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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of William Morris, by Elizabeth Luther Cary
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: William Morris
+       Poet, Craftsman, Socialist
+
+Author: Elizabeth Luther Cary
+
+Release Date: May 18, 2012 [EBook #39725]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WILLIAM MORRIS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Chris Curnow and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images generously made available by The
+Internet Archive.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: _William Morris_]
+
+
+
+
+  WILLIAM MORRIS
+
+  POET
+  CRAFTSMAN
+  SOCIALIST
+
+
+  BY
+  ELISABETH
+  LVTHER
+  CARY
+
+
+  ILLVSTRATED
+
+
+  G. P. PVTNAM'S SONS
+  THE KNICKERBOCKER PRESS
+  NEW YORK & LONDON
+
+
+
+
+  COPYRIGHT, 1902
+  BY
+  G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
+
+  Published, October, 1902
+  Reprinted, June, 1903; December, 1905
+
+
+  The Knickerbocker Press, New York
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+The personal life of William Morris is already known to us through Mr.
+Mackail's admirable biography as fully, probably, as we shall ever know
+it. My own endeavour has been to present a picture of Morris's busy career
+perhaps not less vivid for the absence of much detail, and showing only
+the man and his work as they appeared to the outer public.
+
+I have used as a basis for my narrative, the volumes by Mr. Mackail;
+_William Morris, his Art, his Writings, and his Public Life_, by Aymer
+Vallance; _The Books of William Morris_, by H. Buxton Forman; numerous
+articles in periodicals, and Morris's own varied works.
+
+I wish to express my indebtedness to Mr. Bulkley of 42 East 14th Street,
+New York City, for permission to reproduce a number of Morris patterns in
+his possession, notably a fragment of the St. James's wall-paper.
+
+Much material for the letter-press and for the illustrations I have
+obtained through the Boston Public Library. The _Froissart_ pages were
+found there and most of the Kelmscott publications from which I have
+quoted.
+
+The bibliography is that prepared by Mr. S. C. Cockerell for the last
+volume of Mr. Morris issued by the Kelmscott Press, under the title of _A
+Note by William Morris on His Aims in Founding the Kelmscott Press_. To
+the Cockerell bibliography have been added a few notes of my own.
+
+E. L. C.
+
+BROOKLYN, Sept. 10, 1902.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+  CHAPTER                                               PAGE
+
+     I.--BOYHOOD                                           1
+
+    II.--OXFORD LIFE                                      21
+
+   III.--FROM ROSSETTI TO THE RED HOUSE                   46
+
+    IV.--MORRIS AND COMPANY                               69
+
+     V.--FROM THE RED HOUSE TO KELMSCOTT                  96
+
+    VI.--POETRY                                          114
+
+   VII.--PUBLIC LIFE AND SOCIALISM                       146
+
+  VIII.--PUBLIC LIFE AND SOCIALISM (_Continued_)         174
+
+    IX.--LITERATURE OF THE SOCIALIST PERIOD              194
+
+     X.--THE KELMSCOTT PRESS                             219
+
+    XI.--LATER WRITINGS                                  239
+
+   XII.--THE END                                         255
+
+         BIBLIOGRAPHY                                    269
+
+         INDEX                                           291
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS.
+
+
+                                                                  _Page_
+
+  _William Morris_                                        _Frontispiece_
+      _From Life._
+
+  _Title-page of "The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine"_               _32_
+
+  _Portrait of Rossetti_                                            _36_
+      _By Watts._
+
+  _Illustration by Rossetti to "The Lady of Shalott" in the
+  Moxon "Tennyson." The Head of Launcelot is a Portrait of
+  Morris_                                                           _42_
+
+  _Portrait of Jane Burden (Mrs. Morris)_                           _58_
+      _By Rossetti_
+
+  _Wall-Paper and Cotton-Print Designs_                             _60_
+
+    _"Acanthus" Wall-Paper_
+
+    _"Pimpernel" Wall-Paper_
+
+    _"African Marigold" Cotton-Print_
+
+      _"These designs must not be taken as exact as to colour
+      afterwards used, Mr. Morris using the colours to his
+      hand and afterwards superintending the actual colouring
+      in the course of manufacture, in most cases many
+      experimental trials being made before the desired
+      colouring was actually decided upon."_
+
+      _Reproduced from examples obtained by courtesy of Mr.
+      A. E. Bulkley._
+
+  _The Morris designs in this book were reproduced by permission
+  of Messrs. Morris & Company._
+
+  _"The Strawberry Thief" Design for Cotton-Print_                  _66_
+
+  _Tulip Design for Axminster Carpet_                               _70_
+
+  _Peacock Design for Coarse Wool Hangings_                         _72_
+
+  _Painted Wall Decoration Designed by Morris_                      _76_
+
+  _Painted Wall Decoration Designed by Morris_                      _80_
+
+  _Design for St. James's Palace Wall-Paper_                        _82_
+      _Reproduced from sample obtained through courtesy of Mr.
+      Bulkley._
+
+  _Early Design for Morris Wall-Paper "Daisy and Columbine"_        _84_
+
+  _Chrysanthemum Design for Wall-Paper_                             _84_
+
+  _Anemone Pattern for Silk and Wool Curtain Material_              _88_
+
+  _Portion of Hammersmith Carpet_                                   _90_
+
+  _Secretary Designed by the Morris Co._                            _94_
+      _In possession of Mr. Bulkley._
+
+  _Sofa Designed by the Morris Co._                                 _94_
+      _In possession of Mr. Bulkley._
+
+  _Illustration by Burne-Jones for Projected Edition of "The
+  Earthly Paradise," Cut on Wood by Morris Himself_                 _98_
+
+  _Kelmscott Manor House. Two views_                               _100_
+
+  _Design by Rossetti for Window Executed by Morris & Co.
+  ("The Parable of the Vineyard")_                                 _110_
+
+  _Design by Rossetti for Stained-Glass Window Executed by
+  the Morris Co. ("The Parable of the Vineyard")_                  _110_
+
+  _Morris's Bed, with Hangings Designed by Himself and
+  Embroidered by his Daughter_                                     _114_
+
+  _Kelmscott Manor House from the Orchard_                         _118_
+
+  _Portrait of Edward Burne-Jones_                                 _120_
+      _By Watts._
+
+  _William Morris_                                                 _130_
+
+  _Picture by Rossetti in which the Children's Faces are
+  Portraits of May Morris_                                         _148_
+
+  _Honeysuckle Design for Linen_                                   _162_
+
+  _Washing Cloth at the Merton Abbey Works_                        _174_
+
+  _Merton Abbey Works_                                             _174_
+
+  _Portrait of Mrs. Morris_                                        _200_
+      _By Rossetti._
+
+  _Study of Mrs. Morris_                                           _216_
+      _Made by Rossetti for picture called "The Day Dream."_
+
+  _Kelmscott Types_                                                _220_
+
+  _Page from Kelmscott "Chaucer." Illustration by
+  Burne-Jones. Border and Initial Letter by Morris_                _222_
+
+  _Title-page of the Kelmscott "Chaucer"_                          _224_
+
+  _The Smaller Kelmscott Press-Mark_                               _228_
+
+  _The Larger Kelmscott Press-Mark_                                _228_
+
+  _Drawing by Morris of the Letter "h" for Kelmscott Type,
+  with Notes and Corrections_                                      _228_
+
+  _Specimen Page from the Kelmscott "Froissart"_                   _234_
+      _Projected Edition_
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+BOYHOOD.
+
+
+There is, perhaps, no single work by William Morris that stands out as a
+masterpiece in evidence of his individual genius. He was not impelled to
+give peculiar expression to his own personality. His writing was seldom
+emotionally autobiographic as Rossetti's always was, his painting and
+designing were not the expression of a personal mood as was the case with
+Burne-Jones. But no one of his special time and group gave himself more
+fully or more freely for others. No one contributed more generously to the
+public pleasure and enlightenment. No one tried with more persistent
+effort first to create and then to satisfy a taste for the possible best
+in the lives and homes of the people. He worked toward this end in so many
+directions that a lesser energy than his must have been dissipated and a
+weaker purpose rendered impotent. His tremendous vitality saved him from
+the most humiliating of failures, the failure to make good extravagant
+promise. He never lost sight of the result in the endeavour, and his
+discontent with existing mediocrity was neither formless nor empty. It was
+the motive power of all his labour; he was always trying to make
+everything "something different from what it was," and this instinct was,
+alike for strength and weakness, says his chief biographer, "of the very
+essence of his nature." To tell the story of his life is to write down the
+record of dreams made real, of nebulous theories brought swiftly to the
+test of experiment, of the spirit of the distant past reincarnated in the
+present. But, as with most natures of similar mould, the man was greater
+than any part of his work, and even greater than the sum of it all. He
+remains one of the not-to-be-forgotten figures of the nineteenth century,
+so interesting was he, so impressive, so simple-hearted, so nearly
+adequate to the great tasks he set himself, so well beloved by his
+companions, so useful, despite his blunders, to society at large.
+
+The unity that held together his manifold forms of expression was
+maintained through the different periods of his life, making him a "whole
+man" to a more than usual degree. From the earliest recorded incidents of
+his childhood we gain an impression not unlike that made by his latest
+years, and by all the interval between. The very opposite of Rossetti,
+with whose "school" he has been so long and so mistakenly identified, his
+nature was as single as his accomplishment was complex, and the only means
+by which it is possible to get a just idea of both the former and the
+latter is to regard him as a man of one preoccupation amounting to an
+obsession, the reconstruction of social and industrial life according to
+an ideal based upon the more poetic aspects of the Middle Ages. From first
+to last the early English world, the English world of the thirteenth and
+fourteenth centuries, was the world to which he belonged. "Born out of his
+due time," in truth, he began almost from his birth to accumulate
+associations with the time to which he should have been native and whose
+far off splendour lured him constantly back toward it.
+
+The third of nine children, he was born at Walthamstow, in Essex, England,
+on the 24th of March, 1834. On the Morris side he came of Welsh ancestry,
+a fact accounting perhaps for the mingled gloom and romance of his
+temperament. His father was a discount broker in opulent circumstances,
+and his mother was descended from a family of prosperous merchants and
+landed proprietors. On the maternal side a strong talent for music
+existed, but in the Morris family no more artistic quality can be traced
+than a devotion to general excellence, to which William Morris certainly
+fell heir. For a time he was a sickly child, and used the opportunity to
+advance his reading, being "already deep in the Waverley novels" when four
+years old, and having gone through these and many others before he was
+seven.
+
+In 1840 the family removed to Woodford Hall, a house belonging to the
+Georgian period, standing in about fifty acres of park, on the road from
+London to Epping, and here Morris led an outdoor life with the result of
+rapidly establishing his health, steeping mind and sense in the sights and
+sounds of nature dear to him forever after, and gaining intimate
+acquaintance with the romantic and mediæval surroundings by which his
+whole career was to be influenced. The county of Essex was well adapted to
+feed his prodigious appetite for antiquities. Its churches, in numbers of
+which Norman masonry is to be found, its ancient brasses (that of the
+schoolboy Thomas Heron being among many others within easy reach of
+Woodford), and its tapestry-hung houses, all stimulated his inborn love of
+the Middle Ages and started him fairly on that path through the thirteenth
+century which he followed deviously as long as he lived. Even in his own
+home, we are told, certain of the habits of mediæval England persisted,
+such as the brewing of beer, the meal of cakes and ale at "high prime,"
+the keeping of Twelfth Night, and other such festivals. The places he
+lived in counted for much with him always, and the impressions of this
+childish period remained, like all his later impressions, keen and
+permanent. Toward the end of his life he printed at the Kelmscott Press
+the carol _Good King Wenceslas_, which begins with a lusty freshness:
+
+  Good King Wenceslas look'd out,
+    On the feast of Stephen,
+  When the snow lay round about,
+    Deep and crisp and even.
+  Brightly shone the moon that night,
+    Though the frost was cruel,
+  When a poor man came in sight
+    Gath'ring winter fuel.
+
+"The legend itself," he comments, "is a pleasing and genuine one, and the
+Christmas-like quality of it, recalling the times of my boyhood, appeals
+to me at least as a memory of past days."
+
+Beside angling, shooting, and riding, he very early occupied much of his
+time with visits to the old churches, a pursuit of which he was never to
+weary, studying their monuments and accumulating an amount of genuine
+erudition concerning them quite out of proportion to his rather moderate
+accomplishment along the ordinary lines of study. At an age when Scott was
+scouring his native heath in search of Border ballads and antiquities,
+this almost equally precocious boy was collecting rubbings from ancient
+inscriptions, and picturing to himself, as he wandered about the region of
+his home on foot or on horseback, the lovely face of England as it looked
+in the thirteenth or fourteenth century. In one of the earliest of the
+boyish romances that appeared in the _Oxford and Cambridge Magazine_, he
+imagines himself the master-mason of a church built more than six
+centuries before, and which has vanished from the face of the earth with
+nothing to indicate its existence save earth-covered ruins "heaving the
+yellow corn into glorious waves." His description of the carving on the
+bas-reliefs of the west front and on the tombs shows with what loving
+intensity he has studied the most minute details of the work of the
+ancient builders in whose footsteps he would have rejoiced much to tread.
+How far his family sympathised with his tastes it is impossible to say,
+but probably not deeply. We have few hints of the personal side of his
+home-life; we know that a visit to Canterbury Cathedral with his father
+was among the indelible experiences of his first decade, and that he
+possessed among his toys a little suit of armour in which he rode about
+the park after the manner of a Froissart knight, and that is about all we
+do know until we hear of the strong disapproval of his mother and one of
+his sisters for the career that finally diverted his interest from the
+Church for which they had designed him.
+
+His formal education began when he was sent at the age of nine to a
+preparatory school kept by a couple of maiden ladies. There he remained
+until the death of his father in 1847. In February, 1848, he went to
+Marlborough College, a nomination to which his father had purchased for
+him. The best that can be said for this school seems to be that it was
+situated in a part of England ideally suited to a boy of archæological
+tastes, and was provided with an excellent archæological and architectural
+library. Here his eager mind browsed on the literature of English Gothic,
+and his restless feet carried him far afield among pre-Celtic barrows,
+stone circles, and Roman villas. Savernake Forest was close at hand and
+he spent many of his holidays within it. It was doubtless the familiarity
+with all aspects of the woods, due to his pilgrimages through Savernake
+and Epping Forests and the long roving days idled away among their
+shadows, that gave rise to the allusions in his books--early and late--to
+woodland life. The passage through the thick wood and the coming at last
+to the place where the trees thin out and the light begins to shimmer
+through them is a constantly recurring figure of his verse and of his
+prose. Frequently the important scene of a romance or of a long poem is
+laid in a wildwood, as in the story entitled _The Wood beyond the World_,
+or in _Goldilocks and Goldilocks_, the concluding poem of the volume of
+_Poems by the Way_, in which the great grey boles of the trees, the
+bramble bush, the "woodlawn clear," and the cherished oaks are as vivid as
+the human actors in the drama. His heroes seldom fail of being deft
+woodsmen, able to thread the tangle of underbrush by blind paths, and
+observant of all the common sights and sounds of the woodland, rabbits
+scuttling out of the grass, adders sunning themselves on stones in the
+cleared spaces, wild swine running grunting toward close covert, hart and
+hind bounding across the way. They know the musty savour of water dipped
+from a forest brook, they know how to go straight to the yew sticks that
+quarter best for bow-staves, they know the feeling of the boggy moss under
+their feet, and the sound of the "iron wind" through the branches in the
+depth of winter; there is no detail of wild wood life of which they are
+ignorant. This intimacy with Nature in her most secluded moments, in her
+shyest and most mysterious aspect, forms an element of inexpressible charm
+in the lovely backgrounds against which Morris delighted to place his
+visionary figures. He never tired of combining the impressions stored away
+in his mind on his boyish rambles into pictures the delicate beauty of
+which can hardly be overestimated.
+
+While he was at school, his already highly developed imagination found an
+outlet in constant fable-making, his tales of knights and fairies and
+miraculous adventures having a considerable popularity among his comrades,
+with whom, however, he himself was not especially popular, making friends
+with them only in a superficial fashion. Judging from the autobiographic
+fragments occasionally found in his work, he was a boy of many moods, most
+of them tinged with the self-conscious melancholy of his early poetry.
+Sentiment was strong with him, and a peculiar reticence or detachment of
+temperament kept him independent of others during his school years, and
+apparently uninfluenced by the tastes or opinions of those about him, if
+we except the case of his Anglo-Catholic proclivities, which obviously
+were fed by the tendencies of the school, but which, so far from diverting
+him from the general scheme of his individual interests, fitted into them
+and served him as another link between the present and the much preferred
+past.
+
+Outwardly he can hardly have seemed the typical dreamer he has described
+himself as being. Beautiful of feature, of sturdy build, with a shouting
+voice, extraordinary muscular strength, and a gusty temper, he impressed
+himself upon his comrades chiefly by his impetuosity in the energetic game
+of singlestick, by the surplus vigour that led him at times to punch his
+own head with all his might to "take it out of himself," and by the
+vehemence and enthusiasm of his argumentative talk.
+
+He was little of a student along the orthodox lines, and Marlborough
+College was not calculated to increase his respect--never undue--for
+pedagogic methods. A letter written when he was sixteen to his eldest and
+favourite sister reflects quite fully his pre-occupations. It has none of
+the genuine wit and literary tone of the juvenile letter written by
+Stevenson to his father, presenting his claims for reimbursements. It
+shows no such zest for bookish pursuits as Rossetti's letters, written at
+the same age, reveal. But it is entirely free from the shallow flippancy
+that frequently characterises the correspondence of a young man's second
+decade--that characterised Lowell's, for example, to an almost painful
+degree; nor has it a shade of the self-magnification to which any amount
+of flippancy is preferable. It is straightforward and boyish, and
+remarkable only as showing the thorough and intelligent method with which
+its writer followed up whatever commanded his interest. Commencing with
+the description of an anthem sung at Easter by the trained choir of
+Blore's Chapel connected with his school, he passes on to an account of
+his archæological investigations, giving after his characteristic fashion
+all the small details necessary to enable his correspondent to form a
+definite picture of the places he had visited. After he had made one
+pilgrimage to the Druidical circle and Roman entrenchment at Avebury, he
+had learned of the peculiar method of placing the stones which, from the
+dislocated condition of the ruins, had not been obvious to him. Therefore
+he had returned on the following day to study it out and fix the original
+arrangement firmly in his imagination, and, at the time of writing the
+letter, was able to explain it quite clearly, a result, derived from the
+expenditure of two holidays, that was completely satisfactory to him. He
+winds up with a purely boyish plea for a "good large cake" and some
+biscuit in addition to a cheese that had been promised him, and for paper
+and postage stamps and his silkworm eggs and a pen box to be sent him from
+home.
+
+At school he was "always thinking about home," and when the family moved
+again to Walthamstow, within a short distance of his first home, and to a
+house boasting a moat and a wooded island, he was eagerly responsive to
+the poetic suggestions conveyed by these romantic accessories. When at
+the end of 1851 he left school to prepare under a private tutor for
+Oxford, he renewed his early familiarity with Epping Forest and spent most
+of his holidays among the trees that had not apparently changed since the
+time of Edward the Confessor. The great age of the wood and its peculiarly
+English character made a profound impression upon him, and it is easy to
+imagine the fury with which he must have received the suggestion, made
+forty years later by Mr. Alfred Wallace, that in place of "a hideous
+assemblage of stunted mop-like pollards rising from a thicket of scrubby
+bushes," North American trees should be planted and a part of the forest
+made into an "almost exact copy" of North American woodland. Indeed, a
+suppressed but unmistakable fury breathes from the letters written to the
+_Daily Chronicle_, as late as 1895, regarding the tree-felling that was
+going on ruthlessly in the forest, destroying its native character and
+individual charm. These letters, curiously recalling those written half a
+century before concerning boyish excursions through the same region, are
+well worth quoting here, where properly they belong, as they are inspired
+by the earliest of the associations and ideals cherished by Morris to the
+end of his life. They are fine examples of his own native character in
+argument, his humbly didactic tone early caught from Ruskin and never
+relinquished, his militant irony, his willingness to fortify his position
+by painstaking investigation, his moral attitude toward matters artistic,
+his superb rightness of taste in the special problem under discussion.
+They show also how closely his memory had held through his manifold
+interests the details that had appealed to him in his boyhood. The first
+letter is dated April 23rd, and addressed to the editor of the _Daily
+Chronicle_.
+
+    "SIR: I venture to ask you to allow me a few words on the subject of
+    the present treatment of Epping Forest. I was born and bred in its
+    neighbourhood (Walthamstow and Woodford), and when I was a boy and
+    young man I knew it yard by yard from Wanstead to the Theydons, and
+    from Hale End to the Fairlop Oak. In those days it had no worse foes
+    than the gravel stealer and the rolling-fence maker, and was always
+    interesting and often very beautiful. From what I can hear it is years
+    since the greater part of it has been destroyed, and I fear, Sir, that
+    in spite of your late optimistic note on the subject, what is left of
+    it now runs the danger of further ruin.
+
+    "The special character of it was derived from the fact that by far the
+    greater part was a wood of hornbeams, a tree not common save in Essex
+    and Herts. It was certainly the biggest hornbeam wood in these
+    islands, and I suppose in the world. The said hornbeams were all
+    pollards, being shrouded every four or six years, and were
+    interspersed in many places with holly thickets, and the result was a
+    very curious and characteristic wood, such as can be seen nowhere
+    else. And I submit that no treatment of it can be tolerable which does
+    not maintain this hornbeam wood intact.
+
+    "But the hornbeam, though an interesting tree to an artist and
+    reasonable person, is no favourite with the landscape gardener, and I
+    very much fear that the intention of the authorities is to clear the
+    forest of native trees, and to plant vile weeds like deodars and
+    outlandish conifers instead. We are told that a committee of 'experts'
+    has been formed to sit in judgment on Epping Forest; but, Sir, I
+    decline to be gagged by the word 'expert,' and I call on the public
+    generally to take the same position. An 'expert' may be a very
+    dangerous person, because he is likely to narrow his views to the
+    particular business (usually a commercial one) which he represents. In
+    this case, for instance, we do not want to be under the thumb of
+    either a wood bailiff whose business is to grow timber for the market,
+    or of a botanist whose business is to collect specimens for a
+    botanical garden; or of a landscape gardener whose business is to
+    vulgarise a garden or landscape to the utmost extent that his patron's
+    purse will allow of. What we want is reasonable men of real artistic
+    taste to take into consideration what the essential needs of the case
+    are, and to advise accordingly. Now it seems to me that the
+    authorities who have Epping Forest in hand may have two intentions as
+    to it. First, they may intend to landscape-garden it, or turn it into
+    golf grounds (and I very much fear that even the latter nuisance may
+    be in their minds); or second, they may really think it necessary (as
+    you suggest) to thin the hornbeams, so as to give them a better chance
+    of growing. The first alternative we Londoners should protest against
+    to the utmost, for if it be carried out then Epping Forest is turned
+    into a mere place of vulgarity, is destroyed in fact.
+
+    "As to the second, to put our minds at rest, we ought to be assured
+    that the cleared spaces would be planted again, and that almost wholly
+    with hornbeam. And, further, the greatest possible care should be
+    taken that not a single tree should be felled unless it is necessary
+    for the growth of its fellows. Because, mind you, with comparatively
+    small trees, the really beautiful effect of them can only be got by
+    their standing as close together as the emergencies of growth will
+    allow. We want a thicket, not a park, from Epping Forest.
+
+    "In short, a great and practically irreparable mistake will be made
+    if, under the shelter of the opinion of 'experts,' from mere
+    carelessness and thoughtlessness, we let the matter slip out of the
+    hands of the thoughtful part of the public; the essential character of
+    one of the greatest ornaments of London will disappear, and no one
+    will have even a sample left to show what the great north-eastern
+    forest was like. I am, Sir, yours obediently,
+
+    "WILLIAM MORRIS
+
+    "Kelmscott House, Hammersmith."
+
+The second letter is written two or three weeks later, and shows Morris as
+characteristically prompt and thorough in action as he is positive in
+speech.
+
+    "Yesterday," he says, "I carried out my intention of visiting Epping
+    Forest. I went to Loughton first, and saw the work that had been done
+    about Clay Road, thence to Monk Wood, thence to Theydon Woods, and
+    thence to the part about the Chingford Hotel, passing by Fair Mead
+    Bottom and lastly to Bury Wood and the wood on the other side of the
+    road thereby.
+
+    "I can verify closely your representative's account of the doings on
+    the Clay Road, which is an ugly scar originally made by the lord of
+    the manor when he contemplated handing over to the builder a part of
+    what he thought was his property. The fellings here seem to me all
+    pure damage to the forest, and in fact were quite unaccountable to me,
+    and would surely be so to any unprejudiced person. I cannot see what
+    could be pleaded for them either on the side of utility or taste.
+
+    "About Monk Wood there had been much, and I should say excessive,
+    felling of trees apparently quite sound. This is a very beautiful
+    spot, and I was informed that the trees there had not been polled for
+    a period long before the acquisition of the forest for the public; and
+    nothing could be more interesting and romantic than the effect of the
+    long poles of the hornbeams rising from the trunks and seen against
+    the mass of the wood behind. This wood should be guarded most
+    jealously as a treasure of beauty so near to 'the Wen.' In the Theydon
+    Woods, which are mainly of beech, a great deal of felling has gone on,
+    to my mind quite unnecessary, and therefore harmful. On the road
+    between the Wake Arms and the King's Oak Hotel there has been again
+    much felling, obviously destructive.
+
+    "In Bury Wood (by Sewardstone Green) we saw the trunks of a great
+    number of oak trees (not pollards), all of them sound, and a great
+    number were yet standing in the wood marked for felling, which,
+    however, we heard had been saved by a majority of the committee of
+    experts. I can only say that it would have been a very great
+    misfortune if they had been lost; in almost every case where the
+    stumps of the felled trees showed there seemed to have been no reason
+    for their destruction. The wood on the other side of the road to Bury
+    Wood, called in the map Woodman's Glade, has not suffered from
+    felling, and stands as an object lesson to show how unnecessary such
+    felling is. It is one of the thickest parts of the forest, and looks
+    in all respects like such woods were forty years ago, the growth of
+    the heads of the hornbeams being but slow; but there is no difficulty
+    in getting through it in all directions, and it has a peculiar charm
+    of its own not to be found in any other forest; in short, it is
+    thoroughly _characteristic_. I should mention that the whole of these
+    woods are composed of pollard hornbeams and 'spear'--_i.e._,
+    unpolled--oaks.
+
+    "I am compelled to say from what I saw in a long day's inspection,
+    that, though no doubt acting with the best intentions, the management
+    of the forest is going on the wrong tack; it is making war on the
+    natural aspect of the forest, which the Act of Parliament that
+    conferred it on the nation expressly stipulated was to be retained.
+    The tendency of all these fellings is on the one hand to turn over
+    London forest into a park, which would be more or less like other
+    parks, and on the other hand to grow sizable trees, as if for the
+    timber market. I must beg to be allowed a short quotation here from an
+    excellent little guidebook to the forest by Mr. Edward North Buxton,
+    verderer of the forest (Sanford, 1885). He says, p. 38: 'In the drier
+    parts of the forest beeches to a great extent take the place of oaks.
+    These "spear" trees will make fine timber for future generations,
+    provided they receive timely attention by being _relieved of the
+    competing growth of the unpicturesque hornbeam pollards_. Throughout
+    the wood between Chingford and High Beech, _this has been recently
+    done_, to the great advantage of the finer trees.'
+
+    "The italics are mine, and I ask, Sir, if we want any further evidence
+    than this of one of the verderers as to the tendency of the fellings.
+    Mr. Buxton declares in so many words that he wants to change the
+    special character of the forest; to take away this strange,
+    unexampled, and most romantic wood, and leave us nothing but a
+    commonplace instead. I entirely deny his right to do so in the teeth
+    of the Act of Parliament. I assert, as I did in my former letter, that
+    the hornbeams are the most important trees in the forest, since they
+    give it its special character. At the same time I would not encourage
+    the hornbeams at the expense of the beeches, any more than I would the
+    beeches at the expense of the hornbeams. I would leave them all to
+    nature, which is not so niggard after all, even on Epping Forest
+    gravel, as _e. g._, one can see in places where forest fires have
+    denuded spaces, and where in a short time birches spring up self-sown.
+
+    "The committee of the Common Council has now had Epping Forest in hand
+    for seventeen years, and has, I am told, in that time felled 100,000
+    trees. I think the public may now fairly ask for a rest on behalf of
+    the woods, which, if the present system of felling goes on, will be
+    ruined as a natural forest; and it is good and useful to make the
+    claim at once, when, in spite of all disfigurements, the northern part
+    of the forest, from Sewardstone Green to beyond Epping, is still left
+    to us, not to be surpassed in interest by any other wood near a great
+    capital. I am, Sir, yours obediently,
+
+    "WILLIAM MORRIS."
+
+These letters emphasise in a single instance what the close student of
+Morris will find emphasised at every turn in his career,--the persistent
+and strong influence over him of the tastes and occupations of his
+boyhood. Unless this is kept constantly in mind, it is easy to fall into
+the common error of regarding the various activities into which he threw
+himself as separate and dissociated instead of seeing them as they were,
+component parts of a perfectly simple purpose and unalterable ideal. With
+most men who are on the whole true to the analogy of the chambered
+nautilus and cast off the outworn shell of their successive phases of
+individuality as the seasons roll, the effect of early environment and
+tendency may easily be exaggerated, but Morris grew in the fashion of his
+beloved oaks, keeping the rings by which his advance in experience was
+marked; at the end all were visible. His education began and continued
+largely outside the domain of books and away from masters. His wanderings
+in the depths of the quaint and beautiful forest, his intimate
+acquaintance with the nature of Gothic architecture, his familiarity with
+Scott, his prompt adoption of Ruskin, all these formed the foundation on
+which he was to build his own theory of life, and all were his before he
+went up to Oxford. They prepared him for the many-sided profession, if
+profession it can be called, which was to absorb and at last to exhaust
+his mighty energy. It was the tangible surface of the world that most
+inspired him in boyhood and in maturity. Loving so much even as a child
+its aspects, its lights and shadows, the forms of trees and birds and
+beasts, the changes of season, the lives of men living close to "the kind
+soil" and in touch with it through hearty manual labour, it was but a step
+to the occupations that finally engrossed him. He never got so far away
+from the visions of his youth as to forget them. In one form or another he
+was constantly trying to embody them that others might see them with his
+eyes and worship them with his devotion. "The spirit of the new days, of
+our days," says the old man in _News from Nowhere_, "was to be delight in
+the life of the world, intense and almost overweening love of the very
+skin and surface of the earth on which man dwells."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+OXFORD LIFE.
+
+
+Like the majority of the students who went up to Oxford in the fifties,
+Morris matriculated with the definite intention of taking holy orders.
+Unlike the majority, he was impelled not only by the sensuous beauty of
+ritualistic worship, to which, however, no one could have been more keenly
+alive than he, but by a genuine enthusiasm for a life devoted to high
+purposes. A fine buoyant desire to better existing conditions and sweep as
+much evil as possible off the face of the earth early inspired him. His
+mind turned toward the conventual life as that which combined the mediæval
+suggestions always alluring to him with the moral beauty of holiness. He
+planned a "Crusade and Holy Warfare against the Age," sang plain song at
+daily morning service, read masses of mediæval chronicles and
+ecclesiastical Latin poetry, and hovered just this side of the Roman
+Communion. Had the ecclesiology of the University been supported at that
+time by an inward and spiritual grace sufficient to hold the heart of
+youth to a sustained allegiance, there is little doubt that Morris would
+have thrown himself ardently into the religious path. But Oxford had
+become an indolent and indifferent mother to her children. The storm of
+feeling aroused by the Tractarian movement had died down and the reaction
+from it was evident. At Balliol Jowett's energy had made its mark, but at
+Exeter, where Morris was, the educational system deserved (and received)
+the contempt of an ambitious boy with an unusually large supply of
+stored-up intellectual force seeking outlet and guidance. Nor was the
+social life more stimulating to moral activity. The abuses recorded in
+1852 by the University Commission were in essence so shameful that in the
+light of that famous report "the sweet city with her dreaming spires"
+seems to have only the beauty of the daughter of Helios, under whose
+enchantments men were turned to swine for loving her. The clean mind and
+honest nature of Morris revolted from the excesses that went on about him.
+He wrote to his mother two years after his matriculation, defending the
+proposition that his Oxford education had not been thrown away: "If by
+living here and seeing evil and sin in its foulest and coarsest forms, as
+one does day by day, I have learned to hate any form of sin and to wish to
+fight against it, is not this well too?" It is proof of his purity of
+taste and strength of will that, despite his ample means, the wanton
+extravagance of the typical undergraduate had for him no allurement. It is
+certain that he was never seen at those dinners which were pronounced by
+an official censor "a curse and a disgrace to a place of Christian
+education," and as certainly he played no part in the mad carnivals at
+which novices were initiated into a curriculum of vice. Yet he could not
+indeed say with any truth what Gibbon had said a hundred years before,
+that the time he spent at Oxford was the most idle and unprofitable of his
+whole life. If he felt, as Gibbon did, that his formal studies were
+"equally devoid of profit and pleasure," and if he found nothing
+ridiculous in Ruskin's bitter complaint that Oxford taught him all the
+Latin and Greek that he would learn, but did not teach him that
+fritillaries grew in Iffley meadow, he did find a little band of helpful
+associates. With these he realised the priceless advantages which Mr.
