uggesting to me a Vampire or Somnambulant Cannibal. (To
speak rationally, would not "man-evolved Godhead" be an
_English_ equivalent?) "Euhemeristic" also found me somewhat
on my beam-ends, though explanation is here given; yet I
felt I could do without Euhemerus; and _you_ perhaps without
the _humerous_. You can pardon me now; for _so_ bad a pun
places me at your mercy indeed. But seriously, simple
English in prose writing and in all narrative poetry
(however monumental language may become in abstract verse)
seems to me a treasure not to be foregone in favour of
German innovations. I know Coleridge went in latterly for as
much Germanism as his time could master; but his best genius
had then left him.

It seems necessary to mention that I lectured in 1880, on the relation
of politics to art, and in printing the lecture I asked Rossetti to
accept the dedication of it, but this he declined to do in the generous
terms I have already referred to. The letter that accompanied his
graceful refusal is, however, so full of interesting personal matter
that I offer it in this place, with no further explanation than that my
essay was designed to show that just as great artists in past ages
had participated in political struggles, so now they should not hold
themselves aloof from controversies which immediately concern them:

I must admit, at all hazards, that my friends here consider
me exceptionally averse to politics; and I suppose I must
be, for I never read a parliamentary debate in my life! At
the same time I will add that, among those whose opinions I
most value, some think me not altogether wrong when I
venture to speak of the momentary momentousness and eternal
futility of many noisiest questions. However, you must
simply view me as a nonentity in any practical relation to
such matters. You have spoken but too generously of a sonnet
of mine in your lecture just received. I have written a few
others of the sort (which by-the-bye would not prove me a
Tory), but felt no vocation--perhaps no right---to print
them. I have always reproached myself as sorely amenable to
the condemnations of a very fine poem by Barberino, _On
Sloth against Sin_, which I translated in the Dante volume.
Sloth, alas! has but too much to answer for with me; and is
one of the reasons (though I will not say t