character. The arrangement lasted a considerable time: that it should eventually die lay in the nature of things. Ruskin was bound to criticise, and Rossetti to resent criticism. Before its termination, however, Mr. Ruskin, by another piece of generosity, had enabled Rossetti to publish (1861) his translations of the early Italian poets. Another important friendship made in these years of struggle was that with Sir Edward Burne-Jones, who came to Rossetti, as he himself had gone to Madox Brown, for help and guidance, and repaid him by introducing him to an Oxford circle destined to exercise the greatest influence upon him and receive it in turn. Its most important members were Mr. Swinburne and William Morris. Other and more immediately visible results of the new connection were the appearance of three of Rossetti's finest poems in the ‘Oxford and Cambridge Magazine,’ to which Morris was an extensive contributor, and his share (1857) in the distemper decorations of the Oxford Union, which soon became a wreck, ‘predestined to ruin,’ says Mr. W. M. Rossetti, ‘by fate and climate.’ About the same time ‘The Seed of David,’ a triptych for Llandaff Cathedral, Rossetti's only monumental work, representing the Infant Saviour adored as Shepherd and King, with pendants depicting David in both characters, was undertaken, though not completed for some time afterwards. It is most difficult to date Rossetti's pictures from the variety of forms in which most of them exist, and the uncertainty whether to adopt as date that of the original sketch, or of some one of the completed versions. Generally speaking, however, his most inspired work may be referred to the decade between 1850 and 1860, especially the magnificent drawings illustrative of the ‘Vita Nuova.’ ‘Mary Magdalen,’ ‘Monna Rosa,’ ‘Hesterna Rosa,’ ‘How they met themselves,’ ‘Paolo and Francesca,’ ‘Cassandra,’ and the Borgia drawings may be added. These were the pictorial works in which Rossetti stands forth most distinctly as a poet. He may at a later period have exhibited even greater mastery in his other predominant endowment, that of colour; but the achievement, though great, is of a lower order. Another artistic enterprise of this period was his illustration of Tennyson, undertaken for Edward Moxon, in conjunction with Millais and other artists (1857). The fine drawings were grievously marred by the carelessness and mechanical spirit of the wood-engravers. He succeeded better in book illustration at a somewhat later date, especially in the matchless frontispiece to his sister's ‘Goblin Market’ (1862). He was also labouring much, and not to his satisfaction, on his one realistic picture, ‘Found,’ an illustration of the tragedy of seduction, occupying the place among his pictures which ‘Jenny’ holds among his poems. It was never quite completed. Somewhat later he became interested in the undertaking of William Morris and Madox Brown, for that revival of art manufacture, which produced important results.
During this period he wrote little poetry, designedly holding his poetical gift in abeyance for the undivided pursuit of art. The ‘Early Italian Poets,’ however, went to press in 1861, and was greeted with enthusiasm by Mr. Coventry Patmore and other excellent judges. The edition was sold in eight years, leaving Rossetti 9l. the richer after the acquittal of his obligation to Mr. Ruskin. It was, however, reprinted in 1874 under the title of ‘Dante and his Circle, with the Italian Poets preceding him: a collection of Lyrics, edited and translated in the original metres.’ The book is a garden of enchanting poetry, steeped in the Italian spirit, but, while faithful to all the higher offices of translation, by no means so scrupulously literal as is usually taken for granted. The greatest successes are achieved in the pieces apparently most difficult to render, the ballate and canzoni. That these triumphs are due to genius and labour, and not to the accident of Rossetti's Italian blood, is shown by the fact that he evinced equal felicity in his renderings of François Villon. The ‘Early Italian Poets’ comprised also the prose passages of the ‘Vita Nuova,’ admirably translated.
Rossetti's marriage with Miss Siddal took place at Hastings on 23 May 1860. He had said, in a letter written a month previously, that she ‘seemed ready to die daily.’ He took her to Paris, and on their return they settled at his old rooms at Chatham Place. No length of days could have been anticipated for Mrs. Rossetti, but her existence closed prematurely on 11 Feb. 1862, from the effects of an overdose of laudanum, taken to relieve neuralgia. Rossetti's grief found expression in a manner most characteristic of him, the entombment of his manuscript poems in his wife's coffin. They remained there until October 1869, when he was fortunately persuaded to consent to their disinterment. Chatham Place had naturally become an impossible residence for him, and he soon removed to Tudor House, Cheyne Walk, a large house which for some time harboured three sub-tenants as well—his brother, Mr. Swinburne, and Mr. George
