Rude
hands have touched it, and unmusical voices have made it sound almost
common in our ears. Yet none the less is it for him to tell us of the
marvel of this man whose art he has analysed with such exquisite insight,
whose life he knows as no one else can know it, whom he so loyally loved
and tended, and by whom he was so loyally beloved in turn. As for the
others, the scribblers and nibblers of literature, if they indeed
reverence Rossetti's memory, let them pay him the one homage he would
most have valued, the gracious homage of silence. 'Though you can fret
me, yet you cannot play upon me,' says Hamlet to his false friend, and
even so might Rossetti speak to those well-intentioned mediocrities who
would seem to know his stops and would sound him to the top of his
compass. True, they cannot fret him now, for he has passed beyond the
possibility of pain; yet they cannot play upon him either; it is not for
them to pluck out the heart of his mystery.

There is, however, one feature of this book that deserves unstinted
praise. Mr. Anderson's bibliography will be found of immense use by
every student of Rossetti's work and influence. Perhaps Young's very
powerful attack on Pre-Raphaelitism, as expounded by Mr. Ruskin
(Longmans, 1857), might be included, but, in all other respects, it seems
quite complete, and the chronological list of paintings and drawings is
really admirable. When this unfortunate 'Great Writers' Series comes to
an end, Mr. Anderson's bibliographies should be collected together and
published in a separate volume. At present they are in a very second-
rate company indeed.

Life of Dante Gabriel Rossetti. By Joseph Knight. 'Great Writers'
Series. (Walter Scott.)

MR. MORRIS'S ODYSSEY

(Pall Mall Gazette, April 26, 1887.)

Of all our modern poets, Mr. William Morris is the one best qualified by
nature and by art to translate for us the marvellous epic of the
wanderings of Odysseus. For he is our only true story-singer since
Chaucer; if he is a Socialist, he is also a Saga-man; and there was a
time when he was never wearied of telling us strange legends of gods and
men, wonderful tales of chivalry and romance. Master as he is of
decorative and descriptive verse, he has all the Greek's joy in the
visible aspect of things, all the Greek's sense of delicate and
delightful detail, all the Greek's pleasure in beautiful textures and
exquisite materials and imaginative designs; nor can any one have a
keener sympathy with the Homeric admiration for the workers and the
craftsmen in the various arts, from the stainers in white ivory and the
embroiderers in purple and fold, to the weaver sitting by the loom and
the dyer dipping in the vat, the chaser of shield and helmet, the carver
of wood or stone. And to all this is added the true temper of high
romance, the power to make the past as real to us as the present, the
subtle instinct to discern passion, the swift impulse to portray life.

It is no wonder the lovers of Greek literature have so eagerly looked
forward to Mr.