f a parallel
in career though not in work.

The extract from Rosetti's letters with which I shall close this chapter
is perhaps the most interesting yet made:

One point I must still raise, viz., that I, for one, cannot
conceive, even as the Ghost of a Flea, the ideal individual
who considers the Poetical Remains of Cecco Angiolieri of
more importance than the unity of a great nation! I think
this would have been better if much modified. Say for
instance--"A thing of some moment even while the contest is
waging for the political unity of a great nation." This is
the utmost reach surely of human comparative valuation. I
think you have brought in Benvenuto and Michael much to the
purpose. Shall I give you a parallel in your own style?

During the months for which poet Coleridge became private
Cumberback (a name in which he said his horse would have
concurred), it seems strange that, in such stirring times,
his regiment should not have been ordered off on foreign
service. In such case that pre-eminent member of the awkward
squad would assuredly have been the very first man killed.
Should we have been more the gainers by his patriotism or
the losers by his poetry? The very last man killed in the
last _sortie_ from Paris during the Prussian siege (he
_would_ go behind a buttress to "pot" a Prussian after
orders were given to retire, and so got "potted" himself)
was Henri Regnault, a painter, whose brilliant work was a
guiding beacon on the road of improvement in French methods
of art, if not in intellectual force. Who shall fail to
honour the noble ardour which drew him from the security of
his studies in Tunis to partake his country's danger? Yet
who shall forbear to sigh in thinking that, but for this,
his progressing work might still yearly be an element in
art-progress for Europe? Gerome and others betook themselves
to England instead, and are still benefiting the cause for
which they were before all things born. It was David who
said, "Si on tirait a mitraille sur les artistes, on n'y
tuerait pas un seul patriote!" _He_ was a patriot homicide,
and spoke probably what was true in the sense in which he
meant it. As I said, I am glad you turned Ben and Mike to
account, but the above is in some respects an open question.

I have, as I