SOURCE: Rossetti, D. G. “The Stealthy School of Criticism.” Athenaeum 2303 (16 December 1871): 792-94.

In the following excerpt, Rossetti rebukes the criticism aimed at him by Thomas Maitland (Robert Buchanan) in “The Fleshly School of Poetry.”

Your paragraph, a fortnight ago, relating to the pseudonymous authorship of an article, violently assailing myself and other writers of poetry, in the Contemporary Review for October last, reveals a species of critical masquerade which I have expressed in the heading given to this letter. …

The primary accusation, on which this writer grounds all the rest, seems to be that others and myself “extol fleshliness as the distinct and supreme end of poetic and pictorial art; aver that poetic expression is greater than poetic thought; and, by inference, that the body is greater than the soul, and sound superior to sense.” … It is true, some fragmentary pretence at proof is put in here and...