vate nature to divert it from a channel
of impersonal discussion. It is a fact that the letters written to me by
Rossetti in the year 1880 deal so largely with literary affairs (chiefly
of the past) as to be almost capable of _verbatim_ reproduction, even
at the present short interval after his death. If they were to be
reproduced, they would be found to cover two hundred pages of the
present volume, and to be so easy, fluent, varied, and wholly felicitous
as to style, and full of research and reflection as to substance, as
probably to earn for the writer a foremost place for epistolary power.
Indeed, I am not without hope that this accession of a fresh reputation
may result even upon the excerpts I have decided to introduce.

CHAPTER IV.

It was very natural that our earliest correspondence should deal chiefly
with Rossetti's own works, for those works gave rise to it. He sent me
a copy of his translations from early Italian poets (_Dante and his
Circle_), and a copy of his story, entitled _Hand and Soul_. In posting
the latter, he said:

I don't know if you ever saw a sort of story of mine called
_Hand and Soul_. I send you one with this, as printed to go
in my poems (though afterwards omitted, being, nevertheless,
more poem than story). I printed it since in the
_Fortnightly_--and, I believe, abolished one or two extra
sentimentalities. You may have seen it there. In case it's
stale, I enclose with this a sonnet which _must_ be new, for
I only wrote it the other day.

I have already, in the proper place in this volume, said how
the story first struck me. Perhaps I had never before
reading it seen quite so clearly the complete mission as
well as enforced limitations of true art. All the many
subtle gradations in the development of purpose were there
beautifully pictured in a little creation that was charming
in the full sense of a word that has wellnigh lost its
charm. For all such as cried out against pursuits
originating in what Keats had christened "the infant chamber
of sensation," and for all such as demanded that everything
we do should be done to "strengthen God among men," the
story provided this answer: "When at any time hath He cried
unto thee, saying, 'My son, lend me thy shoulder, for I
fall'?"

The sonnet sent, and spoken of as having just been written
(the letter bears pos