logical and critical in his emotion is not the real part at all.
I have been for many months now studying with my students in college on Rossetti, starting with his lyrics and almost finishing his sonnets. I found that it was more easy in truth for them to understand him (appreciate too), striking enough to say perhaps, than even Longfellow of homespun simplicity. It may be from the reason that they are too old to be content with him at an imaginary fireside, or they are too young yet to really appreciate him as they are in the age when spiritual speculation is more attractive. I think that the acclimatisation of Western art and literature of the modern type which has been encouraged here, though not generally, but among the discerning class, made them feel akin to Rossetti already, even before studying him. And the fact that he had a limitation, which was of an Eastern kind, was doubtless a large reason of this immediate reception; as he never tried to conceal his limitation, it always appeared prominently, but, on the other hand, to delight some people (and us) immensely. He is the poet whom we can
