[13] “The return of this school was to a mediaevalism different from the tentative and scrappy mediaevalism of Percy, from the genial but slightly superficial mediaevalism of Scott, and even from the more exact but narrow and distinctly conventional mediaevalism of Tennyson. . . .  Moreover, though it may seem whimsical or extravagant to say so, these poets added to the very charm of mediaeval literature, which they thus revived, a subtle something which differentiates it from—­which, to our perhaps blind sight, seems to be wanting in—­mediaeval literature itself.  It is constantly complained (and some of those who cannot go all the way with the complainants can see what they mean) that the graceful and labyrinthine stories, the sweet snatches of song, the quaint drama and legend of the Middle Ages lack—­to us—­life; that they are shadowy, unreal, tapestry on the wall, not alive even as living pageants are.  By the strong touch of modernness which these poets and the best of their followers introduced into their work, they have given the vivification required” (Saintsbury, “Literature of the Nineteenth Century,” p. 439).  Pre-Raphaelitism “is a direct and legitimate development of the great romantic revival in England. . . .  Even Tennyson, much more Scott and Coleridge and their generation, had entered only very partially into the treasures of mediaeval literature, and were hardly at all acquainted with those of mediaeval art.  Conybeare, Kemble, Thorpe, Madden were only in Tennyson’s own time reviving the study of Old and Middle English.  Early French and Early Italian were but just being opened up.  Above all, the Oxford Movement directed attention to mediaeval architecture, literature, thought, as had never been the case before in England, and as has never been the case at all in any other country” ("A Short History of English Literature,” by G. Saintsbury, London, 1898, p. 779).

[14] “Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti,” by T. Hall Caine, London, 1883, p. 41.

[15] “The Collected Works of Dante Gabriel Rossetti.”  Edited by W. M. Rossetti, two vols., London, 1886.

[16] “Dante Gabriel Rossetti.  A Record and a Study,” p. 305.

[17] He wrote to Allingham in 1855, apropos of the latter’s poem “The Music Master”:  “I’m not sure that it is not too noble or too resolutely healthy. . . .  I must confess to a need in narrative dramatic poetry . . . of something rather ‘exciting,’ and indeed, I believe, something of the ‘romantic’ element, to rouse my mind to anything like the moods produced by personal emotion in my own life.  That sentence is shockingly ill worded, but Keats’ narratives would be of the kind I mean.”  Theodore Watts ("Encyclopaedia Britannica,” article “Rossetti”) says that “the purely romantic temper was with Rossetti a more permanent and even a more natural temper than with any other nineteenth-century poet, even including the author of ‘Christabel’ himself.”  He thinks that all the French