned, but adhered to it in relation to the other examples.

The pictures by Rossetti which had belonged to Mr. Turner were brought to the hammer at Christie's in 1888. It may not be out of place to note here the prices which they fetched. The largest price—indeed, a disproportionately large one—came to the —£1207. The went for £745; (far below its value, I think), £126; , £236; (watercolour), £152; the (watercolour), £89. There was also a , £42, which may, I presume, be a crayon head.

The year closes (31st December) with a request from Mr. Graham that Rossetti would take in hand the predella—an afterthought—for the . It may be as well to explain that the subject of the picture is the Blessed Damozel leaning over “the gold bar of heaven,” and looking earthward with a yearning gaze, while behind her the background is filled with groups of blue-clad lovers embracing, reunited in their eternal mansion. The predella—which got executed in five or six weeks—was to represent the Damozel's lover disconsolate on earth, and looking, through dark autumnal foliage, towards the perturbed sky. I hardly know whether the idea of this predella—certainly very appropriate for completing pictorially the subject-matter embodied in the poem—came from Rossetti himself, or from Mr. Graham; perhaps rather from the latter. He offered to add for the predella, if done without delay, a sum of £150 to the £1000 which had been already paid for the picture.

One of Rossetti's latest watercolours was a female head named . It now belonged to Mr. Valpy, who, being in Rome in February of the present year, asked the painter to send it in the first instance to Canon Bell. After a while however Rossetti resumed ownership of the , delivering something else in exchange for it. A watercolour , costing £262, was sold in the summer to Mr. Ellis.

Another upset now ensued in relation to the larger and earlier version of the , which we have already seen transferred from the possession of Mr. Graham to that of Mr. Valpy. The last-named gentleman, towards the middle of the year, was contemplating to retire from the active pursuit of his profession as a solicitor, to quit London finally, and to settle down in Bath. Rossetti, as he wrote to Mr. Valpy, could not reconcile himself to the removal of this picture to so remote a residence. It had from the first been apparent that Mr. Valpy, after committing himself, at the instance of Mr. Howell, to the purchase of this large work, had regarded it as somewhat out of scale with his moderate establishment, and with the other specimens of art pertaining to that, and that he would not unwillingly have entered into some different arrangement, had he but felt himself free to do so. Rossetti therefore (it must certainly have been he who took the initiative) proposed that Mr. Valpy should resign to him the , and receive in substitution for it other works, all of minor dimensions, to a total value not only equivalent to that of the relinquished picture, but even definitely larger; thus giving Mr. Valpy an advantage in the terms of exchange, to smooth over any possible asperity incident to such a transaction. Indeed, a value of no less than £1995 is spoken of by Rossetti, as against the £1575 at which the had been priced; but the £1995 was to be reduced to about £1650 by the return to Rossetti of some secondary works—chalk heads &c.—belonging to Valpy. An even larger value—£2230—is specified at a later date in the letter-writing. From August onward, a good deal of correspondence—at times rather tentative and complicated in detail—proceeded between Rossetti and Mr. Valpy. At one stage two replicas from works belonging to Mr. Leyland were proposed. Afterwards it was felt by the painter that this would not be consistent with Mr. Leyland's liking. He then offered only one such replica— either the (of reduced size) or the , at Valpy's option; along with an oil-picture already begun— (from ), trying-on the jewels, a subject for which a different title— —was soon adopted; a duplicate , or something else; and a , a reduction in oils, or else a watercolour. Deferring to Mr. Valpy's rooted dislike of any nudity, the painter expressed himself willing to drape the bosom and part of the shoulders of the . Afterwards a kissing the sword of deliverance was offered. Of this subject a watercolour, the property of Lady Ashburton, was at the time lying in the painter's studio; and he proposed to paint another larger version of it in oil. He stipulated that the works to be exchanged for the would not be deliverable until after he should have succeeded in re-selling that picture; and with a view to re-sale, he at once offered it at a diminished price to Mr. Turner, who however proved irresponsive. In the course of this Valpy correspondence Rossetti observes that he had scarcely ever made a full-sized replica of any life-sized picture—had only done so in the case of the , and of one other subject, which I should presume to be the . Of the watercolour he says, “Neither in expression, colour, nor design, did I ever do a better thing.”

