SOME REMINISCENCES OF WILLIAM MICHAEL ROSSETTI.
Some Reminiscences of William Michael Rossetti. With Portraits and Illustrations. 2 vols. (Brown, Langharn, and Co. £2 2s. net.)—Mr. William Rossetti has already written much on matters connected with his brother and with Preraphaelitism, and, in his own words, has "contributed in some substantial measure to public information concerning relatives and associates," whom he modestly styles "more interesting than myself." But these volumes will be none the less accept- able to that considerable ,publie which is insatiable for details of the most romantic Brotherhood in the history of English art. The author tells the story of his life and of his family circle with a modesty and a simplicity that disarm criticism. Though eclipsed by the extraordinarily gifted Dante Gabriel, and by his sister Christina, whose fine imagination and powers of poetical expression have never met with their due recognition, William himself accomplished no inconsiderable share of solid literary work. By one association or another he was brought in contact with nearly everybody of mark in the literary and artistic world. And as a critic, in these columns and elsewhere, he had no small share in stemming the tide which at one time ran so strongly against the Pre- raphaelites, and in converting the public to wider and more generous ideals in the realms both of painting and of poetry. He was one of the earliest, and not the least effective, of the champions of Swinburne in the storm that was aroused over the first series of "Poems and Ballads "; there has been no break in his friendship with their writer, and the pages devoted to him are among the pleasantest in these volumes. The book as a whole will serve to fill up many chinks in the chronicles of recent English literature, and here and there to simply a missing page, though Mr. Rossetti's memory has an unhappy trick of deserting him when we seem on the brink of something exciting. But apart from the members of the Brotherhood, Tennyson, George Meredith, Walt Whitman, Whistler, Trelawny, the Brownings, Miss Clare Clairmont of Byronic celebrity, Dr. Lushington, Coventry Patmore, Lander, Ruskin, and a host of others, dead and living, pass across the scene, leaving vivid impressions behind them. Not the least curious among the illustrations is a photograph of William Bell Scott, John Ruskin, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti taken in the garden of the last-named at Cheyne Walk in 1864; Ruskin without his beard is somewhat of a revelation to those who only knew him in his later years. There was much tragedy in the history of the Rossetti family. Some of it we learn here for the first time, and it is apparent that through all the shadow and sadness William Rossetti was the prop and mainstay of the group, a faithful brother and a good son. No one can put down these reminis- cences without a feeling of kindliness and respect for the writer, which in these days of "revelations" and disclosures is no small praise.
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