+Bagehot says cannot be got outside a college and which he sums up as found
+"in the books that all read because all like; in what all talk of because
+all are interested; in the argumentative walk or disputatious lounge; in
+the impact of fresh thought on fresh thought, of hot thought on hot
+thought; in mirth and refutation, in ridicule and laughter." The first of
+the few strong personal attachments in the life of Morris dates from his
+first day at Oxford. At the end of January, 1853, he went up for his
+matriculation, and beside him at the examination in the Hall sat
+Burne-Jones, who within a week of their formal entrance to the college
+became his intimate. The friendship thus spontaneously formed on the verge
+of manhood lasted until Morris died. In their studies, in their truant
+reading, in their later aims and work, the two, diametrically as they
+differed in aspect and in temperament and in quality of mind, were
+sympathetic and dear companions. Together they joined a group of other
+happily gifted men--Fulford, Faulkner, Dixon, Cormell Price, and
+Macdonald--who met in one another's rooms for the disputatious lounge over
+the exuberant ideals by which they were in common inspired. Tennyson,
+Keats, and Shelley, Shakespeare, Ruskin, Carlyle, Kingsley, Thackeray,
+Dickens, and Miss Yonge were the gods and half gods of their young and
+passionate enthusiasm. The last, curiously enough, was an influence as
+potent as any. The hero of her novel of 1853, _The Heir of Redclyffe_, was
+the pattern chosen by Morris, according to Mr. Mackail's account, to build
+himself upon. Singular as it seems to-day that any marked impression
+should have been made upon an even fairly well-trained mind by a writer of
+such slight literary quality, it is true that the author of _The Daisy
+Chain_ counted among her devoted readers men of brilliant and dominant
+intellectual power. She had the lucky touch to kindle in young minds that
+fire of sympathy with which they greet whatever shows them their own
+world, their age, themselves as they best like to see them. To Morris in
+particular the young heir of Redclyffe made the appeal of a congenial
+temperament in a position similar to his own. Like Morris, he was
+headstrong and passionate, given to excessive bursts of rage and to
+repentances not less excessive; like Morris, he united to his natural
+pride an unnatural and slightly obtrusive humility; like Morris, he was
+rich and beautiful, generous and lovable. It was no great wonder that
+Morris, poring with his characteristic absorption over the pleasant pages
+on which Guy Morville's chivalrous life is portrayed, said as Dromio to
+Dromio, "Methinks you are my glass and not my brother; I see by you I am a
+sweet-faced youth."
+
+Mr. Mackail notes with an accent of surprise that Kingsley was much more
+widely read than Newman, thinking the choice a curious one in the case of
+passionate Anglo-Catholics. So far as Morris was concerned, however, there
+was little enough to relish in Newman's subtle theology and relentless
+logic. The man to whom religion as a mere sentiment was "a dream and a
+mockery" could hardly appeal to one to whom all life was a sentiment.
+Kingsley, on the other hand, although he was anti-Catholic in temper, and
+disposed to overthrow the illusions by which such romanticists as Scott,
+such dreamers as Fouqué, had surrounded the Middle Ages, picturing their
+coarse and barbarous side with harsh realism, was happy in rendering the
+charms of outdoor life and bold adventure, and the songs of the Crusaders
+in his _Saint's Tragedy_ must have gone farther toward winning Morris than
+pages of Newman's reasoning devotion.
+
+Gradually the monastic ideal faded before the brightness of art and
+literature and the life of the world as these became more and more
+impressed upon Morris's consciousness. To live in the spirit and in the
+region of purely intellectual interests could not have been his choice
+after the passing of the first fanatic impulse of youth to dedicate itself
+to what is difficult, ignorant of the joy of choosing. Many influences
+united to determine the precise form into which he should shape the future
+that for all practical purposes was under his control. His interest in
+pictorial art was stimulated by Burne-Jones, who was already making
+fantastic little drawings, and studies of flowers and foliage. Of great
+art he knew nothing until he spent the Long Vacation of 1854 in travelling
+through Belgium and Northern France, where he saw Van Eyck and Memling,
+who at once became to him, as they were to Rossetti, masters of
+incontestable supremacy. On this trip he saw also the beautiful churches
+of Amiens, Beauvais, and Chartres, which in his unbridled expansiveness of
+phrase he called "the grandest, the most beautiful, the kindest, and most
+loving of all the buildings that the earth has ever borne." The following
+year he repeated the experience, with Burne-Jones and Fulford for
+companions. This time the journey was to have been made on foot from
+motives of economy, as Burne-Jones was poor and Morris embraced the habits
+of poverty when in his company with unaffected delicacy of feeling. At
+Amiens, however, Morris went lame, and, "after filling the streets with
+imprecations on all boot-makers," bought a pair of gay carpet slippers in
+which to continue the trip. These proved not to serve the purpose, and the
+travellers were obliged to reach Chartres by the usual methods of
+conveyance, Morris arguing with fury and futility in favour of skirting
+Paris, "even by two days' journey, so as not to see the streets of it."
+They had with them one book, _Keats_, and their minds were filled with the
+poetic ideas of art as the expression of man's pleasure in his toil, and
+of beauty as the natural and necessary accompaniment of productive labour,
+which Ruskin had been preaching in _The Stones of Venice_ and in the
+Edinburgh lectures. By this time they had become acquainted with the work
+of the Pre-Raphaelites, and Burne-Jones had announced that of all men who
+lived on earth the one he wanted to see was Rossetti. Morris had used his
+spare time, of which we may imagine he had a considerable amount, in the
+study of mediæval design as the splendid manuscripts in the Bodleian
+Library illustrate it. An architectural newspaper also formed part of his
+regular reading outside of his studies. Thus primed for definite action,
+on this holiday filled with stimulating interests and the delicious
+freedom of roaming quite at will with the best of companions through the
+sweet fertile country of Northern France, Morris put quite aside all aims
+that had not directly to do with art. He and Burne-Jones, walking late one
+night on the quays of Havre, discussed their plans. Both gave up once and
+for all the idea of taking orders; both decided to leave Oxford as
+quickly as they could; both were to be artists, Burne-Jones a painter and
+Morris an architect.
+
+Although Morris was never to become a practising architect, this choice of
+a profession at the beginning of his career is both characteristic and
+significant. Buildings, as we have seen, had interested him from his
+childhood. His favourite excursions, long and short, had been to the
+region of churches. In the art of building he saw the means of elevating
+all the tastes of man. Architecture meant to him "the art of creating a
+building with all the appliances fit for carrying on a dignified and happy
+life." It seemed to him even at the outset, before the word "socialism"
+had come into his vocabulary, incredible that people living in pleasant
+homes and engaged in making and using these appliances of which he speaks,
+should lead lives other than dignified and happy. It was much more in
+accordance with his ideal of a vocation, a ministry to man, that he should
+contribute to the daily material comfort and pleasure of the world, that
+he should make places good for the body to live in and fair for the eye to
+rest upon, and therefore soothing to the soul, than that he should
+construct abstract spiritual mansions of which he could at best form but a
+vague conception. It was, then, with a certain sense of dedication, an
+exchange of method without a change of spirit, that he gave up the thought
+of holy orders and turned to the thought of furthering the good of
+mankind by working toward the beauty and order of the visible world.
+
+From the point of view of his later interests as a decorator of houses, he
+was showing the utmost wisdom in beginning with the framework, which must
+exist before any decoration can be applied. "I have spoken of the popular
+arts," he says himself, in one of his lectures, "but they might all be
+summed up in that one word Architecture; they are all parts of that great
+whole, and the art of house-building begins it all. If we did not know how
+to dye or to weave; if we had neither gold nor silver nor silk, and no
+pigments to paint with but half a dozen ochres and umbers, we might yet
+frame a worthy art that would lead to everything, if we had but timber,
+stone and lime, and a few cutting tools to make these common things not
+only shelter us from wind and weather but also express the thoughts and
+aspirations that stir in us. Architecture would lead us to all the arts,
+as it did with the earlier men; but if we despise it and take no note of
+how we are housed, the other arts will have a hard time of it indeed."
+
+And again: "A true architectural work," he says, "is a building duly
+provided with all the necessary furniture, decorated with all due
+ornament, according to the use, quality, and dignity of the building, from
+mere mouldings or abstract lines to the great epical works of sculpture
+and painting, which except as decorations of the nobler form of such
+buildings cannot be produced at all. So looked upon, a work of
+architecture is a harmonious, co-operative work of art, inclusive of all
+the serious arts--those which are not engaged in the production of mere
+toys or ephemeral prettinesses."
+
+Morris communicated his momentous decision to his family as soon as it was
+made, and they received it with amazement and distress. While their origin
+was not especially aristocratic, their tastes ran toward the symbols of
+aristocracy. When Morris was nine years old, his father obtained a grant
+of arms from the Heralds' College, and the son had no small liking for the
+bearings assigned--bearings which included a horse's head erased argent
+between three horseshoes. The horse's head he introduced on the tiles and
+glass of the house he built for himself in later years, and he was in the
+habit of making a yearly pilgrimage to the famous White Horse of the
+Berkshire Downs, connecting it in some obscure way with his ancestry. In
+England, during the fifties, nothing was less calculated to appeal to an
+aristocratic tendency than any form of art considered as a profession. In
+_The Newcomes_ Mr. Honeyman remarks with bland dignity to his aspiring
+young relative; "My dear Clive, there are degrees in society which we must
+respect. You surely cannot think of being a professional artist." In much
+this spirit, apparently, Mrs. Morris received her son's announcement,
+conveyed in a long and affectionate letter stating in detail the motives
+that had led him to his resolution. After defending his chosen profession
+at some length, calling it with characteristic avoidance of pompous
+phraseology, "a useful trade," he dwells upon the moderation of his hopes
+and expectations. He does not hope "to be great at all in anything," but
+thinks he may look forward to reasonable happiness in his work. It will be
+grievous to his pride and self-will, he says, to have to do just as he is
+told for three long years, but "good for it, too," and he looks forward
+with little delight to the drudgery of learning a new trade, but is pretty
+confident of success, and is happy in being able to pay "the premium and
+all that" without laying any fresh burden of expense upon his mother.
+Finally he proposes taking as his master George Edmund Street, who was
+living in Oxford as architect of the diocese, and whose enthusiasm for the
+thirteenth century could hardly have failed to claim the sympathy of
+Morris. Certainly it seemed precisely the fitting opportunity that
+offered. There could have been no better moment for him to follow the
+advice he so frequently gave to others--to turn his back upon an ugly age,
+choose the epoch that suited him best, and identify himself with that.
+Gothic to the core, he had come to Oxford, not, as Mr. Day has suggested,
+to catch the infection of mediævalism abroad there, but to assimilate and
+thrive upon all the influences to which his independently mediæval spirit
+was acutely susceptible. Scott, Pugin, Shaw, Viollet-le-Duc, had broken
+the way through popular prejudice, and Street was engaged at the time
+Morris went to him in the work of restoring ancient churches and designing
+Gothic buildings. "Restoration" had not then so evil a sound to Morris as
+it later came to have. Some thirty years after, he was to say: "No man or
+no body of men, however learned they may be in ancient art, whatever skill
+in design or love of beauty they may have, can persuade, or bribe, or
+force our workmen of to-day to do their work in the same way as the
+workmen of King Edward I. did theirs. Wake up Theodoric the Goth from his
+sleep of centuries and place him on the throne of Italy, turn our modern
+House of Commons into the Witenagemote (or Meeting of the Wise Men) of
+King Alfred the Great!--no less a feat is the restoration of an ancient
+building." In 1855, however, he had not fully arrived at this conviction.
+It was then the period of "fresh hope and partial insight" which,
+regarding it retrospectively, he says, "produced many interesting
+buildings and other works of art, and afforded a pleasant time indeed to
+the hopeful but very small minority engaged in it, in spite of all
+vexations and disappointments." There seemed no reason to suppose that,
+helped as he was by his predilections and by his environment, he could not
+become the master-builder of the house beautiful that constantly haunted
+his imagination.
+
+He was not to begin at once, however. In deference to his mother's wish he
+went through his final term, passed in the Final Schools without
+difficulty, and, together with his companions--The Brotherhood as they
+now called themselves,--gave distinction to his last year at the
+University, where despite all drawbacks he had been aboundingly happy, by
+founding the since famous little _Oxford and Cambridge Magazine_.
+
+[Illustration: TITLE-PAGE OF "THE OXFORD AND CAMBRIDGE MAGAZINE"]
+
+Like the Pre-Raphaelite _Germ_, this periodical aimed at an unusually high
+standard. It was printed at the Chiswick Press with some pretensions to
+typographical beauty. Each number had upon its title-page an ornamental
+heading designed by one of Charles Whittingham's daughters and engraved by
+Mary Byfield. On the green wrappers the name of the magazine was printed
+in the old-fashioned type which the Chiswick Press was the first to
+revive, and although, unlike _The Germ_, it was not illustrated,
+photographs of Woolner's medallions of Carlyle and Tennyson were mounted
+to bind with it and sold at a shilling apiece to subscribers. The price of
+each number was also a shilling, and twelve monthly numbers appeared,
+making it thrice as long lived as its prototype, _The Germ_. The financial
+responsibility, says Mr. Mackail, was undertaken wholly by Morris, and he
+at first attempted the general control. This he was soon glad to
+relinquish, paying a salary of a hundred pounds a year to his editor. The
+title, which in full read _The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine, Conducted by
+Members of the Two Universities_, indicates rather more co-operation than
+existed, the magazine being conducted entirely by Oxford men and fully
+two-thirds written by them. The tone of the contributions was to be
+impeccable. "It is unanimously agreed," wrote Price, "that there is to be
+no shewing off, no quips, no sneers, no lampooning in our Magazine."
+Politics were to be almost eschewed, "Tales, Poetry, friendly Critiques,
+and social articles" making up the body of the text.
+
+First among the contributors in quantity and regularity of supply was
+Morris. During his second year at the University he had discovered that he
+could write poetry, and had communicated the fact to his companions
+without loss of time. Canon Dixon, recalling the very thrilling occasion
+of his reading his first poem to the group gathered in the old Exeter
+rooms occupied by Burne-Jones, affirms that he reached his perfection at
+once, that nothing could have been altered for the better, and also quotes
+him as saying, "Well, if this is poetry, it is very easy to write." He was
+not one to let a capability fust in him unused. Poetry and prose, equally
+easy to him, poured after this from his pen, giving expression with some
+confusion and incoherence to his boyish raptures over the things he best
+loved and most thought about. During the twelve months of the magazine's
+life he contributed to it five poems, eight prose tales, a review of
+Browning's _Men and Women_, and two special articles, one on a couple of
+engravings by Alfred Bethel and one on the Cathedral at Amiens. In all
+this early work, filled with superabundant imagery, self-conscious,
+sensuous, unsubstantial, pictorial, we have Morris the writer as he was
+at the beginning and much as he was again at the end. His first strange
+little romances pass before the eyes as his late ones do, like strips of
+beautiful fabric, deeply dyed with colours both dim and rich, and printed
+with faintly outlined figures in postures illustrating the dreamy events
+of dreamy lives. Many of the pages echo with the sound of trumpets and the
+clash of arms, but the echo is from so far away that the heart of the
+reader declines to leap. Passionate emotions are portrayed in passionate
+language. Men and women love and die with wild adventure. Splendid
+sacrifices are made, and dark revenges taken. But the effect is of
+marionettes, admirably costumed and ingeniously managed yet inevitably
+suggesting artifice and failing to suggest life. Nevertheless Morris wrote
+in the fashion commonly supposed to impart vitality if nothing else to
+composition. He sat up late of nights, after the manner of young writers,
+and let his words stand as they fell hot and unpremeditated on the page.
+The labour of learning the art, as his favourite, Keats, learned it, by
+indefatigable practice in finding the perfect word, the one exquisite
+phrase, was quite outside his method. As long as he lived, he preferred
+rewriting to revising a manuscript. The austerity of mind that leads to
+impatience of superfluous colour or tone, and that dreads as the plague
+superfluous sentiment, was foreign to him, nor did he ever acquire it as
+even the Epicurean temperament may do by ardent self-restraint. In most
+of the romances and poems the scene is laid somewhat vaguely but
+unmistakably in the Middle Ages. We rarely surprise the young writer in a
+date, but the atmosphere is that of the thirteenth century though with
+many thirteenth-century characteristics left out. The incidents appeal to
+what Bagehot calls "that kind of boyish fancy which idolises mediæval
+society as the 'fighting time.'" The distinction lies in the fertility and
+beauty of the descriptions. On nearly every page is some passage that has
+the quality of a picture. In _The Hollow Land_, in _Gertha's Lovers_, in
+_Svend and his Brethren_, and especially in the article on the Amiens
+Cathedral, are exquisite landscapes and backgrounds against which the
+personages group themselves with perfect fittingness. "I must paint Gertha
+before I die," said Burne-Jones, after Morris himself was dead, recalling
+the charm of this story which was written in his company, under the
+willows by the riverside. "The opening and the closing sentences always
+invited me in an indescribable way, but the motive _par excellence_ was
+that of Gertha after death, in the chapter entitled 'What Edith the
+Handmaiden Saw from the War Saddle,' where the beautiful queen lies on the
+battle-field with the blue speedwell about her pale face, while a soft
+wind rustles the sunset-lit aspens overhead."
+
+[Illustration: _Portrait of Rossetti_
+
+_By Watts_]
+
+To his genius for evoking a scene from memory or imagination with a grace
+and delicacy missing in the designs he was later to make with tools more
+rebellious than words, Morris added a singular ability to convey to
+his readers the most significant quality of what he admired, to impress
+them with the feature that had most impressed him. The fancy for gold,
+inspired perhaps by study of mediæval illumination, runs like a glittering
+thread through the story of _Svend and his Brethren_. Cissela's gold hair,
+her crown of gold, the golden ring she breaks with her lover, the gold
+cloth over which she walks across the trampled battle-field, the samite of
+purple wrought with gold stars, the golden letters on the
+sword-blade,--all these recur like so many bright accents from which the
+attention cannot escape. Again, in the description of Amiens Cathedral, we
+get from simple verbal repetition the effect of massive modelling, the
+sense of weight in the design as Morris felt it in one of the sculptured
+figures of the niches: "A stately figure with a king's crown on his head,
+and hair falling in three waves over his shoulders; a very kingly face
+looking straight onward; a great jewelled collar falling heavily to his
+elbows: his right hand holding a heavy sceptre formed of many budding
+flowers, and his left just touching in front the folds of his raiment that
+falls heavily, very heavily to the ground over his feet. Saul, King of
+Israel." In another passage describing with minute detail the figures of
+the Virgin and Child, a similar emphasis is laid on the quality of
+restfulness. "The two figures are very full of rest; everything about them
+expresses it from the broad forehead of the Virgin, to the resting of the
+feet of the Child (who is almost self-balanced) in the fold of the robe
+that she holds gently, to the falling of the quiet lines of her robe over
+her feet, to the resting of its folds between them." And if the effect to
+be rendered is one of colour, a touch of finer eloquence is added to this
+somewhat crude method. The final passage of the account of the great
+Cathedral is a genuine triumph of poetic observation, carrying the fancy
+of the reader lightly over the silvery loveliness of the picture as it lay
+before the boy enraptured by it: "And now, farewell to the church that I
+love, to the carved temple-mountain that rises so high above the
+water-meadows of the Somme, above the grey roofs of the good town.
+Farewell to the sweep of the arches, up from the bronze bishops lying at
+the west end, up to the belt of solemn windows, where, through the painted
+glass, the light comes solemnly. Farewell to the cavernous porches of the
+west front, so grey under the fading August sun, grey with the
+wind-storms, grey with the rain-storms, grey with the beat of many days'
+sun, from sunrise to sunset; showing white sometimes, too, when the sun
+strikes it strongly; snowy-white, sometimes, when the moon is on it, and
+the shadows growing blacker; but grey now, fretted into deeper grey,
+fretted into black by the mitres of the bishops, by the solemn covered
+heads of the prophets, by the company of the risen, and the long robes of
+the judgment-angels by hell-mouth and its flames gaping there, and the
+devils that feed it; by the saved souls and the crowning angels; by the
+presence of the Judge, and by the roses growing above them all forever."
+
+The review of Browning's _Men and Women_, then recently published, is more
+valuable as testifying to the impression produced by Browning upon his
+young contemporary, than for any especial illumination it throws upon the
+poems themselves. Browning was popular with the students of Oxford long
+before he gained his wider audience, and although Morris did not follow
+him far in his investigation of the human soul and came heartily to
+dislike "his constant dwelling on sin and probing of the secrets of the
+heart," he placed him at the time of writing his criticism "high among the
+poets of all time" and he "hardly knew whether first or second in our
+own," and his defence of him, bristling with ejaculations, and couched in
+boyish phrases, shows in part a more than boyish divination. "It does not
+help poems much to _solve_ them," he says, after what, in truth, is a
+somewhat disastrous attempt to interpret the meaning of _Women and Roses_,
+"because there are in poems so many exquisitely small and delicate turns
+of thought running through their music, and along with it, that cannot be
+done into prose, any more than the infinite variety of form, and shadow,
+and colour in a great picture can be rendered by a coloured woodcut." It
+was "a bitter thing" to him to see the way in which the poet had been
+received by "almost everybody," and he assured his little world that what
+the critics called obscurity in Browning's poems resulted from depth of
+thought and greatness of subject on the poet's part, and on his readers'
+part, "from their shallower brains and more bounded knowledge," if not
+indeed from "mere wanton ignorance and idleness," and to this kind of
+obscurity one had little right to object. It was the first tilt in the
+lists, the beginning of the long combat against the Philistines upon which
+Morris entered with high resolve and firm conviction, which he lustily
+enjoyed, and in which despite many a broken lance he bore himself as a
+bold and skilful knight.
+
+In the little tale called _The Hollow Land_, written for the magazine just
+before it "went to smash," to use Burne-Jones's expressive phrase, an
+amusingly significant sentence occurs: "Then I tried to learn painting,"
+says the hero, "till I thought I should die, but at last learned through
+very much pain and grief." Here it is not difficult to recognise an
+autobiographic touch. Painting was already beginning to beckon Morris away
+from the profession he had so recently chosen. At the end of 1855, during
+the Christmas vacation, and just before Morris entered Street's office,
+Burne-Jones had made a visit to London, where at a monthly meeting at the
+Working Men's College he for the first time saw Rossetti, and later heard
+him rend in pieces the opinions of those who differed with him, and
+stoutly support his infrangible theory that all men should be painters.
+How ready Burne-Jones was to yield himself to this potent influence, how
+promptly Rossetti's vivid and original temperament acted upon his admirer,
+is clear from the latter's description, written many years after, of the
+first encounter--the young undergraduate sitting half-frightened,
+embarrassed and worshipping, among strangers, eating thick bread and
+butter, and listening to speeches about the progress of the college, until
+the entrance of his idol, whose sensitive, gentle, indolent face, with its
+flickering of humour and the fire of genius, entirely satisfied his poetic
+imagination. The great qualities of Rossetti in those days revealed
+themselves in his face, and his imperious will and keen intellect were no
+less obvious in his talk. Burne-Jones returned to Oxford with the idea of
+dedicating himself to art more than ever firmly fixed in his mind.
+Rossetti had approved the drawings which he had brought to him for
+consideration, and had pronounced the seven months still to elapse before
+he could take his degree time too valuable to waste outside of art,
+counselling him to fling the University and all its works behind him and
+begin painting at once. With mingled delight and terror Burne-Jones, in
+spite of small means and weak health, followed his leader, who, however
+rash to advise, was not one to neglect his charge, and who worked loyally
+to bring him through with triumph, criticising, teaching, approving,
+encouraging without stint, and presently, after his own inimitable
+fashion, bringing patrons to him, bidding them buy, which obediently they
+did.
+
+It was inevitable that Morris should be stirred to emulation by this step
+on the part of his friend. After Burne-Jones went to London to begin
+painting under Rossetti's direction, Morris spent nearly all his Sundays
+with him at his lodgings in Chelsea. These holidays were full of
+excitement. It was a glorious little world that opened out under
+Rossetti's enthusiastic, dogmatic, and continuous talk and argument.
+Morris was deeply impressed by his notion that everyone should be a
+painter, and after Street moved his office to London and Morris and
+Burne-Jones took lodgings together, the former tried the characteristic
+experiment of combining painting with architecture, attempting to get six
+hours a day at his drawing in addition to his office work. It is
+interesting to find him writing at this juncture that he cannot enter into
+politico-social subjects with any interest, that things are in a muddle
+and that he has no power to set them right in the smallest degree, that
+_his_ work is the embodiment of dreams in one form or another. What
+Rossetti thought of his two disciples is seen in a letter written by him
+to William Allingham in December, 1856, when Morris had been nearly a year
+with Street. He found both "wonders after their kind." "Jones is doing
+designs which quite put one to shame," he wrote, "so full are they of
+everything--Aurora Leighs of art. He will take the lead in no time."
+Morris he deemed "one of the finest little fellows alive--with a touch of
+the incoherent, but a real man," and "in all illumination and work of
+that kind" he considered him quite unrivalled by anything modern that he
+knew. With a guide thus confident and inspiring, it is not strange that
+Morris presently yielded to the spell, and renounced architecture to
+pursue painting as an end and aim in itself, although, like the hero of
+his romance, he learned with much pain and grief.
+
+[Illustration: ILLUSTRATION BY ROSSETTI TO "THE LADY OF SHALOTT" IN THE
+MOXON "TENNYSON." THE HEAD OF LAUNCELOT IS A PORTRAIT OF MORRIS]
+
+Rossetti's service to Morris is difficult to estimate. For a brief period
+his influence over him was supreme. Perhaps in the work and temper of this
+Italian, Morris saw more deeply into the heart of the mediæval world than
+all his churches and illuminated manuscripts could help him to see. At all
+events, he was for the time close to genius and dominated by it. His
+devotion to his master partook of the violence inseparable from his
+temperament. He was soon ready to say, when Burne-Jones complained that he
+worked better in Rossetti's manner than in his own: "I have got beyond
+that; I want to imitate Gabriel as much as I can." But he was never to be
+for very long under any personal influence. Nor could he be persuaded by
+the most brilliant eloquence in the world that good could be got out of
+doing what he did not enjoy; and he never enjoyed any labour that required
+long patience and persistent concentration of effort. Without being
+fickle, his mind was so restless as to produce the effect of fickleness
+and to preclude the possibility of his doing really great work. While he
+was trying, under Rossetti's stimulating but peremptory rule, to master a
+painter's methods he became gloomy and despondent. "How long Rossetti's
+daily influence might have kept him labouring at what he could not do,"
+writes Mr. Mackail with a tinge of bitterness, "when there was work all
+round that he could do, on the whole, better than any man living, it is
+needless to inquire." But that Rossetti did manage to keep him for a
+couple of years at the study of painting cannot be counted a misfortune.
+Probably that experience, together with his brief term under Street, did
+as much as anything to save his design from mediocrity and imitativeness.
+He did not make himself an architect, and he never learned to draw
+anything that remotely resembled the actual structure of the human form,
+but he must have gained through his study some knowledge of the inviolable
+laws of art that he could not have gained by passive observation however
+keen, or by sympathy however ardent. Rossetti can hardly have been the
+best master for him. His own nature was too undisciplined, and he had as
+few of the academic virtues as any man on record of the same technical
+ability. But his was the supreme faculty of rousing enthusiasm. It may be
+doubted whether any other painter in England could have kept Morris at the
+appointed and impossible task for so long a time. It is easy to imagine
+how the impatient spirit of the latter rebelled against the slow process
+of learning to draw the human figure in its complicated and subtle beauty
+of construction and surface. The fact that he stopped so far short of
+satisfactory accomplishment seems to account for many of the defects to be
+found in his later designs, which at their best were never to be entirely
+beautiful, though full of zest and freedom. His tendency to drop any
+branch of his work as soon as it became tedious to him, to turn to
+something else, kept his creative impulse continually fresh and effective;
+but kept him also from achieving the penetrating distinction of artistic
+self-possession. Whatever helped him in any degree toward this
+self-possession, whatever he got in the way of discipline of mind and
+hand, should be acknowledged by his admirers with gratitude, and it is but
+just to recognise in Rossetti the one man who seems to have kept the
+prodigious impetuosity of Morris down without promptly losing hold upon
+his interest. Add to this the clear vision of a romantic ideal which all
+who worked with Rossetti were privileged to share, and the constant
+inspiration of the drama of sentiment and emotion rendered in his colour
+and line and in his exotic treatment of form, and we must own that nowhere
+else could Morris have found such food for an imagination already
+quickened by influences reaching it from a remote time and an alien world.
+Nowhere else could he have come so close to the concealed mysteries of the
+human soul, despite the disillusionment he was bound to feel in daily
+contact with a character as contradictory as it was compelling.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+FROM ROSSETTI TO THE RED HOUSE.
+
+
+Although a blight of discouragement seems to have fallen upon Morris under
+Rossetti's tuition, there were some blithe compensations. Not the least of
+these was the fitting up of the rooms at 17 Red Lion Square where he and
+Burne-Jones took quarters. "Topsy and I live together," wrote Burne-Jones,
+"in the quaintest room in all London, hung with brasses of old knights and
+drawings of Albert Dürer." For the furniture, Morris, who, Rossetti said,
+was "bent on doing the magnificent," made designs to be carried out in
+deal by a carpenter of the neighbourhood. Everything was very large and
+heavy, intensely mediæval, and doubtless rather ugly in an honest fashion,
+but in the end it was furniture to be coveted, for it offered great spaces
+for decoration, and Rossetti as well as Morris and Burne-Jones painted on
+it subjects from Chaucer and Dante and the Arthurian stories. The panels
+of a cupboard glowed with Rossetti's beautiful pictures representing Dante
+and Beatrice meeting in Florence and meeting in Paradise, and on the wide
+backs of the chairs he painted scenes from some of the poems Morris had
+written. The wardrobe was decorated by Burne-Jones with paintings from
+_The Prioress's Tale_. On the walls of the room were hung, no doubt, the
+several water-colours bought from Rossetti, to the lovely names of which
+Morris promptly wrote ballads. An owl was co-tenant with the young
+artists, and they were served and also criticised by a housemaid of
+literary ambitions. In this highly individual apartment, where, curiously
+enough, Rossetti and his friend Deverell had had their studio together
+five or six years before, life was not all labour and striving. There
+were, moreover, holidays spent at the Zoölogical Gardens, evenings at the
+theatre, night-long sessions in Rossetti's rooms, and excursions on the
+Thames. One of the latter is vividly described in Dr. Birkbeck Hill's
+_Letters of Gabriel Rossetti to William Allingham_, giving a joyous
+picture of Morris at the mercy of his ungovernable temper. The party,
+consisting of Hill, Morris, and Faulkner, had started out to row down the
+Thames from Oxford to a London suburb. By the time they had reached Henley
+they had spent all their money except enough for Faulkner's return ticket
+to Oxford, where he was to attend a college meeting. For this he departed,
+promising to bring back a supply of money in the evening. "The weather was
+unusually hot," writes Dr. Hill, "Morris and I sauntered along the
+river-side. I have not forgotten the longing glances he cast on a large
+basket of strawberries. He had always been so plentifully supplied with
+money that he bore with far greater impatience than I did this privation.
+At last the shadows had grown long and the heat was more bearable. We went
+with light hearts to the railway station to meet our comrade. 'Well,
+Faulkner,' cried out Morris, cheerfully, 'how much money have you
+brought?' Our friend gave a start. 'Good heavens,' he replied, 'I forgot
+all about it.' Morris thrust both his hands into his long dark curly hair,
+tugged at it wildly, ground his teeth, swore like a trooper, and stamped
+up and down the platform--in fact, behaved just like Sinbad's captain when
+he found that his ship was driving upon the rocks. His outbursts of rage,
+I hasten to say, were always harmless. They left no sullenness behind, and
+as each rapidly passed away he was ready to join in a hearty laugh at it.
+Faulkner, who was not the most patient of men, noticed that passengers,
+station-master, porters, engine-driver, and stoker were all gazing in
+astonishment. He, too, lost his temper, and, though in a far lower key,
+stormed back. Morris soon quieted down, and a council of war was held. He
+fortunately had a gold watch-chain on which he raised enough to pay all
+needful expenses. I remember well how the rest of our journey we rowed by
+many a tavern on the bank as effectually constrained as ever was Ulysses
+not to listen to its siren call. It was through no earthly paradise that
+the young poet and artist passed on the afternoon of our last day." When
+they landed they had just a penny among them, and were still some six or
+seven miles from their destination, so they were obliged to hire a cab and
+trust to good fortune for not coming to a turnpike gate before arriving at
+Red Lion Square.
