Page:Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1904).djvu/23



, the author of these Recollections, was born at Truro, in 1838. For some time he was engaged as a clerk in the Cornish Bank of his native city, but when about twenty-four years of age, the artistic instinct strong within him, he abandoned the desk for the palette and brush, and adopted painting as a profession. Soon after, as he himself relates, he received an introduction to Dante Gabriel Rossetti. At once he was irresistibly attracted by the magnetism which formed one of the most noteworthy facets of the personality of that poet, painter, and leader of men, and came under the spell of that influence which he possessed over all around him, and none were ever able or willing to liberate themselves from. He forthwith took up his residence with Rossetti. Many years of close comradeship and daily intercourse followed between the chief and his disciple, and it was the good fortune of the latter, during this period, to meet on terms of intimacy those men of distinction—the