for amongst the gifts that Rossetti
had not got was that of concealing from his intimate friends any event,
however trifling, or however important, which weighed upon his mind.
At length I begged him to say what had happened, whereupon, with great
reluctance and many protestations of his intention to observe silence,
and constant injunctions as to secrecy, he told me that during the night
of my absence, in the midst of one of his bouts of coughing, he had
discharged an enormous quantity of blood. "I know this is the final
signal," he said, "and I shall die." I did my utmost to compose him
by recounting afresh the personal incident hinted at, with many added
features of (I trust) justifiable exaggeration, but it is hardly
necessary to say that I did not hold the promise I gave him as to
secrecy sufficiently sacred, or so exclusive, as to forbid my revealing
the whole circumstance to his medical attendant. I may add that from
that moment the cough entirely disappeared.

To return from this reminiscence of a later period to the beginnings,
three years earlier, of our correspondence, I will bring the present
chapter to a close by quoting short passages from three letters written
on the eve of my first visit to Rossetti, in 1880:

I will be truly glad to meet you when you come to town. You
will recognise the hole-and-cornerest of all existences; but
I'll read you a ballad or two, and have Brown's report to
back my certainty of liking you.... I would propose that you
should dine with me at 8.30 on the Monday of your visit, and
spend the evening.... Better come at 5.30 to 6 (if feasible
to you), that I may try to show you a picture by daylight...
Of course, when I speak of your dining with me, I mean tete-
a-tete, and without ceremony of any kind. I usually dine in
my studio, and in my painting coat. I judge this will reach
you in time for a note to reach _me_. Telegrams I hate. In
hope of the pleasure of a meeting, yours ever.

How that "hole-and-cornerest of all existences" struck an ardent admirer
of the poet-painter's genius, and a devoted lover of his personal
character, as then revealed to me, I hope to describe in a later section
of this book. Meantime I must proceed to cull from the epistolary
treasures I possess a number of interesting passages on literary
subjects, called forth in the course of an intercourse which, at that
stage, had few topics of a pri