Of the laborious conscientiousness of Rossetti’s practice in painting it may here be said that it has been greatly under-estimated by those who only saw the less serious side of his complex and self-contradictory nature. That “the capacity for taking infinite pains” developed with the genius which gave it scope is abundantly attested by those who witnessed not only his restless roving from one task to another, but also the ungrudging concentration of toil which he bestowed in turns upon them all. Mr. Shields, who for years was a constant companion in Rossetti’s studio, says in his too-brief record of that intimacy:—“One evening when the fine full-length figure, holding an open book and honeysuckle, called ‘The Day-dream,’ was nearly completed, I found him standing far off from it in the dusky light and searching it critically. ‘It seems to me, that the lower limbs are too short: what do you think?’ An examination compelled me to endorse his fears. It was enough. Condemnation to the effacement of half the picture was instantly passed. Long sprays of young sycamore, rich with the ruddy buds of early spring, crossed before the lady’s green skirt. That sacrificed, it was not possible to save the foliage, and the season was too far advanced for fresh reference to nature. The first necessary step therefore was to copy these on to a clean canvas; that done, he determinately scraped out the large erring surface, corrected the proportions of the figure, and then calmly re-painted all, striking lastly the sycamore boughs into their new places from the rescued studies.” An even more laborious re- painting, says the same authority, was effected in the final oil version of “Dante’s Dream,” completed in 1871. The figure of one of the ladies attendant at the bedside of the dead Beatrice failed to satisfy him in the disposition of her drapery. At the last moment he set to work to make entirely new studies for the robe in question, and almost wholly re-painted the figure that wore it.