Rossetti's was one of the most fascinating characters I ever knew, open and expansive, and, when well, he had a vein of most delightful talk of the things which interested him, mostly those which pertained to art and poetry, the circle of his friends and his and their poetry and painting. To him, art was the dominant interest of existence, not only of his own, but of existence _per se_, and he tolerated nothing that sacrificed it to material or purely intellectual subjects. I remember his indignation at the death of Mrs. Wells, the wife of the Royal Academician, herself a talented painter, who died in childbed, "a great artist sacrificed to bringing more kids into the world, as if there were not other women just fit for that!" he exclaimed; and when Regnault was killed in the sortie from Paris, he burst out in an angry protest at this throwing away valuable lives like Regnault's in a stupid war. The artist was to him the _ultima ratio_ of humanity, and he used to say frankly that artists had nothing to do with morality, and practically, but in a gentle and benevolent way, he made that the guiding principle of his conduct. Whatever was to his hand was made for his use, and when we went into the house at Robertsbridge he at once took the place of master of the house, as if he had invited me, rather than the converse, going through the rooms to select, and saying, "I will take this," of those which suited him best, and "You may have that" of those he had no fancy for. He was the spoiled child of his genius and of the large world of his admirers; there was no vanity about him, and no exaggeration of his own abilities, but other people, even artists whom he appreciated, were of merely relative importance to him. He declined to put himself in comparison with any of his contemporaries, though he admitted his deficiencies as compared to the great Venetians, and repeatedly said that if he had been taught to paint in a great school he would have been a better painter, which was, no doubt, the truth; for, as he admitted, he had not yet learned the true method of painting. He refused to exhibit in the annual exhibitions, whether of the Academy or other, not because he feared the comparison with other modern painters, but because he was indifferent to it, though I have heard him say that he would be glad to exhibit his pictures with those of the old masters, as they would teach him something about his own. Like every other really great artist, he had a very just appreciation of the work of other men, and his criticisms were, _me judice_, very sound and broad from the point of view of art; the only painter of any note I ever heard him speak of with strong dislike was Brett, whom he could not tolerate. But he had a higher opinion of his own natural abilities than of his actual achievement,--his self-appreciation was not the conceit of a man who understood only what he himself did, but a full consciousness of what at his best he would be capable of doing