But we must not linger over the cancelled drawings of an artist who, had he been as great in imagination as he was in originality of method and mastery over his pencil, would have been as great as the greatest in Art. It is now our delightful task to turn to another of the men of the ’sixties, whose imagination and sympathy with high romance has rarely been surpassed, and whose technical mastery, though not the equal of his great contemporary, was yet so distinguished that, even divorced from his other qualities, it would give him a niche in the Temple of Fame. Frederick Sandys has but lately left us, and how few there are who recognise the greatness of his work! For years it has been a matter of astonishment to me that his name was not on every tongue. Keene, alive, was practically unknown. Keene, dead, occupies an unassailable position. Sandys is known and esteemed only by {140} the few. The time will come when his pictures will be a fashionable craze, and every woodcut after him, whether it be in _Once a Week_, _The Cornhill_, _Good Words_, _London Society_, _The Churchman’s Family Magazine_, _The Shilling Magazine_, _The Quiver_, _The Argosy_, or what not, will be eagerly appropriated by those who wish to pass as discerning dilettanti. But we must not generalise, for our concern is here with one particular design, and enthusiasm must not be allowed to run. Done for _Once a Week_, and cut exquisitely on the wood by Swain, that with which we have to do was at the last moment cancelled by a timidly fastidious editor. If we turn to page 672 of vol. iv. of _Once a Week_ (new series), 1867, we shall find the following set of verses, signed “W.,” the origin and authorship of which I am now able to make public:— DANAË The hour of noonday sleep was o’er, And Danaë dreamt her dream no more; Yet still its image lingered on her loom; For there in woven colours bright, And touched to life by purpling light, Smiled the one godhead of the captive’s room. {141} She raised her from the Tyrian sheet, And clasped her sandals on her feet, And lightly drew around her virgin zone; And sighed—and knew not why she sighed; And murmured, while her work she plied, “The World may leave my love and me alone.” Thus sang the maiden of the brazen tower, And longed, unconscious, for the golden shower. “The days and months have grown to years, And I have dried my childish tears, And half forgotten why they ever ran; My soul is plighted to the sky, And we,—my wrinkled nurse and I,— What matter if we see no more of man? She wearies me with omens dire, My son foredoomed to kill my sire,— But sire and son are empty names to me. My love! I only rest awhile, To dream the beauty of thy smile. And only wake again to picture thee.” Thus sang the maiden of the brazen tower, And longed, unconscious, for the golden shower.