ABSTRACT
The history of the reputation of the Christina Rossetti circle cannot leave any student of it with the happy feeling of one who observes a natural, timely, steady growth to due height. Rossetti's original volume was some years too late to be received in the right temper, to be regarded as other than a precious curiosity of beauty or a further manifestation of artistic carnality. And with the aestheticism promoted by Oscar Wilde there was yet more confusion of issues. 'Aestheticism' and its products have long been discredited, but the work of the masters has not been wholly freed from somewhat sickly associations. It is not yet a safe assumption that a man who names Rossetti with reverence has in mind the concentrated power of his imagination; there is still the possibility that he may be seeing in Rossetti only what Wilde saw in him.
