ABSTRACT
The morality of art, Rossetti says bluntly, is such that all things are good in its sight out of which good work may be produced. The one fact for art which is worth taking account of is simply mere excellence of verse or colour, which involves all manner of truth and loyalty necessary to her well-being. Yet in considering the work of the group, after Rossetti had separated himself from Holman Hunt and collected a young disciples, we cannot but be aware of an unusual antinomianism, though it is only in part of Swinburne's own work and in some of Simeon Solomon's that people get to those subtle conspiracies of good with evil which, under this aspect of the matter, are the characteristic of decadent art. But the motive powers of art reverse the requirement of science, and demand first of all an inner standing-point.
