He made acquaintance, and in the appendix to his Edinburgh Lectures placed Rossetti's name with those of Millais and Hunt, especially praising their imaginative power, as rivalling that of the greatest of the old masters.
He did more than this.

He agreed to buy, up to a certain sum every year, any drawings that Rossetti brought him, at their market price; and his standard of money-value for works of art has never been niggardly.

This sort of help, the encouragement to work, is exactly what makes progress possible to a young and independent artist; it is better for him than fortuitous exhibition triumphs--much better than the hack-work which many have to undertake, to eke out their livelihood.

And the mere fact of being bought by the eminent art-critic was enough to encourage other patrons.
"He seems in a mood to make my fortune," said Rossetti in the spring of 1854; and early in 1855 Ruskin wrote: "It seems to me that, of all the painters I know, you on the whole have the greatest genius; and you appear to me also to be--as far as I can make out--a very good sort of person, I see that you are unhappy, and that you can't bring out your genius as you should.
It seems to me then the proper and _necessary_ thing, if I can, to make you more happy; and that I shall be more really useful in enabling you to paint properly, and keep your room in order, than in any other way." He did his best to keep that room in order in every sense.

Anxious to promote the painter's marriage with Miss Siddal--"Princess Ida," as Ruskin called her--he offered a similar arrangement to that which he had made with Rossetti; and began in 1855 to give her L150 a year in exchange for drawings up to that value.