popular writer of tales, verses, etc.; Alexander Munro the sculptor; Walter Howell Deverell, a young painter, son of the Secretary to the Government Schools of Design; James Hannay, the novelist, satirical writer, and journalist; and (known through Madox Brown) William Cave Thomas, a painter who had studied in the severe classical school of Germany, and had earned a name in the Westminster Hall competitions for frescoes in Parliament.  For Woolner, John Hancock and Bernhard Smith, sculptors; Coventry Patmore the poet, with his connections the Orme family and Professor Masson; also William North, an eccentric young literary man, of much effervescence and some talent, author of “Anti-Coningsby” and other novels.  For Collinson, the prominent painter of romantic and biblical subjects John Rogers Herbert, who was, like Collinson himself, a Roman Catholic convert.

The Praeraphaelite Brotherhood having been founded in September 1848, the members exhibited in 1849 works conceived in the new spirit.  These were received by critics and by the public with more than moderate though certainly not unmixed favour:  it had not as yet transpired that there was a league of unquiet and ambitious young spirits, bent upon making a fresh start of their own, and a clean sweep of some effete respectabilities.  It was not until after the exhibitions were near closing in 1849 that any idea of bringing out a magazine came to be discussed.  The author of the project was Dante Gabriel Rossetti.  He alone among the P.R.B.’s had already cultivated the art of writing in verse and in prose to some noticeable extent ("The Blessed Damozel” had been produced before May 1847), and he was better acquainted than any other member with British and foreign literature.  There need be no self-conceit in saying that in these respects I came next to him.  Holman-Hunt, Woolner, and Stephens, were all reading men (in British literature only) within straiter bounds than Rossetti:  not any one of them, I think, had as yet done in writing anything worth mentioning.  Millais and Collinson, more especially the former, were men of the brush, not the pen, yet both of them capable of writing with point, and even in verse.  By July 13 and 14, 1849, some steps were taken towards discussing the project of a magazine.  The price, as at first proposed, was to be sixpence; the title, “Monthly Thoughts in Literature, Poetry, and Art”; each number was to have an etching.  Soon afterwards a price of one shilling was decided upon, and two etchings per number:  but this latter intention was not carried out.{1} All the P.R.B.’s were to be proprietors of the magazine:  I question however whether Collinson was ever persuaded to assume this responsibility, entailing payment of an eventual deficit.  We were quite ready also to have some other proprietors.  Mr. Herbert was addressed by Collinson, and at one time was regarded as pretty safe.  Mr. Hancock the sculptor did not resist the pressure put upon him; but after all he contributed nothing to “The Germ,” either in work or in money.  Walter Deverell assented, and paid when the time came.  Thus there seem to have been eight, or else seven, proprietors—­not one of them having any spare cash, and not all of them much steadiness of interest in the scheme set going by Dante Rossetti.