he only one), why
I have always fallen back on quality instead of quantity in
the little I have ever done. I think often with Coleridge:

Sloth jaundiced all: and from my graspless hand
Drop friendship's precious pearls like hour-glass sand.
I weep, yet stoop not: the faint anguish flows,
A dreamy pang in morning's feverish doze.

However, for all I might desire in the direction spoken of,
volition is vain without vocation; and I had better really
stick to knowing how to mix vermilion and ultramarine for a
flesh-grey, and how to manage their equivalents in verse. To
speak without sparing myself,--my mind is a childish one, if
to be isolated in Art is child's-play; at any rate I feel
that I do not attain to the more active and practical of the
mental functions of manhood. I can say this to you, because
I know you will make the best and not the worst of me; and
better than such feasible best I do not wish to appear. Thus
you see I don't think my name ought to head your
introductory paragraph--and there an end. And now of your
new lecture, and of the long letter I lately had from you.
At some moment I should like to know which pieces among the
translations are specially your favourites. Of the three
names you leash together as somewhat those of sensualists,
Cecco Angiolieri is really the only one--as for the
respectable Cino, he would be shocked indeed, though
certainly there are a few oddities bearing that way in the
sonnets between him and Dante (who is again similarly
reproached by his friend Cavalcanti), but I really _do_
suspect that in some cases similar to the one in question
about Cino (though not Guido and Dante) politics were really
meant where love was used as a metaphor.... I assure you,
you cannot say too much to me of this or any other work of
yours; in fact, I wish that we should communicate about
them. I have been thinking yet more on the relations of
politics and art. I do think seriously on consideration that
not only my own sluggishness, but vital fact itself, must
set to a great extent a _veto_ against the absolute
participation of artists in politics. When has it ever been
effected? True, Cellini was a bravo and David a good deal
like a murderer, and in these capacities they were not