awn in Paris in 1844. That series, though not very sightly to the
eye, is of extraordinary value for dramatic insight and energy. We
gladly accepted, and he produced this etching with very little
self-satisfaction, so far as the technique of execution is concerned.
Dante Rossetti was to have furnished some verses for the etching; but
for this he did not find time, so I was put in as a stopgap, and I am
not sure that any reader of "The Germ" has ever thanked me for my
obedience to the call of duty.

By Patmore: "Essay on Macbeth." In this interesting and
well-considered paper Mr. Patmore assumes that he was the first
person to put into writing the opinion that Macbeth, before meeting
with the witches, had already definitely conceived and imparted the
idea of obtaining the crown of Scotland by wrongful means. I have
always felt some uncertainty whether Mr. Patmore was really the
first; if he was, it certainly seems strange that the train of
reasoning which he furnishes in this essay--forcible, even if we do
not regard it as unanswerable--should not have presented itself to
the mind and pen of some earlier writer. The Essay appears to have
been left incomplete in at least one respect. In speaking of "the
fifth scene," the author refers to "postponement of comment" upon
Macbeth's letter to his wife, and he "leaves it for the present." But
the comment never comes.

By Christina Rossetti: "Repining." This rather long poem, written in
December 1847 on a still broader scale, was never republished by the
authoress, although all her other poems in "The Germ" were so. She
did not think that its deservings were such as to call for
republication. I apprehend that herein she exercised a wise
discretion: none the less, when I was compiling the volume of her
"New Poems," issued in 1896, I included "Repining"--for I think that
some of the considerations which apply to the works of an author
while living do not remain in anything like full force after death.

By Dante G. Rossetti: "The Carillon, Antwerp and Bruges." These
verses, and some others further on in "The Germ," were written during
the brief trip, in Paris and Belgium, which my brother made along
with Holman-Hunt in the autumn of 1849. He did not republish "The
Carillon"; but he left in MS. an abridged form of it, with the title
"Antwerp and Bruges," and this I included in his "Collected Works,"
1886. The only important change was the omission of stanzas 1 and 4.

By Dante