The spirit of poetry, re-awakened in literature, had found its way into art, and themselves the comrades of the poets of the time, the leaders of the little band whose efforts were destined to revolutionise English painting, gladly confessed in their own work, though in varying measure, the newly kindled ambition to embody in art that quality of imagination that had hitherto found expression only in literature. And this movement towards a wider idealism was helped, not hindered, by the strenuous desire for the faithful presentment of actual reality which stood as a dominant article of faith in the pre-Raphaelite creed. At the head of this revolution in taste, which has left a lasting mark, not only upon the painting of England, but also in some degree upon the art of all Continental nations, two names I think stand pre-eminent, those of G. F. Watts and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. From them came the poetic inspiration which lay at the root of all the greatest achievements of the time. Others there were, like Millais, more greatly endowed with the painter’s gift, but even he, whose genius was destined ultimately to find its own more congenial exercise in portraiture and landscape, confessed in his earlier days the commanding domination of men who, in intellect and imagination, were his leaders and his masters. The work of Mr. Watts, based on an earlier tradition, was open to all the world, but it was only by rare chance and good fortune that the student of that day had the opportunity of making acquaintance with the paintings of Rossetti. I remember it was while I was on Circuit that I had my first sight of some examples of his work in the collection of Mr. Rae of Birkenhead, and there, too, I found pictures of Madox Brown, another of the group who did not publicly exhibit. I think it was a study of Mr. Rae’s collection that induced me to publish in the _Globe_ newspaper a series of articles on painters of the day over the signature of “Ignotus” in the year 1873. Certainly it was the publication of these papers that formed the occasion of my making the acquaintance of several of the artists whose talent I had endeavoured to appreciate. It was my intention at the time to refashion the series and to issue them as a separate volume, and with that view I wrote to several of them asking them for some personal details of the earlier days of their studentship. The answers I received were in nearly every case characteristic, and it was by means of my correspondence with Rossetti that I afterwards became a visitor at his house. It was through my friend Mr. George Hake, who was at that time staying with him, that I first obtained a personal introduction to Rossetti, but we were already known to each other by correspondence.