to works of imagination. Within these limits his critical faculty was admirable, not deeply penetrative, but always embodying the soundest common-sense. His few critical essays are excellent. His memory was almost preternatural, and his knowledge of favourite writers, such as Shakespeare, Dante, Scott, Dumas, exhaustive. It is lamentable that his soundness of judgment should have deserted him in his own case, and that he should have been unable to share the man of genius's serene confidence that not all the powers of dulness and malignity combined can, in the long run, deprive him of a particle of his real due. He altered sonnets in ‘The House of Life’ in deference to what he knew to be unjust and even absurd strictures, and the alterations remain in the English editions, though the original readings have been restored in the beautiful Boston reprint of Messrs. Copeland & Day. His distaste for travel and indifference to natural beauty were surprising characteristics, the latter especially so in consideration of the gifts of observation and description so frequently evinced in his poetry.
All the extant pictorial likenesses of Rossetti, mostly by himself, have been published by his brother in various places. One of these of himself, aged 18, is in the National Portrait Gallery, London. No portrait so accurately represents him as the photograph by W. and E. Downey, prefixed to Mr. Hall Caine's ‘Recollections.’ A posthumous bust was sculptured by Madox Brown for a memorial fountain placed opposite Rossetti's house in Cheyne Walk. Another portrait was painted by G. F. Watts, R.A. A drawing by Rossetti of his wife belongs to Mr. Barclay Squire. Exhibitions of his pictures have been held by the Royal Academy and by the Arts Club. His poetical works have been published more than once in a complete form since his death.
The National Gallery acquired in 1886 his oil-painting ‘Ecce Ancilla Domini’ (1850), in which his sister Christina sat for the Virgin. His ‘Dante's Dream’ (1869–71) is in the Walker Art Gallery at Liverpool. But with very few exceptions his finest works are in private hands.
[It was long expected that an authentic biography of Rossetti would be given to the world by Mr. Theodore Watts-Dunton, who contributed obituary notices of Dante Gabriel and Christina Rossetti to the Athenæum. The apparent disappointment of this anticipation led Mr. W. M. Rossetti to publish, in 1895, the Memoir (accompanying the Letters) of his brother. The letters are entirely family letters, and exhibit Rossetti to much less advantage as a correspondent than do the letters addressed on literary and artistic subjects to private friends. Mr. Rossetti had previously (1889) published ‘Dante Gabriel Rossetti as Designer and Writer.’ The record of Rosetti's squabbles with picture-dealers and other customers is not always edifying, but the chronological list of his works is indispensable. Mr. Rossetti subsequently issued in 1899 ‘Ruskin, Rossetti and Preraphaelitism’ [papers 1854–62], in 1900 ‘Præraphaelite Diaries and Letters’ [early correspondence 1835–54]; and in 1903 ‘Rossetti papers, 1862–70.’ Mr. Joseph Knight has contributed an excellent miniature biography to the Great Writers series (1887), and Mr. F. G. Stephens, an old pre-Raphaelite comrade, has written a comprehensive and copiously illustrated account of his artistic work as a monograph in the Portfolio (1894). The reminiscences of Mr. William Sharp and Mr. Hall Caine refer exclusively to his latter years; but the first-named gentleman's Record and Study (1882) may be regarded as an excellent critical handbook to his literary work, especially the sonnets; and the latter's Recollections (1882) include a number of interesting letters. The best, however, of all Rossetti's letters, so far as hitherto published, are those to William Allingham, edited by Dr. G. Birkbeck Hill and published in London in 1897. The autobiographies of Dr. Gordon Hake and Mr. William Bell Scott contain much important information, though the latter must be checked by constant reference to Mr. W. M. Rossetti's biography. Much light is thrown on Rossetti's pre-Raphælite period by Mr. Holman Hunt's Pre-Raphaelitism and the P.R. Brotherhood, 1905. Esther Wood's Dante Rossetti and the Pre-Raphaelite Movement (1891) deserves attention, but is of much less authority. See also Sarrazin's Essay in his Poètes Modernes de l'Angleterre (1885), Mr. Watts-Dunton's article in Nineteenth Century (‘The Truth about Rossetti’), March 1883, and communication to the Athenæum, 23 May 1896; Robert Buchanan's Fleshly School of Poetry (1872), with the replies by Rossetti and Swinburne; Coventry Patmore's Principle in Art; Mr. Hall Caine in Miles's Poets of the Century; and Hueffer's Life of Ford Madox Brown, 1896.]
ROSSETTI, LUCY MADOX (1843–1894), painter, was the only daughter of Ford Madox Brown by his first marriage, and half-sister of Oliver Madox Brown [q. v.] Her mother's maiden name was Bromley. Lucy was born at Paris, 19 July 1843; her parents brought her to England in 1844, and, after her mother's death in 1846, her father definitely established himself in England. She showed no special aptitude for art until in 1868 the failure of one of Madox Brown's pupils to execute a piece of work led her to volunteer to supply his place, and her success induced her father to give her regular instruction. A watercolour drawing, ‘Après
