Memories and Notes of People and Places 1852-1912

Colvin moved in the Rossetti circle in DGR's most lively years, in the late 1860s and early 1870s. His memoir devotes a section to the period. Most notable is his report on the dinners when DGR would extemporise his limericks. He gives an interesting variant on DGR's best known limerick on William Bell Scott as an example of how DGR would “faithfully and scathingly hit off” the “essential weaknesses” of his target. He also prints part of a limerick that DGR turned on himself, but—as Colvin writes—“wild horses would not drag from me” (74) the conclusion of the epigram. Colvin also prints DGR's limerick on Charles Augustus Howell, copying it from WMR's 1911 edition.