“You doubtless think it odd,” he said at one moment, “to hear an old fellow read such love-poetry as much of this is, but I may tell you that the larger part of it, though still unpublished, was written when I was as young as you are. When I print these sonnets, I shall probably affix a note saying, that though many of them are of recent production, not a few are obviously the work of earlier years.” I expressed admiration of the pathetic sonnet entitled _Without Her_. “I cannot tell you,” he said, “at what terrible moment it was wrung from me.” He had read it with tears of voice, subsiding at length into suppressed sobs and intervals of silence. As though to explain away this emotion he said: “All poetry, that is really poetry, affects me deeply and often to tears. It does not need to be pathetic or yet tender to produce such a result. I have known in my life two men, and two only, who are similarly sensitive--Tennyson, and my old friend and neighbour William Bell Scott. I once heard Tennyson read _Maud_, and whilst the fiery passages were delivered with a voice and vehemence which he alone of living men can compass, the softer passages and the songs made the tears course down his cheeks. Morris is a fine reader, and so, of his kind, though a little prone to sing-song, is Swinburne. Browning both reads and talks well--at least he did so when I knew him intimately as a young man.” Rossetti went on to say that he had been among Browning’s earliest admirers. As a boy he had seen something signed by the then unknown name of the author of _Paracelsus_, and wrote to him. The result was an intimacy. He spoke with warmest admiration of _Child Roland_; and referred to Elizabeth Barrett Browning in terms of regard, and, I think I may say, of reverence. I asked if he had ever heard Ruskin read. He replied: