little since), when I was eighteen. It
was first printed when I was twenty-one. Of the first _Jenny_, perhaps
fifty lines survive here and there, but I felt it was quite beyond me
then (a world I was then happy enough to be a stranger to), and later
I re-wrote it completely. I will give you correct particulars at some
time. _Sister Helen_, I may mention, was written either in 1851 or
beginning of 1852, and was printed in something called _The Duesseldorf
Annual_ {*} (published in Germany) in 1853; though since much revised
in detail--not in the main. You will be horror-struck to hear that
the first main addition to this poem was made by me only a few days
ago!--eight stanzas (six together, and two scattered ones) involving
a new incident!! Your hair is on end, I know, but if you heard the
stanzas, they would smooth if not curl it. The gain is immense.

* In The Duesseldorf Annual the poem was signed H. H. H., and
in explanation of this signature Rossetti wrote on his own
copy the following characteristic note:--"The initials as
above were taken from the lead-pencil."

In reply to this I told Rossetti that, as a "jealous honourer" of his,
I confessed to some uneasiness when I read that he had been making
important additions to _Sister Helen_. That I could not think of a stage
of the story that would bear so to be severed from what goes before or
comes after it as to admit of interpolation might not of itself go for
much; but the entire ballad was so rounded into unity, one incident so
naturally begetting the next, and the combined incidents so properly
building up a fabric of interest of which the meaning was all inwoven,
that I could not but fear that whatever the gain in certain directions,
the additions of any stanzas involving a new incident might, in
some measure, cripple the rest. Even though the new stanzas were as
beautiful, or yet more beautiful than the old ones, and the incident as
impressive as any that goes before it, or comes after it, the gain to
the poem as an individual creation was not, I thought, assured because
people used to say my style was hard.

Rossetti was mistaken in supposing that I possessed the latest and
best edition of his _Poems_, but I had seen the latest of all English
editions, and had noted in it several valuable emendations which, in
subsequent quotation, I had been careful to employ. One of these seemed
to me to involve an immeasurable gain. A stanza of _Sister