Of Dante Gabriel Rossetti I had but a passing glimpse. The poet-painter called on George Hake (a son of Borrow’s friend) when I happened to be stopping with him at Oxford. But the impression left is vivid enough. Six or seven years had passed since the bitter domestic bereavement had taken place which saddened his life and induced the habit that shortened his days. In appearance he presented neither the delicate, almost ascetic, figure of the early portraits nor the wan aspect of the later likenesses. One might have almost called him robust. He had the general aspect of a prosperous country squire. We all three chatted on current topics, and in Rossetti’s contributions to the talk he was now incisive and epigrammatic, and again fanciful and quaint. He was not for a moment pessimistic or bitter. The Rossetti presented to the public is, I know, a very different sort of individual. I can only repeat that I describe the man as I saw him during the closing years of the sixties. Mr. Hall Caine presents a Rossetti of a very different sort. In a work of autobiography that popular writer devotes the greater portion of his book to a narrative of his relations with the poet. Mr. Caine became acquainted with the poet when his powers were decaying and his work practically finished; when he was habitually drugged and incapable of normal emotions; when he was deserted by his friends, and grateful for the companionship of almost anybody. The literary venture of Mark Tapley Ainsworth failed to justify the auriferous future that his cousin, the novelist, had prophesied for it. The unfortunate owner was losing over it more money than he could afford. He called on me to announce the sad circumstance. He was as joyous as ever. He laughed merrily as he spoke of his bitter disappointment. I felt it impossible to sympathize with his mood. In my crass ignorance of the publishing world, the death of a magazine was a tragic thing. It affected me almost as the passing away of some eminent man. We lunched over the event (a sort of “wake,” it seemed to me) at the Blue Posts in Cork Street, and the proprietor of the magazine, the decease of which was about to be announced, was in the gayest of spirits. After all, the dear old chap may be excused at exhibiting some feeling of relief. It had been for him, as he cheerily explained, “a matter of always paying out, and never paying in.”