+
+About this time also Rossetti and Morris made an excursion to Oxford for
+the purpose of visiting Benjamin Woodward, the architect and Rossetti's
+friend. Mr. Woodward had recently erected a building for the Oxford Union,
+a society composed of past and present members of the University. In
+exhibiting the building to Rossetti it was suggested that the blank
+stretch of wall which ran around the top of the Debating Room afforded an
+admirable opportunity for decoration, and Rossetti with prompt enthusiasm
+evolved a plan for a coöperative enterprise. He and Morris, with several
+other willing spirits,--Burne-Jones, of course, Arthur Hughes, Valentine
+Prinsep, Spencer Stanhope, and J. Hungerford Pollen,--were to go up to
+Oxford in a body. Each was to choose a subject from the _Morte d'Arthur_,
+and execute it to the best of his ability on the walls of the Debating
+Room. The whole affair was to be a matter of a few weeks. The artists
+offered their services for nothing; their expenses (which turned out to be
+as free as their offer) were to be paid by the Union. It is easy to
+imagine the ensuing bustle and ardour. Rossetti eagerly managing, Morris
+delighted with the charmingly mediæval situation,--a few humble painters
+working together piously, without hope of glory or thought of gain,--the
+others following their leader with lamb-like docility. Had their knowledge
+of methods been equal to their zeal, the walls of the Debating Room must
+have become the loveliest of realised visions and the delight of many
+generations. The young workmen sat for each other, Morris, Burne-Jones,
+and Rossetti all possessing fine paintable heads. They clambered up and
+down endless ladders to gain a satisfactory view of their performance, and
+attacked the most stupendous difficulties with patience and ingenuity. The
+faces in the subject undertaken by Burne-Jones were painted, for example,
+in three planes at right angles to one another, owing to the projection of
+a string-course of bricks straight across the space to be filled by the
+heads of the figures. Some studies by Rossetti have been preserved, and
+show that his part at least of the decoration was conceived in a fresh
+poetic spirit, with fulness and quaintness of expression and suggestion.
+But the congenial band had entered upon their labours with a carelessness
+that can only be described as wanton. Not one of them knew how to paint in
+tempera, and the new damp walls were smeared over with a thin coat of
+white lime wash laid upon the bare bricks as sole preparation for a sort
+of water-colour painting that blossomed like a flower under the gifted
+hands of the artists, and faded almost as soon away. The effect at the
+time was so brilliant as to make the walls, according to Mr. Coventry
+Patmore's contemporaneous testimony, "look like the margin of an
+illuminated manuscript," but in the course of a few months the colours had
+sunk into the sponge-like surface to such an extent that the designs were
+already dim and indistinguishable.
+
+Morris, with characteristic promptness, was the first on the field, and
+his picture was finished in advance of any of the others. He was, however,
+no better instructed than his companions in the special requirements of
+his material, and presently all that was left of his painting was the head
+of his brave knight peering over the tops of multitudinous sunflowers. The
+decoration of the ceiling was also assigned to him, and he made his design
+for it in a single day. Later, in 1875, he repainted it, but most of the
+art of this merry period has receded into complete oblivion. The stay in
+Oxford lengthened into months as complications increased, and finally the
+enterprise was abandoned with the work unfinished. It had led, however, to
+an event of paramount importance to Morris, and of considerable importance
+to Rossetti--the meeting with Miss Burden, who was to figure in so many of
+Rossetti's symbolic pictures, and who became the wife of Morris. Her
+remarkable beauty had attracted the attention of the young men one night
+at the little Oxford theatre. "My brother was the first to observe her,"
+writes William Rossetti; "her face was at once tragic, mystic, passionate,
+calm, beautiful, and gracious--a face for a sculptor and a face for a
+painter--a face solitary in England, and not at all like that of an
+English woman, but rather of an Ionian Greek." In Rossetti's portrait of
+her at eighteen, painted shortly after this meeting, we see the grave,
+unusual features almost precisely as they are drawn with words in a poem
+by Morris, entitled _Praise of My Lady_, which Mr. Mackail says was
+written during a visit to the Manchester Exhibition of 1857, but which
+assuredly is no earlier than the date of his acquaintance with Jane
+Burden. The description, Pre-Raphaelite in its detail, runs through the
+first half of the poem:
+
+  My Lady seems of ivory
+  Forehead, straight nose, and cheeks that be
+  Hollow'd a little mournfully.
+                Beata mea Domina!
+
+  Her forehead, overshadow'd much
+  By bows of hair, has a wave such
+  As God was good to make for me.
+                Beata mea Domina!
+
+  Not greatly long my lady's hair,
+  Nor yet with yellow color fair,
+  But thick and crisped wonderfully;
+                Beata mea Domina!
+
+  Heavy to make the pale face sad,
+  And dark, but dead as though it had
+  Been forged by God most wonderfully;
+                Beata mea Domina!
+
+  Of some strange metal, thread by thread,
+  To stand out from my lady's head,
+  Not moving much to tangle me.
+                Beata mea Domina!
+
+  Beneath her brows the lids fall slow,
+  The lashes a clear shadow throw
+  Where I would wish my lips to be.
+                Beata mea Domina!
+
+  Her great eyes, standing far apart,
+  Draw up some memory from her heart,
+  And gaze out very mournfully;
+                Beata mea Domina!
+
+  So beautiful and kind they are,
+  But most times looking out afar,
+  Waiting for something, not for me.
+                Beata mea Domina!
+
+  I wonder if the lashes long
+  Are those that do her bright eyes wrong,
+  For always half tears seem to be.
+                Beata mea Domina!
+
+  Lurking below the underlid,
+  Darkening the place where they lie hid--
+  If they should rise and flow for me!
+                Beata mea Domina!
+
+  Her full lips being made to kiss,
+  Curl'd up and pensive each one is;
+  This makes me faint to stand and see.
+                Beata mea Domina!
+
+It was the force of this attraction that kept Morris long at Oxford after
+Rossetti and Burne-Jones had returned to London, leaving the walls of the
+Oxford Union to their sad fate. But it was no love in idleness for him,
+rather a time of many beginnings. He was carving in stone, modelling in
+clay, making designs for stained glass windows, even "doing worsted
+work," in Rossetti's contemptuous phrase for his efforts at reviving the
+lost art of embroidery, with a frame made from an old model and wools dyed
+especially for him. Most of all he was writing poetry, the proper
+occupation of a lover so æsthetically endowed. Early in 1858 he had _The
+Defence of Guenevere_, a collection of thirty poems, ready to bring out.
+Save for a slim little pamphlet entitled _Sir Galahad: A Christmas
+Mystery_, the contents of which were included in it, it was his first
+volume and, like Swinburne's _Rosamond_ published two years later, it was
+dedicated to Rossetti.
+
+In this youthful, fantastic, emotional poetry we get the very essence of
+the writer's early spirit without the strange shadow of foreboding, the
+constant sense of swiftly passing time, that comes into the poetry of his
+maturity. Technically, the poems could hardly be more picturesquely
+defective than they are. The one giving the volume its name is nearly
+unintelligible in parts, even when the reader is aware of the incidents of
+Guenevere's story, and prepared to interpret the hysterical ravings of a
+woman overcome by sorrow, shame, and love.
+
+But no poems, except Rossetti's own, have so suggested romantic art in
+strange shapes and unbridled colour. They, too, like the wall-paintings of
+that early and unrivalled time, resemble the margins of an illuminated
+manuscript, reminding one of nothing in nature, but flashing the richness
+of mediæval symbolism upon the imagination in more or less awkward forms.
+If Morris could not "imitate Gabriel" in his pictures, he could at least
+imitate Gabriel's pictures in his poems. From the _Beata Beatrix_, from
+the _Ghirlandata_, from the _Proserpine_, from almost any of Rossetti's
+paintings of women, these curious and affected lines, for example, might
+have been gleaned:
+
+  See through my long throat how the words go up
+    In ripples to my mouth; how in my hand
+  The shadow lies like wine within a cup
+    Of marvellously colour'd gold.
+
+In _The Eve of Crecy_ we have the glitter of gold and the splendour of
+material things, rendered with a childish abandon, as in the prose
+romances:
+
+  Gold on her head and gold on her feet,
+  And gold where the hems of her kirtle meet,
+  And a golden girdle round my sweet;--
+        Ah! qu'elle est belle, La Marguerite.
+
+  Yet even now it is good to think
+
+         *       *       *       *       *
+
+  Of Margaret sitting glorious there,
+  In glory of gold and glory of hair,
+  And glory of glorious face most fair;
+        Ah! qu'elle est belle, La Marguerite.
+
+The full hues that had for the decorators of mediæval missals a religious
+significance recur again and again in lines that have much more to do with
+earth than with heaven, and show less concern with the human soul than
+with the human heart. Damozels hold scarlet lilies such as Maiden
+Margaret bears "on the great church walls;" ladies walk in their gardens
+clad in white and scarlet; the vision of Christ appears to Galahad "with
+raiment half blood-red, half white as snow"; angels appear clad in white
+with scarlet wings; scarlet is the predominating colour throughout, if we
+except gold, which serves as background and ornament to everything. Next
+to scarlet comes green, which Morris was later to call "the workaday
+colour," and we find occasional patches of blue and of grey in painted
+boats and in hangings. The following stanza shows a favourite method of
+emphasising the prevailing colour of a poem:
+
+            The water slips,
+  The red-bill'd heron dips,
+  Sweet kisses on red lips,
+  Alas! the red rust grips,
+  And the blood-red dagger rips,
+  Yet, O knight, come to me!
+
+For pure incoherence, the quality that Rossetti discerned in Morris at
+their first meeting, the song from which this stanza is taken is
+unsurpassed. Yet an emotional effect is gained in it. What we chiefly miss
+in the little craft sailing under such vivid colours, is that
+"deep-grasping keel of reason" which, Lowell says, "alone can steady and
+give direction" to verse. Excitable and impatient, in pursuit of a vague
+ideal, gifted with the power to bring out the pictorial quality of
+detached scenes, but without a fine metrical sense, and averse to lucid
+statement, the young poet introduced himself to the world as a symbolist
+in the modern acceptation of the word. One of his poems, _Rapunzel_, has
+been said to forecast Maeterlinck's manner and spirit, and the general
+characteristics of the poem--a fairy tale somewhat too "grown-up" in
+treatment--certainly suggest the comparison. In all this work physical
+characteristics play an important part. Long hands with "tenderly shadowed
+fingers," "long lips" that "cleave" to the fingers they kiss, lips "damp
+with tears," that "shudder with a kiss," lips "like a curved sword," warm
+arms, long, fair arms, lithe arms, twining arms, broad fair eyelids, long
+necks, and unlimited hair, form an equipment somewhat dangerous for a poet
+with anything short of genius to sustain him. For themes Morris had gone
+chiefly to the Arthurian stories and to the chronicles of Froissart. His
+style, he himself thought, was more like Browning's than anyone else's,
+though the difference that lay between him and Browning even at the
+beginning forbade any essential likeness. Browning's effort was always to
+render an idea which was perfectly clear in his own mind. His volubility
+and obscurity and roughness frequently arose from his over-eagerness to
+express his idea in a variety of ways, leading him to break off with half
+statements and begin afresh, to throw out imperfect suggestions and follow
+them with others equally imperfect. But all his stutterings and broken
+sentences failed to disguise the fact that an intellectual conception
+underlay the turbulent method, giving substance and life to the poem
+however much it might lack grace and form. With Morris the intellectual
+conception was as weak as with Browning it was strong, and apparently
+existed chiefly to give an excuse for the pictures following one another
+in rapid succession through every poem, short or long, dramatic or lyric,
+of both his youth and maturity. In this early volume there was, to be
+sure, an obvious effort toward rendering psychological effects. Most of
+the longer poems are miniature dramas with a march toward some great event
+in the lives of the actors. The author observes the dramatic requirement
+of sinking himself in the identity of his characters. Knights are slain
+and ladies die of love and witch-bound maidens are rescued by their
+princes without the sounding of a personal note on the part of their
+creator. And in two instances, _Sir Peter Harpdon's End_ and _The Haystack
+in the Floods_, there is ruddy human blood in the tortured beings whose
+extremity moves the reader with a genuine emotion. In these two poems the
+voice might indeed be the voice of Browning, though the hand is still
+unmistakably the hand of Morris. In the main, however, the appeal that is
+made is to the imagination concerned with the visible aspect of
+brilliantly coloured objects and with the delirious expression of
+overwrought feelings.
+
+[Illustration: _Portrait of Jane Burden (Mrs. Morris)_
+
+_By Rossetti_]
+
+One defect, calculated to interfere with a warm reception of the volume on
+the part of the general public, Morris shared with Browning, possessing
+even more than Browning the merit attending it. Familiarity with the
+art and literature of the Middle Ages made it natural for him to preserve
+the thin new wine of his youthful poetry in the old bottles of the defunct
+past, using motives and scenes and accessories alien to our modern life,
+and only dimly understood by the modern reader. The true spirit of that
+past it is hardly necessary to say he did not revive,--no writer has ever
+revived the true spirit of any age antecedent to his own,--and Morris,
+with his remarkable faculty for eliminating from his mental conceptions
+whatever did not please his taste, was wholly unfitted by temperament,
+however well fitted by his acquirements, to carry through successfully a
+task so tremendous.
+
+_The Defence of Guenevere_ was received by the public without enthusiasm.
+About half an edition of five hundred copies was sold and given away, and
+the remainder lingered for a dozen years or more until the publication of
+_The Earthly Paradise_ stimulated the interest of readers in the previous
+work of its author.
+
+Whatever disappointment Morris may have felt must soon have given way to
+the excitement of the plunge he now made into a new life and the most
+intense personal interests. On the twenty-sixth of April, 1859, he was
+married to Jane Burden, and after a brief interval of travel he began to
+build the beautiful house which he then supposed would be his home for the
+rest of his days.
+
+His personal attractiveness at this time was keenly felt by his
+companions. He had been "making himself," as the phrase is, since his
+childhood, and if Stevenson's dictum--to know what you like is the
+beginning of wisdom and of old age--be applied to him he can never have
+been wholly ignorant or a child. Knowledge of what he liked, and even more
+definitely of what he did not like, was his earliest as well as his most
+notable acquirement. But he was a boy, too, in his excessive restless
+vitality, and hitherto with all his enthusiasms he had been a somewhat
+cold boy. Just now he was beginning to "take a fancy for the human," as
+one of his friends put it. He was connecting his vague schemes and
+ambitions with a personal and practical enterprise. His ideals dropped
+from a region always too rare for them to an atmosphere of activities and
+interests in which the vast general public could breathe as easily as he.
+In building his new home to his fancy he was unconsciously laying the
+corner-stones of the many homes throughout England into which his
+influence was afterward to enter. He was just twenty-five, filled with
+energy, generous impulse, honesty, and kindness. The bourgeois touch which
+his biographer declares was inherent in his nature was far from obvious as
+yet. Society for its own sake he liked little, and was not above getting
+out of unwelcome invitations by subterfuge, if fair means would not avail.
+He affected a Bohemian carelessness in dress, and his hair was uniformly
+wild. His language was generally forcible, often violent, always
+expressive. He lived in the company of his intimates and cared for nothing
+beyond the range of his fixed interests. The remark made long after--"Do
+you suppose that I should see anything in Rome that I can't see in
+Whitechapel?"--was perfectly indicative of his mood toward everything that
+failed to arouse his intellectual curiosity. But the places and things
+that did arouse it were never tawdry or valueless, and his reasons for
+caring for them, of which he was always remarkably prolific, were such as
+appeal strongly to the mind in which homely associations hold a constant
+place. It must be an out and out classicist who fails to detect in himself
+a pulsation of sympathy in response to the wail which Morris once sent
+home from Verona: "Yes, and even in these magnificent and wonderful towns
+I long rather for the heap of grey stones with a grey roof that we call a
+house north-away."
+
+[Illustration: "ACANTHUS" WALL-PAPER, "PIMPERNEL" WALL-PAPER, "AFRICAN
+MARIGOLD" COTTON-PRINT
+
+WALL-PAPER AND COTTON-PRINT DESIGNS
+
+(_Reproduced from examples obtained by courtesy of Mr. A. E. Bulkley_)]
+
+His first house, in which he took unlimited delight, was not, however, a
+heap of grey stones, but a structure of brick, its name, the Red House,
+indicating its striking and then unusual colour. Its architect was Philip
+Webb, who had been an associate of Morris during the brief period passed
+in Mr. Street's office. Situated not far from London, on the outskirts of
+the village of Upton and in the midst of a pleasant orchard, whose trees
+dropped their fruit into its windows, the Red House wore an emphatically
+Gothic aspect. It was L-shaped, with numerous irregularities of plan, and
+entirely without frippery of applied ornament. Its great sloping roof, the
+pointed arches of its doorways, the deep simple porches, the large hall,
+with its long table in place of an entrance alley the open-timbered roof
+over the staircase, the panelled screen dividing the great hall from a
+lesser one,--all these were characteristic of the old English house before
+the day of Italian invasion, while the mobile Gothic style, adapting
+itself readily to individual needs, prevailed. It stood among the old and
+gnarled trees, only two stories in height, but with an effect of rambling
+spaciousness and hospitality, and the garden that lay close to it was as
+individual and old-fashioned as itself. Morris prided himself, Mr. Mackail
+tells us, on his knowledge of gardening, and his advice to the Birmingham
+Society of Artists in one of the lectures of his later years shows how
+thoughtfully he considered the subject. As he always acted so far as he
+could upon his theories, we may be fairly sure that the Red House garden
+was planned in conformity with the ideal place sketched in this lecture,
+and may assume in it a profusion of single flowers mixed to avoid great
+masses of colour, among them the old columbine, where the clustering doves
+are unmistakable and distinct, the old china aster, the single snowdrop,
+and the sunflower, these planted in little squares, divided from each
+other by grassy walks, and hedged in by wild rose or sweet-briar
+trellises. We may be sure the place contained no curiosities from the
+jungle or tropical waste, that everything was excluded which was not
+native to the English soil, and that ferns and brakes from the woodland
+were not enticed from the place of their origin to take away the
+characteristic domestic look of a spot that ought to seem "like a part of
+the house." "It will be a key to right thinking about gardens," says
+Morris, "if you consider in what kind of places a garden is most desired.
+In a very beautiful country, especially if it be mountainous, we can do
+without it well enough, whereas in a flat and dull country we crave after
+it, and there it is often the very making of the homestead; while in great
+towns, gardens both private and public are positive necessities if the
+citizens are to live reasonable and healthy lives in body and mind."
+
+Passing from this first necessity of reasonable and healthy living through
+the rose-masked doorway into the Red House itself, we find it equally
+suggestive of its master's personal tastes and beliefs. For everything
+Morris had his persuasive reason. His windows had small leaded panes of
+glass, because the large windows found "in most decent houses or what are
+so called," let in a flood of light "in a haphazard and ill-considered
+way," which the indwellers are "forced to obscure again by shutters,
+blinds, curtains, screens, heavy upholsteries, and such other nuisances."
+By all means, therefore, fill the window with moderate-sized panes of
+glass set in solid sash bars--"we shall then at all events feel as if we
+were indoors on a cold day"--as if we had a roof over our heads. The fact
+that small windows were used in mediæval times and must therefore of
+necessity be superior is not brought forward in this argument, and the
+charm of the reasoning is not marred by any reminder of the actual
+conditions of which small heavily leaded windows are a survival--such as
+the fortress style of building belonging to a warlike time, and the great
+costliness of glass, and the inability to support large panes by leads.
+
+Morris could always be trusted to support his fundamental liking for a
+thing by a host of assurances as to its sensible merits and practical
+advantages, but the mere fact that he liked it was quite sufficient for
+his own satisfaction of mind. When one of his comrades once suggested to
+him that personal feeling ought not to count for too much, and that not
+liking a thing did not make it bad, he replied: "Oh, don't it though! What
+we don't like _is_ bad." And he had a fashion which must have produced an
+irritating effect upon some of his hearers, of declaring that the people
+who did not hold his ideas must be unhealthy either in body or mind or
+both. Certainly the aspect of the Red House suggested health within its
+walls. With a slight stretch of imagination one could argue from its
+furnishings that its master was a northerner, a middle-class man, the
+admirer of a rough age, a sturdy art, a plain habit of life; that he was a
+worker whose dreams tormented him to speedy and vigorous action, a
+creature whose vitality was too great even for his strong frame and
+physical power. He liked a massive chair, and well he might, for one of
+his amusements was to twist his legs about it in such a way that a lightly
+built affair must instantly succumb. He liked a floor that he could stamp
+on with impunity; he liked a table on which he could pound with his fists
+without danger to its equilibrium. In the Red House these requirements
+were fully met. In the lecture called _The Beauty of Life_ is an account
+of the fittings "necessary to the sitting-room of a healthy person."
+Beside the table that will "keep steady when you work upon it," and the
+chairs "that you can move about," the good floor, and the small carpet
+"which can be bundled out of the room in two minutes," there must be "a
+bookcase with a great many books in it," a bench "that you can sit or lie
+upon," a cupboard with drawers, and, "unless either the bookcase or the
+cupboard be very beautiful with painting or carving," pictures or
+engravings on the wall, "or else the wall itself must be ornamented with
+some beautiful and restful pattern," then a vase or two, and fireplaces as
+unlike as possible to "the modern mean, miserable, and showy affairs,
+plastered about with wretched sham ornament, trumpery of cast iron, and
+brass and polished steel, and what not--offensive to look at and a
+nuisance to clean." To these necessaries, "unless we are musical and need
+a piano, in which case as far as beauty is concerned we are in a bad way,"
+we can add very little without "troubling ourselves, and hindering our
+work, our thought, and our rest."
+
+In accordance with these opinions, but with a fulness and richness of
+ornament not suggested by the simplicity of their expression, the pleasant
+building at Upton gradually took on great beauty and individuality. The
+walls were hung with embroidered fabrics worked by Mrs. Morris and her
+friends, or painted by Burne-Jones, who, undeterred by the Oxford episode,
+started an elaborate series of mural decorations in illustration of the
+wonderful adventures of Sire Degravant, the hero of an ancient romance.
+Another series of scenes from the War of Troy was started for the walls of
+the staircase, and although both schemes were abandoned, enough was done
+to give an effect of splendour to the rooms. Up to the large drawing-room
+came the ponderous and mighty settle which had cost so many expletives in
+the course of its adjustment to the old room in Red Lion Square, and which
+was now embellished by a balcony at the top to which a stairway led up.
+All minor accessories were thoughtfully considered and for the most part
+designed by Morris or by friends pressed into service at his eager demand.
+He found little to content him in the articles of commerce on sale at the
+orthodox shops in the early sixties. "In looking at an old house," he says
+in one of his books, "we please ourselves by thinking of all the
+generations of men that have passed through it, remembering how it has
+received their joy and borne their sorrow and not even their folly has
+left sourness on it; and in looking at a new house if built as it
+should be, we feel a pleasure in thinking how he who built it has left a
+piece of his soul behind him to greet the newcomers one after another,
+long after he is gone." Such an impress he left upon the Red House, so
+that no one passing it or even hearing of it can fail to think of it as
+belonging to William Morris, whoever may have the fortune to live in it
+hereafter, and fall heir to the associations with which he invested it.
+
+[Illustration: "THE STRAWBERRY THIEF" DESIGN FOR COTTON PRINT]
+
+During the time of building and furnishing he was exuberantly happy and
+wholly in his element. Turning constantly from one thing to another, yet
+keeping along the line of his united interests, giving his magnificent
+energy free scope in doing and accomplishing, seeing grow into visible
+form the theories and tastes so dear to his heart, letting out his
+enthusiasms and carrying others along on their current, setting a
+practical example in what he believed to be of the deepest importance by
+requiring for himself artistic handicraft, acting out a vigorous protest
+against the mechanical arts and the shams of the commercial world,--all
+this was meat and drink to him, and out of it grew an enterprise
+representing what to the public has been probably the most valuable side
+of his many-sided career, the establishment of a firm engaged in various
+forms of decorative art. At about this time he adopted, after the fashion
+of the master-workman of the Middle Ages, a device or legend expressive in
+one way or another of his aim. He chose the one used by Van Eyck, "Als
+ich kanne,"--if I can,--and distributed it in French translation and in
+English over his house, on windows and tiles and in tapestry hangings. The
+modesty of the words was no doubt as sincere in his case as in the case of
+the old Flemish painter who excelled all his contemporaries, but the
+extent to which he could and did in the new business on which he was about
+to enter has been the wonder of his followers.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+MORRIS AND COMPANY.
+
+
+The formation of the firm of "Morris, Marshall, Faulkner, & Company," as
+it was first called, appears to have been highly incidental in character,
+despite the assertion of Morris himself in a letter to his old tutor, that
+he had long meant to be a decorator, and to that end mainly had built his
+fine house. "One evening a lot of us were together," says Rossetti, in the
+account given by Mr. Watts-Dunton, "and we got to talking about the way in
+which artists did all kinds of things in olden times, designed every kind
+of decoration and most kinds of furniture, and someone suggested--as a
+joke more than anything else--that we should each put down five pounds and
+form a company. Fivers were blossoms of a rare growth among us in those
+days, and I won't swear that the table bristled with fivers. Anyhow the
+firm was formed, but of course there was no deed or anything of that kind.
+In fact it was a mere playing at business, and Morris was elected manager,
+not because we ever dreamed he would turn out a man of business, but
+because he was the only one among us who had both time and money to spare.
+We had no idea whatever of commercial success, but it succeeded almost in
+our own despite."
+
+In the mind of Morris it doubtless promised to be the sort of association
+about which he was constantly dreaming; a group of intelligent craftsmen
+interested in making the details of daily life as full as possible of
+beauty, each man fitted to his task and loving it, each in his way a
+master-workman of the guild, counting his craft honourable and spending
+his best thought and labour on it. There was ground enough for faith in
+the artistic if not in the commercial outcome of the enterprise. The
+associates, beside Morris, Rossetti, and Burne-Jones, were Madox-Brown,
+then an artist of established reputation, Webb, the architect of the Red
+House, who was also a designer of furniture and ornament; Peter Paul
+Marshall, to whom Mr. William Rossetti ascribes the first suggestion of
+the formation of the firm, a "capable artist" although an amateur; and
+Charles Faulkner of the Oxford group, who had followed his mates to London
+unable to endure the loneliness of Oxford without them. They proposed to
+open what Rossetti called "an actual shop," and sell whatever their united
+talent produced. "We are not intending to compete with ----'s costly
+rubbish or anything of that sort," Rossetti wrote to his friend Allingham,
+"but to give real good taste at the price as far as possible of ordinary
+furniture."
+
+[Illustration: TULIP DESIGN FOR AXMINSTER CARPET]
+
+In the Spring of 1861, premises were taken over a jeweller's shop at 8 Red
+Lion Square. Two floors and a part of the basement were used by the firm,
+and about a dozen men and boys were presently employed. There were regular
+weekly meetings carried on with the boisterousness of youth and high
+spirits, but with thorough efficiency, nevertheless, where plans that were
+to modify and influence the household decoration of all England were gaily
+formed and put into practice.
+
+The prospectus, in which Mr. Mackail discerns Rossetti's "slashing hand
+and imperious accent," was not entirely calculated to mollify rival
+decorators, calling attention to the fact that attempts at decorative art
+up to that time had been crude and fragmentary, and emphasising the want
+of some one place where work of "a genuine and beautiful character could
+be obtained." The new firm pledged itself to execute in a business-like
+manner:
+
+"I. Mural Decoration, either in Pictures or in Pattern Work, or merely in
+the arrangement of Colours, as applied to dwelling-houses, churches, or
+public buildings.
+
+"II. Carving generally, as applied to Architecture.
+
+"III. Stained Glass, especially with reference to its harmony with Mural
+Decoration.
+
+"IV. Metal Work in all its branches, including jewellery.
+
+"V. Furniture, either depending for its beauty on its own design, on the
+application of materials hitherto overlooked, or on its conjunction with
+Figure and Pattern Painting. Under this head is included Embroidery of all
+kinds, Stamped Leather, and ornamental work in other such materials,
+besides every article necessary for domestic use."
+
+Clearly this was not the usual thing, nor was the business conducted in
+the usual way. According to Mr. William Rossetti, the young reformers
+adopted a tone of "something very like dictatorial irony" toward their
+customers, permitting no compromise, and laying down the law without
+concession to individual taste or want of taste. You could have things
+such as the firm chose them to be or you could go without them.
+
+The finance of the company began, Mr. Mackail says, with a call of one
+pound per share and a loan of a hundred pounds from Mrs. Morris of Leyton.
+In 1862 a further call of nineteen pounds a share was made on the
+partners, raising the paid-up capital to one hundred and forty pounds,
+which "was never increased until the dissolution of the firm in 1874." A
+few hundred pounds additional were loaned by Morris and his mother. Each
+piece of work contributed by any member of the firm was paid for at the
+time, and Morris as general manager received a salary of a hundred and
+fifty pounds a year.
+
+[Illustration: PEACOCK DESIGN FOR COARSE WOOL HANGINGS]
+
+It is obvious that with this slender financial basis the business required
+the utmost energy, industry, skill, and talent to keep it from being
+promptly wrecked on the very uncertain coast of public opinion. During
+the first year all the members of the firm were active, although even at
+the first Morris led the rest. A stimulus was provided by the
+International Exhibition of 1862, whither they sent examples of their
+work, at the cost, wrote Faulkner, of "more tribulation and swearing to
+Topsy than three exhibitions will be worth." The exhibits attracted
+attention, and were awarded medals, in the case of the stained glass, "for
+artistic qualities of colour and design," and in the case of the
+furniture, hangings, and so forth, for the "closeness with which the style
+of the Middle Ages was rendered." It happened that the chief work in
+stained glass in the exhibit of the firm consisted of a set of windows
+designed by Rossetti, and giving, according to a Belgian critic, "an
+impression of colour, dazzling and magnificent, velvety and harmonious,
+resembling the Flemish stained glass windows decorating the Gothic
+cathedrals." Thus, fortunately, the first appearance of the firm was
+distinguished by the splendour which Rossetti alone among the group of
+workers could achieve, but his interest and activity shortly flagged and
+were absorbed in his individual work outside the company.
+
+At first, despite the lordly prospectus, there were occasional blunders.
+Dr. Birkbeck Hill tells of a study table and an arm-chair, neither one of
+which was so thorough a piece of workmanship as the firm would have turned
+out later on, and Mr. Hughes remembers a sofa with a long bar beneath
+projecting six inches at each end so that it tripped up anyone who
+hastily went round it. These, however, were blunders of a kind soon
+remedied by experience. So long as the associates kept up their enthusiasm
+there were among them ample skill to grapple with technicalities, and
+ample artistic faculty to defy all ordinary competition. Whoever dropped
+behind from time to time in this most essential quality of enthusiasm it
+was never Morris, and all accounts agree in attributing to his energy and
+industry and unutterable zest the success of the novel and interesting
+experiment. "He is the only man I have known," said Rossetti once, "who
+beats every other man at his own game." The men he had to beat at this
+game of decoration were for the most part unworthy foes. Decorative art
+was at a low ebb in the early Victorian age, the age of antimacassars,
+stucco, and veneer. From this cheap vulgarity and pretentiousness Morris
+turned back--as he was wont to do on every occasion that offered
+excuse--to the thirteenth century as the purest fount of English
+tradition, where, if anywhere, could be found models showing logical
+principles of construction and genuine workmanship. His companions either
+caught from him the infection of the mediæval attitude or were already in
+sympathy with it, and the work of the firm took on an emphatically Gothic
+aspect from the beginning. How great or how important a part each member
+played in the sum of the production is very difficult to estimate owing to
+the coöperative plan by which several artists frequently united in
+executing one and the same piece of work. Sometimes Burne-Jones would
+draw the figures, Webb the birds, and Morris the foliage for a piece of
+drapery or wall-paper. Again portions of separate designs would be used
+over and over in different combinations for different places. This free
+coöperation, this moving about within the limits of a general plan, suited
+the restless spirit of Morris, and chimed also with his profound
+admiration for the way in which the mediæval works of art were brought
+about, no one man standing high above the others or trying to preserve his
+name and the fame of his performance. Working for the pleasure of the work
+was of the very essence of his philosophy, and nothing could be more
+unjust than the sneers from time to time launched at him because his
+venture proved a commercial triumph. Perhaps it would be going too far to
+say that money-getting was never in his mind, but there is no question
+that it was never first in his mind, and never in the slightest degree
+crowded his desire to put forth sincere, fine work, worth its price to the
+last detail, and worthy of praise and liking without regard to its price.
+There was not the slightest suggestion of pose or sham of any kind in his
+thought when he wrote, as he often did, against the greed of gain and in
+praise of the kind of labour that may be delighted in without regard to
+pounds and pence. He could say quite faithfully that he shared the
+humility of the early craftsmen, of whom he speaks with reverence.
+
+"In most sober earnest," he says in one of his lectures, "when we hear it
+said, as it often is said, that extra money payment is necessary under all
+circumstances to produce great works of art, and that men of special
+talent will not use those talents without being bribed by mere gross
+material advantages, we, I say, shall know what to reply. We can appeal to
+the witness of those lovely works still left to us, whose unknown, unnamed
+creators were content to give them to the world, with little more extra
+wages than what their pleasure in their work and their sense of usefulness
+in it might bestow on them." There is no room for doubt that he approached
+his work in precisely the spirit here described by him. He was willing to
+exercise his faculties on the humblest undertakings, with no other aim
+than to make a common thing pleasant to look upon and agreeable to use.
