If English rhymed metres had been as easy to work in as Italian rhymed metres, her imagination was so vivid, her poetic impulse was so strong, and, indeed, her poetic wealth so inexhaustible, that she would have stood in the front rank of English poets. But the writer of English rhymed measures is in a very different position as regards improvisatorial efforts from the Italian who writes in rhymed measures. He has to grapple with the metrical structure—to seize the form by the throat, as it were, and force it to take in the enormous wealth at the English poet’s command. Fine as is the ‘Prince’s Progress,’ for instance (and it would be hard to find its superior in regard to poetic material in the whole compass of Victorian poetry), the number of rugged lines the reader has to encounter weighs upon and distresses him until, indeed, the conclusion is reached: then the passion and the pathos of the subject cause the poem to rise upon billows of true rhythm. On the other hand, however, it may be said that a special quality of her verse is a _curiosa felicitas_ which makes a metrical blemish tell as a kind of suggestive grace. But I must stop; I must bear in mind that he who has walked and talked with Christina Rossetti, burdened with a wealth of remembered beauty from earth and heaven, runs the risk of becoming garrulous. II. In regard to unpublished manuscripts which a writer has left behind him, the responsibilities of his legal representatives are far more grave than seems to be generally supposed. In deciding what posthumous writings an executor is justified in giving to the public it is important, of course, to take into account the character, the idiosyncrasy of the writer in regard to all his relations towards what may be called the mechanism of every-day life. Some poets are so methodical that the mere fact of anything having been left by them in manuscript unaccompanied by directions as to its disposal is _primâ facie_ evidence that it was intended to be withheld from the public, either temporarily for revision or finally and absolutely. And, of course, the representative, especially if he is also a relative or a friend, has to consider primarily the intentions of the dead. If loyalty to living friends is a duty, what shall be said of loyalty to friends who are dead? This, indeed, has a sanction of the deepest religious kind.