(detailed or cursory) to every poem in it. Possibly (but I hardly
think so) the critique was afterwards shortened, so as to bereave it
of this merit.

By Madox Brown (the etching) and by W. M. Rossetti (the verses):
"Cordelia." For the belated No. 3 of "The Germ" we were much at a
loss for an illustration. Mr. Brown offered to accommodate us by
etching this design, one of a series from "King Lear" which he had
drawn in Paris in 1844. That series, though not very sightly to the
eye, is of extraordinary value for dramatic insight and energy. We
gladly accepted, and he produced this etching with very little
self-satisfaction, so far as the technique of execution is concerned.
Dante Rossetti was to have furnished some verses for the etching; but
for this he did not find time, so I was put in as a stopgap, and I am
not sure that any reader of "The Germ" has ever thanked me for my
obedience to the call of duty.

By Patmore: "Essay on Macbeth." In this interesting and
well-considered paper Mr. Patmore assumes that he was the first
person to put into writing the opinion that Macbeth, before meeting
with the witches, had already definitely conceived and imparted the
idea of obtaining the crown of Scotland by wrongful means. I have
always felt some uncertainty whether Mr. Patmore was really the
first; if he was, it certainly seems strange that the train of
reasoning which he furnishes in this essay--forcible, even if we do
not regard it as unanswerable--should not have presented itself to
the mind and pen of some earlier writer. The Essay appears to have
been left incomplete in at least one respect. In speaking of "the
fifth scene," the author refers to "postponement of comment" upon
Macbeth's letter to his wife, and he "leaves it for the present." But