According to Mr. Sharp, Rossetti pronounced this sonnet to be the finest of all the versions of the Doppelganger idea, and for many years he seriously purposed to render it in art. It is easy to understand why Rossetti never carried out his intention, for the pictorial magic of the sonnet is so powerful that even the greatest of all romantic painters could hardly have rendered it on canvas. Poetry can suggest to the imagination deeper mysteries than the subtlest romantic painting. No sonnet has been more frequently localized—erroneously localized than this. It is often supposed to depict the Thames above Kew, but Mr. Norris says that ‘every one familiar with Hemingford Meadow will see that it describes the Ouse backwater near Porto Bello, where the author as a young man was constantly seen on summer evenings listening from a canoe to the blackcaps and nightingales of the Thicket.’ That excellent critic, Mr. Earl Hodgson, the editor of Dr. Gordon Hake’s ‘New Day,’ seems to think that the ‘lily-isles’ are on the Thames at Kelmscott, while other writers have frequently localized these ‘lily-isles’ on the Avon at Stratford. But, no doubt, Mr. Norris is right in placing them on the Ouse. This, however, gives me a good opportunity of saying a few words about Mr. Watts-Dunton’s love of the Avon. The sacred old town of Stratford-on-Avon has always been a favourite haunt of Mr. Watts-Dunton’s. No poet of our time has shown a greater love of our English rivers, but he seems to love the Avon even more passionately than the Ouse. He cannot describe the soft sands of Petit Bot Bay in Guernsey without bringing in an allusion to ‘Avon’s sacred silt.’ It was at Stratford-on-Avon that he wrote several of his poems, notably the two sonnets which appeared first in the ‘Athenæum,’ and afterwards in the little volume, ‘Jubilee Greetings at Spithead to the Men of Greater Britain.’ They are entitled ‘The Breath of Avon: To English-speaking Pilgrims on Shakspeare’s Birthday’:— Whate’er of woe the Dark may hide in womb For England, mother of kings of battle and song— Rapine, or racial hate’s mysterious wrong, Blizzard of Chance, or fiery dart of Doom— Let breath of Avon, rich of meadow-bloom, Bind her to that great daughter sever’d long— To near and far-off children young and strong— With fetters woven of Avon’s flower perfume. Welcome, ye English-speaking pilgrims, ye Whose hands around the world are join’d by him, Who make his speech the language of the sea, Till winds of Ocean waft from rim to rim The Breath of Avon: let this great day be A Feast of Race no power shall ever dim.