By W. M. Rossetti:  “Review of the Strayed Reveller and other Poems, by A.”  As we all now know, “A.” was Matthew Arnold, and this was his first published volume; but I, at the time of writing the review, knew nothing of the identity of “A.,” and even had I been told that he was Matthew Arnold, that would have carried the matter hardly at all further.  I remember that, after I had written the whole or most of this admiring review, I found that the volume had been abused in “Blackwood’s Magazine”; a fact of sweet savour to myself and other P.R.B.’s, as we entertained a hearty detestation of that magazine, with its blustering “Christopher North,” and its traditions of truculency against Keats, Shelley, Leigh Hunt, Tennyson, Ruskin, and some others.  I read “A.’s” volume with great attention, and piqued myself somewhat upon having introduced into my review some reference (detailed or cursory) to every poem in it.  Possibly (but I hardly think so) the critique was afterwards shortened, so as to bereave it of this merit.

By Madox Brown (the etching) and by W. M. Rossetti (the verses):  “Cordelia.”  For the belated No. 3 of “The Germ” we were much at a loss for an illustration.  Mr. Brown offered to accommodate us by etching this design, one of a series from “King Lear” which he had drawn in Paris in 1844.  That series, though not very sightly to the eye, is of extraordinary value for dramatic insight and energy.  We gladly accepted, and he produced this etching with very little self-satisfaction, so far as the technique of execution is concerned.  Dante Rossetti was to have furnished some verses for the etching; but for this he did not find time, so I was put in as a stopgap, and I am not sure that any reader of “The Germ” has ever thanked me for my obedience to the call of duty.

By Patmore:  “Essay on Macbeth.”  In this interesting and well-considered paper Mr. Patmore assumes that he was the first person to put into writing the opinion that Macbeth, before meeting with the witches, had already definitely conceived and imparted the idea of obtaining the crown of Scotland by wrongful means.  I have always felt some uncertainty whether Mr. Patmore was really the first; if he was, it certainly seems strange that the train of reasoning which he furnishes in this essay—­forcible, even if we do not regard it as unanswerable—­should not have presented itself to the mind and pen of some earlier writer.  The Essay appears to have been left incomplete in at least one respect.  In speaking of “the fifth scene,” the author refers to “postponement of comment” upon Macbeth’s letter to his wife, and he “leaves it for the present.”  But the comment never comes.

By Christina Rossetti:  “Repining.”  This rather long poem, written in December 1847 on a still broader scale, was never republished by the authoress, although all her other poems in “The Germ” were so.  She did not think that its deservings were such as to call for republication.  I apprehend that herein she exercised a wise discretion:  none the less, when I was compiling the volume of her “New Poems,” issued in 1896, I included “Repining”—­for I think that some of the considerations which apply to the works of an author while living do not remain in anything like full force after death.