ay
say that I did not know the list would accompany them--still
less that contributions would be so low generally as to
leave me near the head of the list--an unenviable sort of
parade.... My own opinion about the lecture question is
this. You know best whether such a lecture could be turned
to the purposes of your Keats article (now in progress), or
rather be so much deduction from the freshness of its
resources: and this should be the _absolute_ test of its
being done or not done.... I think, if it can be done
without impoverishing your materials, the method of getting
Lord Houghton to preside and so raising as much from it as
possible is doubtless the right one. Of course I view it as
far more hopeful than mere distribution of any number of
prospectuses.... Even L25 would be a great contribution to
the fund.

The lecture project was not found feasible, and hence it was abandoned.
Meantime the kindness of friends enabled me to add to the list a good
number of subscriptions, but feeling scarcely satisfied with any such
success as I might be likely to have in that direction, I opened, by
the help of a friend, a correspondence with Lord Houghton with a view
to inducing him to apply for a pension for the lady. It then transpired
that Lord Houghton had already applied to Lord Beaconsfield for a
pension for Mme. Llanos, and would doubtless have got it, had not Mr.
Buxton Forman applied for a grant from the Royal Bounty, which was
easier to give. I told Rossetti of this fact and he said:

I am not surprised about Lord H., and feel sure it is a pity
he was not left to try Beaconsfield, but I judge the
projectors on the other side knew nothing of his intentions.
However, _I_ was in no way a projector.

In the end Lord Houghton repeated to Mr. Gladstone the application he
had made to Lord Beaconsfield, and succeeded.

Rossetti must have been among the earliest admirers of Keats. I remarked
on one occasion that it was very natural that Lord Houghton should
consider himself in a sense the first among men now living to champion
the poet and establish his name, and Rossetti admitted that this was so,
and was ungrudging in his tribute to Lord Houghton's services towards
the better appreciation of Keats; but he contended, nevertheless,
that he had himself been one of the first writers of the generation
succeeding the poet's own to adm