We left Rossetti, in order to describe the formation of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, at the point where he had just settled down in a joint studio with Holman Hunt to paint his first picture. In an enthusiasm for community of action, and a spirit of devotion to Keats, it had been proposed that each of the Brethren should illustrate, by an etching, a scene from that poet's "Isabella." Hunt, however, was already engaged upon his picture of _Rienzi_; Millais had work of a less than Pre-Raphaelite character to finish off, and Rossetti himself was seized with desire to paint a subject which much commended itself to his mystical and symbol-loving mind, _The Girlhood of Mary Virgin_. The only one of the three eventually, who touched Keats that year (1848) was Millais, who achieved a triumph with the striking picture, _Lorenzo and Isabella_. Rossetti's subject, as can well be imagined, gave him endless trouble, and was a source of violent fits of alternate depression and energy. Madox Brown's diary, a document full of dry humour and quaint touches, to say nothing of its pathos, contains many anecdotes of Rossetti's exasperating changefulness and want of consideration which show that kindness did not blind the painter to his pupil's foibles. To Brown's description of Rossetti, "lying, howling, on his belly in my studio," and, at another time, reduced by struggles with impossible drapery to an almost maudlin condition of profanity, we may add Hunt's description of how he had solemnly to take his companion out for a walk and explain that if the interruptions of temper and multiplication of difficulties did not cease, neither of them would have a picture finished to show alongside of Millais's--a remonstrance which he says was effectual and taken in perfect good part.