I have more than once had occasion to confute a current misconception that Dante Rossetti could be adequately described as a sentimentalist, a dreamer, a mystic, an æsthete, and the like, without allowance being made for a considerable counterbalance of attributes of a very opposite character. Certainly he had some sentiment; he dreamed several dreams, asleep and awake; he may have been a mystic (though I never quite understood what a mystic is); and he had a passion for art in various forms, and for the word “art” we now often substitute the word “æsthetics”--a term which Rossetti seldom, if ever, pronounced. But it is not the less true that he was full of vigour and buoyancy, full of _élan_, well alive to the main chance, capable of enjoying the queer as well as the grave aspects of life, by no means behindhand in contributing his quota to the cause of high spirits--and generally a man equally natural and genial. In youth these qualities had not been overclouded by some troubles which beset his later years--although indeed, like other men, he had at all periods of life his troubles and his glooms. The present correspondence belongs all to the years of his youth; and I think readers will say that, whatever else Dante Rossetti may have been, he was a quick-blooded, downright-speaking man, with plenty of will and an abundant lack of humbug. People who take an interest in him may depend upon it that the more they learn about him--of an authentic kind--the more will the masculine traits of his character appear in evidence, and the less will room be left for the notion of a pallid and anæmic “æsthete,” a candidate for the sunflowers of a Du Maurier design. He did not “yearn.” All this is said without at all derogating from the fact that in the very essence of his mind and temperament Dante Rossetti was a poet--a poet who expressed himself in verse and in form and colour. I have appended several headnotes and one or two footnotes to these letters; and will only add here a few observations, in the form of a _Dramatis Personæ_, on some persons not otherwise accounted for: John Lucas Tupper, Sculptor, intimate associate of the Præraphaelite Brothers; a selection of his poems was published posthumously in 1897. Frederic George Stephens, Student of Painting, P.R.B., now a leading Art-Critic. Walter Howell Deverell, Painter, nominated for election into the P.R.B. Thomas Seddon, Painter: produced the picture of _Jerusalem_ now in the National Gallery. John P. Seddon, Architect. Charles A. Collins, Painter and Author; became son-in-law of Dickens. James Hannay, Novelist and Essayist; was British Consul at Barcelona in his later years. Francis McCracken, Shipping Agent at Belfast, an early purchaser of “Præraphaelite” pictures. John Marshall, Surgeon, ultimately President of the Royal College of Physicians. William Allingham, Poet and Essayist. Thomas Woolner, Sculptor and R.A.