By the bye, you are right about _Cloud Confines_, which _is_ my very best thing--only, having been foolishly sent to a magazine, no notice whatever resulted. Rossetti was not always open to suggestions as to the need of clarifying obscure phrases in his verses, but on one or two occasions, when I was so bold as to hint at changes, I found him in highly tractable moods. I called his attention to what I imagined might prove to be merely a printer’s slip in his poem (a great favourite of mine) entitled _The Portrait_. The second stanza ran: Yet this, of all love’s perfect prize, Remains; save what in mournful guise Takes counsel with my soul alone,-- Save what is secret and unknown, Below the earth, above the sky. The words “yet” and “save” seemed to me (and to another friend) somewhat puzzling, and I asked if “but” in the sense of _only_ had been meant. He wrote: That is a very just remark of yours about the passage in _Portrait_ beginning _yet_. I meant to infer _yet only_, but it certainly is truncated. I shall change the line to Yet only this, of love’s whole prize, Remains, etc. But would again be dubious though explicable. Thanks for the hint.... I shall be much obliged to you for any such hints of a verbal nature. CHAPTER V. The letters printed in the foregoing chapter are valuable as settling at first-hand all question of the chronology of the poems of Rossetti’s volume of 1870. The poems of the volume of 1881 (Rose Mary and certain of the sonnets excepted) grew under his hand during the period of my acquaintance with him, and their origin I shall in due course record. The two preceding chapters have been for the most part devoted to such letters (and such explanatory matter as must needs accompany them) as concern principally, perhaps, the poet and his correspondent; but I have thrown into two further chapters a great body of highly interesting letters on subjects of general literary interest (embracing the fullest statement yet published of Rossetti’s critical opinions), and have reserved for a more advanced section of the work a body of further letters on sonnet literature which arose out of the discussion of an anthology that I was at the time engaged in compiling.