+Half a century ago "craft" was not the fashionable word for the kind of
+work with which the firm chiefly concerned itself, and in doing the
+greater part of what he did Morris was merely writing himself down, in the
+language of the general public, an artisan. Conforming to the truest of
+principles he raised his work by getting under it. Nothing was too
+laborious or too lowly for him. Pride of position was unknown to him in
+any sense that would prevent him from indulging in manual labour. His real
+pride lay in making something which he considered beautiful take the place
+of something ugly in the world. If it were a fabric to be made lovely with
+long disused or unfamiliar dyes, his hands were in the vat. If tapestry
+were to be woven, he was at the loom by dawn. In his workman's blouse,
+steeped in indigo, and with his hair outstanding wildly, he was in the
+habit of presenting himself cheerfully at the houses of his friends,
+relying upon his native dignity to save appearances, or, to speak more
+truly, not thinking of appearances at all, but entirely happy in his rôle
+of workman, though frankly desirous that the business should prosper
+beyond all danger of the "smash" that would, he owned, "be a terrible
+nuisance." "I have not time on my hands," he said, "to be ruined and get
+really poor." It was to the peculiar union of the ideal and the practical
+in his nature that his success in the fields on which he ventured is due.
+
+[Illustration: PAINTED WALL DECORATION DESIGNED BY MORRIS]
+
+It must be admitted, however, that while his soul and vigour found vent in
+his designing and in the journeyman work--"delightful work, hard for the
+body and easy for the mind"--at which he was so ready to lend a hand, his
+artistic product lacked somewhat in the qualities that come from the
+exercise of the higher intellectual gifts. It was more than an attempt to
+revive old Gothic forms; it was an adoption of old forms with an infusion
+of modern spirit; but it missed the native and personal character of work
+growing out of contemporaneous conditions and tastes. Imaginative
+craftsman as he was, Morris was never quite an artist in the strict sense
+of the word. He had a fine sense of colour and, within certain limits, a
+right feeling for pattern; but his invention was too exuberant for
+repose, and he displayed in the greater part of his work an ornamental
+luxuriance that destroyed dignity and simplicity of effect. He did not
+like the restraints of art, and he seems to have been incapable of
+entering the sphere of abstract thought in which the principles governing
+great art are found. "No schools of art," he says with his superbly
+inaccurate generalisation, "have ever been contented to use abstract lines
+and forms and colours--that is, lines and so forth without any meaning."
+Such ornament he deemed "outlandish." He wanted his patterns, especially
+his wall-paper patterns, to remind people of pleasant scenes: "of the
+close vine trellis that keeps out the sun by the Nile side; or of the wild
+woods and their streams with the dogs panting beside them; or of the
+swallows sweeping above the garden boughs toward the house eaves where
+their nestlings are, while the sun breaks the clouds on them; or of the
+many-flowered summer meadows of Picardy,"--all very charming things to
+think about, but as really pertinent to wall-paper designing as the
+pleasant memory of a hard road with a fast horse speeding over it would be
+to the designing of a carpet. He preached the closest observation of
+nature and the most delicate understanding of it before attempting
+conventionalisation, but he did not hesitate to break all the laws of
+nature in his designs when he happened to want to do so. He did not
+hesitate, as Mr. Day has said, to make an acorn grow from two stalks or to
+give a lily five petals. Fitness in ornament was one of his fundamental
+principles, and he made his designs for the place in which they were to be
+seen and with direct reference to the limitations of opportunities of that
+place. It was never his way to turn a wall-paper loose on the market for
+any chance purchaser. He must know, if possible, something of the walls to
+which the design was to be applied and of the room in which it was to
+live, and he then adapted his design to his idea of what was required.
+This idea, however, was commonly much influenced by certain pre-conceived
+theories. He believed, for example, that there should be a sense of
+mystery in every pattern designed. This mystery he tried to get, not by
+masking the geometrical structure upon which a recurring pattern must be
+based, but by covering the ground equably and richly, so that the observer
+may not "be able to read the whole thing at once." Thus many of his
+designs are so over-elaborated as to give the effect of restlessness,
+whereas "rest" was the word oftenest on his lips in connection with
+domestic art. In common with most designers who derive their ideals from
+mediæval sources, he was less impressed by the tranquillity gained from
+calm clean spaces, the measure, order, and stateliness brought about by
+the simple relation of abstract lines, the repose of the rhythmical play
+of mass in perfect proportion, undisturbed by decorative detail, than by
+the charm of highly vitalised imagery. But though he erred on the side of
+luxuriance--while preaching simplicity--he never allowed his design to
+sink into vulgarity or petty picturesqueness. He might be intricate but he
+was not vague. "Run any risk of failure rather than involve yourself in a
+tangle of poor weak lines that people can't make out," he says. "Definite
+form bounded by firm outline is a necessity for all ornament. You ought
+always to go for positive patterns when they may be had." They might
+always be had from him. And it is due to his positive quality, his
+uncompromising certainty of the rightness of the thing that he is doing,
+that even when he is most imitative he gives an impression of originality,
+and is in fact original in the sense that he has thought out for himself
+the methods and motives of the ancient art by which he is consciously and
+intentionally influenced.
+
+[Illustration: PAINTED WALL DECORATION DESIGNED BY MORRIS]
+
+Finish, it need hardly be said, was not prized by him. It was one of his
+assumptions that "the better is the enemy of the good," and he preferred
+the roughness of incompleteness to the suavity of perfect workmanship. He
+dreaded the suggestion of the machine that lurks in the polished surface
+and the perfect curve. Nor did he at any time believe in the subdivision
+of labour by which a workman learns to do one thing with the utmost
+efficiency, holding that no workman could enjoy such specialised work, and
+therefore, of course, could not through it give pleasure to others. The
+following is the creed which, according to his "compact with himself,"
+he made it a duty to repeat when he and his fellow-men came together to
+discuss art:
+
+"We ought to get to understand the value of intelligent work, the work of
+men's hands guided by their brains, and to take that, though it be rough,
+rather than the unintelligent work of machines or slaves though it be
+delicate; to refuse altogether to use machine-made work unless where the
+nature of the thing compels it, or where the machine does what mere human
+suffering would otherwise have to do; to have a high standard of
+excellence in wares and not to accept make-shifts for the real thing, but
+rather to go without--to have no ornament merely for fashion's sake, but
+only because we really think it beautiful, otherwise to go without it; not
+to live in an ugly and squalid place (such as London) for the sake of mere
+excitement or the like, but only because our duties bind us to it--to
+treat the natural beauty of the earth as a holy thing not to be rashly
+dealt with for any consideration; to treat with the utmost care whatever
+of architecture and the like is left us of the times of art."
+
+[Illustration: DESIGN FOR ST. JAMES'S PALACE WALL-PAPER
+
+(_Reproduced by courtesy of Mr. Bulkley_)]
+
+Wall-papers were among the earliest staple products of the firm in Red
+Lion Square, although Morris always regarded them in the light of a
+compromise; an altogether unsatisfactory substitute for the hand-painting,
+or tapestry or silk or printed cotton hangings, which he considered the
+proper covering for the bare walls which, of course, no one not in "an
+unhealthy state of mind and probably of body also" could endure to leave
+bare. The first to be designed, the _Trellis_ paper, was the combined work
+of Morris and Webb, the former being responsible for the rose-trellis
+intended, we may suppose, to bring with it pleasant recollections of
+gardens in June and inspired by his own sweet garden at Upton, the latter
+for the birds that cling to the lattice or dart upward among the heavily
+thorned stems. In the early papers the designs were very simple and
+direct, often more quaint than beautiful, as in the case of the well-known
+_Daisy_ paper, and depending greatly on the colouring for the
+attractiveness they possessed. Later came such intricate patterns as the
+_Pimpernel_, the _Acanthus_, so elaborate as to require a double set of
+blocks and no less than thirty-two printings, and the paper designed for
+St. James's Palace, as large and magnificent as the environment in which
+it was to be placed demanded. It is quite obvious from these designs that
+Morris did not regard his wall-hangings as backgrounds but as decorations
+in themselves. As a matter of fact he did not fancy pictures for his
+walls. After his early burst of enthusiasm over Rossetti's paintings he
+bought few pictures if any, and they do not seem ever to have entered into
+his schemes of decoration. The wall of a room was always important to him,
+and despite his discontent with paper coverings for it, he was anxious to
+have such coverings as ornamental as possible, admitting them to be useful
+"as things go," and treating them in considerable detail in his lectures
+on the decorative arts. He advised making up for the poverty of the
+material by great thoughtfulness in the design: "The more and the more
+mysteriously you interweave your sprays and stems, the better for your
+purpose, as the whole thing has to be pasted flat upon a wall and the cost
+of all this intricacy will but come out of your own brain and hand."
+Concerning colour he was equally specific. In his lecture
+characteristically called _Making the Best of It_, in which with an accent
+of discouragement he endeavours to show his audience how at the time of
+his speaking to make a middle-class home "endurable," he lays down certain
+rules which indicate at one and the same time his mastery of his subject
+and the incommunicability of right taste in this direction, although many
+of his ideas may be pondered to great advantage by even the mind untrained
+in colour schemes. He begins with his usual preliminary statement as to
+the health of those who disagree with him. "Though we may each have our
+special preferences," he says, "among the main colours, which we shall do
+quite right to indulge, it is a sign of disease in an artist to have a
+prejudice against any particular colour, though such prejudices are common
+and violent enough among people imperfectly educated in art, or with
+naturally dull perceptions of it. Still colours have their ways in
+decoration, so to say, both positively in themselves, and relatively to
+each man's way of using them. So I may be excused for setting down some
+things I seem to have noticed about these ways." After thus establishing
+friendly relations with his audience, he instructs them that yellow is a
+colour to be used sparingly and in connection with "gleaming materials"
+such as silk; that red to be at its finest must be deep and full and
+between crimson and scarlet; that purple no one in his senses would think
+of using bright and in masses, and that the best shade of it tends toward
+russet; green, he continues, must seldom be used both bright and strong.
+"On the other hand," he adds, "do not fall into the trap of a dingy,
+bilious-looking yellow-green, a colour to which I have a special and
+personal hatred, because (if you will excuse my mentioning personal
+matters) I have been supposed to have somewhat brought it into vogue."
+Dingy colours were abhorred by him in all cases, and his patience with
+those customers who demanded them was extremely limited. Blue was his
+"holiday colour," and "if you duly guard against getting it cold if it
+tend toward red, or rank if it tends toward green," you "need not be much
+afraid of its brightness."
+
+[Illustration: EARLY DESIGN FOR MORRIS WALL-PAPER "DAISY AND COLUMBINE"]
+
+[Illustration: CHRYSANTHEMUM DESIGN FOR WALL-PAPER]
+
+From his hatred of mechanical methods grew his preferences among the
+lesser arts. He once complained that he never could see any scene "with a
+frame as it were around it," and the less necessity there was for bounding
+and limiting his design the happier he was in making it. Embroidery he
+loved, for here the worker had an almost absolutely free hand. There was
+no "excuse" in embroidery for anything short of striking beauty. "It is
+not worth doing," he said, "unless it is either very copious and rich,
+or very delicate--or both. For such an art nothing patchy or scrappy, or
+half-starved should be done." Tapestry-weaving stood next in freedom of
+method, and this was not only a favourite art with him, but one which he
+carried to an extraordinary degree of perfection, he and Burne-Jones
+combining their designs to produce results coming nearer to the old Arras
+effects than to the work of modern weavers. In tapestry-weaving Morris
+used the _haute lisse_ or "high loom," the weaver holding apart with his
+left hand the threads of the warp which stands upright before him as with
+his right hand he works his bobbins in and out, seeing the picture he is
+making in a mirror placed on the other side of the loom. The interest of
+Morris in the weaving craft is said to have been first awakened by the
+sight of a man in the street selling toy models of weaving machines, one
+of which he promptly bought for experimental purposes. It was many years
+before he could find a full-sized loom of the kind he wanted, which had
+become obsolete or nearly so, and which was the only style of loom he
+would consider using as it was most like the looms on which the splendid
+fabrics of mediæval times had been woven. By such difficulties he was
+rarely baffled. In the case of his tapestries the method he proposed to
+revive had died out in Cromwell's time and there was no working model
+which could be used as a guide. But there was an old French official
+handbook that came in his way, from which he was able to pick up the
+details of the craft and this sufficed. His personal familiarity with his
+process is apparent in his various discussions of it. He speaks with the
+authority of a workman whose hand has held the tool. This practical and
+positive knowledge saved him from the sentimentalism into which his
+theories might otherwise have led him. He designed his patterns fully
+aware of the way in which they were going to behave in the process of
+application. When in 1882 he was called upon to give evidence before the
+Royal Commission appointed to inquire into the subject of technical
+instruction, he urged the necessity of this working-knowledge on the part
+of every designer. "I think it essential," he said, "that a designer
+should learn the practical way of carrying out the work for which he
+designs; he ought to be able to weave himself." In all his talk about art
+he tried to tell people how to do only the things he himself had done, in
+which he differed widely and wholesomely from his master Ruskin whose
+teachings were so often on his lips. The activity of his hand was a needed
+and to a great extent an effective check upon the activity of his
+sentiment. But--like Ruskin here--he found it hard to stay long away from
+the moral or emotional significance of the art he was discussing. The art
+that speaks to the mind he did not completely understand. The art that
+speaks to the senses he abundantly explained. The amazingly ingenious
+point of view from which he defends his preoccupation with what he has
+named "the lesser arts" is displayed in the following passage, beginning
+with the almost inevitable formula:
+
+"A healthy and sane person being asked with what kind of art he would
+clothe his walls, might well answer, 'with the best art,' and so end the
+question. Yet out on it! So complex is human life, that even this
+seemingly most reasonable answer may turn out to be little better than an
+evasion. For I suppose the best art to be the pictured representation of
+men's imaginings: what they have thought has happened to the world before
+their time, or what they deem they have seen with the eyes of the body or
+the soul; and the imaginings thus represented are always beautiful indeed,
+but oftenest stirring to men's passions and aspirations and not seldom
+sorrowful or even terrible.
+
+"Stories that tell of men's aspirations for more than material life can
+give them, their struggle for the future welfare of the race, their
+unselfish love, their unrequited service; things like this are the
+subjects for the best art; in such subjects there is hope surely, yet the
+aspect of them is likely to be sorrowful enough: defeat, the seed of
+victory, and death, the seed of life, will be shown on the face of most of
+them.
+
+"Take note, too, that in the best art all these solemn and awful things
+are expressed clearly and without any vagueness, with such life and power
+that they impress the beholder so deeply that he is brought face to face
+with the very scenes, and lives among them for a time: so raising his life
+above the daily tangle of small things that wearies him to the level of
+the heroism which they represent. This is the best art, and who can deny
+that it is good for us all that it should be at hand to stir the emotions;
+yet its very greatness makes it a thing to be handled carefully, for we
+cannot always be having our emotions deeply stirred: that wearies us body
+and soul; and man, an animal that longs for rest like other animals,
+defends himself against that weariness by hardening his heart and refusing
+to be moved every hour of the day by tragic emotions,--nay, even by beauty
+that claims his attention overmuch. Such callousness is bad, both for the
+arts and our own selves, and therefore it is not so good to have the best
+art forever under our eyes, though it is abundantly good that we should be
+able to get at it from time to time.
+
+"Meantime, I cannot allow that it is good for any hour of the day to be
+wholly stripped of life and beauty, therefore we must provide ourselves
+with lesser (I will not say worse) art with which to surround our common
+work-a-day or restful times; and for those times I think it will be enough
+for us to clothe our daily and domestic walls with ornament that reminds
+us of the outward face of the earth, of the innocent love of animals, or
+man passing his days between work and rest as he does. I say with ornament
+that reminds us of these things and sets our minds and memories at work
+easily creating them; because scientific representation of them would
+again involve us in the problems of hard fact and the troubles of life,
+and so once more destroy our rest for us."
+
+[Illustration: ANEMONE PATTERN FOR SILK AND WOOL CURTAIN MATERIAL]
+
+Was ever a craftsman of the ancient guilds so at pains to make clear the
+propriety and usefulness of his wood-carving or enamelling or niello! Like
+the early workman, however, he moved with marvellous facility from one
+branch of his art to another. From wall-papers it was but a step to cotton
+prints which in a way were the playthings of a mind at leisure. They might
+be as gay as one chose to make them, and "could not well go wrong so long
+as they avoided commonplace and kept somewhat on the daylight side of
+nightmare." From the weaving of hangings to the weaving of carpets was a
+step as easily taken, and when the impulse seized him to carry on the
+great but dying art of Persia in this direction, Morris so effectively
+applied himself to mastering the conditions under which the beautiful
+Eastern carpets were brought to their perfection as to produce at least
+one example--that called _The Buller's Wood Carpet_--that fairly competes
+with the splendour of its prototypes. Stained glass for a time baffled
+him. "His was not the temperament," says one of his critics, "patiently to
+study the chemistry of glass colour; or to prove by long experiment the
+dependence to be placed upon a flux." Although many windows were made by
+the firm, the larger number of them designed by Burne-Jones, Morris being
+responsible for the colour, he never seemed to forget that he had come
+near to being worsted in his fight with the technical difficulties of this
+most difficult art, and economised his enthusiasm for it accordingly.
+Hand-painted tiles, however, which he was the first to introduce into
+England, were favourites with him, and in them he perpetuated some of his
+attempts at drawing the human figure. Furniture, though an important
+feature of the work undertaken by the firm, did not appeal to him, and he
+left it to his associates. His experiments in vegetable dyes produced
+interesting results, although here also his technical knowledge was not
+entirely adequate to his task. In connection with his textile work he
+early felt the imperative necessity of having finer colours than the
+market offered. To get them as he wanted them he was obliged to go back as
+far as Pliny, but this was a small matter to one whose mind was always
+ready to provide him with an Aladdin's carpet. Back to Pliny he went to
+learn old methods, and in addition he called to his aid ancient herbals
+and French books of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, finally
+setting up his own vats and becks and very literally plunging in. At first
+he complained of "looking such a beast," but his enthusiasm soon overcame
+this rather remarkable display of concern for his personal appearance, and
+he wrote most joyously of working in sabots and blouse in the dye-house
+"pretty much all day long." Out of his vats came the blue of his
+indigo, the red of his madder, the yellow of weld or Persian berry, the
+rich brown of walnut juice, making beautiful combinations, which, when
+they faded, changed into paler tints of the same colour and were not
+unpleasant to look upon. The aniline dyes, which in 1860 were the latest
+wonder of science, and in a very crude stage of their development, called
+out his most picturesque invective. Each colour was hideous in itself,
+crude, livid, cheap, and loathed by every person of taste, the "foul blot
+of the capitalist dyer." In brief, the invention supposed to be for the
+benefit of an art "the very existence of which depends upon its producing
+beauty" was "on the road; and very far advanced on it, towards destroying
+all beauty in the art." The only thing to do was to turn one's back on the
+chemical dyes, relegate them to a museum of scientific curiosities, and go
+back "if not to the days of the Pharaohs yet at least to those of
+Tintoret." It was highly characteristic of him that he chose the remedy of
+"going back" in place of progressing with the new material as far as
+possible.
+
+[Illustration: PORTION OF HAMMERSMITH CARPET]
+
+His work with silks and with wools was naturally greatly enriched by his
+use of his own full, soft and brilliant colours, and his personal
+attention to the art of dyeing counted for so much that one of his most
+accomplished pupils in embroidery is quoted by Mr. Mackail as saying that
+she promptly felt the difference when Morris ceased to dye with his own
+hands, that the colours became more monotonous and prosy and the very
+lustre of the silk was less beautiful. It is, however, difficult to
+impress yourself upon the public precisely as you are, whatever vigour
+your personality may have. Morris, with his intense love of bright full
+hues, has come down as the promoter of the so-called "æsthetic" dulness of
+colour, and his name has been especially associated with the peacock blue
+and the "sage-green" to which he had an especial aversion. It was one of
+his doctrines that a room should be kept cheerful in tone, and how happily
+he could carry out this doctrine is seen in more than one of the rooms
+decorated by the firm. A visitor to Stanmore Hall, for example, has noted
+the delicate tones of the painted ceilings as looking like embroidery on
+old white silk, giving a bright yet light and aërial effect, and forming
+with the woodwork of untouched oak an impression of delightful gayety.
+
+That Morris made himself a master of so many crafts and grappled even so
+successfully as he did with the technical difficulties involved would be
+somewhat remarkable had he attempted none of the other undertakings in
+which he gained for himself a name to be remembered. His eagerness to
+express his ideals in a practical form led him on indefinitely. To the
+very last a new world to conquer roused his spirit and made him tingle to
+be off. For a man with the trace of the plodder in him such a career would
+have been an impossible one, but Morris went blithely from craft to craft
+by a series of leaps and bounds. He stayed with each just long enough to
+understand its working principles and to make himself efficient to teach
+others its peculiar virtues and demands, and he then passed on. "Each
+separate enterprise on which he entered," says one of his biographers,
+"seems for a time to have moved him to extraordinary energy. He thought it
+out, installed it, set it going, designed for it, trained men and women in
+the work to be done, and then by degrees, as the work began to run
+smoothly and could be trusted to go on without him, his interest became
+less active: a new idea generated in his mind, or an old one burst into
+bud, and his energies burst out afresh in some new doing." As time went on
+he had less and less practically to do with the firm of which he was the
+head and of which he continued to the end to be the consulting adviser. He
+gathered about him coöperators who not only were sympathetic with his
+methods but absorbed his style. His distinction as a designer was neither
+so great nor so personal that it could not to a considerable degree be
+communicated, and this accounts for the enduring quality of his influence
+which has been handed down to us through others without too much
+subtracted from it, with many of the characteristics most to be cherished
+still present. Greater decorators have existed, indeed, but it may be
+questioned if anyone has been quite so inspiriting; has had the matter
+quite so much at heart. He persuaded the multitude from the intensity of
+his own conviction, and he persuaded them on the whole toward good things
+and toward beauty. He made other men's ideas his own but he adopted them
+body and soul. He followed his own fashion, inveighing with vigour and
+frequently with logic against nearly all the fashions of his time. It is
+not surprising that he himself became the great fashion of the nineteenth
+century in matters of decoration. And this certainly was what he wanted,
+in the sense of wanting everyone in England to see as he did the
+possibilities of household art and to share in furthering them by turning
+their backs upon the sham art with which the commercial world was largely
+occupied. But he made no effort toward gaining the patronage of those
+unwilling to admit that what he disliked was intolerable. His was never a
+conciliatory policy. The following passage from his lecture on _The Lesser
+Arts_ reveals his attitude in his own phrasing:
+
+"People say to me often enough: If you want to make your art succeed and
+flourish, you must make it the fashion: a phrase which I confess annoys
+me: for they mean by it that I should spend one day over my work to two
+days in trying to convince rich, and supposed influential people, that
+they care very much for what they really do not care in the least, so that
+it may happen according to the proverb: _Bell-wether took the leap and we
+all went over_; well, such advisers are right if they are content with the
+thing lasting but a little while: say till you can make a little money, if
+you don't get pinched by the door shutting too quickly: otherwise they are
+wrong: the people they are thinking of have too many strings to their
+bow, and can turn their backs too easily on a thing that fails, for it to
+be safe work trusting to their whims: it is not their fault, they cannot
+help it, but they have no chance of spending time enough over the arts to
+know anything practical of them, and they must of necessity be in the
+hands of those who spend their time in pushing fashion this way and that
+for their own advantage.
+
+[Illustration: SOFA DESIGNED BY THE MORRIS CO.
+
+(_Reproduced by courtesy of Mr. Bulkley_)]
+
+[Illustration: SECRETARY DESIGNED BY THE MORRIS CO.
+
+(_Reproduced by courtesy of Mr. Bulkley_)]
+
+"Sirs, there is no help to be got out of these latter, or those who let
+themselves be led by them: the only real help for the decorative arts must
+come from those who work in them: nor must they be led, they must lead.
+
+"You whose hands make those things that should be works of art, you must
+all be artists, and good artists too, before the public at large can take
+real interest in such things; and when you have become so, I promise you
+that you shall lead the fashion; fashion shall follow your hands
+obediently enough."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+FROM THE RED HOUSE TO KELMSCOTT.
+
+
+While Morris was developing the industries of the firm with essential
+steadiness, despite the rapid transitions from one pursuit to another, he
+was going through a variety of personal experiences, some of which
+involved his disappointment in deeply cherished plans. For one thing, and
+this perhaps the most grievous, he was obliged to give up the Red House
+upon which so much joyous labour had been spent. Several causes
+contributed to the unhappy necessity, chief among them an attack of
+rheumatic fever that made him sensitive to the bleak winds which the
+exposed situation of the building invited. The distance between London and
+Upton became also a serious matter after his illness, as he found it
+almost impossible to make the daily journeys required by his attention to
+the business. Several compromises were thought of, the most enticing being
+the removal of the works from Red Lion Square to Upton, and the addition
+of a wing to the Red House for Burne-Jones and his family; but in the end
+the beautiful house was sold, Morris, after leaving it, never again
+setting eyes upon it.
+
+[Illustration: ILLUSTRATION BY BURNE-JONES FOR PROJECTED EDITION OF "THE
+EARTHLY PARADISE," CUT ON WOOD BY MORRIS HIMSELF]
+
+The first move was to Queen Square, London, where Morris and the business
+became house-mates in the autumn of 1865, remaining together there, with
+more or less interruption, for seven years. Queen Square is in Bloomsbury,
+not far from the British Museum, and a part of the ugly London
+middle-class region for which Morris had so little liking, but as a place
+to carry on the rapidly increasing work of the firm it possessed great
+advantages. The number of the house was 26, and adjacent buildings and
+grounds were used for the workshops. At this time Mr. George Warrington
+Taylor was made business manager for the company, and Morris gained by his
+accession much valuable time, not only for designing and experimenting,
+but for the literary work that again began to claim his attention. He was
+still, however, a familiar figure in "the shop," acting as salesman,
+showman, designer, or manual labourer. His aspect as he strode along the
+streets of the dull neighbourhood must have been refreshing. Those who
+knew him have repeatedly described him as the image of a sea-captain in
+general appearance. He wore habitually a suit of navy-blue serge cut in
+nautical fashion, and his manner was bluff and hearty as that of the
+proverbial seaman. Mr. Mackail gives a breezy picture of him in his
+workman's blouse, hatless, with his ruddy complexion and rocking walk,
+bound for the Faulkners' house where once upon a time a new maid took him
+for the butcher. To have seen him in these days was to have seen one of
+his own ideal workmen out of _News from Nowhere_. As a master of men he
+seems to have been singularly successful, despite the temper which led him
+at times to commit acts of positive violence. His splendid zest for work
+must have been stimulating and to a degree contagious. Merely to be in the
+company of one who thought hearty manual labour so interesting and so
+pleasant and so heartily to be desired by everyone, must have had its
+vivifying effect. He was stating the simple truth when he said that he
+should die of despair and weariness if his daily work were taken from him
+unless he could at once make something else his daily work, and he is
+constantly drawing persuasive pictures of the charm of the various
+handicrafts--that of weaving for example, his description of which would
+invite the most discontented mind. He does not call the weaver's craft a
+dull one: "If he be set to doing things which are worth doing--to watch
+the web growing day by day almost magically, in anticipation of the time
+when it is to be taken out and one can see it on the right side in all its
+well-schemed beauty--to make something beautiful that will last out of a
+few threads of silk and wool, seems to me not an unpleasant way of earning
+one's livelihood, so long only as one lives and works in a pleasant place,
+with work-day not too long, and a book or two to be got at." His own
+weavers were some of them boys trained in the shop from a condition of
+absolute ignorance of drawing and of the craft to such an efficiency as
+enabled them to weave the Stanmore tapestry, one panel of which took two
+years to the making, and which was of the utmost elaboration and
+magnificence of design. The exigencies of the business presently made it
+necessary to devote the whole of the premises in Queen Square to the work
+going on there, and the Morris family removed in 1872 to a small house
+between Hammersmith and Turnham Green, near Chiswick Lane, Morris
+retaining a couple of rooms in the Queen Square house for his use when
+busy there. Even the extended quarters soon proved insufficient, however,
+and in 1877 rooms were taken in Oxford Street for showing and selling the
+work of the firm, the manufacturing departments being still ensconced in
+Queen Square. In 1881 these also were transferred to more suitable
+premises. The dyeing and cotton-printing demanded workshops by the side of
+some stream of clear water "fit to dye with," and after much search Morris
+found an ideal situation on the banks of the little Wandle River, near
+Wimbledon. There were the ruins of Merton Abbey where the Barons once gave
+their famous answer "Nolumus leges Angliæ mutari," and there manufactures
+had been carried on for centuries. In the long low-roofed worksheds on the
+river's bank his workmen could move about in ample space, practising
+ancient methods of dyeing, printing, and weaving, seven miles from Charing
+Cross. It is anything but a typical manufactory that has been depicted by
+visitors to the Merton Abbey works. We read of an old walled garden gay
+with old-fashioned flowers and shrubs, of the swift little Wandle River
+rushing along between the buildings, its trout leaping under the windows,
+a water-wheel revolving at ease, hanks of yarn, fresh from the vats,
+drying in the pure air, calico lying "clearing" on the meadow grass in an
+enclosure made by young poplar trees, a sunlit picture of peaceful work
+carried on by unharried workers among surroundings of fresh and wholesome
+charm. Women and men were both employed, some of them old and not all of
+them competent, but none of them overworked or underpaid. Though Morris
+had somewhat scant courtesy of manner toward those who worked for and with
+him, he had at least the undeviating desire to promote their welfare. If
+he expected work of his work-people, as certainly he did, he expected it
+only under the most healthful and agreeable conditions. Judging others by
+himself, he could not conceive anyone as happy in idleness, but neither
+did he expect anyone to be happy without leisure. In his own business he
+proved what the nineteenth century found hard to believe, that honest,
+thorough, and artistic workmanship, accomplished under reasonable
+exactions by people enjoying their occupation, could be combined with
+commercial prosperity. That the products of such labour could not be
+bought by the poorer classes was due, he argued, to a social order wrong
+at the root. The time when art could be made "by the people and for the
+people, as a happiness to the maker and the user," was a far-off dream.
+
+[Illustration: _Kelmscott Manor House_]
+
+Shortly before Morris abandoned Queen Square as a place of residence, he
+discovered for himself a "heaven on earth," in which he could spend his
+vacations from town, and free himself from the contamination of London
+streets. This was Kelmscott Manor House, which he rented--at first jointly
+with Rossetti--in 1871, and in which he took infinite satisfaction for the
+remainder of his life. The beautiful old place was in its way as
+characteristic of him and of his tastes as the Red House had been, and has
+become intimately associated with him in the minds of all who knew him
+during his later years, his passion for places investing those for which
+he cared with a sentiment not to be ignored or slighted in making up the
+sum of his interests. For a couple of years Rossetti was an inmate of
+Kelmscott Manor, and through his letters many vivid glimpses of it are
+obtained. The village of Kelmscott was at the time no more than a hamlet
+containing a hundred and seventeen people, and situated two and a half
+miles from the nearest town, Lechlade, to whose churchyard Shelley lent
+distinction by writing a poem there. The nearest station-town was
+Farringdon, so far off that the carrier who brought railway parcels to the
+occupants of the Manor charged six shillings and sixpence for each trip.
+"Thus," writes Rossetti, who was chronically short of money, "a good deal
+of inconvenience tempers the attractions of the place." Nothing, however,
+unless the presence of Rossetti, who was "unromantically discontented"
+there, tempered them for Morris. In an article for _The Quest_ for
+November, 1895, he describes the house in the most minute detail,
+accentuating its charms with a touch of comment for each that falls like a
+caress. The roofs are covered with the beautiful stone slates of the
+district, "the most lovely covering which a roof can have." The
+"battering" or leaning back of the walls is by no means a defect but a
+beauty, "taking from the building a rigidity which otherwise would mar
+it," and the stout studded partitions of the entrance passage are "very
+agreeable to anyone who does not want cabinet work to supplant carpentry."
+To the building of it all must have gone, he thinks, "some thin thread of
+tradition, a half-anxious sense of the delight of meadow and acre and wood
+and river, a certain amount (not too much, let us hope) of common-sense, a
+liking for making materials serve one's turn, and perhaps at bottom some
+little grain of sentiment." And from Rossetti we hear of the primitive
+Kelmscott church "looking just as one fancies chapels in the _Mort
+d'Arthur_," of clouds of starlings sinking in the copses "clamourous like
+mill-waters at wild play," of "mustering rooks innumerable," of a
+"delicious" garden and meadows leading to the river brink, of apple
+blossoms and marigolds and arrow-heads and white lilies "divinely
+lovely," of an island by the boat-house rich in wild periwinkles, and of
+many another exquisite aspect of a place whose unvexed quietness was
+nevertheless powerless to soothe the turmoil of that tormented soul.
+
+[Illustration: _Kelmscott Manor House_]
+
+To realise fully how Morris himself felt toward it, one must turn to his
+description in _News from Nowhere_. There he is supposed to see it through
+the kindly mist of time, returning to it from a regenerate and beautified
+world, and his problem is to write of it with the penetrating eloquence
+and melancholy associated with remembered happiness. It is supremely
+characteristic of him that he could perfectly strike this note while still
+living in hale activity upon the spot he is to praise with the tenderness
+of reminiscence. The great virtue of his temperament lay in this peculiar
+intensity of realisation. He needed neither loss nor change to spur his
+sensibility and awaken his recognition of the worth or special quality of
+what he loved. Vital as few men are, he seems, nevertheless, always to
+have dwelt in sight of death and to have grasped life as though the next
+moment he was to be torn from it. The burden of the song which Ogier the
+Dane hears on a fair May morning:
+
+  Kiss me love! for who knoweth
+  What thing cometh after death?