In October, having despatched the to its purchaser Mr. Turner, Rossetti turned his mind to some new subject. He fixed upon — where Desdemona sits crooning the willow-song, as Emilia combs out her hair. For this subject he made several studies and designs, the composition being altered more than once. He did not, I think, actually begin painting it on the canvas, but he must have come very near to so doing. He was particularly occupied with this theme in the summer of 1881.

In the last month of the year Mr. Valpy arranged with my brother that Miss Williams, the daughter of a lady residing at Shirley Hall, Tunbridge Wells, was to sit to him for a chalk portrait. It was finished in May of the following year.

A letter to Mr. Graham, dated in May, shows that the replica of , long ago commissioned by that gentleman, was now so far advanced as to be quite ready for glazing. The double predella for this picture was expected to be completed very soon afterwards. The entire work was in fact finished by the end of November; but then the painter avowed himself not satisfied with the figure of Beatrice, and held it over for alteration. The predella represents (1) Dante sick in body and perturbed in mind, dreaming his troublous dream, watched by ladies of his family; and (2) Dante narrating his dream to the same ladies. Both these incidents appertain to the poem which the picture illustrates. A full-sized monochrome of the old subject, —also due to Mr. Graham—was in hand in May as an aid towards bringing the picture itself to a conclusion.

About the same date another picture was painted, and was purchased by Mr. Ellis, who received it towards the end of the year. This is , the same subject (sometimes bearing the alternative title of ) of which more than one chalk drawing had previously been done; but I think the successive treatments of the theme always varied in arrangement. This ranks, I think, among my brother's most mature paintings; the expression being at once deep and reserved. It may be worth mentioning that the Donna della Finestra is (in the narrative in Dante's ) a lady who looked from a window upon Dante when sunk in sorrow for the death of Beatrice, and whose aspect manifested so much pity for him that he was after a while almost lured into falling in love with her. According to the allegorical interpretation of the (an interpretation for which Dante's own statements in the are largely responsible), this same lady really represents Philosophy; but Rossetti had no sympathy with any downright allegory of that sort, and, in representing the Donna della Finestra, he had no notion of representing Philosophy, or any abstract personification of like kind. He contemplated the Donna as a real woman; but neither was her human reality intended to be regarded as the essence of the pictorial presentment—rather her personal reality subserving the purpose of poetic suggestion—an emotion embodied in feminine form—a passion of which beautiful flesh-and-blood constitutes the vesture. Humanly she is the Lady at the Window; mentally she is the Lady of Pity. This interpenetration of soul and body—this sense of an equal and indefeasible reality of the thing symbolized, and of the form which conveys the symbol—this externalism and internalism—are constantly to be understood as the key-note of Rossetti's aim and performance in art. I have emphasized the point here, as the particular subject from the , with its dubious balance (so far as Dante's intention is concerned) between the actual and the allegorical, seemed to invite some such observations; but remarks to the like effect might have been made in relation to many of the works of my brother previously specified, and they apply to the general range and scope of his art from first to last.

It may have been in 1879 that Rossetti made a chalk portrait of Mr. Leyland, as a wedding-gift to that gentleman's daughter, Mrs. Hamilton.

The picture which occupied him most towards the end of the year, and for some months ensuing, was the full-length figure entitled at starting , but afterwards —a youthful lady seated in the fork of a sycamore-tree, with a book and a sprig of honeysuckle (the flower had at first been the snowdrop). This is perhaps the only instance in which one of his life-sized ideal female figures was pictured at whole length. Mr. Constantine Ionides, a friendly acquaintance of old standing, saw the painting in progress, or perhaps rather he saw the chalk-drawing which served as foundation for the painting; and he showed a disposition, which took effect, to become its purchaser. Hereupon Rossetti addressed to him on the 5th October a letter which gives some practical details. He says that the price of would be £735; being lower (as it certainly was) than the scale of prices which had prevailed in Mr. Graham's commissions. For instance, had cost £840, the £1102, the £1207.* The , sold to Mr. Turner, had brought £840; and its price would have been higher but for the fact that Mr. Turner purchased several works at once. Rossetti added

* This price (apparently through substituting guineas for pounds) exceeds the price named under the year 1877: I fancy the guineas are probably correct.

