Theodore Rousseau's maxim, "If you have not got your picture in the first five lines you will never get it," seems to me the true golden rule of the art of painting, as in all creation.

A picture should grow _pari passu_ in all its parts; otherwise there is no certainty of its keeping together when finished.
Rossetti's influence, though always partial and never leaving a genuine pupil, was very wide, in the end, it seems to me, much exceeding that of Millais and that of Holman Hunt; but it is a question in which of his two functions--poet or painter--it was most effective.

I have heard Swinburne say that but for Rossetti's early poetry he would never have written verses, but this I think must be taken conditionally.

Swinburne has the poetic temperament so decided and so individual, and his musical quality is so exalted, that it was impossible that he should not have shown it at some time; but it is possible that Rossetti furnished the spark that actually kindled the fire.

Perhaps Swinburne himself cannot trace the vein to its hidden sources, and confounded the mastery of Rossetti's temperament and the personal magnetism he exercised on those who came into close relations with him with an intellectual stimulus which, strictly speaking, Rossetti did not exercise.