+
+so often quoted in evidence of his fainting and dejected spirit, embodies
+indeed the sentiment of his attitude toward the pleasures and
+satisfactions to be drawn from the visible and perishable world, but does
+not hint at the energy with which he seized those pleasures, the
+sturdiness with which he filled himself with those satisfactions. When
+_News from Nowhere_ was written, Morris had lived the better part of
+twenty years in close relation with the Kelmscott house, but custom had
+not staled for him its infinite variety. This is what he writes of it and
+of its surroundings in his romance of _An Epoch of Rest_: He and his
+companions have approached it by way of the river.
+
+"Presently we saw before us a bank of elm trees, which told us of a house
+amidst them. In a few minutes we had passed through a deep eddying pool
+into the sharp stream that ran from the ford, and beached our craft on a
+tiny strand of limestone gravel, and stepped ashore.
+
+"Mounting on the cart-road that ran along the river some feet above the
+water, I looked round about me. The river came down through a wide meadow
+on my left, which was grey now with the ripened seeding grasses; the
+gleaming water was lost presently by a turn of the bank, but over the
+meadow I could see the gables of a building where I knew the lock must be.
+A low wooded ridge bounded the river-plain to the south and south-east,
+whence we had come, and a few low houses lay about its feet and up its
+slope. I turned a little to my right and through the hawthorn sprays and
+long shoots of the wild roses could see the flat country spreading out
+far away under the sun of the calm evening, till something that might be
+called hills with a look of sheep pastures about them bounded it with a
+soft blue line. Before one, the elm boughs still hid most of what houses
+there might be in this river-side dwelling of men; but to the right of the
+cart-road a few grey buildings of the simplest kind showed here and there.
+
+"I had a mind to say that I did not know the way thither, and that the
+river-side dwellers should lead: but almost without my will my feet moved
+on along the road they knew. The raised way led us into a little field
+bounded by a backwater of the river on one side: on the right hand we
+could see a cluster of small houses and barns and a wall partly overgrown
+with ivy, over which a few grey gables showed. The village road ended in
+the shallow of the aforesaid backwater. We crossed the road, and again
+almost without my will my hand raised the latch of a door in the wall, and
+we stood presently on a stone path which led up to the old house to which
+fate in the shape of Dick had so strangely brought me in this world of
+men. My companion gave a sigh of pleased surprise and enjoyment, nor did I
+wonder, for the garden between the wall and the house was redolent of the
+June flowers, and the roses were rolling over one another with that
+delicious superabundance of small well-tended gardens which at first sight
+takes away all thought from the beholder save that of beauty. The
+blackbirds were singing their loudest, the doves were cooing on the
+roof-ridge, the rooks in the high elm trees beyond were garrulous among
+the young leaves, and the swifts wheeled, whining, about the gables. And
+the house itself was a fit guardian for all the beauty of this heart of
+summer.
+
+"Once again Ellen echoed my thoughts as she said: 'Yes, friend, this is
+what I came out to see; this many-gabled old house built by the simple
+country-folk of the long-past times, regardless of all the turmoil that
+was going on in cities and courts, is lovely still amidst all the beauty
+which these latter days have created; and I do not wonder at our friends
+'tending it so carefully and making much of it. It seems to me as if it
+had waited for these happy days, and held in it the gathered crumbs of
+happiness of the confused and turbulent past.'
+
+"She led me up close to the house and laid her shapely sun-browned hand
+and arm upon the lichened wall as if to embrace it, and cried out: 'O me!
+O me! How I love the earth and the seasons and weather, and all the things
+that deal with it and all that grows out of it,--as this has done!'
+
+"We went in and found no soul in any room as we wandered from room to
+room--from the rose-covered porch to the strange and quaint garrets
+amongst the great timbers of the roof, where of old time the tillers and
+herdsmen of the manor slept, but which a-nights seemed now, by the small
+size of the beds, and the litter of useless and disregarded
+matters--bunches of dying flowers, feathers of birds, shells of
+starling's eggs, caddis worms in mugs and the like,--seemed to be
+inhabited for the time by children.
+
+"Everywhere there was but little furniture, and that only the most
+necessary, and of the simplest forms. The extravagant love of ornament
+which I had noted in this people elsewhere, seemed here to have given
+place to the feeling that the house itself and its associations was the
+ornament of the country life amidst which it had been left stranded from
+old times, and that to reornament it would but take away its use as a
+piece of natural beauty.
+
+"We sat down at last in a room over the wall which Ellen had caressed, and
+which was still hung with old tapestry, originally of no artistic value,
+but now faded into pleasant grey tones which harmonised thoroughly well
+with the quiet of the place, and which would have been ill supplanted by
+brighter and more striking decoration.
+
+"I asked a few questions of Ellen as we sat there, but scarcely listened
+to her answers, and presently became silent, and then scarce conscious of
+anything but that I was there in that old room, the doves crooning from
+the roofs of the barn and dovecot beyond the window opposite."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In 1878 Morris took a London house on the Upper Mall, Hammersmith, which
+he occupied alternately with Kelmscott Manor. This place, which Mr.
+Mackail describes as "ugly without being mean," was also on the banks of
+the river, and Morris gained much satisfaction from the thought that the
+water flowing by it had come in its due course past the beloved Kelmscott
+garden. A somewhat inconvenient touch of sentiment caused him to give his
+Hammersmith home the name of "Kelmscott House" in compliment to the home
+actually situated at Kelmscott, the latter being distinguished by the
+title of "Manor," a title that seems to belong to it by courtesy alone.
+
+From the great fondness felt by Morris for these places on which he
+lavished his art until they spoke more eloquently than his words of the
+aims and theories so dear to him, the domesticity of his life would
+naturally be inferred. Nor was he an eager traveller judged by modern
+standards. Nevertheless, he managed to find time for some extended trips
+just as he found time for everything that came in his way with an appeal
+to his liking. The most important of these was a voyage to Iceland, made
+in company with Faulkner and two other friends during the summer of 1871,
+just after the acquisition of Kelmscott Manor, in which he left Rossetti.
+His mind was ripe for the experience. He had already published
+translations from the Icelandic sagas made in collaboration with Mr.
+Magnusson, and his interest in the bracing Northern literature was
+reaching its height. Long years after, Rossetti said of him, "There goes
+the last of the Vikings!" and his mood in visiting Iceland was not unlike
+that of a modernised Viking returning to his home. Thoughts of the
+country's great past were constantly with him. The boiling geysers, the
+conventional attraction for tourists who "never heard the names of Sigurd
+and Brunhild, of Njal, or Gunnar, or Grettir, or Gisli, or Gudrun," were a
+source of irritation to him. His pilgrimages to the homes of the ancient
+traditions were the episodes of his journey worth thinking about, and
+about them he thought much and vigorously, seeing in imagination the
+figures of the old heroes going about summer and winter, attending to
+their haymaking and fishing and live stock, eating almost the same food
+and living on the same ground as the less imposing Norsemen of the
+present. "Lord!" he writes, "what littleness and helplessness has taken
+the place of the old passion and violence that had place here once--and
+all is unforgotten; so that one has no power to pass it by unnoticed." His
+two months spent among the scenes of the greater sagas left him with an
+intense impression of a land stern and terrible, of toothed rocks and
+black slopes and desolate green, a land that intensified his melancholy by
+its suggestion of short-lived glory and early death, and intensified also
+his enjoyment of life by the sense of adventure, the rugged riding, and
+the fresh keen air. One of the important events of the trip was the
+exploration of the great cave at Surts-hellir, and twenty years after,
+many of its incidents were embodied in the book called _The Story of the
+Glittering Plain_, wherein Hallblithe and the three Seekers make their
+way through the stony tangle of the wilderness seeing "nought save the wan
+rocks under the sun."
+
+Two years later he made a still more adventurous journey across the arid
+tableland occupying the central portion of Iceland and across the northern
+mountains to the sea. It was highly characteristic of him that for the
+time he yielded himself utterly to the influence of the strange and awful
+land upon his imagination, and that for years afterward his writing was
+flooded by the impressions that continually swept back upon his mind as he
+reverted to these experiences. Mr. Mackail gives an amusing instance of
+the way in which the interest uppermost with him became an obsession
+leading to the most childlike extravagances. During a holiday tour in
+Belgium he came to a place where neither French nor English was spoken. He
+therefore "made a desperate effort at making himself understood by
+haranguing the amazed inn-keeper in Icelandic." His first visit to Italy,
+made between the first and second visits to Iceland, took faint hold upon
+him, nor was the second Italian journey, made some years later, and marked
+by a troublesome attack of gout, notably successful. He was a man of the
+North as surely as Rossetti was a man of the South, and it would have been
+a renaissance indeed that could have turned him into a Florentine or a
+Venetian.
+
+[Illustration: DESIGN BY ROSSETTI FOR WINDOW EXECUTED BY MORRIS & CO.
+(_THE PARABLE OF THE VINEYARD_)]
+
+[Illustration: DESIGN BY ROSSETTI FOR STAINED-GLASS WINDOW EXECUTED BY THE
+MORRIS CO. (_THE PARABLE OF THE VINEYARD_)]
+
+During this middle period of his life, at the height of his great
+activity, an event occurred involving the element of tragedy, if the
+breaking of friendships be accounted tragic. In 1875 the firm was
+dissolved. Following Mr. Mackail's account of the circumstances that led
+to the dissolution, we find that the business had become one in which
+Morris supplied practically all the capital, invention, and control. It
+was also the chief source of his income. On the other hand, his partners
+might find themselves at any time seriously involved in the liabilities of
+a business which was rapidly extending. Hence the desirability of the
+dissolution and reconstitution of the firm. But in connection with this
+step an embarrassing situation arose. Under the original instrument, each
+partner had equal rights in the assets of the firm. After the first year
+or two the profits had never been divided, and the six partners of Morris,
+for the hundred and twenty pounds by which they were represented in the
+contributed capital at the beginning, had now claims on the business for
+some seven or eight thousand pounds. If these claims were insisted upon,
+Morris would be placed in a position of considerable financial difficulty.
+Burne-Jones, Webb, and Faulkner refused to accept any consideration. "The
+other three," says Mr. Mackail, "stood on the strict letter of their legal
+rights." Naturally the relations between Morris and the latter became
+grievously strained, and with Rossetti the break was absolute and
+irremediable. In passing out of Morris's life, as he then did, he
+certainly left it more serene, but with him went also the vivifying
+influence of his genius. In considering the very unfortunate part played
+by him in the conflict among the members of the firm, it is fair to give a
+certain weight to details emphasised in Mr. William Rossetti's account as
+modifying--to a slight degree, it is true, but still modifying--the sordid
+aspect of Rossetti's action. Madox Brown, who was one of the partners
+wishing not to forego their legal rights, was getting on in years and was
+a comparatively poor man. He had always counted on the firm "as an
+important eventual accession to his professional earnings." No one
+familiar with Rossetti's character can doubt that a desire to stand by his
+old friend and teacher in such a matter would have a strong influence with
+him. To his brother's mind, his attitude was throughout "one of
+conciliation," with the wish "to adjust contending claims had that but
+been possible." "He himself," says Mr. William Rossetti, "retired from the
+firm without desiring any compensation for his own benefit. A sum was,
+however, assigned to him. He laid it apart for the eventual advantage of a
+member of the Morris family, but, ere his death, circumstances had induced
+him to trench upon it not a little." It is easy to imagine circumstances
+trenching upon any sum of money under Rossetti's direct control, and in
+the absence of any testimony the reader acquainted with his prodigal
+disposition may very well be pardoned for doubting whether any member of
+the Morris family became appreciably the richer for his impulse.
+Nevertheless, it is a reasonable conclusion that he was not actuated by a
+sordid motive in opposing the essentially just claim made by Morris, but
+was to his own mind acting in accordance with the demands of a friendship
+older and closer than that between him and Morris. It must be noted,
+however, that a reconciliation was effected in the course of time between
+Morris and Madox Brown, while in Rossetti's case the wound never healed.
+The outcome of the negotiations was that Madox Brown was bought out,
+"receiving a handsome sum," says Mr. William Rossetti, and the business
+went on under the sole management and proprietorship of Morris.
+
+In addition to the annoyance and real trouble of mind caused Morris by
+these transactions, he had the further anxiety at about this time of a
+breakdown of a serious and permanent nature in the health of his eldest
+daughter. This he took deeply to heart, losing spirits to a marked degree,
+but nothing human had power to stay his fertile brain and busy hand.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+POETRY.
+
+
+Intent as he was upon the artistic success of his work in decoration, and
+ardent in giving time and thought to achieving this success, Morris was
+far from excluding poetry from the sum of his occupations. The five years
+following his marriage (1859-1864), indeed, were barren of any important
+literary work. He had planned, somewhat anticipating the large scale of
+his later verse, a cycle of twelve poems on the Trojan War, but he
+completed only six of the twelve, and the project was presently abandoned.
+After the Red House was sold, however, and he was back in London with the
+time on his hands saved from the daily journey, he began at once to make
+poetry of a form entirely different from anything he had previously
+written. The little sheaf of poems contained in his early volume had been
+put together by the hand of a boy. The poem published in June, 1867, under
+the title _The Life and Death of Jason_, was the work of a man in full
+possession of his faculty. It was simple, certain, musical, and
+predestined to speedy popularity, even Tennyson, with whom Morris was
+not a favourite, liking the Jason. It flowed with sustained if monotonous
+sweetness through seventeen books in rhymed pentameter, occasionally
+broken by octosyllabic songs. Although published as a separate poem, on
+account of the length to which it ran, apparently almost in despite of its
+author's will, it had been intended to form part of the series called _The
+Earthly Paradise_, the first division of which followed it in 1868. This
+ambitious work was suggested by Chaucer's _Canterbury Tales_, and consists
+of no fewer than twenty-four long narrative poems, set in a framework of
+delicate descriptive verse containing passages that are the very flower of
+Morris's poetic charm. The scheme of the arrangement is interesting. A
+little band of Greeks, "the seed of the Ionian race," are found living
+upon a nameless island in a distant sea. Hither at the end of the
+fourteenth century--the time of Chaucer--come certain wanderers of
+Germanic, Norse, and Celtic blood who have set out on a voyage in search
+of a land that is free from death, driven from their homes by the
+pestilence sweeping over them. Hospitably received, the wanderers spend
+their time upon the island entertaining their hosts with the legends
+current in their day throughout Western Europe, and in turn are
+entertained with the Hellenic legends which have followed the line of
+living Greek tradition and are told by the fourteenth-century islanders in
+the mediæval form and manner proper to them at that time. Among the
+wanderers are a Breton and a Suabian, and the sources from which the
+stories are drawn have a wide range. They were at first, indeed, intended
+to represent the whole stock of the world's legends, but this field was
+too vast for even the great facility of Morris, and much was set aside. At
+the end we find _The Lovers of Gudrun_, taken from the Laxdæla Saga of
+Iceland, and bearing witness in the grimness of its tragedy and the
+fierceness of its Northern spirit to the powerful influence of the
+Icelandic literature upon the mind of Morris. It is the only story in the
+collection which has dominated his dreamy mediævalism and struck fire from
+his pen.
+
+[Illustration: _Morris's Bed, with Hangings designed by himself and
+embroidered by his Daughter_]
+
+In _The Earthly Paradise_ we have all the qualities that make its author
+dear to most of his readers. The mind is steeped in the beauty of imagery,
+and content to have emotion and thought lulled by the long, melancholy
+swing of lines that seem like the echo of great poetry without its living
+voice. Such poetry is what Morris wished his decorations to be--the
+"lesser art" that brings repose from the quickening of soul with which a
+masterpiece is greeted. The spirit revealed through the fluent murmur of
+the melodious words is very true to him and lies at the root of all his
+efforts toward making life fair to the eyes and soothing to the heart. The
+"unimpassioned grief," the plaintive longing with which he regarded the
+fleeting and unsatisfying aspects of a world so beautiful and so
+sorrowful, never found more exquisite expression than in passage after
+passage of this pellucid and lovely verse. The flight from death and the
+seeking after eternal life on this material globe constitute a theme that
+had for him a singular fitness. No one could have rendered with more
+sensitive appreciation the mood of men who set their life at an unmeasured
+price. No one could have expressed the dread of dying with more poetic
+sympathy. The preludes to the stories told on the island are poems
+addressed to the months of the changing year, and not one is free from the
+grievous suggestion of loss or the weary burden of fear and dejection.
+Read without the intervening narratives, they wrap the mind in an
+atmosphere of foreboding. There is no welcome unaccompanied by the shadow
+of farewell. There is no leaping of the heart to meet sunshine and fair
+weather without its corresponding faintness of shrinking from the clouds
+and darkness certain to follow. With a brave determination to seize
+exultation on the wing, he cries to March:
+
+  Yea, welcome March! and though I die ere June,
+  Yet for the hope of life I give thee praise,
+  Striving to swell the burden of the tune
+  That even now I hear thy brown birds raise,
+  Unmindful of the past or coming days;
+  Who sing: "O joy! a new year is begun:
+  What happiness to look upon the sun!"
+
+But what follows? The sure reminder of the silence that shall come after
+the singing:
+
+    Ah, what begetteth all this storm of bliss
+  But Death himself, who crying solemnly,
+  E'en from the heart of sweet Forgetfulness,
+  Bids us "Rejoice, lest pleasureless ye die.
+  Within a little time must ye go by.
+  Stretch forth your open hands, and while ye live
+  Take all the gifts that Death and Life may give."
+
+And in the stanzas for October, written, Mr. Mackail tells us, in memory
+of a happy autumn holiday, we have the most poignant note of which he was
+capable:
+
+  Come down, O Love; may not our hands still meet,
+  Since still we live to-day, forgetting June,
+  Forgetting May, deeming October sweet--
+  --O hearken, hearken! through the afternoon,
+  The grey tower sings a strange old tinkling tune!
+  Sweet, sweet, and sad, the toiling year's last breath,
+  Too satiate of life to strive with death.
+
+  And we too--will it not be soft and kind,
+  That rest from life, from patience and from pain;
+  That rest from bliss we know not when we find;
+  That rest from Love which ne'er the end can gain?--
+  Hark, how the tune swells, that erewhile did wane?
+  Look up, Love!--ah, cling close and never move!
+  How can I have enough of life and love?
+
+June, the high tide of the year, he selects as the fitting month in which
+to tell of something sad:
+
+  Sad, because though a glorious end it tells,
+  Yet on the end of glorious life it dwells.
+
+In February he asks:
+
+  Shalt thou not hope for joy new born again,
+  Since no grief ever born can ever die
+  Through changeless change of seasons passing by?
+
+[Illustration: _Kelmscott Manor House from the Orchard_]
+
+Thus across the charming images of French romance, Hellenic legend, and
+Norse drama, falls the suggestion of his own personality, and it is due to
+this pervading personal mood or sentiment that _The Earthly Paradise_ has
+a power to stir the imagination almost wholly lacking to his later work.
+It cannot be said that even here he is able to awaken a strong emotion.
+But the human element is felt. A warm intelligence of sympathy creeps in
+among dreams and shadows, the reader is aware of a living presence near
+him and responds to the appeal of human weakness and depression. It is
+because Morris in the languid cadences of _The Earthly Paradise_ spoke
+with his own voice and took his readers into the confidence of his
+hopeless thoughts, that the book will remain for the multitude the chief
+among his works, the only one that portrays for us in its most
+characteristic form the inmost quality of his temperament. Nor does he
+seem to have had for any other book of his making quite the intimate
+affection he so frankly bestowed upon this. The final stanzas in which the
+well-known message is sent to "my Master, Geoffrey Chaucer," confide the
+autobiographic vein in which it was written. Says the Book of its maker:
+
+  I have beheld him tremble oft enough
+  At things he could not choose but trust to me,
+  Although he knew the world was wise and rough:
+  And never did he fail to let me see
+  His love,--his folly and faithlessness, maybe;
+  And still in turn I gave him voice to pray
+  Such prayers as cling about an empty day.
+
+  Thou, keen-eyed, reading me, mayst read him through,
+  For surely little is there left behind;
+  No power great deeds unnameable to do;
+  No knowledge for which words he may not find;
+  No love of things as vague as autumn wind--
+  Earth of the earth lies hidden by my clay,
+  The idle singer of an empty day.
+
+Written at great speed, one day being marked by a product of seven hundred
+lines, the last of _The Earthly Paradise_ was in the hands of the printers
+by the end of 1870, and Morris was free for his Icelandic journey and new
+interests.
+
+[Illustration: _Portrait of Edward Burne-Jones_
+
+_By Watts_]
+
+He was no sooner home from Iceland than he set to work upon a curious
+literary experiment--a dramatic poem of very complicated construction,
+called _Love is Enough, or the Freeing of Pharamond: A Morality_, the
+intricate metrical design of which is interestingly explained by Mr.
+Mackail. Rossetti and Coventry Patmore both spoke in terms of enthusiasm
+of its unusual beauty. The story is that of a king, Pharamond, who has
+been gallant on the field and wise on the throne, but is haunted by
+visions of an ideal love sapping his energy and driving peace from his
+heart. He deserts his people, and with his henchman, Oliver, wanders
+through the world until he encounters Azalais, a low-born maiden, who
+satisfies his dream. He returns to find that his people have become
+estranged from him and he abdicates at once, to retire into obscurity with
+his love. There has been an obvious struggle on the part of the poet
+to obtain a strong emotional effect, and certain passages have indeed the
+"passionate lyric quality" ascribed to them by Rossetti; but as a drama it
+hardly carries conviction. The songs written to be sung between the scenes
+have nevertheless much of the haunting beauty soon to be lost from his
+work, and of these the following is a felicitous example:
+
+  Love is enough: it grew up without heeding
+      In the days when ye knew not its name nor its measure,
+      And its leaflets untrodden by the light feet of pleasure
+  Had no boast of the blossom, no sign of the seeding,
+      As the morning and evening passed over its treasure.
+
+  And what do ye say then?--that Spring long departed
+      Has brought forth no child to the softness and showers;
+      That we slept and we dreamed through the Summer of flowers;
+  We dreamed of the Winter, and waking dead-hearted
+      Found Winter upon us and waste of dull hours.
+
+  Nay, Spring was o'er happy and knew not the reason,
+      And Summer dreamed sadly, for she thought all was ended
+      In her fulness of wealth that might not be amended,
+  But this is the harvest and the garnering season,
+      And the leaf and the blossom in the ripe fruit are blended.
+
+  It sprang without sowing, it grew without heeding,
+      Ye knew not its name and ye knew not its measure,
+      Ye noted it not 'mid your hope and your pleasure;
+  There was pain in its blossom, despair in its seeding,
+      But daylong your bosom now nurseth its treasure.
+
+Although Morris planned a beautifully decorated edition of the poem which
+was highly valued by him, its failure to impress itself upon the public
+was no great grief to him, and he put it cheerfully out of mind to devote
+himself to translation and to Icelandic literature.
+
+The surprising task to which he first turned was a verse translation of
+Virgil's _Æneid_, in which he attempted to give the closest possible
+rendering of the Latin and to emphasise the romantic side of Virgil's
+genius. He followed with an almost word-for-word accuracy the lines and
+periods of the original using, and he threw over the poem a glamour of
+romance, but Mr. Mackail says truly that he had taken his life in his
+hands in essaying a classic subject with his inadequate training and
+unclassic taste. The same authority, who on this subject, certainly, is
+not to be disputed by the lay reader, considers the result a success from
+Morris's own point of view, declaring that he "vindicated the claim of the
+romantic school to a joint ownership with the classicists in the poem
+which is not only the crowning achievement of classical Latin, but the
+fountain-head of romanticism in European literature." The opposing critics
+are fairly represented by Mr. Andrew Lang, who, in this case as in many
+another, is an ideal intermediary between scholar and general reader.
+
+"There is no more literal verse-translation of any classic poem in
+English," he says, "but Mr. Morris's manner and method appear to me to be
+mistaken. Virgil's great charm is his perfection of style and the
+exquisite harmony of his numbers. These are not represented by the
+singularly rude measures and archaistic language of Mr. Morris. Like Mr.
+Morris, Virgil was a learned antiquarian, and perhaps very accomplished
+scholars may detect traces of voluntary archaism in his language and
+style. But these, if they exist, certainly do not thrust themselves on the
+notice of most readers of the _Æneid_. Mr. Morris's phrases would almost
+seem uncouth in a rendering of Ennius. For example, take
+
+                    'manet alta mente repostum
+  Judicium Paridis, spretæque injuria formæ.'
+
+This is rendered in a prose version by a fine and versatile scholar, 'deep
+in her soul lies stored the judgment of Paris, the insult of her slighted
+beauty.' Mr. Morris translates:
+
+                    'her inmost heart still sorely did enfold
+  That grief of body set at naught by Paris' doomful deed.'
+
+Can anything be much less Virgilian? Is it even intelligible without the
+Latin? What modern poet would naturally speak of 'grief of body set at
+naught,' or call the judgment of Paris 'Paris' doomful deed'? Then 'manet
+alta mente repostum' is strangely rendered by 'her inmost heart still
+sorely did enfold.' This is an example of the translation at its worst,
+but defects of the sort illustrated are so common as to leave an
+impression of wilful ruggedness, and even obscurity, than which what can
+be less like Virgil? Where Virgil describes the death of Troilus, 'et
+versa pulvis inscribitus hasta' ('and his reversed spear scores the
+dust'), Mr. Morris has 'his wrested spear a-writing in the dust,' and
+Troilus has just been 'a-fleeing weaponless.' Our doomful deed, is that to
+be a-translating thus is to write with wrested pen, and to give a
+rendering of Virgil as unsatisfactory as it is technically literal. In
+short, Mr. Morris's _Æneid_ seems on a par with Mr. Browning's
+_Agamemnon_. But this," Mr. Lang is careful to add, "is a purely personal
+verdict: better scholars and better critics have expressed a far higher
+opinion of Mr. Morris's translation of Virgil."
+
+Mr. Lang's whimsical despair over the affectations of language which
+abound in the translation of the _Æneid_ with less pertinence than in many
+other writings of Morris where also they abound, recalls the remonstrance
+that Stevenson could not resist writing out in the form of a letter
+although it was never sent on its mission. Acknowledging his debt to
+Morris for many "unforgettable poems," the younger writer and more
+accomplished student of language protests against the indiscriminate use
+of the word _whereas_ in the translations from the sagas. "For surely,
+Master," he says, "that tongue that we write, and that you have
+illustrated so nobly, is yet alive. She has her rights and laws, and is
+our mother, our queen, and our instrument. Now in that living tongue,
+_where_ has one sense, _whereas_ another."
+
+The translation of the _Æneid_ was published under the title of _The
+Æneids_, in the autumn of 1875. Morris had written a good part of it in
+the course of his trips back and forth on the Underground Railway, using
+for these first drafts a stiff-covered copybook, which was his constant
+companion. In the summer of the same year he had brought out a volume of
+the translations from the Icelandic which he was making in collaboration
+with Mr. Magnusson, calling it _Three Northern Love-Stories and Other
+Tales_. He had still, he declared "but few converts to Saga-ism," and he
+regarded his translating from the Icelandic as a pure luxury, adopting it
+for a Sunday amusement. During the winter of 1875-76, however, he was
+embarked on a cognate enterprise of the utmost importance to him, although
+he thought, and with truth, that his public would be indifferent to it.
+This was the epic poem which he called _The Story of Sigurd the Volsung_,
+based on the Volsunga Saga, the story of the great Northern heroes told
+and re-told from generation to generation, polished and perfected until
+the final form, in which it preserves the traditions of the people who
+cherish it, is the noblest attained in the Icelandic legends. Morris had
+published a prose translation of the saga in 1870, and the following
+passage from his preface shows how deeply his emotions were stirred by his
+subject:
+
+"As to the literary quality of this work we might say much," he writes,
+"but we think we may well trust the reader of poetic insight to break
+through whatever entanglement of strange manners or unused element may at
+first trouble him, and to meet the nature and beauty with which it is
+filled: we cannot doubt that such a reader will be intensely touched by
+finding amidst all its wildness and remoteness such startling realism,
+such subtlety, such close sympathy with all the passions that may move
+himself to-day. In conclusion, we must again say how strange it seems to
+us, that this Volsung Tale, which is in fact an unversified poem, should
+never before have been translated into English. For this is the Great
+Story of the North, which should be to all our race what the tale of Troy
+was to the Greeks--to all our race first, and afterwards, when the change
+of the world has made our race nothing more than a name of what has
+been--a story too--then should it be to those that come after us no less
+than the Tale of Troy has been to us."
+
+In the course of the following six years, during which he was constantly
+increasing his intimacy with the literature of the North, an impulse not
+unlike that which tempted Tennyson toward the _Idylls of the King_ led him
+to try the winning of a wider audience for the tale of great deeds and
+elemental passions by which he himself had been so much inspired. In the
+prose translation he had given the Volsunga Saga to the public as it had
+been created for an earlier public of more savage tastes and fiercer
+tendencies. Now he proposed to divest it of some of the childish and ugly
+details that formed a stumbling block to the modern reader (though
+plausible and interesting enough to those for whom they were invented),
+and to add to the "unversified poem" rhyme and metre, emphasising the
+essential points and such characteristics of the actors as most appealed
+to him. A comparison of the saga with the poem will show that in his
+effort to preserve the heroic character of the antique conception by
+accentuating everything pleasing, leaving out much of the rudeness and
+cruelty, and adorning it with copious descriptive passages, he robs the
+story of a great part of the wild life stirring in its ancient forms, and
+more or less confuses and involves it. The modern poem really requires for
+its right understanding a mind more instructed in its subject than the
+prose translation of the old saga, and readers to whom the latter is
+unfamiliar may find a plain outline of the story not superfluous.
+
+In the translation, the origin of the noble Volsung race, of which Sigurd
+is the flower and crown, is traced to Sigi, called the son of Odin, and
+sent out from his father's land for killing a thrall. He is fortunate in
+war, marries a noble wife, and rules over the land of the Huns. His son is
+named Rerir. Volsung is the son of Rerir, and thus the great-grandson of
+Odin himself. He marries the daughter of a giant, and the ten sons and one
+daughter of this union are strong in sinew and huge in size, the Volsung
+race having the fame of being "great men and high-minded and far above the
+most of men both in cunning and in prowess and all things high and
+mighty." Volsung becomes in his turn king over Hunland, and builds for
+himself a noble Hall in the centre of which grows an oak-tree whose limbs
+"blossom fair out over the roof of the hall," and the trunk of which is
+called Branstock.
+
+The poem opens with the description of a wedding-feast held in this Hall
+for Signy, King Volsung's daughter, who has been sought in marriage by
+Siggeir, King of the Goths, a smaller and meaner race than the Volsungs.
+Signy is not content with her fate, but her father has deemed the match to
+be a wise one, and, eminent in filial obedience as in all things else, she
+yields. From this point for some distance saga and poem march together
+save for certain minor changes intended to increase Signy's charm. During
+the feasting a one-eyed stranger enters the Hall and thrusts his sword up
+to its hilt into the tree-trunk, saying that who should draw the sword
+from the trunk should have it for his own and find it the best he had ever
+borne in his hand. This, of course, is Odin. Siggeir tries to draw the
+sword, and after him his nobles, and then the sons of King Volsung, but
+none succeeds until Sigmund, the twin of Signy, draws it lightly forth as
+an easy task. Siggeir is wroth and offers to buy the sword for thrice its
+weight in gold, but Sigmund will not part with it, and Siggeir sets sail
+for home in dudgeon, though concealing his feelings from the Volsungs and
+inviting them cordially to visit him in Gothland. Signy reads the future,
+and implores her father to undo the marriage and let Siggeir depart
+without her. (In the poem Morris has her offer herself as a sacrifice if
+her father will but remain in his kingdom and decline Siggeir's
+invitation.) King Volsung, however, insists on keeping his troth, and
+Signy and Siggeir depart, followed in due time by King Volsung and his
+sons and nobles in response to Siggeir's request. What Signy prophesied
+comes to pass and King Volsung falls at the hands of the Goths while his
+ten sons are taken captive. Now Signy prays her husband that her brothers
+be put for a time in the stocks, since home to her mind comes "the saw
+that says _Sweet to eye while seen_." Siggeir is delighted to consent
+though he deems her "mad and witless" to wish longer suffering for her
+brothers. Here the poem departs from the original in that Morris puts the
+idea of the stocks into the mind of Siggeir in answer to Signy's
+suggestion that her brothers be spared for a little time. Sigmund and the
+rest of the brothers are taken to the wildwood, and a beam is placed on
+their feet, and night by night for nine nights a she-wolf comes to devour
+one of them. (In the poem Morris hastens matters somewhat by having two
+wolves appear each night to despatch the brothers two at a time.) Each
+morning Signy sends a messenger to the wildwood who brings back the woeful
+news. Finally she thinks of a ruse, and on the tenth night the messenger
+is sent to smear the face of Sigmund, now the sole remaining brother, with
+honey, putting some also into his mouth. When the wolf comes she licks his
+face, and then puts her tongue into his mouth to get the last delicious
+drop. Sigmund promptly closes his teeth upon her tongue and in the
+struggle that ensues Sigmund's bonds are burst and the wolf escapes,
+leaving her tongue between his teeth. This incident was probably not
+sufficiently heroic to please Morris, and in the poem no mention is made
+of Signy's clever device, Sigmund gaining his freedom in a more dignified
+fashion and the details being slurred over lightly, with a vague and
+general allusion to snapping "with greedy teeth." Sigmund dwells in the
+wildwood in hiding, and Signy sends to him in turn her two sons by King
+Siggeir, that he may test their fitness to help avenge the fate of her
+family. Here again Morris mitigates the stern temper of Signy for a more
+womanly type. In the saga when Signy finds that the boys are not stout
+enough of heart to accomplish her purpose she bids Sigmund kill them at
+once: "Why should such as they live longer?" In the poem, however, when
+Signy sends her son to Sigmund he is delivered with the diplomatic message
+that if his heart avail not he may "wend the ways of his fate," and when
+it is found that his heart does not avail, he is returned in safety to his
+mother, Sigmund awaiting the slow coming of the competent one.
