Rossetti’s influence, though always partial and never leaving a genuine pupil, was very wide, in the end, it seems to me, much exceeding that of Millais and that of Holman Hunt; but it is a question in which of his two functions—­poet or painter—­it was most effective.  I have heard Swinburne say that but for Rossetti’s early poetry he would never have written verses, but this I think must be taken conditionally.  Swinburne has the poetic temperament so decided and so individual, and his musical quality is so exalted, that it was impossible that he should not have shown it at some time; but it is possible that Rossetti furnished the spark that actually kindled the fire.  Perhaps Swinburne himself cannot trace the vein to its hidden sources, and confounded the mastery of Rossetti’s temperament and the personal magnetism he exercised on those who came into close relations with him with an intellectual stimulus which, strictly speaking, Rossetti did not exercise.  He was too specialized, too exclusively artistic in all his developments, to carry much intellectual weight, and Swinburne was more fully developed in the purely intellectual man; but the warmest friendship existed between them.  I often saw Swinburne at Cheyne Walk, and, when they were together, the painter’s was certainly the dominant personality, to which Swinburne’s attitude was that of an affectionate younger brother.

One day Rossetti had invited us all to dinner, and when we went down to the drawing-room there was great exhilaration, Swinburne leading the fun.  Morris was, as usual, very serious, and, in discussing some subject of conversation, Swinburne began to chaff and tease him, and finally gave him a vigorous thrust in the stomach, which sent him backwards into a high wardrobe, on the outer corners of which stood Rossetti’s two favorite blue and white hawthorn jars, a pair unrivaled in London, for which he had paid several hundred pounds each.  The wardrobe yielded and down came the jars.  I caught one, and Morris, I believe, the other, as it was falling on his head.  Rossetti was naturally angry, and, for the first and only time in my experience of him, lost control of his temper, bursting out on the culprit with a torrent of abuse which cooled the hilarity of the poet instantly, and reduced him to decorum with the promptness of a wet bath.  To hear Swinburne read his own poetry was a treat, and this I enjoyed several times at Rossetti’s; the terrible sonnets on Napoleon III. after Sedan, amongst the readings, being the most memorable and effective.

The influence of Rossetti on Morris and Burne-Jones is unquestionable, and they probably both owed their embarking in an artistic career to the stimulus given by the advent of a purely artistic nature which set a new light in their firmament.  The little we have of Morris’s painting shows only that he had the gift, but his own appreciation of his work was too modest to encourage him to face the strain of going through the necessary education, made more