Mr. A. C. Benson, in his monograph on D. G. Rossetti, in English Men of Letters, says, ’It was for a long time hoped that Mr. Watts-Dunton would give the memoir of his great friend to the world, but there is such a thing as knowing a man too well to be his biographer.  It is, however, an open secret that a vivid sketch of Rossetti’s personality has been given to the world in Mr. Watts-Dunton’s well-known romance Aylwin, where the artist D’Arcy is drawn from Rossetti.’

Since the appearance of these words many people who take an increasing interest in the most mysterious and romantic figure in the artistic world of the mid-Victorian period, have urged the author to tell them whether the portrait of Rossetti in Aylwin is a true one, or whether it is not idealized as certain cynical critics have affirmed.  Nothing but the dread of being charged with egotism has prevented the author’s stating publicly, and once for all, that the portrait of Rossetti in Aylwin showing him to be the creature of varying moods, gay and even frolicsome at one moment, profoundly meditative at the next, deeply dejected at the next, but always the most winsome of men, is true to the life.  It is more than hinted in the story that D’Arcy’s melancholy was the result of the loss of one he deeply loved.  From such a loss it was that Rossetti’s melancholy moods resulted.  There are documentary evidences of the verisimilitude of the picture in every respect.  Let one be given out of many.  There exists a pathetic record that has never yet been published, by one who knew Rossetti—­knew him with special intimacy—­the poet Swinburne—­depicting the great tragedy which darkened Rossetti’s life—­the loss of his wife.

It gives the only authorized account of that tragedy—­a tragedy which ever since the publication of William Bell Scott’s Autobiographical Notes has been so grievously misunderstood and misrepresented.  In this narrative Swinburne tells how, when first introduced to Rossetti, he himself was an Oxford undergraduate of twenty.  He records how he and Rossetti had lived on terms of affectionate intimacy:  shaped and coloured on Rossetti’s side by the cordial kindness and exuberant generosity which, to the last, distinguished his recognition of younger men’s efforts:  on his (Swinburne’s) part by gratitude as loyal and admiration as fervent as ever strove and ever failed to express ’all the sweet and sudden passion of youth towards greatness in its elder.’  He records how, during that year, he had come to know, and to regard with little less than a brother’s affection, the noble lady whom Rossetti had recently married.  He records how on the evening of her terrible death, they all three had dined together at a restaurant which Rossetti had been accustomed to frequent.  He records how next morning, on coming by appointment to sit for his portrait, he heard that she had died in the night, under circumstances which afterwards made necessary his (Swinburne’s)