+
+[Illustration: _William Morris_
+
+_From painting by Watts_]
+
+The story of the birth of Sinfjotli, in whose veins runs unmixed the blood
+of the Volsungs, is given a certain dignity not accorded it in Wagner's
+familiar version of the legend as Mr. Buxton Forman, Morris's most devoted
+critic, has pointed out, but true to the account in the original saga. The
+saga is followed, also, in the burning of Siggeir's Hall by Sigmund
+and Sinfjotli, but the Signy who kisses her brother in "soft and sweet"
+farewell certainly fails to recall to the mind the vengeful creature of
+the original. Sigmund returns to the Hall of the Volsungs with Sinfjotli,
+and marries Borghild. Presently Sinfjotli sails abroad with the brother of
+Queen Borghild, Gudrod by name, and kills him for reason--as given in the
+translation--of their rivalry in loving "an exceeding fair woman." In the
+poem, however, Morris records a shabby trick played upon Sinfjotli by
+Gudrod in the dividing of their spoils of battle, making this the cause of
+the duel in which Gudrod was killed. Sinfjotli returns to his home with
+the news of Gudrod's death, and Borghild in revenge poisons him. Sigmund
+then sends her away and takes for his wife fair Hiordis, meeting his death
+at the hand of Odin himself, who appears to him in battle and shatters the
+sword he had drawn in his youth from the Volsung Branstock. As he lies
+dying he tells Hiordis that she must take good care of their child, who is
+to carry on the Volsung tradition, and must guard well the shards of
+Odin's sword for him. Then comes the carrying away of Hiordis by a
+sea-king to his kingdom in Denmark, and here ends, rightly speaking, the
+epic of Sigmund's career, which, as Mr. Mackail has said, is a separate
+story neither subordinate to nor coherent with the later epic of Sigurd,
+but which Morris could not forbear uniting to it. Sigurd the Volsung, the
+golden-haired, the shining one, the symbol of the sun, is born of Hiordis
+in the home of King Elf, and fostered by Regin, an aged man and "deft in
+every cunning save the dealings of the sword." When Sigurd has grown to be
+a boy of high mind and stout heart, Regin urges him to ask of King Elf a
+horse. This he does, and is sent to choose one for himself. He chooses the
+best horse in the world and names him, Greyfell in the poem, Grani in the
+prose. Regin now presses him to attack Fafnir the "ling-worm," or dragon,
+who guards a vast hoard of treasure in the desert. According to the saga,
+Sigurd is not ashamed to own to a slight hesitation in attacking a
+creature of whose size and malignity he has heard much, but in the poem he
+is ready for the deed, merely hinting that "the wary foot is the surest
+and the hasty oft turns back." Thereupon follows the tale of the treasure
+told by Regin with great directness in the prose, and with much
+circumlocution in the poem.
+
+When Sigurd learns that Fafnir is the brother of Regin, and is keeping him
+out of his share of treasure belonging to them both, on which, however, a
+curse is laid, he pities Regin, and promises that if he will make him a
+sword worthy of the deed he will kill Fafnir for him. This Regin attempts
+to do and fails until Sigurd brings him the shards of Odin's mighty sword,
+his inheritance from his father Sigmund. With a sword forged from the
+shards and named by him "the Wrath," Sigurd sets out on Greyfell,
+accompanied by Regin, to attack the dragon. The description in the poem of
+the ride across the desert is rich in the fruits of Morris's own
+experience, and reflects very closely his impressions of the mournful
+place of "short-lived eagerness and glory." Sigurd and Regin ride to the
+westward.
+
+                      ... and huge were the mountains grown
+  And the floor of heaven was mingled with that tossing world of stone;
+  And they rode till the moon was forgotten and the sun was waxen low,
+  And they tarried not though he perished, and the world grew dark below.
+  Then they rode a mighty desert, a glimmering place and wide,
+  And into a narrow pass high-walled on either side
+  By the blackness of the mountains, and barred aback and in face
+  By the empty night of the shadow; a windless silent place:
+  But the white moon shone o'erhead mid the small sharp stars and pale,
+  And each as a man alone they rode on the highway of bale.
+
+  So ever they wended upward, and the midnight hour was o'er,
+  And the stars grew pale and paler, and failed from the heaven's floor,
+  And the moon was a long while dead, but where was the promise of day?
+  No change came over the darkness, no streak of the dawning grey;
+  No sound of the wind's uprising adown the night there ran:
+  It was blind as the Gaping Gulf ere the first of the worlds began.
+
+The fight with the dragon, the roasting of the dragon's heart, the tasting
+of the blood by Sigurd, and his instant knowledge of the hearts of men and
+beasts and of the speech of birds, follow with close adherence of poem to
+saga, the most marked divergence being the substitution of eagles for the
+woodpeckers who sing to Sigurd of his future. Through his new
+accomplishment Sigurd is able to read Regin's heart, and sees therein a
+traitorous intent, therefore he kills Regin, loads Greyfell with the
+treasure, and rides to the mountain where Brynhild, the warrior maiden
+struck with slumber by Odin in punishment for disobedience to him, is
+lying in her armour guarded by flames. Sigurd wins through the fire, and
+awakens her, and they hold loving converse together on the mountain,
+Brynhild teaching him wisdom in runes and in the saga, bringing him beer
+in a beaker, "the drink of love," although in the poem this hospitable
+ceremony is omitted. After a time they part, plighting troth, and later,
+when they meet at the home of Brynhild in Lymdale, they again exchange
+vows of faith.
+
+Then Sigurd rides to a realm south of the Rhine, where dwell the Niblung
+brothers with their sister Gudrun and their fierce-hearted mother,
+Grimhild, who brews for Sigurd a philter that makes him forget the vows he
+exchanged with Brynhild and become enamoured of Gudrun. Completely under
+the power of the charm, he weds the latter and undertakes to woo and win
+Brynhild for her brother Gunnar. This he does by assuming Gunnar's
+semblance, and riding once more through the fire that guards Brynhild,
+reminding her of her oath to marry whomever should perform this feat, and
+returning to his own form after gaining her promise for Gunnar. This ruse
+is made known to Brynhild (after she has wedded Gunnar) by Gudrun, who is
+not averse to marring the peace of the greatest of women, and Brynhild
+makes the air ring with her wailing over the woeful fact that Gudrun has
+the braver man for her husband. In the saga she is a very outspoken lady
+and in a wild temper, and even in the poem her grief fails in noble and
+dignified expression. At her instigation Sigurd is killed by Gunnar and
+his brethren. The vengeance brings no happiness, however, and Brynhild
+pierces her breast with a sword that she and Sigurd may lie on one funeral
+pyre! Lovers of Wagner opera will remember that the story as there told
+ends with this climax, but Morris carries it on to Gudrun's marriage with
+King Atli, Brynhild's brother, and to the struggle between him and the
+Niblungs for the fatal treasure, which results in the murder of the
+Niblungs (Gudrun's brothers) and the irrevocable loss of the treasure.
+Although Gudrun has approved Atli's deed, she finds she can no longer
+abide with him after it has been accomplished, and accordingly sets fire
+to his house and throws herself into the sea. Morris omits the grewsome
+incident of the supper prepared for Atli by Gudrun from the roasted hearts
+of their children whom she had killed, and also leaves out the subsequent
+account of the bringing ashore of Gudrun and the wedding and slaying of
+Swanhild, her daughter by Sigurd.
+
+To the poetic and symbolic elements of this strange old saga, Morris has
+been abundantly sensitive. The curse attending the desire for gold, which
+is the pointed moral of the saga, is brought out, not dramatically, but
+by allusions and suggestions, not always apparent at a casual reading. The
+conception of Sigurd as the sun-god destroying the powers of darkness and
+illuminating a shadowy world is constantly hinted at, as when he threatens
+Regin with the light he sheds on good and ill, and when Regin, looking
+toward him as he sits on Greyfell, sees that the light of his presence
+blazes as the glory of the sun. The heroism of Sigurd, his rôle as the
+ideal lover and warrior and spiritual saviour of his race, is perhaps
+over-emphasised. As King Arthur certainly lost in interest by Tennyson's
+re-creation of him, so Sigurd is more lovely and fair and golden and
+glorious in the poem than in the saga, and considerably less human and
+attractive withal. In fact, none of the characters in the poem--all so
+intensely alive to Morris himself--lives in quite a like degree for his
+readers. His power to probe beneath externals and rouse emotions of
+spiritual force was curiously limited. There are indications in his
+biography that his business with crafts and "word-spinning," as he called
+it, served him as a kind of armour, protecting him from the wounds of
+feelings too poignant to handle freely, too deadly to invite. We read of
+his agony of apprehension, for example, when in Iceland he did not hear
+from his home for a considerable period. "Why does not one drop down or
+faint or do something of that sort when it comes to the uttermost in such
+matters!" he exclaims. But in his writing it is mainly the surface of the
+earth and the surface of the mind with which he deals. It is in the nature
+of his genius, says one of his most accomplished critics, to dispense with
+those deeper thoughts of life which for Chaucer and for Shakespeare were
+"the very air breathed by the persons living in their verse."
+Nevertheless, his service to English literature, in translating the
+Northern sagas as none but a poet could have translated them, was very
+great, and his _Story of Sigurd_ is in many respects a splendid
+performance. In writing it he endeavoured to infuse into his style the
+energy and passion of the literature from which he drew his material, and
+to brace it with the sturdy fibre of the Icelandic tongue. His efforts to
+de-Latinise his sentences had already lent his translations a vigour
+lacking in his earlier work. He had captured something of the Northern
+freshness corresponding very truly to his external aspect if not to the
+workings of his brain. The chief defect from which his story of Sigurd
+suffers lies in the extreme garrulity of the narrative. A single passage,
+set by the side of the translation, will suffice to show the manner in
+which a direct statement is smothered and amplified until the reader's
+brain is dull with repetition, and the episode or description is extended
+to three or four times its original length. Thus in the saga we are told
+that after Sigurd had eaten of the dragon's heart "he leapt on his horse
+and rode along the trail of the worm Fafnir, and so right unto his
+abiding-place; and he found it open, and beheld all the doors and the
+gear of them that they were wrought of iron; yea, and all the beams of the
+house; and it was dug down deep into the earth: there found Sigurd gold
+exceeding plenteous, and the sword Rotti; and thence he took the Helm of
+Awe, and the Gold Byrny, and many things fair and good. So much gold he
+found there, that he thought verily that scarce might two horses, or three
+belike, bear it thence. So he took all the gold and laid it in two great
+chests, and set them on the horse Grani, and took the reins of him, but
+nowise will he stir, neither will he abide smiting. Then Sigurd knows the
+mind of the horse, and leaps on the back of him, and smites spurs into
+him, and off the horse goes even as if he were unladen."
+
+From this comparatively unvarnished tale Morris evolves the following:
+
+  Now Sigurd eats of the heart that once in the Dwarf-king lay,
+  The hoard of the wisdom begrudged, the might of the earlier day.
+  Then wise of heart was he waxen, but longing in him grew
+  To sow the seed he had gotten, and till the field he knew.
+  So he leapeth aback of Greyfell, and rideth the desert bare,
+  And the hollow slot of Fafnir that led to the Serpent's lair.
+  Then long he rode adown it, and the ernes flew overhead,
+  And tidings great and glorious of that Treasure of old they said,
+  So far o'er the waste he wended, and when the night was come
+  He saw the earth-old dwelling, the dread Gold-wallowers home.
+  On the skirts of the Heath it was builded by a tumbled stony bent;
+  High went that house to the heavens, down 'neath the earth it went,
+  Of unwrought iron fashioned for the heart of a greedy king:
+  'Twas a mountain, blind without, and within was its plenishing
+  But the Hoard of Andvari the ancient, and the sleeping Curse unseen,
+  The Gold of the Gods that spared not and the greedy that have been.
+  Through the door strode Sigurd the Volsung, and the grey moon and the
+      sword
+  Fell in on the tawny gold-heaps of the ancient hapless Hoard:
+  Gold gear of hosts unburied, and the coin of cities dead,
+  Great spoil of the ages of battle, lay there on the Serpent's bed:
+  Huge blocks from mid-earth quarried, where none but the Dwarfs have
+      mined,
+  Wide sands of the golden rivers no foot of man may find,
+  Lay 'neath the spoils of the mighty and the ruddy rings of yore:
+  But amidst was the Helm of Aweing that the Fear of earth-folk bore,
+  And there gleamed a wonder beside it, the Hauberk all of gold,
+  Whose like is not in the heavens nor has earth of its fellow told:
+  There Sigurd seeth moreover Andvari's Ring of Gain,
+  The hope of Loki's finger, the Ransom's utmost grain;
+  For it shone on the midmost gold-heap like the first star set in the
+      sky,
+  In the yellow space of even when the moon-rise draweth anigh.
+  Then laughed the Son of Sigmund, and stooped to the golden land,
+  And gathered that first of the harvest and set it on his hand;
+  And he did on the Helm of Aweing, and the Hauberk all of gold,--
+  Whose like is not in the heavens nor has earth of its fellow told:
+  Then he praised the day of the Volsungs amid the yellow light,
+  And he set his hand to the labour and put forth his kingly might;
+  He dragged forth gold to the moon, on the desert's face he laid
+  The innermost earth's adornment, and rings for the nameless made;
+  He toiled and loaded Greyfell, and the cloudy war-steed shone,
+  And the gear of Sigurd rattled in the flood of moonlight wan;
+  There he toiled and loaded Greyfell, and the Volsung's armour rang
+  'Mid the yellow bed of the Serpent--but without the eagles sang:
+
+  "Bind the red rings, O Sigurd! let the gold shine free and clear!
+  For what hath the Son of the Volsungs the ancient Curse to fear?
+
+  "Bind the red rings, O Sigurd! for thy tale is well begun,
+  And the world shall be good and gladdened by the Gold lit up by the sun.
+
+  "Bind the red rings, O Sigurd! and gladden all thine heart!
+  For the world shall make thee merry ere thou and she depart.
+
+  "Bind the red rings, O Sigurd! for the ways go green below,
+  Go green to the dwelling of Kings, and the halls that the Queen-folk
+      know.
+
+  "Bind the red rings, O Sigurd! for what is there bides by the way,
+  Save the joy of folk to awaken, and the dawn of the merry day?
+
+  "Bind the red rings, O Sigurd! for the strife awaits thine hand
+  And a plenteous war-field's reaping, and the praise of many a land.
+
+  "Bind the red rings, O Sigurd! but how shall storehouse hold
+  That glory of thy winning and the tidings to be told?"
+
+  Now the moon was dead and the star-worlds were great on the heavenly
+      plain,
+  When the steed was fully laden; then Sigurd taketh the rein
+  And turns to the ruined rock-wall that the lair was built beneath,
+  For there he deemed was the gate and the door of the Glittering Heath,
+  But not a whit moved Greyfell for aught that the King might do;
+  Then Sigurd pondered awhile, till the heart of the beast he knew,
+  And clad in all his war-gear he leaped to the saddle-stead,
+  And with pride and mirth neighed Greyfell and tossed aloft his head,
+  And sprang unspurred o'er the waste, and light and swift he went,
+  And breasted the broken rampart, the stony tumbled bent;
+  And over the brow he clomb, and there beyond was the world,
+  A place of many mountains and great crags together hurled.
+  So down to the west he wendeth, and goeth swift and light,
+  And the stars are beginning to wane, and the day is mingled with night;
+  For full fain was the sun to arise and look on the Gold set free,
+  And the Dwarf-wrought rings of the Treasure and the gifts from the floor
+      of the sea.
+
+Beautiful and full of poetic spirit and suggestion as this phraseology is,
+a reader may be forgiven if it recalls the reply of Hamlet when asked by
+Polonius what it is he reads. Compared with the swift dramatic method
+employed by Wagner to make the heroes and heroines of this same saga live
+for our time, it must be admitted that the latter drives home with the
+greater energy and conviction. Morris himself, however, was "not much
+interested" in anything Wagner did, looking upon it "as nothing short of
+desecration to bring such a tremendous and world-wide subject under the
+gaslights of an opera, the most rococo and degraded of all forms of art."
+
+To the group of translations and adaptations already described must be
+added one other ambitious effort which belongs to it, properly speaking,
+although separated from it in time by more than ten years. In 1887 Morris
+published a translation of the _Odyssey_, written in anapæstic couplets,
+and rendered as literally as by the prose crib of which he made frank use.
+Mr. Watts-Dunton finds in this translation the Homeric eagerness, although
+the Homeric dignity is lacking. The majority of competent critics were
+against it, however, nor is a high degree of classical training necessary
+to perceive in it an incoherence and clumsiness of diction impossible to
+associate with the lucid images of the Greeks. Compare, for example,
+Morris's account of the recognition of Ulysses by Argus with Bryant's
+limpid rendering of the same episode, and the tortured style of the former
+is obvious at once. Bryant's translation reads:
+
+                            There lay
+  Argus, devoured with vermin. As he saw
+  Ulysses drawing near, he wagged his tail
+  And dropped his ears, but found that he could come
+  No nearer to his master. Seeing this
+  Ulysses wiped away a tear unmark'd
+  By the good swineherd whom he questioned thus:
+    "Eumæus, this I marvel at,--this dog
+  That lies upon the dunghill, beautiful
+  In form, but whether in the chase as fleet
+  As he is fairly shaped I cannot tell.
+  Worthless, perchance, as house-dogs often are
+  Whose masters keep them for the sake of show."
+
+  And thus, Eumæus, thou didst make reply:
+
+    "The dog belongs to one who died afar.
+  Had he the power of limb which once he had
+  For feats of hunting when Ulysses sailed
+  For Troy and left him, thou wouldst be amazed
+  Both at his swiftness and his strength. No beast
+  In the thick forest depths which once he saw,
+  Or even tracked by footprints, could escape.
+  And now he is a sufferer, since his lord
+  Has perished far from his own land. No more
+  The careless women heed the creature's wants;
+  For, when the master is no longer near,
+  The servants cease from their appointed tasks,
+  And on the day that one becomes a slave
+  The Thunderer, Jove takes half his worth away."
+
+    He spake, and, entering that fair dwelling-place,
+  Passed through to where the illustrious suitors sat,
+  While over Argus the black night of death
+  Came suddenly as soon as he had seen
+  Ulysses, absent now for twenty years.
+
+And here is the description by Morris of the infinitely touching scene:
+
+  There then did the woodhound Argus all full of ticks abide;
+  But now so soon as he noted Odysseus drawing anear
+  He wagged his tail, and fawning he laid down either ear,
+  But had no might to drag him nigher from where he lay
+  To his master, who beheld him and wiped a tear away
+  That he lightly hid from Eumæus, unto whom he spake and said:
+
+  "Eumæus, much I marvel at the dog on the dung-heap laid;
+  Fair-shapen is his body, but nought I know indeed
+  If unto this his fairness he hath good running speed,
+  Or is but like unto some--men's table-dogs I mean,
+  Which but because of their fairness lords cherish to be seen."
+
+  Then thou, O swineherd Eumæus, didst speak and answer thus:
+
+  "Yea, this is the hound of the man that hath died aloof from us;
+  And if yet to do and to look on he were even such an one
+  As Odysseus left behind him when to Troy he gat him gone
+  Then wouldest thou wonder beholding his speed and hardihood,
+  For no monster that he followed through the depths of the tangled wood
+  Would he blench from, and well he wotted of their trail and where it
+      led.
+  But now ill he hath, since his master in an alien land is dead,
+  And no care of him have the women, that are heedless here and light;
+  Since thralls whenso they are missing their masters' rule and might.
+  No longer are they willing to do the thing that should be;
+  For Zeus, the loud-voiced, taketh half a man's valiancy
+  Whenso the day of thralldom hath hold of him at last."
+
+  So saying into the homestead of the happy place he passed
+  And straight to the hall he wended 'mid the Wooers overbold.
+  But the murky doom of the death-day of Argus now took hold
+  When he had looked on Odysseus in this the twentieth year.
+
+The decade between the publication of _The Earthly Paradise_ and _Sigurd
+the Volsung_ had been one of sustained literary effort varied, as we have
+seen, but hardly interrupted by the work in decoration. The latter Morris
+called his "bread-and-cheese work," the former his "pleasure work of
+books." The time had not yet come for a complete union between the two,
+although it was foreshadowed by the illuminated manuscripts made for
+friends during these years. A selection from his own poems, a translation
+of the _Eyrbyggja Saga_, a copy of Fitzgerald's _Rubaiyat of Omar
+Khayyam_, and the _Æneid_ of Virgil were among the works that Morris
+undertook to transcribe with his own hand on vellum, with decorative
+margins with results of great beauty. He had now long been happy in work
+calling out all this enthusiasm, but the world was going on without, to
+use his own words, "beautiful and strange and dreadful and worshipful."
+He was approaching the time when his conscience would no longer let him
+rest in the thought that he was "not born to set the crooked straight."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+PUBLIC LIFE AND SOCIALISM.
+
+
+In the autumn of 1876, just after the publication of _Sigurd the Volsung_,
+Morris took his first dip in the ocean of public affairs, the waves of
+which were presently almost to submerge him. He was forty-two years of
+age, and had thus far managed to keep well within the range of his
+individual interests and away from the political and social questions that
+none the less stirred in his mind from time to time, and pricked him to
+random assertions that he would have nothing to do with them, that his
+business was with dreams, and that he would remain "the idle singer of an
+empty day." He was roused to action, however, by the barbarous massacre on
+the part of the Mussulman soldiery of men, women, and children in
+Bulgaria, the news of which moved the heart of England to a frenzy of
+indignation. When Russia intervened, the possibility that England might
+take up arms on the side of Turkey in order to erect a barrier against
+Russian aggression was intolerable to him, and he wrote to the _Daily
+News_ in eloquent protestation. "I who am writing this," he said, with a
+just appreciation of his ordinary attitude toward political matters, "am
+one of a large class of men--quiet men, who usually go about their own
+business, heeding public matters less than they ought, and afraid to speak
+in such a huge concourse as the English nation, however much they may
+feel, but who are now stung into bitterness by thinking how helpless they
+are in a public matter that touches them so closely." "I appeal," he
+continued, "to the workingmen, and pray them to look to it that if this
+shame falls upon them they will certainly remember it and be burdened by
+it when their day clears for them and they attain all and more than all
+they are now striving for." Again in the spring of 1877, when war seemed
+imminent, Morris appealed "to the workingmen of England," issuing a
+manifesto which was practically his first Socialist document and heralded
+the long series of lectures and addresses, poems, articles, and treatises,
+presently to take the place of romances and epics in his literary life.
+After declaring that the people who were bringing on the war were "greedy
+gamblers on the Stock Exchange, idle officers of the army and navy (poor
+fellows!), worn-out mockers of the clubs, desperate purveyors of exciting
+war-news for the comfortable breakfast-tables of those who have nothing to
+lose by war, and lastly, in the place of honour, the Tory Rump, that we
+fools, weary of peace, reason, and justice, chose at the last election to
+represent us," he added a passage that reads like the outcome of many a
+heated discussion with brethren of his own social class.
+
+"Workingmen of England, one word of warning yet," he said: "I doubt if you
+know the bitterness of hatred against freedom and progress that lies at
+the hearts of a certain part of the richer classes in this country; their
+newspapers veil it in a kind of decent language, but do but hear them
+talking amongst themselves, as I have often, and I know not whether scorn
+or anger would prevail in you at their folly and insolence. These men
+cannot speak of your order, of its aims, of its leaders, without a sneer
+or an insult; these men, if they had the power (may England perish
+rather!) would thwart your just aspirations, would silence you, would
+deliver you bound hand and foot forever to irresponsible capital.
+Fellow-citizens, look to it, and if you have any wrongs to be redressed,
+if you cherish your most worthy hope of raising your whole order
+peacefully and solidly, if you thirst for leisure and knowledge, if you
+long to lessen these inequalities which have been our stumbling-block
+since the beginning of the world, then cast aside sloth and cry out
+against an Unjust War, and urge us of the middle classes to do no less."
+
+[Illustration: _Picture by Rossetti in which the Children's Faces are
+Portraits of May Morris_]
+
+By this time he was treasurer of the Eastern Question Association, and
+working with all his might against the principles of the war party in
+England, contributing to the general agitation the political ballad called
+_Wake, London Lads!_ which was sung with much enthusiasm at one of the
+meetings to the appropriate air, _The Hardy Norseman's Home of Yore_, and
+was afterwards freely distributed in the form of a leaflet among the
+mechanics of London. It was during this period of political activity that
+J. R. Green wrote of him to E. A. Freeman: "I rejoiced to see the poet
+Morris--whom Oliphant setteth even above you for his un-Latinisms--brought
+to grief by being prayed to draw up a circular on certain Eastern matters,
+and gravelled to find 'English words.' I insidiously persuaded him that
+the literary committee had fixed on him to write one of a series of
+pamphlets which Gladstone wants brought out for the public enlightenment,
+and that the subject assigned him was 'The Results of the Incidence of
+Direct Taxation on the Christian Rayah,' but that he was forbidden to
+speak of the 'onfall of straight geld,' or other such 'English' forms. I
+left him musing and miserable." Musing and miserable he may well have been
+at finding that his duty, as he conceived it, was leading him into such
+unlovely paths, but the English of his polemical writings was unmistakable
+enough and unconfused by any affectations, Saxon or Latin. In declining to
+stand for the Professorship of Poetry at Oxford on the occasion of Matthew
+Arnold's withdrawal from it, he had confessed to a peculiar inaptitude for
+expressing himself except in the one way in which his gift lay, and it was
+true that his mind was singularly inept outside its natural course. He had
+not a reasoning mind. His opinions, dictated as they were chiefly by
+sentiment, were not worked out by the careful processes dear to genuine
+thinkers. But he was before all things a believer. No man was ever more
+certain of the absolute rectitude of his views, and by this sincerity of
+conviction they were driven home to his public. He was so eager to make
+others feel as he felt that he spent his utmost skill upon the delivery of
+his message, using the simple and downright phrases that could be
+understood by the least cultivated of his hearers. It was impossible to
+listen to him, says one of his friends, not a convert to his views,
+without for the time at least agreeing with him. Thus he conquered the
+"peculiar inaptitude" of which he speaks by the force of his great
+integrity, and although he complained that "the cursed words" went to
+water between his fingers, they accomplished their object.
+
+"When the crisis in the East was past," says Mr. Mackail, "it left Morris
+thoroughly in touch with the Radical leaders of the working class in
+London, and well acquainted with the social and economic ideas which,
+under the influence of widening education and of the international
+movement among the working classes, were beginning to transform their
+political creed from an individualist Radicalism into a more or less
+definite doctrine of State Socialism." This contact was sufficient to
+kindle into activity the ideas implanted in his own mind during his
+college days. Carlyle had then thundered forth his amazing anathemas
+against modern civilisation and had declaimed that Gurth born thrall of
+Cedric, with a brass collar round his neck, was happy in comparison with
+the poor of to-day enjoying their "liberty to die by starvation," no
+displeasing gospel to a young mediævalist; while Ruskin had preached with
+vociferous eloquence the doctrine that happiness in labour is the end and
+aim of life. From the beginning of his work in decorative art Morris had
+shown the influence of these beliefs in peace. He was now to let them lead
+him into war.
+
+Before he wrote himself down a Socialist, however, he set on foot a
+movement not so important in the eyes of the public, but much more
+characteristic of his personal mission in the world of life and art. He
+had long before learned from Ruskin that the so-called restoration of
+public monuments meant "the most total destruction which a building can
+suffer: a destruction out of which no remnants can be gathered: a
+destruction accompanied with false description of the thing destroyed."
+Whatever his feeling may have been concerning the destructive restoration,
+of which he must have seen manifold examples before this period of his
+middle age, he seems to have awakened rather suddenly to the necessity of
+taking some active measure to check the ravages of the restorer. Goaded,
+finally, by the sight of alterations going on in one of the beautiful
+parish churches near Kelmscott, he conceived the idea of forming a society
+of protest. Early in 1877 the impending fate of the Abbey Church at
+Tewkesbury, under the devastating hands of Sir Gilbert Scott, prompted him
+to put the idea at once before the public, and he wrote to the _Athenæum_
+a letter in which he went straight to the heart of his subject with
+clearness and simplicity.
+
+"My eye just now caught the word 'restoration' in the morning paper," he
+wrote, "and on looking closer, I saw that this time it is nothing less
+than the Minster of Tewkesbury that is to be destroyed by Sir Gilbert
+Scott. Is it altogether too late to do something to save it,--it and
+whatever else of beautiful and historical is still left us on the sites of
+the ancient buildings we were once so famous for? Would it not be of some
+use once for all, and with the least delay possible, to set on foot an
+association for the purpose of watching over and protecting these relics
+which, scanty as they are now become, are still wonderful treasures, all
+the more priceless in this age of the world, when the newly-invented study
+of living history is the chief joy of so many of our lives?
+
+"Your paper has so steadily and courageously opposed itself to these acts
+of barbarism which the modern architect, parson, and squire call
+'restoration,' that it would be waste of words here to enlarge on the ruin
+that has been wrought by their hands; but, for the saving of what is left,
+I think I may write you a word of encouragement, and say that you by no
+means stand alone in the matter, and that there are many thoughtful
+people who would be glad to sacrifice time, money, and comfort in defence
+of those ancient monuments; besides, though I admit that the architects
+are, with very few exceptions, hopeless, because interest, habit, and an
+ignorance yet grosser, bind them; still there must be many people whose
+ignorance is accidental rather than inveterate, whose good sense could
+surely be touched if it were clearly put to them that they were destroying
+what they, or more surely still, their sons and sons' sons would one day
+fervently long for, and which no wealth or energy could ever buy again for
+them.
+
+"What I wish for, therefore, is that an association should be set on foot
+to keep a watch on old monuments, to protest against all 'restoration'
+that means more than keeping out wind and weather, and, by all means,
+literary and other, to awaken a feeling that our ancient buildings are not
+mere ecclesiastical toys, but sacred monuments of the nation's growth and
+hope."
+
+In less than a month the association was formed under the title of the
+"Society for Protection of Ancient Buildings," abbreviated by Morris to
+the "Anti-Scrape Society," in cheerful reference to the pernicious
+scraping and pointing indulged in by the restorers. Morris was made
+secretary of the Society, and, as long as he lived, worked loyally in its
+behalf, giving, in addition to time and money, the labour, which to him
+was grievous, of lecturing for it. He wrote a prospectus that was
+translated into French, German, Italian, and Dutch, and among the more
+important of his protests were those against the demolition of some of the
+most beautiful portions of St. Mark's at Venice, and the "bedizening" of
+the interior of Westminster Abbey.
+
+For the sentiment which inspired him, the inextinguishable love in his
+heart toward every example however humble of the art he reverenced, we may
+turn to one of the most eloquently reasonable passages of his numerous
+lectures. Closing his account of pattern designing with a reference to the
+creation of modern or Gothic art, he says: "Never until the time of that
+death or cataleptic sleep of the so-called Renaissance did it forget its
+origin, or fail altogether in fulfilling its mission of turning the
+ancient curse of labour into something more like a blessing."
+
+"As to the way in which it did its work," he continues, "as I have no
+time, so also I have but little need to speak, since there is none of us
+but has seen and felt some portion of the glory which it left behind, but
+has shared some portion of that most kind gift it gave the world; for even
+in this our turbulent island, the home of rough and homely men, so far
+away from the centres of art and thought which I have been speaking of,
+did simple folk labour for those that shall come after them. Here in the
+land we yet love they built their homes and temples; if not so
+majestically as many peoples have done, yet in such sweet accord with the
+familiar nature amidst which they dwelt, that when by some happy chance
+we come across the work they wrought, untouched by any but natural change,
+it fills us with a satisfying untroubled happiness that few things else
+could bring us. Must our necessities destroy, must our restless ambition
+mar, the sources of this innocent pleasure, which rich and poor may share
+alike--this communion with the very hearts of the departed men? Must we
+sweep away these touching memories of our stout forefathers and their
+troublous days that won our present peace and liberties?
