Yet it must be admitted that with all his ardour, his real though very fitful diligence, and his sincere delight in his chosen profession, Rossetti never fully conquered that imperfection of technique in draughtsmanship which has been the stronghold of hostile criticism throughout the Pre-Raphaelite movement, but which in fact arose from the inevitable deficiency of a mind too impatient for ideas, too eager for subject-matter, to be steadfastly concerned with the science of expression. That neither Rossetti nor any other of the Pre-Raphaelites _as such_ have attained to technical greatness, still less to technical perfection, is a charge weightily preferred, and not without reason, but hardly of so fatal an import as at first appears. It must be remembered that no new message comes to the world ready-clothed in the full grace of accurate and harmonious speech. The voice crying in the wilderness is apt to be harsh and unmusical. The visions of the seer are at first too vivid, too bewildering in the fresh glory of revelation, to be told (if he would set them forth on canvas) in any but broken lights and shadowy images. In every art, the gospel of a new epoch has been proclaimed with faltering speech and stammering tongue. The torrent of denunciation outpoured on Wagner’s transgressions of strict form, yet powerless, as it has proved, to drown his music, was not more sweeping than the judgment of authority against the metrical solecisms of Walt Whitman’s poetry; nor has the storm still raging round the modern Scandinavian drama been less fierce than that which overtook the leaders of the Pre- Raphaelite van.