SOURCE: "Christina Rossetti," in The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 94, No. 6, December, 1904, pp. 815-21.

In the following essay, More extols Rossetti's "feminine genius" as displayed in her poetry.

Probably the first impression one gets from reading the Complete Poetical Works of Christina Rossetti, now collected and edited by her brother, Mr. W. M. Rossetti, is mat she wrote altogether too much, and that it was a doubtful service to her memory to preserve so many poems purely private in their nature. The editor, one thinks, might well have shown himself more "reverent of her strange simplicity." For page after page we are in the society of a spirit always refined and exquisite in sentiment, but without any guiding and restraining artistic impulse; she never drew to the shutters of her soul, but lay open to every wandering breath of heaven. In comparison with the works of the more creative poets...