+
+"If our necessities compel us to it, I say we are an unhappy people; if
+our vanity lure us into it, I say we are a foolish and light-minded
+people, who have not the wits to take a little trouble to avoid spoiling
+our own goods. Our own goods? Yes, the goods of the people of England, now
+and in time to come: we who are now alive are but life-renters of them.
+Any of us who pretend to any culture know well that in destroying or
+injuring one of these buildings we are destroying the pleasure, the
+culture--in a word, the humanity--of unborn generations. It is speaking
+very mildly to say that we have no right to do this for our temporary
+convenience. It is speaking too mildly. I say any such destruction is an
+act of brutal dishonesty.... It is in the interest of living art and
+living history that I oppose 'restoration.' What history can there be in a
+building bedaubed with ornament, which cannot at best be anything but a
+hopeless and lifeless imitation of the hope and vigour of the earlier
+world? As to the art that is concerned in it, a strange folly it seems to
+me for us who live among these bricken masses of hideousness, to waste the
+energies of our short lives in feebly trying to add new beauty to what is
+already beautiful. Is that all the surgery we have for the curing of
+England's spreading sore? Don't let us vex ourselves to cure the
+antepenultimate blunders of the world, but fall to on our own blunders.
+Let us leave the dead alone, and, ourselves living, build for the living
+and those that shall live. Meantime, my plea for our Society is this, that
+since it is disputed whether restoration be good or not, and since we are
+confessedly living in a time when architecture has come on the one hand to
+Jerry building, and on the other to experimental designing (good, very
+good experiments some of them), let us take breath and wait; let us
+sedulously repair our ancient buildings, and watch every stone of them as
+if they were built of jewels (as indeed they are), but otherwise let the
+dispute rest till we have once more learned architecture, till we once
+more have among us a reasonable, noble, and universally used style. Then
+let the dispute be settled. I am not afraid of the issue. If that day ever
+comes, we shall know what beauty, romance, and history mean, and the
+technical meaning of the word 'restoration' will be forgotten.
+
+"Is not this a reasonable plea? It means prudence. If the buildings are
+not worth anything they are not worth restoring; if they are worth
+anything they are at least worth treating with common sense and prudence.
+
+"Come now, I invite you to support the most prudent Society in all
+England."
+
+It is easy to understand from such examples as this how Morris gained his
+popularity as a lecturer. In the printed sentences you read the eager,
+persuasive accent, so convincing because so convinced. On the platform he
+stood, say his friends, like a conqueror, stalwart and sturdy, his good
+grey eyes flashing or twinkling, his voice deepening with feeling, his
+gesture and speech sudden and spontaneous, his aspect that of an
+insurgent, a fighter against custom and orthodoxy.
+
+It was not long after the formation of the Society for the Protection of
+Ancient Buildings that he began to show himself a rebel in more than words
+against existing social laws. The steps by which he reached his membership
+in the Democratic Federation in the year 1883 are not very easily traced.
+Comments on the distressing gulf between rich and poor and on the
+conditions under which the modern workingman did his task became more
+frequent in his letters and addresses. His mind seemed to be gradually
+adjusting itself to the thought that the only hope for obtaining ideal
+conditions in which--this was always the ultimate goal--art might be
+constantly associated with handicraft, was perhaps to let art go for the
+time being, and upset society and all its conventions in preparation for a
+new earth. "Art must go under," he wrote in one of his private letters
+"where or however it may come up again." But it was always the fate of art
+that concerned him. He never really understood what Socialism technically
+and economically speaking meant. He read its books with labour and sorrow,
+and struggled with its theories in support of his antagonism to the
+commercial methods of modern business, but he gained no firm grasp of any
+underlying political principle. In most of his later addresses he talked
+pure sentiment concerning social questions, characteristically declaring
+it to be the purest reason. His avowed belief was that "workmen should be
+artists and artists workmen," and this, he felt, could only be attained
+under the freest conditions. A workman should not be clothed in shabby
+garments, should not be wretchedly housed, overworked, or underfed. But
+neither will it profit him much if he wear good clothes, and keep short
+hours, and eat wholesome food, and contribute to the ugliness of the wares
+turned out by commerce. The idea that a man works only to earn leisure in
+which he does no work was shocking to him as it had been to Ruskin.
+Pleasant work to do, leisure for other work of a different pleasantness,
+this was what the workingman really wanted if only he knew it. It was
+clear to Morris that he himself worked "not the least in the world for the
+sake of earning leisure by it," but "partly driven by the fear of
+starvation and disgrace," and partly because he loved the work itself;
+and while he was ready to confess that he spent a part of his leisure "as
+a dog does" in contemplation, and liked it well enough, he also spent part
+of it in work which gave him as much pleasure as his bread-earning work,
+neither more nor less. Obviously if there are men with whom such is not
+the case it is because they have not the right kind of work to do, and are
+not doing it in the right way, and it is equally obvious that the wrong
+work and the wrong way of doing it are forced upon them. Left to
+themselves they are bound to do what pleases them and what will please
+others of right minds. The ideal handicraftsman developing under an ideal
+social order "shall put his own individual intelligence and enthusiasm
+into the goods he fashions. So far from his labour being 'divided,' which
+is the technical phrase for his always doing one minute piece of work and
+never being allowed to think of any other, so far from that, he must know
+all about the ware he is making and its relation to similar wares; he must
+have a natural aptitude for his work so strong that no education can force
+him away from his special bent. He must be allowed to think of what he is
+doing and to vary his work as the circumstances of it vary, and his own
+moods. He must be forever stirring to make the piece he is at work at
+better than the last. He must refuse at anybody's bidding to turn out, I
+won't say a bad, but even an indifferent piece of work, whatever the
+public want or think they want. He must have a voice, and a voice worth
+listening to in the whole affair."
+
+This attitude is almost identical with that of Ruskin. To see how the
+theories of master and pupil coincide one has only to read _The Stones of
+Venice_ and compare with the passage quoted above the famous chapter on
+_The Nature of the Gothic_.
+
+"It is verily this degradation of the operative into a machine," says
+Ruskin, "which, more than any other evil of the times, is leading the mass
+of the nations everywhere into vain, incoherent, destructive struggling
+for a freedom of which they cannot explain the nature to themselves. Their
+universal outcry against wealth and against nobility is not forced from
+them either by the pressure of famine or the sting of mortified pride.
+These do much, and have done much in all ages; but the foundations of
+society were never yet shaken as they are at this day. It is not that men
+are ill-fed, but that they have no pleasure in the work by which they make
+their bread, and therefore look to wealth as the only means of pleasure.
+It is not that men are pained by the scorn of the upper classes, but they
+cannot endure their own; for they feel that the kind of labour to which
+they are condemned is verily a degrading one, and makes them less than
+men.... We have much studied and much perfected, of late, the great
+civilised invention of the division of labour; only we give it a false
+name. It is not, truly speaking, the labour that is divided; but the
+men--divided into mere segments of men--broken into small fragments and
+crumbs of life, so that all the little piece of intelligence that is left
+in a man is not enough to make a pin or a nail, but exhausts itself in
+making the point of a pin, or the head of a nail.... And the great cry
+that rises from all our manufacturing cities, louder than their furnace
+blast, is all in very deed for this,--that we manufacture everything there
+except men.... And all the evil to which that cry is urging our myriads
+can be met only ... by a right understanding on the part of all classes,
+of what kinds of labour are good for men, raising them and making them
+happy; by a determined sacrifice of such convenience, or beauty, or
+cheapness as is to be got only by the degradation of the workman." But
+Ruskin was altogether too much of an aristocrat, too much of an egoist, to
+root out classes. We can hardly imagine him preaching as Morris finally
+came to preach a revolution which should make it impossible for him to
+condescend. He could devote seven thousand pounds of his own money to
+establishing a St. George Society, but it would probably never have
+occurred to him to head a riot in Trafalgar Square.
+
+When Morris, under the influence of old theories and new associations,
+came to consider not only the desirability but the possibility of
+establishing a social order in which men could work quite happily and art
+could get loose from handcuffs welded and locked by commercialism, it was
+a necessity of his temperament that he should turn his back on halfway
+methods and urge drastic reforms. His way was not the way of compromise,
+and he seriously believed that if "civilisation" could be swept out of the
+path by a revolution which should destroy all class distinctions and all
+machinery and machine-made goods, which should do away with commercialism
+and strip the world to its bare bones, so that men could start afresh, all
+equal and all freed from the superfluities of life, there would grow up a
+charming communism in which kind hearts would take the place of coronets,
+and cheerful labour the place of hopeless toil. We find him writing in a
+private letter--madly, yet with the downright force that kindled where it
+struck--that he has "faith more than a grain of mustard seed in the future
+history of civilisation," that he now knows it to be doomed to
+destruction, and that it is a consolation and joy to him to think of
+barbarism once more flooding the world, "and real feelings and passions,
+however rudimentary, taking the place of our wretched hypocrisies." It was
+thus he thought, or felt, about the new field of labour upon which he was
+entering, and it is from this point of view that he must be defended
+against the slurs that have been cast at him as a "Capitalist-Socialist."
+He did not ignore the ideal of renunciation which had tempted him in his
+youth, and which he again thought of in his middle age--though less
+tempted, perhaps. But he reasoned, logically enough, that for one man or a
+few men to divide his or their wealth with the poor would not advance
+the world by a furlong or a foot toward the state of things which he had
+at heart to bring about. It might raise the beneficiaries a little higher
+in the ranks--in other words, bring them a little closer to the dangerous
+middle-class, from which came the worst of their troubles, and it might
+also have the effect of making them a trifle more content with existing
+conditions. Neither effect was desirable in his eyes. A divine discontent
+to be spread throughout all classes was the end and aim of such Socialism
+as he accepted. Nothing could be done except through the antagonism of
+classes, which seemed in itself to provide a remedy. In _News from
+Nowhere_, his best known Socialistic romance, the name of which was
+perhaps suggested by Kingsley's Utopian and anagrammatic _Erewhon_, he
+puts into the mouth of an old man who is himself a survival from the days
+of "class slavery," a description of the imaginary change to an ideal
+Communism. Toward the end of the nineteenth century, it is assumed, a
+federation of labour made it possible for the workmen or "slaves" to
+establish from time to time important strikes that would sometimes stop an
+industry altogether for a while, and to impose upon their "masters" other
+restrictions that seriously interfered with the systematic conduct of
+commerce. The resulting "bad times" reached a crisis in the year 1952,
+when the "Combined Workers" determined upon the bold step of demanding a
+practical reversal of classes, by which they should have the management
+of the whole natural resources of the country, together with the machinery
+for using them. The upper classes resisting, riots ensued, then the "Great
+Strike." "The railways did not run," the old man recalls; "the telegraph
+wires were unserved; flesh, fish, and green stuff brought to market was
+allowed to lie there still packed and perishing; the thousands of
+middle-class families, who were utterly dependent for the next meal on the
+workers, made frantic efforts through their more energetic members to
+cater for the needs of the day, and amongst those of them who could not
+throw off the fear of what was to follow, there was, I am told, a certain
+enjoyment of this unexpected picnic--a forecast of the days to come in
+which all labour grew pleasant." Out of all this came civil war, with
+destruction of wares and machinery and also the destruction of the spirit
+of commercialism. With the removal of the spur of competition it is
+admitted that there was a temporary danger of making men dull by giving
+them too much time for thought or idle musing. How was this danger
+overcome? By a growing interest in art, to be sure. The people, all
+workmen now, and providing very simply for their simple needs, "no longer
+driven desperately to painful and terrible overwork," began to wish to
+make the work they had in hand as attractive as possible, and rudely and
+awkwardly to ornament the wares they produced. "Thus at last and by slow
+degrees," the old man concludes, "we got pleasure into our work; then we
+became conscious of that pleasure, and cultivated it, and took care that
+we had our fill of it, and then all was gained and we were happy."
+
+[Illustration: HONEYSUCKLE DESIGN FOR LINEN]
+
+There is little here to charm the logically constructive mind, acquainted
+with human nature, and in the lectures setting forth in more detail and
+with more attempt at practical teaching the methods by which society could
+be enlightened and raised to his standard of excellence, Morris boldly
+invites the scorn of the political economist by the wholly visionary
+character of his pathetically "reasonable" views. Nevertheless, he was not
+without an instinct for distinguishing social evils and suggesting right
+remedies. Strip his doctrines of their exaggerated conclusions from false
+premises, and it is possible to find in them the seeds of many reforms
+that have come about to the inestimable benefit of the modern world. In
+his lecture on _Useful Work versus Useless Toil_, the very title of which
+is a flash of genius, he advocates the kind of education that is directed
+toward finding out what different people are fit for, and helping them
+along the road which they are inclined to take. He would have young people
+taught "such handicrafts as they had a turn for as a part of their
+education, the discipline of their minds and bodies; and adults would also
+have opportunities of learning in the same schools." He preaches the
+necessity of agreeable surroundings, claiming that science duly applied
+would get rid of the smoke, stench, and noise of factories, and that
+factories and buildings in which work is carried on should be made decent,
+convenient, and beautiful, while workers should be given opportunities of
+living in quiet country homes, in small towns, or in industrial colleges,
+instead of being obliged to "pig together" in close city quarters. Not one
+of these considerations is ignored by the organisations now endeavouring
+in the name of civilisation to raise the standard of the community. Manual
+training schools, free kindergartens, health protective associations,
+model tenement societies, have all arisen to meet in their own ways the
+needs to which Morris was so keenly alive. It was not the word reform,
+however, but the word revolution, that he constantly reiterated, and
+declined to relinquish in favour of any milder term. His friend William
+Clarke has summed up in a single paragraph the substance of many
+conversations held with him on the subject of social progress. "Existing
+society is, he thinks, gradually, but with increasing momentum,
+disintegrating through its own rottenness. The capitalist system of
+production is breaking down fast and is compelled to exploit new regions
+in Africa and other parts, where, he thinks, its term will be short.
+Economically, socially, morally, politically, religiously, civilisation is
+becoming bankrupt. Meanwhile it is for the Socialist to take advantage of
+this disintegration by spreading discontent, by preaching economic
+truths, and by any kind of demonstration which may harass the authorities
+and develop among the people an _esprit de corps_. By these means the
+people will, in some way or other, be ready to take up the industry of the
+world when the capitalist class is no longer able to direct or control
+it."
+
+The expression "in some way or other" very well indicates the essential
+vagueness underlying Morris's definite speech. He had no idea of the means
+by which the people could be educated to the assumption of unfamiliar
+control. The utmost that he could suggest was that they should be awakened
+to the beauty of life as he saw it in his dreams. This beauty he
+continually set before them in phrases as simple and as eloquent as he
+could make them. Nor did he shirk the responsibilities raised by his
+extreme point of view. Nothing testifies more truly to his fidelity of
+nature and devotion to his ideal than his readiness to put aside the
+pursuits he loved with his whole heart and take up activities detested by
+him for many years of that gifted, interesting life of his, in the hope of
+bringing about, for people whom he really cared for only in the mass, who
+did not understand him and whom he did not very well understand, an order
+of things which should in time, but not in his time, make them--so he
+thought--quite happy. The extent to which he renounced was not slight.
+
+Now indeed was the time when his friends might justly lament that he was
+being kept labouring at what he could not do, with work all round that he
+could do so well. First he joined the Democratic Federation and was
+promptly put on its executive committee. We find him writing that it is
+naturally harder to understand the subject of Socialism in detail as he
+gets alongside of it, and that he often gets beaten in argument even when
+he knows he is right, which only drives him to more desperate attempts to
+justify his theories by the study of other people's arguments. While he
+was a member of the Federation (a definitely Socialist body at the time)
+he delivered a lecture at Oxford with the effect of rousing consternation
+in the University despite the fact that he had taken pains to inform the
+authorities of his position as an active Socialist. They did not
+understand the extent of his activity, and when he wound up an agreeable
+talk by frankly appealing to the undergraduates of the Russell Club, at
+whose invitation he was speaking, to join the Democratic Federation, the
+Master of University was brought to his feet to explain that nothing of
+the kind had been foreseen when Mr. Morris was asked to express there "his
+opinion on art under a democracy."
+
+Besides his lecturing, which went on in London, or at Manchester, Leeds,
+Blackburn, Leicester, Glasgow, and anywhere else where a hopeful
+opportunity afforded, he was writing for the weekly paper of the
+Federation, the little sheet called _Justice_, and also writing pamphlets
+for distribution among the people. The measures urged in _Justice_ for
+immediate adoption as remedies for the evils of existing society were:
+
+Free Compulsory Education for all classes, together with the provision of
+at least one wholesome meal a day in each school.
+
+Eight Hours or less to be the normal Working day in all trades.
+
+Cumulative Taxation upon all incomes above a fixed minimum not exceeding
+£300 a year.
+
+State Appropriation of Railways, with or without compensation.
+
+The Establishment of National Banks, which shall absorb all private
+institutions that derive a profit from operations in money or credit.
+
+Rapid Extinction of the National Debt.
+
+Nationalisation of the Land and organisation of agricultural and
+industrial armies under State control on Coöperative principles.
+
+The objects of the Federation were: "To unite the various Associations of
+Democrats and Workers throughout Great Britain and Ireland for the purpose
+of securing equal rights for all, and forming a permanent centre of
+organisation; to agitate for the ultimate adoption of the programme of the
+Federation; to aid all Social and political movements in the direction of
+these reforms." Morris believed himself to be in full sympathy with the
+fundamental principles of the Federation, and faithfully resented the
+assumption of a kindly intentioned critic who stated that his imperfect
+sympathy with them must in charity be supposed. To the implication that he
+cared only for art and not for the other side of the social questions he
+had been writing about, he responded: "Much as I love art and ornament, I
+value it chiefly as a token of the happiness of the people, and I would
+rather it were all swept away from the world than that the mass of the
+people should suffer oppression"; but he continued with the familiar
+challenge, opportunity to utter which was seldom lost, "At the same time,
+Sir, I will beg you earnestly to consider if my contention is not true,
+that genuine Art is always an expression of pleasure in Labour?" In
+explaining his point of view to the public before whom he placed his
+little collection of Socialist lectures, he expressed his conviction that
+all the ugliness and vulgarity of civilisation, which his own work had
+forced him to look upon with grief and pain are "but the outward
+expression of the innate moral baseness into which we are forced by our
+present form of society." The ethical and practical sides of the problem
+he was trying to face honestly, grew up in his mind as he dwelt upon its
+artistic side, and he made noble efforts to evolve schemes of practical
+expediency. In his reasonableness he went so far as to admit the possible
+usefulness of machinery in the new order toward which he was directing the
+attention of his followers; but he is swift to add, "for the consolation
+of the artists," that this usefulness will probably be but temporary;
+that a state of social order would lead, at first, perhaps, to a great
+development of machinery for really useful purposes, "because people will
+still be anxious about getting through the work necessary to holding
+society together"; but after a while they will find that there is not so
+much work to do as they expected and will have leisure to reconsider the
+whole subject, and then "if it seems to them that a certain industry would
+be carried on more pleasantly as regards the worker, and more effectually
+as regards the goods, by using hand-work rather than machinery they will
+certainly get rid of their machinery, because it will be possible for them
+to do so." "It isn't possible now," he adds; "we are not at liberty to do
+so; we are slaves to the monsters we have created. And I have a kind of
+hope that the very elaboration of machinery in a society whose purpose is
+not the multiplication of labour, as it now is, but the carrying on of a
+pleasant life, as it would be under social order,--that the elaboration of
+machinery, I say, will lead to the simplification of life, and so once
+more to the limitation of machinery."
+
+Although the discussion of methods and external forms was entirely foreign
+to Morris's habit of mind, he was not averse to discussing the history of
+society. He was not much more an historian than he was an economist in the
+strict sense. He ignored, idealised, and blackened at will, always
+perfectly certain that he was setting forth the contrast between the past
+and the present in its true light; but his delight in the mediæval past,
+which was the only past to which he gave much attention, lends to his
+pictures of it a charm most appealing to those who have not too prodding a
+prejudice in favour of historical accuracy. He is at his best when he
+breaks from his grapple with the subject of the commercial classes and
+their development to evoke the visions which neither history nor economics
+could obscure in his mind. "Not seldom I please myself with trying to
+realise the face of mediæval England," he says to the motley audience
+gathering at a street corner or in some dingy little hall or shed to
+listen to him, "the many chases and great woods, the stretches of common
+tillage and common pasture quite unenclosed; the rough husbandry of the
+tilled parts, the unimproved breeds of cattle, sheep, and swine;
+especially the latter, so lank and long and lathy, looking so strange to
+us; the strings of packhorses along the bridle-roads; of the scantiness of
+the wheel-roads, scarce any except those left by the Romans, and those
+made from monastery to monastery; the scarcity of bridges, and people
+using ferries instead, or fords where they could; the little towns, well
+bechurched, often walled; the villages just where they are now (except for
+those that have nothing but the church left to tell of them), but better
+and more populous; their churches, some big and handsome, some small and
+curious, but all crowded with altars and furniture, and gay with pictures
+and ornament; the many religious houses, with their glorious architecture;
+the beautiful manor-houses, some of them castles once, and survivals from
+an earlier period; some new and elegant; some out of all proportion small
+for the importance of their lords. How strange it would be to us if we
+could be landed in fourteenth-century England; unless we saw the crest of
+some familiar hill like that which yet bears upon it a symbol of an
+English tribe, and from which, looking down on the plain where Alfred was
+born, I once had many such ponderings, we should not know into what
+country of the world we were come: the name is left, scarce a thing
+else."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+PUBLIC LIFE AND SOCIALISM (_Continued_).
+
+
+By the latter part of 1884 the political agitations and internal
+differences in the Federation, now called The Social Democratic
+Federation, became so violent as to force Morris to leave the association
+in which he had had no desire to be a leader, but had been unable to keep
+the position of acquiescent follower. In his connection with this and
+other public organisations, the underlying gentleness and real humility of
+his nature was clearly to be seen. He learned patience through his
+conflict with unsympathetic minds. From the weary experience of working in
+constant intercourse with men whose temper and practice and many of whose
+theories were directly antagonistic to his own, although identified with
+them in the public mind by a common responsibility, he learned to subdue
+those elements of his temperament that worked against the success of what
+he had most loyally at heart. From self-confidence, a critical habit, an
+overbearing positiveness of assertion, he passed to comparative
+reticence, tolerance, even docility. To his equals it was painful to see
+ignorant men assign to him his task, but he never failed to comply
+instantly with their orders.
+
+[Illustration: MERTON ABBEY WORKS]
+
+[Illustration: WASHING CLOTH AT THE MERTON ABBEY WORKS]
+
+It could not, however, have been an education in which he could take
+conscious pleasure, and at this juncture he doubtless would have been
+happy indeed could he have gone quietly back to the weaving and dyeing and
+writing of poetry with which his new preoccupation had seriously
+interfered. His conscience, however, was too deeply involved to permit a
+desertion, which would, he said, be dastardly. The question now constantly
+in his mind was how he would have felt against the system under which he
+lived had he himself been poor. He was convinced that he would have found
+it unendurable. Therefore, with a longing glance at his chintz bleaching
+in the sunlight and pure air of Merton Abbey, he put his shoulder to the
+wheel again, and, gathering together a few of his sympathisers,
+inaugurated a new party, the Socialist League, with the famous little
+_Commonweal_ for its organ, a monthly paper now the joy of collectors on
+account of the beautiful headings of Walter Crane and the remarkable
+quality of the contributions by Morris himself. In this new society, for
+which he was primarily responsible, Morris found his work redoubled. He
+was editor of the _Commonweal_ as well as contributor to it. He continued
+his lecturing, often under the most depressing conditions, speaking to
+small and indifferent audiences in small and miserable quarters. At
+Hammersmith he instituted a branch of the League in the room previously
+given up to his carpet-weaving, and there he gave Sunday evening
+addresses. On Saturday afternoons and Sunday mornings he spoke at the
+outdoor meetings which were to be the insidious foes of his health, and
+which more than once brought him into personal notoriety of a disagreeable
+kind.
+
+The first of these occasions was on the 21st of September, 1885, when a
+number of people were arrested for gathering together that Sunday morning
+at the corner of Dod Street and Burdett Road against orders from the
+authorities to the effect that meetings at that place--a favourite spot
+with open-air speakers--must be stopped. Morris, with other members of the
+League, was present in court when the prisoners were brought up, and
+joined in the hisses and cries of "Shame!" when one prisoner was sentenced
+to two months' hard labour and the others were fined. Morris was arrested,
+subjected to a little questioning from the magistrate, and dismissed. The
+following Sunday another meeting, comprising many thousands of people, was
+held on the forbidden corner; nothing occurred, and they dispersed
+victoriously. The next year a Sunday-morning meeting in a street off
+Edgeware Road was interfered with by the police, and Morris was summoned
+to the police court and fined a shilling and costs for the offence of
+obstructing the highway.
+
+Out of these experiences resulted, we may very well imagine, the farce
+entitled: _The Tables Turned; or, Nupkins Awakened_, given at an
+entertainment in the Hall of the Socialist League, at Farringdon Road, on
+October 15, 1887. Copies of it are still in existence--sorry little
+pamphlets in blue wrappers, bearing no kinship to the aristocratic
+products of the Kelmscott Press so soon to follow, but extremely
+entertaining as showing Morris in his least conventional and most
+aggressive public mood. As the pamphlet is quite rare, a brief description
+of its contents is not, perhaps, superfluous, although its literary merit
+amounts to as little as possible considering its authorship. It opens with
+a scene in a court of justice, Justice Nupkins presiding, in which a Mr.
+La-di-da is found guilty of swindling and of robbing the widow and the
+orphan. He is sentenced to imprisonment for the space of one calendar
+month. Next Mary Pinch, a poor woman (the part was taken by Morris's
+daughter May), is accused of stealing three loaves of bread, and, after
+absurd and contradictory testimony by witnesses for the prosecution
+(constables and sergeants), is sentenced to eighteen months of hard
+labour. Next, John Freeman, a Socialist, is accused of conspiracy,
+sedition, and obstruction of the highway. The Archbishop of Canterbury
+(this rôle enacted by Morris), Lord Tennyson, and Professor Tyndall are
+called as witnesses and give testimony, the manner and speech of the
+renowned originals being somewhat rudely parodied. After contradictory
+evidence by these witnesses and the former ones, the prisoner is sentenced
+to six years' penal servitude with a fine of one hundred pounds, his
+offence having been an open-air speech advocating the principles of
+Socialism. As his sentence is pronounced the _Marseillaise_ is heard, and
+a Socialist ensign enters with news that the Revolution has begun.
+
+It is in the second part that the tables are turned upon Nupkins. The
+scene this time is laid in the fields near a country village, with a copse
+close by. The time is after the Revolution. Justice Nupkins is found
+skulking in the copse, half mad with fear at the reversal of social
+conditions, his past cruelty giving him small reason to hope for gentle
+treatment at the hands of the former "lower classes," who are now running
+affairs to suit themselves. He meets Mary Pinch, who pities his deplorable
+aspect and invites him to her house, now a pleasant and prosperous home.
+He cannot believe in the sincerity of her apparent kindness, and flees
+from her in a panic, only to meet other of his former victims who further
+alarm him by pretending to arrest him and give him a mock trial, during
+which he thinks he is to be sentenced to death. He learns at last that
+under the beautiful new order he is free to do what he pleases, and may
+dig potatoes and earn his own living by such tilling of the soil. The
+citizens dance about him singing the following words to the tune of the
+_Carmagnole_:
+
+  What's this that the days and the days have done?
+  Man's lordship over man hath gone.
+
+  How fares it, then, with high and low?
+  Equal on earth they thrive and grow.
+            Bright is the sun for everyone;
+            Dance we, dance we the Carmagnole.
+
+  How deal ye, then, with pleasure and pain?
+  Alike we share and bear the twain.
+
+  And what's the craft whereby ye live?
+  Earth and man's work to all men give.
+
+  How crown ye excellence of worth?
+  With leave to serve all men on earth.
+
+  What gain that lordship's past and done?
+  World's wealth for all and everyone.
+
+This somewhat childlike but not too bland revenge on the powers of the law
+met with an enthusiastic reception at the Hall of the Socialist League;
+Mr. Bernard Shaw, who was present, declaring that there had been no such
+successful "first night" within living memory.
+
+The year 1887 was marked, however, by events much more serious than the
+acting of a little farce. On the 13th of November,--"Bloody Sunday" it was
+called,--the efforts of the Government to check open-air speaking
+culminated in an organised riot on the part of the Socialists in alliance
+with the extreme Radicals. Sir Charles Warren had prohibited by
+proclamation the holding of any meeting in Trafalgar Square,--a meeting
+having been announced to take place there to protest against the Irish
+policy of the Government. Thereupon it was agreed by the Socialist League,
+the Social Democratic Federation, the Irish National League, and certain
+Radical clubs that their members should assemble at various centres and
+march toward Trafalgar Square. Morris put himself at the head of the
+Clerkenwell contingent, first delivering a short speech mounted on a cart
+in company with Mrs. Besant and others. He declared that wherever it was
+attempted to put down free speech it was a bounden duty to resist the
+attempt by every possible means, and told his audience that he thought
+their business was to get to the Square by some means or other; that he
+intended to do his best to get there, whatever the consequences might be,
+and that they must press on like orderly people and good citizens. Thus
+pressing on, with flags flying and bands playing, they were met at the
+Bloomsbury end of St. Martin's Lane by the police, mounted and on foot,
+who charged in among them, striking right and left, and causing complete
+disorder in the ranks. The triumph of law and order over the various
+columns of the demonstrators was soon complete, and the outcome consisted
+of the arrest of three hundred men or more (many of whom were sent to
+prison and a few condemned to penal servitude) and the killing of three.
+The first to die was Alfred Linnell, for whom a public funeral was
+given--great masses of men marching in perfect and solemn order to Bow
+Cemetery, where he was buried, the service at the grave being read by the
+light of a lantern. Such an event would inevitably stir Morris to
+sympathetic rage, and the dirge written by him to be sung as poor Linnell
+was buried has an inflammatory sound despite the obvious effort at
+restraint:
+
+  We asked them for a life of toilsome earning,
+    They bade us bide their leisure for our bread;
+  We craved to speak to tell our woful learning,
+    We came back speechless, bearing back our dead!
+
+Thus time was spent. Sometimes Morris was heading processions "with the
+face of a Crusader," says Joseph Pennell, describing one occasion on which
+he led a crowd, "among the red flags, singing with all his might the
+_Marseillaise_"--into Westminster Abbey to attend the Sunday services.
+Sometimes he was bailing out his friends who had been "run in" by the
+police. Sometimes he was tramping, whatever the weather, at the head of
+the workless workers of Hammersmith to interview the Guardians of the
+Poor. Sometimes he was delivering his lectures among woful hovels in
+tumbledown sheds to a score or so of people of whose comprehension he felt
+most doubtful. Always he was preaching "Education toward Revolution," but
+with an ever-increasing consciousness that a vast amount of education was
+needed before revolution could be effectively reforming. His imagination
+had formed great ideals and had pictured those ideals in triumphant
+practice, but his practical sense was sufficient to show him the futility
+of unintelligent action. He had spent much money, not in profit-sharing
+among his workmen (although this obtained to a certain extent in his
+business), but in bearing the various and heavy expenses imposed by the
+publication of the organs of Socialism, which he supported almost as
+largely by his purse as by his pen, and by a thousand other needs of the
+cause to which in 1882 he had also sacrificed the greater part of his
+valuable library. He had spent much time, which, to one so deeply
+interested in pursuits for which any one life is far too short, meant
+infinitely more than the expenditure of money or the relinquishing of
+property that, after all, may be got back again. And he had worked against
+the grain with all sorts and conditions of companions, from whom he was as
+widely separated as the east is from the west--never more widely than when
+he was marching by their side toward a goal that neither could see
+clearly. He was now longing more and more to get back to his own life and
+away from a life so foreign. As he had said in the first flush of his
+enthusiasm, "Art must go under," he was now prepared "to see all organised
+Socialism run into the sand for a while." It is not surprising that he
+"somehow did not seem to care much" when the Socialist League became
+disintegrated and insolvent. He had done his best for it, but its
+strongest members had drifted away from it, the executive control had been
+gained by a group of Anarchists, and Morris had been by these deposed
+from the editorship of the _Commonweal_. Before the society reached its
+lowest depths he resigned, giving expression in the _Commonweal_ for the
+15th of November, 1890, to his feeling in the form it then took toward the
+movement which so long had carried him out of his course and kept him in
+turbulent waters. This movement had then been going on for about seven
+years. Those concerned in it had made, he thought, "about as many mistakes
+as any other party in a similar space of time." When he first joined it he
+hoped that some leaders would turn up among the workingmen who "would push
+aside all middle-class help and become great historical figures." This
+hope he had pretty well relinquished. In the beginning there had been
+little said about anything save the great ideals of Socialism, but as the
+Socialist idea had become more and more impressed upon the epoch a
+somewhat vulgarised and partial realisation of these ideals had pressed
+upon the friends of the cause. They began to think of methods, and mostly
+of "methods of impatience," as Morris from his ripened and moderated point
+of view now designated them. "There are two tendencies in this matter of
+methods," he said; "on the one hand is our old acquaintance, palliation,
+elevated now into vastly greater importance than it used to have, because
+of the growing discontent, and the obvious advance of Socialism; on the
+other is the method of partial, necessarily futile, inconsequent revolt,
+or riot rather, against the authorities, who are our absolute masters, and
+can easily put it down.
