Dante Rossetti And the Pre-Raphaelite Movement

he following pages do not afford any material additions to what is already known of Dante Rossetti, or of the history and purpose of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. The authoritative biography of Rossetti has yet to be written; and while availing myself fully of such new details as may cast fresh side-lights upon the dominant personalities of the Pre-Raphaelite movement, my aim has rather been to present the main features of that movement in their relation to the larger intellectual tendencies of the age, and to the moral principles which have determined the growth of taste and feeling in the nineteenth century. To this end I have avoided as far as possible the proper domain of the art critic, and endeavoured to deal with the Pre-Raphaelite movement more as an ethical than an æsthetic revolution.