SOURCE: Maitland, Thomas. “The Fleshly School of Poetry: Mr. D. G. Rossetti.” Contemporary Review 18, no. 3 (October 1871): 334-50.

In the following excerpt, Maitland (a pseudonym of Robert Buchanan), negatively critiques the poetry of Rossetti and the Pre-Raphaelites.

If, on the occasion of any public performance of Shakspere's great tragedy, the actors who perform the parts of Rosencranz and Guildenstern were, by a preconcerted arrangement and by means of what is technically known as “gagging,” to make themselves fully as prominent as the leading character, and to indulge in soliloquies and business strictly belonging to Hamlet himself, the result would be, to say the least of it, astonishing; yet a very similar effect is produced on the unprejudiced mind when the “walking gentlemen” of the fleshly school of poetry, who bear precisely the same relation to Mr. Tennyson as Rosencranz and Guildenstern do to the Prince of Denmark in the...