Of Burne-Jones I saw little in those days.  He was still working out his artistic problem, and came now and then to the studio of Rossetti, who had the highest opinion of his abilities.  And, taking art in its special function, that of the decorator, there can hardly be a dispute as to his rank amongst the greatest of romantic designers of the centuries following that of Giotto.  His fertility of invention was very great; and, considering that his studies began at a period which for most artists would have been too late for the acquisition of technical excellence of a high degree, his attainment in that direction was most remarkable.  Entirely original, if that quality could be predicated of any artist, he certainly was not, and he borrowed of his predecessors to an immense extent, not slavishly but adaptingly, and what he borrowed he proved a good right to, for he used it with a high intelligence and to admirable effect.  It seems to me that though he added little or nothing to the resources of art, as Rossetti undoubtedly did, he employed the precedents of past art, and especially of the Italian renaissance, to better effect than any other artist of our epoch; and, in borrowing as he did, he only followed the example of most of the great old masters, who used material of any kind found in their predecessors’ works, in perfectly good conscience.  His industry was prodigious, and his devotion to art supreme.

CHAPTER XXV

RETURN TO JOURNALISM

Miss Spartali and I were married in the Spring of 1871, and in justice to her I came to the hazardous decision to make my home in England, and there to devote myself to general literature and correspondence with America.  As my financial condition at that moment, thanks to the various contributions to it, was better than it had ever been before, I had the courage needed to face the great change in my life.  I brought with me from Lowell a letter to Leslie Stephen, whose friendship has ever since been one of the pleasantest things in my English life.  Mrs. Stephen, the elder daughter of Thackeray, was to us an angel of goodness, and never since has the grateful recognition of her loving hospitality in thought and deed diminished in my mind.  Our debt to her was a debt of the heart, and those are never paid.  Her sister, later Mrs. Ritchie, added much to the obligations of our early life in London, and still remains our friend.  Mr. Stephen gave me an introduction to the “Pall Mall Gazette,” then under the charge of Greenwood, and I contributed in incidental ways to its columns; and with contributions to “Scribner’s” and other magazines it seemed that we might forgather, and we decided to bring the children out.