The publication, in 1870, of Rossetti’s volume of “Poems,” containing, together with some of his loveliest short lyrics, “The Blessed Damozel,” and the “House of Life” sonnets, led the way for that unfortunate attack upon him in the critical press which undoubtedly contributed to the shortening of his days, however regrettable may have been the hyper- sensitive manner in which the poet met his arraignment. In 1871 an article signed “Thomas Maitland” was published in the “Contemporary Review,” entitled “The Fleshly School of Poetry,” in which Rossetti’s poems were attacked, from an avowedly moral point of view, on the ground of sensuality. Ignoring the essential principles of all Rossetti’s work— the sacredness of the senses as the instruments of the soul—the meaning of all physical beauty as the witness of an immanent God—the writer deliberately charged him with pandering to the lowest instincts of his readers, and being, in short, the prophet of that later and grossly materialistic phase of European art of which the very name _Pre_- Raphaelite was a repudiation. It is not surprising that to a deeply (if undefinedly) religious nature like Rossetti’s this should have seemed the hardest blow that could have been dealt at his art and at him. The publication of the magazine article, however, seriously disconcerted him at the moment. It was not until the offensive and wholly unfair indictment was re-issued in the following year in pamphlet form that it began to assume a more serious aspect in the victim’s eyes. Criticism of his poetic methods he could have borne with equanimity. Indifference and neglect seldom troubled him. He cared little for popularity, and was no seeker after fame, although he naturally desired the appreciation of those whose judgment was of real account in literature. But he did care for his general reputation as a clean-lived and pure-minded man. This charge assailed the ethical foundations of all his work. He had seen in the loveliest things of earth the vessels and channels of the loveliness of heaven. And that this should be counted to him for sensuality—that the love which had been to him “a worship and a regeneration” should be held up to scorn as a gross and carnal passion—that was the intolerable thing!