was "that of a fiery and dictatorial mind concentrated into repose."—Ibid. In the February of 1862, Rossetti was overwhelmed with grief and dismay by the death of his wife." He was always and essentially of a dominant turn, in intellect and temperament a leader. He was impetuous and vehement, and necessarily therefore impatient; easily angered, easily appeased, although the embittered feelings of his later years obscured this amiable quality to some extent . . . in family affection warm and equable and (except in relation to our mother, for whom he had a fondling love) not demonstrative. Never on stilts in matters of the intellect, or of aspiration, but steeped in the sense of beauty, and loving, if not always practising, the good . . . and anti-scientific to the marrow. Throughout his youth and early manhood I considered him to be markedly free from vanity, though certainly well-equipped in pride; the distinction between these two tendencies was less definite in his closing years . . . good-natured and hearty without being complaisant or accommodating; reserved at times, yet not haughty; desultory enough in youth, diligent and persistent in maturity; self-centred always, and brushing aside whatever traversed his purpose or his bent."—Preface, by Mr. W. M. Rossetti, to the Collected Works.
In 1870 Rossetti published his volume of Poems. c< For some considerable while it was hailed with general and lofty praise, chequered by only moderate stricture or demur; but late in 1871 Mr. Robert Buchanan published, under a pseudonym, in the Contemporary Review, a very hostile article, named The Fleshly School of Poetry, attacking the poems on literary and more especially on moral grounds. . . . The assault produced on Rossetti an effect altogether disproportionate to its intrinsic importance; indeed, it developed in his character an excess of sensitiveness and of distempered brooding which his nearest relatives and friends had never before surmised.
