“As to the personality of Dante Gabriel Rossetti much has been written since his death, and it is now widely known that he was a man who exercised an almost irresistible charm over most with whom he was brought in contact. His manner could be peculiarly winning, especially with those much younger than himself, and his voice was alike notable for its sonorous beauty and for a magnetic quality that made the ear alert, whether the speaker was engaged in conversation, recitation, or reading. I have heard him read, some of them over and over again, all the poems in the _Ballads and Sonnets_; and especially in such productions as _The Cloud Confines_ was his voice as stirring as a trumpet tone; but where he excelled was in some of the pathetic portions of the _Vita Nuova_, or the terrible and sonorous passages of _L’Inferno_, when the music of the Italian language found full expression indeed. His conversational powers I am unable adequately to describe, for during the four or five years of my intimacy with him he suffered too much from ill-health to be a consistently brilliant talker, but again and again I have seen instances of those marvellous gifts that made him at one time a Sydney Smith in wit, and a Coleridge in eloquence. In appearance he was, if anything, rather over middle height, and, especially latterly, somewhat stout; his forehead was of splendid proportions, recalling instantaneously to most strangers the Stratford bust of Shakespeare; and his gray blue eyes were clear and piercing, and characterised by that rapid penetrative gaze so noticeable in Emerson. He seemed always to me an unmistakable Englishman, yet the Italian element was frequently recognisable. As far as his own opinion is concerned, he was wholly English.”--1878. RICHARD SAVAGE 1697-1743 [Sidenote: _Dublin University, Magazine_, 1858. *]