Rossetti's work, during the earlier part of the period we have been glancing through, was of a particularly interesting, and towards the latter end of a sufficiently varied character. In range of subject it belongs to the category described in Chapter III, with the important addition that now for the first time is added to his sources of romantic inspiration the "Morte Darthur" of Sir Thomas Malory. This cycle of old Celtic legends had been for many years practically a sealed book in England, and its popularity to-day is largely owing to the interest revived in it by Rossetti, and later by the famous group of Oxford friends, including William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones. Rossetti had become acquainted with Malory by 1854, which is the date of that strange, sad little water-colour, _King Arthur's Tomb_, representing, in an imaginary scene, Launcelot bidding a last farewell to Guenevere. Apart from this Rossetti had in hand a number of drawings which were continually put on one side as fresh ideas crowded into his restless brain, and were often not finished until many years later. The statement could easily be verified, that many, if not most, of Rossetti's later pictures were planned during these early strenuous years of his life, so that it is not to be wondered at that the actual finished work of these early years was sparse in quantity and slight in quality--much slighter, for instance, than the two religious paintings with which he had begun his career. On the other hand, for many people these little water-colours of Rossetti's second period have a charm that nothing in his larger and more elaborated later work can recall.