a doctor in whom I have confidence, and an excellent nurse, and we have also seen Dr. Babington, head of the Lying-in Hospital, so I feel sure all is being done for the best. She has too much courage to be in the least downcast herself; and this is one great point, nor is her strength unusually low. So we can but wait, and trust for a happy termination.

"With kind remembrances to Mrs. Gilchrist . . On the second of May, D. G. Rossetti says :— "Swinburne and I will be with you on Saturday. "This morning my wife was confined--Our fears were correct in one respect, as the child was still-born-In all other respects she fares as yet, thank God, better than we had ventured to hope. Still of course anxiety cannot be at an end yet.

"I will try and come to the Cheese' on Thursday, though perhaps rather later than six, but I dare say I should find you till nearly seven." [The "Cheshire Cheese," a well-known tavern in Wine Office Court, out of Fleet-street.]

"I believe I am going to Macmillan's afterwards and perhaps you will bear me company. I send him the book to-day, and when I see him shall add your salutary stipulation, as to a fortnight's grace for decision. Patmore has written me most encouragingly concerning opinion of the book." [The book in question was "The Early Italian Poets, from Ciullo D'Alcamo to Dante Alighieri."] "I shall lend you a copy, if you have time to look at it. Of course I mean to beg your acceptance of one as soon as it has the etchings and is otherwise completed."

WEIGALL SITS FOR BOSWELL.

My wife goes on well, and gets out daily."

89

In a letter (June 18, 1861), Gabriel Rossetti speaks of being troubled with "an ulcerated sore throat, with fever, to which I am subject. I used a remedy I have used before, and am now better. I wish I were with you to get the benefit of some sun, and should much better even like it for my wife, but we must see; she has been working very hard these few days, and made a beautiful water-colour sketch, but is none the better for it . . .

"Smith and Elder have made me the offer of taking all expenses, but will not give a halfpenny, furnishing a calculation similar to Macmillan's, proving that the speculation would not in that way be a convenient one at all. I think I shall close with them now (though I deferred my answer), as I should only hear the same from Chapman's, and perhaps unaccompanied by so decent an offer; I see Ruskin has much influenced S. and E. in my favour. They propose, as the only way, to sell the book for 12s. in one vol., and without the etchings, if I do not think them worth making, unpaid; but I almost think I shall make them for the book's sake. What say you? Have you any suggestion?"

P.S.-Weigall brought me (when he came to sit for my Boswell yesterday !) another plate he is doing for your book, a Job border with the America headpiece in the middle. I have asked him for the future to let me see his first drawing."

In a long letter, describing his late friend Woodward, Rossetti speaks of a visit to Oxford with the architect: -"Going there one day in his company to see the

progress of the Museum, in 1857, at the outset of the long vacation, I was greatly struck with the beauty of the building he showed me, one on which he was then engaged the new debating room of the Union Debating Club. Thinking of it only as his beautiful work, and without taking into consideration the purpose it was intended for, (indeed hardly knowing of the latter) I offered to paint figures of some kind on the blank spaces of one of the gallery window bays; and another friend who was with us, William Morris, offered to do the same for a second bay. Woodward was greatly delighted with the idea, as his principle was that of the mediaval builders, to avail himself in any building of as much decoration as circumstances permitted at the time, and not prefer uniform bareness to partial beauty. He had never before had a decided opportunity of introducing picture work in a building, and grasped at the idea.

"In the course of that long vacation, six other friends of ours-Edward Burne Jones, Arthur Hughes, V. C. Prinsep, John Pollen (the painter of the lovely roof of Merton Chapel), R. S. Stanhope, and Alexander Munro, joined in the project, which was a labour of love on all our parts-the expenses of materials alone being defrayed from the building fund. Each of the five painters took one window-bay, and the sculptor the stone shield above the porch, and the work proceeded merrily in concert for several months.

"The subject taken for illustration throughout was the ancient romance of the Morte d'Arthur, and the pictures were painted on a large scale in distemper. The roof was also covered with a vast pattern-work of grotesque

THE JOVIAL CAMPAIGN.

91

creatures by Morris, assisted by amateur workmen, who offered on all hands, chiefly University men who stayed 'n Oxford that 'Long' for the purpose.

"The work was, as I said, done for its own sake, and therefore, after that long vacation spent on it, could only be resumed when other business on the part of its various members rendered it possible. All were however bent on completing it,-a perfect scheme having been drawn out for the whole series, of which several bays still remained untouched, though I had myself made designs for two, besides the one I in great measure carried out. However, the owners of the building, a set of youths, among whom some had taste and feeling, but these not the majority, and with whom of course we had held no sort of council on the matter,-grew impatient in 1859, two years later, and applied to me to suggest that some one of us should consent to complete the series from my existing designs, for which (i.e. for the carrying out) I must say they stated themselves willing to pay. We held a counsel on the matter, and one or two among us agreed to go down and fill the empty bays at a stated period, charging only a sum sufficient to cover the price of materials. We could not however agree on all points, and they then requested me to lend my designs to another artist of their own to work from. This I refused, and they employed this person to fill the remaining spaces from his own designs: which I have never seen, but hear are wonderful exceedingly.

"Thus ended this jovial campaign on which I might give you more details but have said too much already; my business being with Woodward. . .

"Woodward built the new Crown Insurance Office, in New Bridge Street, Blackfriars, close to my studio. It seems to me the most perfect piece of civil architecture of the new school that I have seen in London. I never cease to look at it with delight; and the decoration designed by Pollen and executed by Woodward's excellent trained workmen, the Brothers Shae, is worthy of the building.

Dante G. Rossetti, who was furnishing Alexander Gilchrist with biographical details of the young architect Woodward, for an (obituary) notice-goes on to say "I must have been the last friend who saw Woodward in England, as he called here, after we had long been unseen by each other, on his way to the station, going this last time to Paris. I am sitting now in the place, and I think in the chair, he sat in, to write this. If I am ever found worthy to meet him again, it will be where the dejection is unneeded which I cannot but feel at this moment; for the power of further and better work must be the reward bestowed on the deserts and checked aspirations of such a sincere soul as his. . . .

"No doubt the work by which his name must at any rate be preserved, is the Oxford Museum. I know how much there is in this building with which he himself was greatly dissatisfied-the influences at work in its direction being in great measure inartistic, not only to the extent of indifference, but of antagonism. Carping and opposition had wearied him partially of a work on which he entered with the warmest enthusiasm; but still, it is in the main a very noble one, and worthy of its purpose. Many faults in it, were things traced to