never wore this kind of armour and did not need to raise his visor. He was neither conventional nor unconventional. He immersed himself in art and poetry, letting opinion go by the wind. How often I regret that I did not go to him. Perhaps at a single bound I should have escaped forever from this entangling web of grey theory in which I have spent my life. There was another great poet that I missed. Browning had seen a design that I made for a picture of Job's wife bidding him curse God and die, and he came to see me. Unfortunately I was not in my studio when he called. I am sometimes asked what is it that artists & poets aim at. I answer, it is the birth, the growth, and expansion of ever living personalities. That is the value or the charm of a picture or poem. I read a poem or I look at a picture; these, if they be works of art embody a personality. A personality is a man brought into unity by a mood, not a static unity, (that is character) but alive and glowing like a star, all in harmony with himself. Conscience at peace yet vigilant; spiritual and sensual desires at one; all of them in intense movement. In contact with such picture or poem, the mood enters into my mind, pervading soul and body, so that for the moment I become a living personality, with, for dominant note, joy or sorrow, or hope or love. I become the personality I create. When I read Rossetti's poems or look at his pictures, I fall under the spell of his art. Had I met Rossetti in the flesh I think I should have cast out forever this questioning intellect which has haunted me all my life like a bad conscience--as indeed it does most men in these uneasy days--and lived the imaginative life. Going to see Rossetti must have been like a visit to the tropics. A friend often asked me to go with him to see George Meredith. I threw away also that chance but by no means with so keen a regret. In George Meredith is no wild luxuriance, no risk of self-abandonment. He is pervaded through and through with the conventions of upper middle-class English society. The other stood aside from all conventions, even from those of unconventionality. Naked we come into the world, and naked we should remain if we retain personality and have the wizard's spell.