Not that he lacked defenders. His own answer, under the title of “The Stealthy School of Criticism,” in the columns of the “Athenæum,” was more than supported by Mr. Swinburne’s indignant challenge, “Under the Microscope;” and other loyal friends contributed to a sufficient vindication. Save in the too morbid imagination of the poet, the attack soon lapsed, for the most part, into the oblivion it deserved; more especially since the writer, a few years later, had the manliness to retract his charge, and to make a candid apology, though a tardy one,for having uttered it. But not so easily could the pain given to Rossetti be overcome. He now began to shrink intensely from society, fearing at all points to encounter that suspicion of his artistic work. Suffering acutely from nervous prostration and insomnia, he yielded himself the more fully to the fatal chloral habit which only aggravated his condition. In the autumn of 1872 he spent some weeks at the house of Dr. Gordon Hake at Roehampton, and proceeded thence with Mr. Madox Brown, Mr. George Hake, and Mr. Bell Scott to Stobhall in Perthshire, on the Tay. Returning to the south in improved health, Rossetti and Mr. George Hake proceeded at once to Kelmscott Manor, where they settled for a considerable time. Rossetti indeed remained for nearly two years, gradually resuming his artistic work, and regaining at times something of his old vivacity and high spirits: only a few friends went to and fro in visits full of mutual delight and inspiration. The beautiful old house, and the quaint, romantic chamber that served for studio, became the resort of poets and artists, critics and connoisseurs, disciples and aspirants, in companies small indeed, but brilliant and memorable as any that gathered round the young Pre-Raphaelites in Newman Street or the maturer masters of art and song that assembled in Cheyne Walk, Chelsea. Mr. William Morris and his family were there frequently; Dr. Gordon Hake made a visit, and afterwards embodied his memories in his sequence of sonnets addressed to Mr.Theodore Watts, “The New Day,” one of which deserves quotation: “O happy days with him who once so loved us! We loved as brothers, with a single heart, The man whose iris-woven pictures moved us From Nature to her blazoned shadow—Art. How often did we trace the nestling Thames From humblest waters on his course of might, Down where the weir the bursting current stems— There sat till evening grew to balmy night, Veiling the weir whose roar recalled the strand Where we had listened to the wave-lipped sea, That seemed to utter plaudits while we planned Triumphal labours of the day to be. The words were his: ‘Such love can never die;’ The grief was ours when he no more was nigh.”