Pre-Raphaelite Diaries and Letters. Edited by William Michael Rossetti. Illustrated.
(Hurst and Blackett. 6s.)—This book takes us into the intimate life of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and their friends, in the years 1847 to 1856. Besides the work of painting, with which it chiefly deals, we have interesting side- lights on the literature of the times when the Brownings, Tennyson, Carlyle, Thackeray, Dickens, to mention only a few names, were all at work. Here is a passage from the Pre- Raphaelite Brotherhood Journal, in 1853, which brings the last generation very near to us:—" Carlyle the other night in talking with Woolner was speaking of Alfred' (as he calls Tennyson) and Browning in reference to their embodying their thoughts in verse, when there is no great need of doing things in the directest way possible. ' Alfred,' he said, 'knows how to jingle, but Browning does not.' He spoke, however, of Browning's intellect in the highest terms. He then referred to the Pre- Raphaelite Brotherhood. ' These Pre-Raphaelites they talk of are said to copy the thing as it is, or invent it as it must have been; now there's some sense and hearty sincerity in this. It is the only way of doing anything fit to be seen." Mader Brown's diary (1847-1856) is chiefly an account of. his hard fight with poverty. He and his wife and children were at times reduced to a few shillings. Even then he says that it is impossible for him to paint in any but the most thorough and conscientious manner, so we hear no mention of pot-boilers. The minute details he gives as to the composition and painting of " Work " and the "Emigrants" are very interesting. He does not seem to have shrunk from scraping out his work many times if necessary, and the artist's joy in form and colour helped him to bear and to overcome poverty. People at this time looked upon shower- baths as noteworthy events, to judge from the many entries in this diary recording the fact of taking one, and from the im- portance attached to them in the Browning letters. Whenever a shower-bath is mentioned the vision of Leech's gentleman in the conical hat rises before us, and we can laugh again.
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