“He seems in a mood to make my fortune,” said Rossetti in the spring of 1854; and early in 1855 Ruskin wrote: 

“It seems to me that, of all the painters I know, you on the whole have the greatest genius; and you appear to me also to be—­as far as I can make out—­a very good sort of person, I see that you are unhappy, and that you can’t bring out your genius as you should.  It seems to me then the proper and necessary thing, if I can, to make you more happy; and that I shall be more really useful in enabling you to paint properly, and keep your room in order, than in any other way.”

He did his best to keep that room in order in every sense.  Anxious to promote the painter’s marriage with Miss Siddal—­“Princess Ida,” as Ruskin called her—­he offered a similar arrangement to that which he had made with Rossetti; and began in 1855 to give her L150 a year in exchange for drawings up to that value.  Rossetti’s poems also found a warm admirer and advocate.  In 1856, “The Burden of Nineveh” was published anonymously in the Oxford and Cambridge Magazine; Ruskin wrote to Rossetti that it was “glorious” and that he wanted to know who was the author,—­perhaps not without a suspicion that he was addressing the man who could tell.  In 1861 he guaranteed, or advanced, the cost of “The Early Italian Poets,” up to L100, with Smith and Elder; and endeavoured, but unsuccessfully, to induce Thackeray to find a place for other poems in The Cornhill Magazine.

Mr. W.M.  Rossetti, in his book on his brother “as Designer and Writer” and in his “Family Letters,” draws a pleasant picture of the intimacy between the artist and the critic.  “At one time,” he says, “I am sure they even loved one another.”  But in 1865 Rossetti, never very tolerant of criticism and patronage, took in bad part his friend’s remonstrances about the details of “Venus Verticordia.”  Eighteen months later, Ruskin tried to renew the old acquaintance.  Rossetti did not return his call; and further efforts on Ruskin’s part, up to 1870, met with little response.  But the lecture on Rossetti in “The Art of England” shows that on one side at least “their parting,” as Mr. W.M.  Rossetti says, “was not in anger;” and the portrait of 1861, now in the Oxford University Galleries, will remain as a memorial of the ten years’ friendship of the two famous men.

At Red Lion Square, during Lent term, 1855, the three teachers worked together every Thursday evening.  With the beginning of the third term, March 29, the increase of the class made it more convenient to divide their forces.  Rossetti thenceforward taught the figure on another night of the week; while the elementary and landscape class continued to meet on Thursdays under Ruskin and Lowes Dickinson.  In 1856 the elementary and landscape class was further divided, Mr. Dickinson taking Tuesday evenings, and Ruskin continuing the Thursday class, with the help of William Ward as under-master.  Later on, G. Allen, J. Bunney, and W. Jeffrey were teachers.  Burne-Jones, met in 1856 at Rossetti’s studio, was also pressed into the service for a time.