Meanwhile, although the more vigorous

members of the brotherhood had shown no

special sympathy for Rossetti's religious mys-

ticism, a feebler artist, himself one of the orig-

inal seven, had taken it up with embarrassing

effusion. This was the late James Collinson,

whose principal picture, “St. Elizabeth of

Hungary” finished in 1851, produced a sort of crisis in Rossetti's career. This painting

out-mystified the mystic himself; it was simply

maudlin and hysterical, though drawn with

some feeling for grace, and in a very earnest

spirit. Rossetti, with his strong good sense,

recognized that it would be impossible ever to

reach the public with art of this unmanly

character, and from this time forth he began

to abandon the practice of directly sacred art.

Meanwhile, as is proved by two sonnets which

Mr. W. B. Scott kindly permits me to print,

one of them for the first time, the poet con-

tinued to dwell on that field of thought from

which, as a painter, he had now shut himself

out. The earlier of these sonnets, which were

written in 1852, and sent to Mr. Scott at

Newcastle, was published for the first time,

with various alterations, in 1881: