r from being of a kind to annoy or hurt me),
had, to my thinking, been only generous, sympathetic, and beautiful.
Again he wrote:

My dear Caine,--

Let me assure you at once that correspondence with yourself
is one of my best pleasures, and that you cannot write too
much or too often for _me_; though after what you have told
me as to the apportioning of your time, I should be
unwilling to encroach unduly upon it. Neither should I on my
side prove very tardy in reply, as you are one to whom I
find there _is_ something to say when I sit down with a pen
and paper. I have a good deal of enforced evening leisure,
as it is seldom I can paint or draw by gaslight. It would
not be right in me to refrain from saying that to meet with
one so "leal and true" to myself as you are has been a
consolation amid much discouragement.... I perceive you have
had a complete poetic career which you have left behind to
strike out into wider waters.... The passage on Night, which
you say was written under the planet Shelley, seems to me
(and to my brother, to whom I read it) to savour more of the
"mortal moon"--that is, of a weird and sombre
Elizabethanism, of which Beddoes may be considered the
modern representative. But we both think it has an
unmistakeable force and value; and if you can write better
poetry than this, let your angel say unto you, _Write_.

I take it that it would be wholly unwise of me in selecting excerpts
from Rossetti's letters entirely to withhold the passages that concern
exclusively (so far as their substance goes) my own early doings or
try-ings-to-do; for it ought to be a part of my purpose to lay bare the
beginnings of that friendship by virtue of which such letters exist.
I can only ask the readers of these pages to accept my assurance, that
whatever the number and extent of the passages which I publish that are
necessarily in themselves of more interest to myself personally than to
the public generally, they are altogether disproportionate to the number
and extent of those I withhold. I cannot, however, resist the conclusion
that such picture as they afford of a man beyond the period of middle
life capable of bending to a new and young friend, and of thinking with
and for him, is not without an exceptional literary interest as being so
contrary to every-day experience. Hence, I am not without hope tha