Early in this year Rossetti was occupied in completing the picture of , commissioned several years before by Mr. Leyland; and his friend Mr. Charles Fairfax Murray, settled in Florence as a painter and agent for works of art, obliged him by sending over a sketch of the scenery of the fever-stricken Maremma, needed for the background of this picture. He afterwards forwarded some photographs of picturesque ancient street-views from Siena, to guide Rossetti in composing the background of a Florentine street, applicable to his later painting of , which illustrates more particularly the sonnet of the Florentine poet, “Tanto gentile e tanto onesta pare.” This painting was probably begun in 1880, and was continued in 1881: it was purchased by Mr. Leyland for £682, and had reached a stage not very remote from completion at the date when my brother's shaken and failing health passed into the final stages of disease, and he could work no more upon the canvas. The same gentleman also bought towards November the second version of —an oil-painting differing considerably (especially in lacking the background groups) from the first version, in the possession of Mr. Graham. Rossetti accepted for the second version a sum—£500—much below the usual range of his prices in these latter years. The work had remained long on hand, and more than one disappointment had occurred with regard to its sale, and the picture- market generally was then in a rather depressed condition.

A design in pen-and-ink of was produced, to be sent as a present to our mother for her eightieth birthday, 27th April. It embodies the same ideas of the typical quality of the sonnet-form of verse which are expressed in a sonnet which my brother wrote to accompany it. An engraving of this design forms the frontispiece to the book on Rossetti which Mr. William Sharp published in 1882, soon after his death.

A letter of this year refers to a painting which Rossetti had executed as far back as 1861. It is an , done upon the pulpit in the church built by Mr. Bodley at Scarborough. In 1880 a Manchester picture-buyer, who admired this composition, notified a wish to obtain a duplicate of it: nothing however came of this proposal.

The picture of was still proceeding meanwhile. Rossetti worked upon it with earnest assiduity, sparing no pains to bring it up to his highest standard, and altering freely when he found that some improvement could be effected. In July he effaced the head first painted-in, and proceeded to substitute another; the original head had never impressed him as being quite equal to the one in the cartoon.

In August the intended for Mr. Valpy was nearly finished, and Rossetti expected to deliver it shortly.

The old picture named was again much in my brother's thoughts towards the end of this year. It had long been due to its last commissioning purchaser, Mr. Graham; and would probably about this time have been actually finished, had it not been that an unfortunate difference of view arose between the purchaser and the painter with regard to transactions dating several years back. Mr. Graham had at that period commissioned the Dantesque subject , as well as the , each of them at £840; and had made, on account of both of these works, certain payments which he now claimed a right of concentrating on the alone, thus dropping altogether the proposed purchase of . Naturally this variation of plan was not agreeable to Rossetti, who maintained that the payments ought to continue distributed as at first purposed, and that additional sums remained due for each picture, and that his unrelinquished intention of at some time taking up , and carrying it to completion as a work bespoken by Mr. Graham, should not be thus thwarted. His interests were obviously at stake; and of these, though not inclined to urge them harshly or graspingly, he was always somewhat tenacious. The result of the whole controversy was untoward. remained uncompleted, and , except in its olden form of a large monochrome in oil, was never even begun. There is a letter dated in November from Mr. Arthur Hughes the painter, showing that preparations were then being made for finishing . As Mr. Hughes resided in the country, he undertook to oblige Rossetti by looking out for a smock-frock, to be used for painting the costume of the male figure in . My brother, living a severely secluded life in his latter years, was out of the way of attending to such matters for himself: it was his good fortune to have various friends who never grudged to render him the requisite aid.