And as his health continued to improve, Rossetti’s poetry and painting rose again to their highest level. The former, indeed, is thought by some sound critics to reach at this juncture a superb merit unattained before; for it was here that he wrote the first of the three great romantic ballads which mark the zenith of his poetic power. “Rose Mary” stands supreme in this incomparable category. Nor did he ever far surpass, if at all, his pictures of this period,—“The Bower Maiden” (1873) for frank and vigorous natural beauty in the pretty child with the fresh-blowing marigolds, “Dis Manibus” or “The Roman Widow” (1874) for delicate and simple pathos in the treatment of the classic world; and “Proserpine” (1874) for the sombre moral tragedy symbolized in the classic story, seldom, if ever, so interpreted on canvas before. In these years also he painted the beautiful “Garland Girl,” “La Ghirlandata” (1873), and “Veronica Veronese” (1872), called at first “The Day-dream,” but wholly distinct from the later work of that date; reverted, or endeavoured to revert in sketches, to his old fantasy of “Michael Scott’s Wooing,” and resumed a subject begun in 1864, but never quite fully worked out, “The Boat of Love,” suggested by Dante’s second Sonnet,—“Guido, vorrei che tu e Lapo ed io,” and representing Dante and Beatrice embarking in a boat with his friend and brother-poet Guido Calvacanti, and his lady Giovanna, and Lapo degli Uberti and his love. “THE BOAT OF LOVE.” _By permission of the Corporation of Birmingham._ [Illustration] In the autumn of 1874 Rossetti returned to Chelsea, and again made his headquarters at 16, Cheyne Walk, where he remained, save for two visits to the seaside, until 1880. Here he worked from time to time at the picture illustrative of his own early poem, “The Blessed Damozel,”—the sole instance, by the way, of Rossetti’s completion of a subject in verse before attempting it on canvas; and began what promised to be among the most profound of his mystical creations, “The Sphinx” or “The Question,” and also the last subject he ever took from the “Vita Nuova” of Dante, “La Donna della Finestra,” or “Our Lady of Pity.” These two, as well as “The Boat of Love,” remained unfinished in his studio. To this fruitful decade belong an excellent replica of an early water- colour, “The Damozel of the Sanct Grael” (1874); the exquisite crayon drawing “The Spirit of the Rainbow” (1877); and four splendid oils, “The Sea Spell” (1876), “A Vision of Fiametta” (1878), “The Day-dream” and “Mnemosyne” or “The Lamp of Memory” (1880). To 1875 is due “La Bello Mano” (“The Beautiful Hand”). In 1879 he made a crayon drawing, which he called “Sancta Lilias,” for an Annunciation; depicting a girl unfolding a white scarf from a tall lily which she carries in her hand; but the sketch was never finished, nor advanced beyond the crayon stage.