ABSTRACT
William Michael Rossetti, less gifted but perhaps more sensible than some other members of the circle of which he was to become an important chronicler, was once known as a critic of art and literature. In the preface to Swinburne’s Poems and Ballads he explained that he had not been asked, but had volunteered, to undertake his friend’s defence. Originally he had planned that defence as an article for the North American Review, but J.R. Lowell’s harsh judgment of Swinburne’s tragedies in that periodical had led him to publish it as a book.
