SOURCE: "The Burden of Christina Rossetti," in Impressions and Memories, J. M. Dent and Co., 1895, pp. 55-64.

In the following excerpt, Noble praises "Goblin Market" as a "spiritual drama" about the redemptive power of love.

For those who love letters so well that even its mere chronology has for them no barren aridity, there are certain years to which are assigned specially honourable places in the chambers of memory; and 1862 has a double claim to such honour, for it witnessed the publication of the "Last Poems" of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and of the first really representative work of Christina Rossetti. When the latter poet was but sixteen, a little collection of her girlish verse had been proudly though privately printed by her maternal grandfather, Mr Polidori, and in 1850 her pen-name, "Ellen Alleyn," had appeared as the signature of seven youthful poems published in The Germ; but the slim...