16 September 1867 – 22 September 1867

Fine — D. G. R. and I walk, to Boldre Church, Gilpin's tomb and its inscription ; we talk of ' immortality,' but nothing new, and of ' suicide,' which R. thinks ' silly.' There are traces of superstition noticeable in him, none of religion. Back by Pilley and Walhampton House. I visit the Skinners : they are going to Arundel. Young Skinner walks back with me. We find D. G. R. on the sofa.

R. and I look round the furniture brokers, he buys an old mirror and several other things ' for a song,' but they will have to be done up, ' otherwise you fill your house with dinginess.' Then a walk. R. walks very characteristically, with a peculiar lounging gait, often trailing the point of his umbrella on the ground, but still obstinately pushing on and making way, he humming the while with closed teeth, in the intervals of talk, not a tune or anything like one but what sounds like a sotto voce note of defiance to the Universe. Then suddenly he will fling himself down somewhere and refuse to stir an inch further. His favourite attitude — on his back, one knee raised, hands behind head. On a sofa he often, too, curls himself up like a cat. He very seldom takes particular notice of anything as he goes, and cares nothing about natural history, or science in any form or degree. It is plain that the simple, the natural, the naive are merely insipid in his mouth ; he must have strong savours, in art, in literature and in life. Colours, forms, sensations are required to be pungent, mordant. In poetry he desires spasmodic passion, and emphatic, partly archaic, diction. He cannot endure Wordsworth, any more than I can S. He sees nothing in Lovelace's ' Tell me not. Sweet, I am unkind.' In foreign poetry, he is drawn to Dante by inheritance (Milton, by the way, he dislikes) ; in France he is interested by Villon and some others of the old lyric writers, in Germany by nobody. To Greek Literature he seems to owe nothing, nor to Greek Art, directly. In Latin poetry he has turned to one or two things of Catullus for sake of the subjects. English imaginative literature — Poems and Tales, here lies his pabulum : Shakespeare, the old Ballads, Blake, Keats, Shelley, Browning, Mrs. Browning, Tennyson, Poe being first favourites, and now Swin- burne. Wuthering Heights is a Koh-i-noor among novels, Sidonia the Sorceress ' a stunner.' Any writing that with the least competency assumes an imaginative form, or any criticism on the like, attracts his attention more or less ; and he has discovered in obscurity, and in some cases helped to rescue from it, at least in his own circle, various unlucky books ; those, for example, of Ebenezer Jones and Wells, authors of Joseph and His Brethren and Stories after Nature. About these and other matters Rossetti is chivalrously bold in announcing and defending his opinions, and he has the valuable quality of knowing what he likes and sticking to it. In Painting the Early Italians with their quaint- ness and strong rich colouring have magnetised him. In Sculpture he only cares for picturesque and grotesque qualities, and of Architecture as such takes, I think, no notice at all.

D. G. R. and I take a short walk to Pennington, then early dinner, and he departs by the 5.45 train, I going with him to Brocken- hurst. He did up his picture again without having put a single touch upon it ; and while down here indeed never once handled brush or pencil, partly to save his eves.