ave said, in the domain of character. Through
all the outbursts of her ignescent hate Sister Helen can never lose the
ineradicable relics of her human love:

But he and I are sadder still.

As Rossetti from time to time made changes in his poems, he transcribed
the amended verses in a copy of the Tauchnitz edition which he kept
constantly by him. Upon reference to this little volume some days after
his death, I discovered that he had prefaced _Sister Helen_ with a
note written in pencil, of which he had given me the substance in
conversation about the time of the publication of the altered version,
but which he abandoned while passing the book through the press. The
note (evidently designed to precede the ballad) runs:

It is not unlikely that some may be offended at seeing the
additions made thus late to the ballad of _S. H._ My best
excuse is that I believe some will wonder with myself that
such a climax did not enter into the first conception.

At the foot of the poem this further note is written:

I wrote this ballad either in 1851 or early in 1852. It was
printed in a thing called _The Duesseldorf Annual_ in (I
think) 1853--published in Germany. {*}

* In the same private copy of the Poems the following
explanatory passage was written over the much-discussed
sonnet, entitled, The Monochord:--"That sublimated mood of
the soul in which a separate essence of itself seems as it
were to oversoar and survey it." Neither the style nor the
substance is characteristic of Rossetti, and though I do not
at the moment remember to have met with the passage
elsewhere, I doubt not it is a quotation. That quotation
marks are employed is not in itself evidence of much moment,
for Rossetti had Coleridge's enjoyment of a literary
practical joke, and on one occasion prefixed to a story in
manuscript a long passage on noses purporting to be from
Tristram Shandy, but which is certainly not discoverable in
Sterne's story.

The next letter I shall quote appears to explain itself:

There is a last point in your long letter which I have not
noticed, though it interested me much: viz., what you say of
your lecture on my poetry; your idea of possibly returning
to and enlarging it would, if carried out, be welcome to me.
I suppose ere long I must get together such additional work
as I have t