+
+"With both these methods I disagree; and that the more because the
+palliatives have to be clamoured for, and the riots carried out by men who
+do not know what Socialism is, and have no idea what their next step is to
+be, if, contrary to all calculation, they should happen to be successful.
+Therefore, at the best, our masters would be our masters still, because
+there would be nothing to take their place. _We are not ready for such a
+change as that!_" The time was favourable, he thought, for preaching the
+simple principles of Socialism regardless of the policy of the passing
+hour, nor was any more active work desirable. "I say, for us _to make
+Socialists_," he concluded, "is _the_ business at present, and at present
+I do not think we can have any other useful business. Those who are not
+really Socialists--who are Trades Unionists, disturbance-breeders, or what
+not--will do what they are impelled to do, and we cannot help it. At the
+worst there will be some good in what they do; but we need not and cannot
+heartily work with them, when we know that their methods are beside the
+right way.
+
+"Our business, I repeat, is the making of Socialists, _i.e._, convincing
+people that Socialism is good for them and is possible. When we have
+enough people of that way of thinking, _they_ will find out what action is
+necessary for putting their principles in practice. Therefore, I say,
+make Socialists. We Socialists can do nothing else that is useful."
+
+This was practically the end of militant Socialism for Morris. Together
+with a handful of his true followers and sympathisers he did organise or
+reorganise under very simple rules a little society named the Hammersmith
+Socialist Society, which took the place of the Hammersmith Branch of the
+Socialist League. The manifesto explained that the separation had been
+made because the members of the new society did not hold the Anarchistic
+views of the majority of the old society's members, and would be likely to
+waste in bickering time "which should be spent in attacking capitalism."
+The business of the Hammersmith Society was to spread the principles of
+Socialism, the method so warmly recommended by Morris in his _Commonweal_
+article. But it was obvious that his interest was no longer keen in even
+this passive mode of advancing the cause for which he had laboured so long
+and, on the whole, so thanklessly. He set himself dutifully to work at
+writing the manifesto, but complained, "I would so much rather go on with
+my Saga work."
+
+It cannot be said, however, that he was inconsistent. He had gone into
+militant Socialism as he went into everything, with a superabundant energy
+that must work itself off in activity. But there was more vehemence than
+narrowness in his partisanship. When his party forsook the principles for
+the sake of which he had joined it, he forsook the party. He learned of
+human nature much that was discouraging during his efforts to make many of
+his fellows work together in harmony, but he brought out of the fiery
+experience an unharmed ideal. And among the clashing of creeds and the
+warring of minds he played the part of peacemaker to an extent remarkable
+in so impulsive a nature. "It seemed as though he wanted to have all his
+own way," says one of his acquaintances, "yet put him in the chair at a
+meeting and he was as patient as the mildest of us." His inmost belief was
+much the same at the end as at the beginning,--matured by study and
+tempered by practical failures, but holding to the fundamental idea that
+art is the great source of pleasure in human life as well as pleasure's
+best result, and must be made possible for everyone to practise with a
+free mind and a body unwearied by hopeless toil. The letter to the _Daily
+Chronicle_ of the 10th of November, 1893, on "Help for the Miners, the
+Deeper Meaning of the Struggle," sounds the familiar note as positively as
+ever, and contains all that is required to represent the creed of his
+later years. "I hold firmly to the opinion," he says in this letter, "that
+all worthy schools of art must be in the future, as they have been in the
+past, the outcome of the aspirations of the people towards the beauty and
+true pleasure of life. And, further, now that democracy is building up a
+new order, which is slowly emerging from the confusion of the commercial
+period, these aspirations of the people towards beauty can only be born
+from a condition of practical equality, of economical condition amongst
+the whole population. Lastly, I am so confident that this equality will be
+gained that I am prepared to accept, as a consequence of the process of
+that gain, the apparent disappearance of what art is now left us, because
+I am sure that that will be but a temporary loss, to be followed by a
+genuine new birth of art which will be the spontaneous expression of the
+pleasure of life innate in the whole people. This, I say, is the art which
+I look forward to, not as a vague dream, but as a practical certainty,
+founded on the general well-being of the people. It is true that the
+blossom of it I shall not see; therefore I may be excused if, in common
+with other artists, I try to express myself through the art of to-day,
+which seems to us to be only a survival of the organic art of the past, in
+which the people shared, whatever the other drawbacks of their condition
+might have been.... Yet if we shall not (those of us who are as old as I
+am) see the New Art, the expression of the general pleasure of life, we
+are even now seeing the seed of it beginning to germinate. For if genuine
+art be impossible without the help of the useful classes, how can these
+turn their attention to it if they are living amidst sordid cares which
+press upon them day in, day out? The first step, therefore, towards the
+new birth of art must be a definite rise in the condition of the workers;
+their livelihood must (to say the least of it) be less niggardly and less
+precarious, and their hours of labour shorter; and this improvement must
+be a general one and confirmed against the chances of the market by
+legislation. But, again, this change for the better can only be realised
+by the efforts of the workers themselves. 'By us, and not for us,' must be
+their motto.... What these staunch miners have been doing in the face of
+such tremendous odds other workmen can and will do; and when life is
+easier and fuller of pleasure people will have time to look around them
+and find out what they desire in the matter of art, and will also have
+time to compass their desires."
+
+Just why Morris with his extreme independence stopped short of Anarchism
+is difficult to see unless it be attributed to an instinct for order
+inherited from the sturdy stock to which he belonged. The necessity of a
+public rule of action was always, however, quite clear to him. He
+contended that you have a right to do as you like so long as you do not
+interfere with your neighbour's right to do as he likes, a contention
+which not even a fairly conservative mind finds very difficult to uphold:
+he was not willing to admit the right of an individual to act
+"unsocially." Indeed all the charm of his pictures of the ideal life
+derives from the atmosphere of loving-kindness and mutual helpfulness with
+which he surrounds them. The Golden Rule was always in his mind as he
+built up in his imagination his Paradise on earth. He possessed the
+optimism of the kind-hearted, the faith in his fellow men that made him
+sure of their right acting could they only start afresh with a field clear
+of injury and abuse. He never dreamed in all his dreaming that these would
+again grow up and destroy the beautiful fabric of his new Society, so
+bright and unspotted in his mind. Of course there would be a social
+conscience "which, being social, is common to every man." Without that
+there could be no society; and "Man without society is not only impossible
+but inconceivable." Thus he argued and thus he believed. His militant
+Socialism had, while it lasted, a very dangerous side. His Socialist
+"principles" are easily torn to ribbons by the political economist in
+possession of facts showing the increasing prosperity of the working
+classes and their increasing interest under existing conditions in the
+arts and in education; but regarding his views merely as representing one
+aspect of his impressive personality, it is easy to find them attractive.
+To quote what the _Pall Mall Gazette_ said of the Sunday evenings at the
+Hammersmith Hall, "They are patches of bright colour in the great drab,
+dreary, dull, and dirty world." They bring with them such thoughts as
+Arnold had of the repose that has fled "for ever the course of the river
+of Time." The spirit breathed through them in strong contrast to the
+spirit of many of his co-workers, ennobles all efforts toward true reform,
+diffuses the love of humanity among a cold people, and makes for the
+innocent and exquisite happiness which our human nature is so apt
+paradoxically to deny us. In Morris's world we should all be very happy if
+we were like Morris. He was not very happy in our world, yet perhaps he
+managed to get out of it as much of the joy of doing as it can be made to
+yield to any one man. His Socialism, from one point of view, was certainly
+a tremendous failure, but no other side of his life visible to the public
+at large showed so plainly his moral virtues, his generosity, his
+sincerity, his power of self-sacrifice, his effort toward self-control. It
+was significant that when, with a last rally of his forces to active work
+for the cause, he joined in a concerted effort to unite all Socialists
+into a single party, he was chosen as the best man for the purpose, all
+the societies having "a deep regard and respect for him." It is even more
+significant that his own employees in his large business also esteemed him
+highly, feeling the sincerity with which he tried to make his practices
+accord with his theories. If his business was a successful one it was not
+because he tried to get from his workmen the utmost he could claim in time
+and labour. The eight-hour working-day was in practice in the Merton
+factory, and the wages paid were the highest known in the trade. He was
+free from the self-complacency that gives to justice the name of charity,
+and he was not distinguished for civility toward the people under his
+direction, but he was, they said in their emphatic and expressive
+vernacular, "the sort of bloke you always could depend upon."
+
+Toward the end of his activity for the cause of Socialism he became
+connected with a society which perhaps would not have existed without his
+influence, although he was not directly responsible for its formation.
+This was the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society [founded in 1888], the
+aims of which were described by one of its members in the following words:
+"To assert the possibilities of Art in design, applied even to the least
+pretentious purpose and in every kind of handicraft; to protest against
+the absolute subjection of Art in its applied form to the interests of
+that extravagant waste of human energy which is called economic
+production; to claim for the artist or handicraftsman, whose identity it
+has been the rule to hide and whose artistic impulse it has been the
+custom to curb (until he was really in danger of becoming, in fact as in
+name, a mere hand), some recognition and some measure of appreciation; to
+try and discover whether the public cared at all, or could be brought to
+care, for the Art which, good or bad, is continually under their eyes; and
+whether there might not be, in association with manufacture, or apart from
+it, if that were out of the question, some scope for handicraft, some hope
+for Art."
+
+Morris's point of view is apparent in these aims, and the society was
+composed chiefly of young men who, says Mr. Mackail, "without following
+his principles to their logical issues or joining any Socialist
+organisation, were profoundly permeated with his ideas on their most
+fruitful side,--that of the regeneration, by continued and combined
+individual effort, of the decaying arts of life." The Art Workers' Guild,
+dating from 1884, was the source from which the new society sprang, the
+immediate purpose of the latter being to get the work of men who combined
+art with handicraft before the public by means of exhibitions, the
+committees of the Royal Academy and kindred associations refusing to
+accept examples of applied art for the exhibitions which they devoted to
+what they called "fine art proper." Mr. Mackail calls attention to the
+fact that Morris at this stage of his life was so thoroughly imbued with
+the idea that the general public were ignorant of and indifferent to
+decorative art, as to feel more sceptical of the success of the
+exhibitions than was justified by their outcome. He lent his aid, however,
+with his customary energy, guaranteeing a considerable sum of money, and
+contributing some valuable papers and lectures, the exhibitions being
+combined with instruction by acknowledged masters of handicraft. In 1891
+he was elected President of the Society, holding that office until the
+time of his death, when he was succeeded by Walter Crane. He was a member
+of the Art Workers' Guild as well, and was elected Master of the Guild in
+1892. He also belonged to the Bibliographical Society formed in that year,
+and in 1894 was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London.
+The societies were all directly concerned with questions in which Morris
+had all his life been interested, and his connection with them was not
+only natural but almost inevitable. He was not a man to whom public
+business made a strong appeal. He undertook it with reluctance and
+relinquished it with delight. Nor did he care for the labels of
+distinction for which most men, even among the greatly distinguished, have
+a measure of regard. He was, however, gratified when, in 1882, he was
+unanimously elected Honorary Fellow of Exeter College at Oxford, an honour
+which is rarely conferred, and is generally reserved, says Mr. Mackail,
+"for old members who have attained the highest official rank in their
+profession."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+LITERATURE OF THE SOCIALIST PERIOD.
+
+
+Despite the large amount of time and comparatively unproductive thought
+given by Morris to his Socialism, the period of his greatest activity in
+this direction was not without result in the field of pure literature. The
+years from 1884 to 1890 were crowded with pamphlets, leaflets, newspaper
+articles, manifestoes, and treatises, all with the one object--the making
+of Socialists. Many of these were more or less works of art--but of art in
+fetters; in the main they bore sad witness to the havoc made in the
+æsthetic life of their author by his propagandising policy, and in their
+deadly dulness betrayed the unwillingness of his mind to labour in a field
+so foreign to it. Not even the overwhelming tasks imposed upon him
+sufficed, however, to subdue entirely his restless imagination. From time
+to time in the arid desert of his writings for "the cause" a poem of
+romance appeared of a quality to show that the sap still ran in the
+products of his mind. Between the first issue of _The Commonweal_ and the
+inauguration of the Kelmscott Press he wrote in the following order: _The
+Pilgrims of Hope_, _A Dream of John Ball_, _The House of the Wolfings_,
+_The Roots of the Mountains_, and _News from Nowhere_.
+
+Each is interesting as throwing a varied yet steady light upon his mental
+processes, and the first is especially interesting despite its conspicuous
+defects, as one of the very few examples of its author's style when
+treating a subject belonging to the actual present, not to the past or
+future. In it the reader leaves dreamland and is confronted by modern
+problems and situations set forth in plain modern English. A garden is no
+longer a garth, a dwelling-place is no longer a stead, the writer no
+longer wots and meseems. So violent a change in vocabulary could hardly be
+accomplished with entire success; at all events it was not, and much of
+the phraseology is an affliction to the ear, showing a peculiarly
+deficient taste in the use of a style uninspired by mediæval tradition.
+Yet, withal, _The Pilgrims of Hope_ is touched with life, as many of
+Morris's more artful compositions are not. The old bottles will not always
+serve for the new wine, Lowell warns us, and there is a noticeably
+quickening element in this wine poured from the bottle of the day. It is
+mentioned in Mr. Mackail's biography that Morris once began to write a
+modern novel, but left it unfinished. The fabric of _The Pilgrims of Hope_
+is that of a modern novel, and the characters and incidents are such as
+Morris might easily have found in his daily path. A country couple leading
+a life of peaceful simplicity go down to London, and among the sordid
+influences of the town become converts to Socialism. Much that follows may
+be considered a record of Morris's personal experience. The husband in the
+poem tries, as Morris tried, to learn the grounds of the Socialist faith,
+and takes up, as he did, the burden of spreading it among an indifferent
+people. The following description might very well have been culled from
+the diary kept by Morris during a part of his period of militant
+Socialism, but it must be confessed that the balance of poetic charm is
+all in favour of the account in the diary.
+
+                          I read day after day
+  Whatever books I could handle, and heard about and about
+  What talk was going amongst them; and I burned up doubt after doubt,
+  Until it befell at last that to others I needs must speak
+  (Indeed, they pressed me to that while yet I was weaker than weak).
+  So I began the business, and in street-corners I spake
+  To knots of men. Indeed, that made my very heart ache,
+  So hopeless it seemed, for some stood by like men of wood.
+  And some, though fain to listen, but a few words understood;
+  And some but hooted and jeered: but whiles across some I came
+  Who were keen and eager to hear; as in dry flax the flame
+  So the quick thought flickered amongst them: and that indeed was a
+      feast.
+  So about the streets I went, and the work on my hands increased;
+  And to say the very truth, betwixt the smooth and the rough
+  It was work, and hope went with it, and I liked it well enough.
+
+A similar passage, also showing the style at its worst, renders the actual
+scene encountered by Morris at many a lecture, and contains a careful
+portrait of himself as he appeared in his own eyes on such occasions. For
+the sake of its accuracy its touch of self-consciousness may well be
+forgiven. Not a conceited man, and curiously averse to mirrors, Morris was
+not in the habit of using their psychological counterparts, and it is
+impossible to surprise him in the act of posing to himself in becoming
+attitudes. There is, therefore, no irritation to the mind in his
+occasional frank assumption of interest in himself as a feature of the
+landscape, so to speak. Here he is on the Socialist platform as the
+Pilgrim of Hope beholds him, the Pilgrim explaining how it happened that
+he got upon his track.
+
+  This is how it befell: a workman of mine had heard
+  Some bitter speech in my mouth, and he took me up at the word,
+  And said: "Come over to-morrow to our Radical spouting-place;
+  For there, if we hear nothing new, at least we shall see a new face;
+  He is one of those Communist chaps, and 'tis like that you two may
+      agree."
+  So we went, and the street was as dull and as common as aught you
+      could see.
+  Dull and dirty the room. Just over the chairman's chair
+  Was a bust, a Quaker's face with nose cocked up in the air.
+  There were common prints on the walls of the heads of the party fray,
+  And Mazzini dark and lean amidst them gone astray.
+  Some thirty men we were of the kind that I knew full well,
+  Listless, rubbed down to the type of our easy-going hell.
+  My heart sank down as I entered, and wearily there I sat
+  While the chairman strove to end his maunder of this and that.
+
+  And partly shy he seemed, and partly indeed ashamed
+  Of the grizzled man beside him as his name to us he named;
+  He rose, thickset and short, and dressed in shabby blue,
+  And even as he began it seemed as though I knew
+  The thing he was going to say, though I never heard it before.
+  He spoke, were it well, were it ill, as though a message he bore.
+  A word that he could not refrain from many a million of men.
+  Nor aught seemed the sordid room and the few that were listening then
+  Save the hall of the labouring earth and the world which was to be,
+  Bitter to many the message, but sweet indeed unto me,
+  And every soul rejoicing in the sweet and bitter of life:
+  Of peace and good-will he told, and I knew that in faith he spake,
+  But his words were my very thoughts, and I saw the battle awake,
+  And I followed from end to end! and triumph grew in my heart
+  As he called on each that heard him to arise and play his part
+  In the tale of the new-told gospel, lest as slaves they should live and
+      die.
+
+  He ceased, and I thought the hearers would rise up with one cry,
+  And bid him straight enroll them; but they, they applauded indeed,
+  For the man was grown full eager, and had made them hearken and heed.
+  But they sat and made no sign, and two of the glibber kind
+  Stood up to jeer and to carp his fiery words to blind.
+
+  I did not listen to them, but failed not his voice to hear
+  When he rose to answer the carpers, striving to make more clear
+  That which was clear already; not overwell, I knew
+  He answered the sneers and the silence, so hot and eager he grew;
+  But my hope full well he answered, and when he called again
+  On men to band together lest they live and die in vain,
+  In fear lest he should escape me, I rose ere the meeting was done,
+  And gave him my name and my faith--and I was the only one.
+  He smiled as he heard the jeers, and there was a shake of the hand,
+  He spoke like a friend long known; and lo! I was one of the band.
+
+There is nothing impressive in such rhyming save its message, the form
+costing little trouble and awakening little interest. Here, obviously,
+Morris, like Dante, would rather his readers should find his doctrine
+sweet than his verses. Parts of the poem are, however, upon a much higher
+plane of accomplishment. The first section, called _The Message of the
+March Wind_, contains exquisite images and moves to a fresh elastic
+measure; a world both real and lovely being evoked by the opening stanzas:
+
+  Fair now is the springtide, now earth lies beholding
+    With the eyes of a lover the face of the sun;
+  Long lasteth the daylight, and hope is enfolding
+    The green-growing acres with increase begun.
+
+  Now sweet, sweet it is through the land to be straying
+    'Mid the birds and the blossoms and the beasts of the fields;
+  Love mingles with love and no evil is weighing
+    On thy heart or mine, where all sorrow is healed.
+
+  From township to township, o'er down and by tillage
+    Fair, far have we wandered and long was the day,
+  But now cometh eve at the end of the village,
+    Where o'er the grey wall the church riseth grey.
+
+  There is wind in the twilight; in the white road before us
+    The straw from the ox-yard is blowing about;
+  The moon's rim is rising, a star glitters o'er us,
+    And the vane on the spire-top is swinging in doubt.
+
+  Down there dips the highway, toward the bridge crossing over
+    The brook that runs on to the Thames and the sea.
+  Draw closer, my sweet, we are lover and lover;
+    This eve art thou given to gladness and me.
+
+In the course of the poem the Pilgrims are called to Paris by the voice of
+the Revolution, and there the wife is killed. Interwoven with the main
+incidents is the domestic tragedy most familiar to fiction, the alienation
+of the wife's affections by one of the husband's friends. Morris in his
+treatment of this situation shows a peculiarly fine and tender quality,
+sufficiently rare in life itself and seldom to be found in pictures of
+life. He preserves the dignity of his unhappy characters by a delicate
+sincerity in their attitude toward one another and by an immeasurable
+gentleness and self-forgetfulness on the part of the one most wronged. A
+similar situation in _News from Nowhere_ is made trivial and consequently
+revolting by the impression it gives that it was created to illustrate a
+theory. In no place does _The Pilgrims of Hope_ give such an impression.
+It is a drawing from life, clumsy and summary enough in outline, yet
+firm and expressive of the thing seen, and with power to convey a genuine
+emotion.
+
+[Illustration: _Portrait of Mrs. Morris_
+
+_By Rossetti_]
+
+_The Pilgrims of Hope_ appeared serially in _The Commonweal_ during
+1885-1886. It was soon followed by a romance called _The Dream of John
+Ball_. This subject with its mediæval setting suited Morris well, and was
+treated by him in his ripest and strongest vein. Although the story opens
+in a lightly facetious manner, never a particularly happy one with him,
+its tone as it proceeds is that of subdued and stately pathos. The writer
+dreams himself in a village of Kent, where men are hanging upon the words
+of that poor tutor of Oxford, the "Mad Priest," preaching the equality of
+gentle and villein on the text
+
+  When Adam dalf, and Eve span
+  Who was thanne a gentilman?
+
+Apparently the dream is the result of a mournfully retrospective mood. The
+dreamer hears the plain and stirring speech of John Ball, listens to his
+eager appeal to the men of Kent that they help their brethren of Essex
+cast off the yoke placed upon them by bailiff and lord, and to his
+prophecies that in the days to come, when they are free from masters, "man
+shall help man, and the saints in heaven shall be glad, because men no
+more fear each other ... and fellowship shall be established in heaven and
+on the earth." But knowledge of the later time penetrates the dream, and
+the dreamer ponders "how men fight and lose the battle, and the thing
+that they fought for comes about in spite of their defeat, and when it
+comes it turns out not to be what they meant, and other men have to fight
+for what they meant under another name." At this time Morris was realising
+in some bitterness of heart that the thing for which he had fought was
+turning out to be not what he had meant, and the talk between John Ball
+and the dreamer concerning the future, of which the latter can reveal the
+secret, is eloquent of sober and noble resignation. The reformer of the
+earlier age receives with serenity the assurance that his sacrifice will
+count only as failure in the eyes of the coming generations, since with it
+goes the further assurance that men will continue to seek a remedy for
+their wrongs. But we read in the conception the author's foreboding that
+his own efforts toward the reconstitution of society are also doomed. The
+dreamer meditates, with an insight born of personal experience and
+disappointment, upon the darkness of our vision and the difficulty of
+directing our steps toward our actual goal. Morris obviously traced in
+John Ball's action a parallel to his own. What happened to the one was
+what might happen to the other. The hope that inspired the one was the
+same as inspired the other. The mistakes of the one were akin to the
+mistakes of the other. Thus, this prose romance, of all that Morris wrote,
+is warmest and most personal. The historical setting is an aid, not an
+obstacle, to the imagination. The pathos of the real life touched upon,
+the knowledge that the hopeful spirit of the preacher was once alive in
+the land, and that the response of the men of Kent was given in truth and
+with the might of angry, living hearts, lends a certain solidity and
+vitality to the figures and inspires Morris to a sturdier treatment of his
+material than legends could force from him. Had some of the marvellous
+activity that later went toward the making of purely imaginary situations
+and characters been spent upon realising for us the individual lives of
+more of the mediæval workers and thinkers, so vivid to Morris and so dim
+to most of us, the result might not have been history, but it would have
+been literature of a rare and felicitous type.
+
+In April, 1888, _The Dream of John Ball_ was reprinted from _The
+Commonweal_ in one volume, together with a short story based on the life
+of Matthias Corvinus, King of Hungary, and called _A King's Lesson_. This
+also had appeared in _The Commonweal_ under the title of "An Old Story
+Retold."
+
+Hard upon this little volume followed _The House of the Wolfings_, a
+war-story of the early Middle Ages, and significant as forming, with its
+immediate successor, a link between old interests and new, marking its
+author's return to the writing of pure romance, and also his first
+awakening to an active interest in the typography of his books. The
+subject is derived from the ancient literature, half myth, half history,
+in which he had long been steeped, but in its treatment lurks a suggestion
+of the great moral excitement of the Socialist campaign. Thiodulf, the
+hero, beloved by a goddess, is the war-duke of a Gothic host and, on the
+verge of battle with Roman legionaries, is deceived into wearing a hauberk
+wrought by the dwarfs, the peculiar quality of which lies in its power to
+preserve the wearer's life at the cost of defeat for his army. Learning of
+this, Thiodulf removes the magic armour in time to gain his victory, but
+in the moment of triumph he is killed. His exaltation of mood in thus
+renouncing life suggests a spiritual ambition different from that commonly
+associated with the gods and heroes of the early world, and conveys the
+message by which Morris was at once burdened and inspired: that individual
+life may cheerfully be sacrificed if the life of the many is saved or
+elevated thereby. How far a war-duke of the Goths would have felt the
+compensatory sense that he was gaining immortality through the effect of
+his deeds on the destiny of his people was probably not in his mind. He
+himself, despite his constitutional horror of death, would perhaps not
+have been sorry at this time to lay off his hauberk if he could have been
+certain of the victory. Throughout the history of Thiodulf runs an
+elevated ethical intention absent from Morris's later romances. The
+dignity and seriousness of the women, the nobility of the men, the social
+unity of the Marksmen, and the high standard of thought and action
+maintained by them as a community place the interest on a high plane. The
+shadow of an idealised Socialism intensifies the relations of the
+characters to one another, and the reader familiar with the course of the
+author's life interprets the narrative as an expression of personal
+feeling and moral conviction not without pathos in its contrast to the
+actual world in which Morris was moving and in which he found what he
+conceived to be his duty so repugnant to his tastes.
+
+Indirectly the book was to open the way for his escape by filling his mind
+with an enthusiasm along the natural line of his gifts, a zest for further
+accomplishment in the field he loved that was not to be withstood. It was
+printed at the Chiswick Press, and owing to a new interest in fine
+printing due to his intercourse with Mr. Emery Walker, Morris chose for it
+a quaint and little-known fount of type cut by Howard half a century
+before, and gave much attention to the details of its appearance. With all
+his familiarity with mediæval books, and his delight in illustration and
+illumination, he was still ignorant of the art of spacing and type
+designing. He had characteristically concentrated his attention on the
+special feature in which he was interested,--in the case of the old books,
+the woodcuts and ornaments,--and had passed over even the most marked
+characteristics which later were to absorb his whole attention. An
+anecdote told by Mr. Buxton Forman shows the extent to which he
+subordinated all other questions to the now supreme problem of a handsome
+page, and also the adaptability of his mind, never at a loss to meet an
+emergency. Mr. Forman had run across him at the Chiswick Press, whither
+he had repaired to settle some final points concerning his title-page.
+Presently down came the proof of the page. "It did not read quite as now,"
+says Mr. Forman; "the difference, I think, was in the fourth and fifth
+lines where the words stood 'written in prose and verse by William
+Morris.' Now unhappily the words and the type did not so accord as to come
+up to Morris's standard of decorativeness. The line wanted tightening up;
+there was a three-cornered consultation between the Author, the Manager,
+and myself. The word _in_ was to be inserted--'written in prose and in
+verse'--to gain the necessary fulness of line. I mildly protested that the
+former reading was the better sense and that it should not be sacrificed
+to avoid a slight excess of white that no one would notice. 'Ha!' said
+Morris, 'now what would you say if I told you that the verses on the
+title-page were written just to fill up the great white lower half? Well,
+that was what happened!'" The verses thus produced to fill a purely
+decorative need were the following, as delicate and filled with tender
+sentiment as any written by Morris under the most genuine inspiration--if
+one may assume that any inspiration was more genuine with him than the
+spur of a problem in decoration:
+
+  Whiles in the early winter eve
+  We pass amid the gathering night
+  Some homestead that we had to leave
+  Years past; and see its candles bright
+  Shine in the room beside the door
+  Where we were merry years agone
+  But now must never enter more,
+  As still the dark road drives us on.
+  E'en so the world of men may turn
+  At even of some hurried day
+  And see the ancient glimmer burn
+  Across the waste that hath no way;
+  Then with that faint light in its eyes
+  Awhile I bid it linger near
+  And nurse in wavering memories
+  The bitter-sweet of days that were.
+
+In glee over the fine appearance of _The House of the Wolfings_ as it came
+from the press, Morris passed on to his next book, _The Roots of the
+Mountains_, also a romance suggesting the saga literature, but without the
+mythological element. The setting hints at history without belonging to
+any especial time or place. The plan is quite complicated in incident, and
+the love-story involved has a modern tinge. Gold-mane, a chieftain of
+Burgdale, is betrothed to a damsel somewhat prematurely named the Bride.
+By a magic spell he is drawn through the woods to the Shadowy Vale where
+he meets a daughter of the Kindred of the Wolf, called Sunbeam, with whom
+he falls in love. It is a touch characteristic of Morris that makes
+Gold-mane in describing his old love to the new loyally give the former
+all the credit of her charm. "Each day she groweth fairer," he says to the
+maiden who is already her rival in his affections; "there is no man's son
+and no daughter of woman that does not love her; yea, the very beasts of
+field and fold love her." Presently an alliance is formed between the men
+of Burgdale and the Kindred of the Wolf for the purpose of attacking their
+common enemy, the Dusky Men, who belong to a race of Huns. Attached to the
+allied forces is a band of Amazons, and the two brave ladies, the Sunbeam
+and the Bride, show themselves valorous in battle. The attack on the Dusky
+Men is victorious, and peace returns to the valleys. In the meantime
+Gold-mane has firmly, though with gentle words, told the Bride of his
+intention of breaking his pledge to her, and the Sunbeam's brother,
+Folkmight, has been moved by compassion and finally by love for the
+deserted maiden, who consents to be his wife. It is quite in accord with
+the ideal established by Morris in his works of fiction, as indeed in his
+life, that sincerity takes the leading place among the virtues of his
+characters. It requires a certain defiance of the conventional modern mood
+to tolerate Gold-mane, the deserter, as he deals out cold comfort to the
+Bride, yet the downright frankness of all these people is a quality so
+native to their author as to pierce their unreality and give them the
+touch of nature without which they would be made wholly of dreams.
+
+_The Roots of the Mountains_ was written rapidly and issued with unrelaxed
+attention to typographical problems. Its title-page was made even more
+satisfactory than that of its predecessor, and the device of introducing a
+little poem to fill up the ugly white space in the centre was again
+employed. The lines in this case have nothing to do with the contents of
+the book, though forced into a relation with the author's purpose of
+providing "rest" for the reader. They were, in fact, founded upon an
+incident of a railway trip when the train passed through meadows in which
+hay-making was going on. Mr. Emery Walker was with Morris, and as they saw
+the hay-cocks defrauded by the summer breeze he exclaimed, "A subject for
+your title-page!" "Aye," said Morris, and jotted it down in his manuscript
+book.
+
+_The Roots of the Mountains_ was a favourite with Morris, and he planned
+for it an edition on Whatman paper and bound in two patterns of Morris and
+Company's chintz. Some of the paper ordered for this edition was left
+over, and eventually was used by Morris for the first little post-quarto
+catalogues and prospectuses printed at Hammersmith. Thus the book formed a
+material link between the Chiswick Press and the Kelmscott Press.
+
+Before the establishment of the latter, however, Morris gave one more book
+to Socialism. His _News from Nowhere_ was the last of his works to appear
+in _The Commonweal_ and was almost immediately reprinted from its pages by
+an American publisher. It is an account of the civilised world as it might
+be made, according to Morris's belief, by the application of his
+principles of Socialism to life in general and in particular. In 1889 he
+had reviewed for _The Commonweal_ Mr. Bellamy's _Looking Backward_, with
+how much approbation may readily be imagined. As an expression of the
+temperament of its author he considered it interesting, but as a
+reconstructive theory unsafe and misleading. "I believe," he said, "that
+the ideal of the future does not point to the lessening of man's energy by
+the reduction of _labour_ to a minimum, but rather to the reduction of
+_pain in labour_ to a minimum so small that it will cease to be pain; a
+gain to humanity which can only be dreamed of till men are more completely
+equal than Mr. Bellamy's Utopia would allow them to be, but which will
+most assuredly come about when men are really equal in condition; although
+it is probable that much of our so-called 'refinement,' our luxury,--in
+short, our civilisation,--will have to be sacrificed to it." Early in 1890
+appeared the first instalment of _News from Nowhere_, in which Morris set
+himself the task of correcting the impression produced by Mr. Bellamy's
+views of the future by substituting his own picture of a reconstructed
+society, from which all the machinery that in _Looking Backward_ was
+brought to so high a degree of efficiency is banished, and the natural
+energies of man are employed to his complete satisfaction. Homer's
+_Odyssey_, which Morris at this time was translating by way of refreshment
+and amusement, may well have served as a partial inspiration for the
+brilliant, delicate descriptions of handicrafts practised by the
+art-loving people of Nowhere. We read in both of lovely embroideries; of
+fine woven stuffs, soft and pliant in texture, and deeply dyed in rich
+forgotten colours of antiquity; of the quaint elaboration and charm of
+metals wrought into intricate designs; of all beautiful ornament to be
+gained from the zeal of skilled and sensitive fingers. The image is before
+us in _News from Nowhere_ of a life as busy and as bright as that of the
+ancient Greeks, whose cunning hands could do everything save divide use
+from beauty. As a natural consequence of happy labour, the inhabitants of
+Nowhere have also the superb health and personal beauty of the Greeks.
+Their women of forty and fifty have smooth skins and fresh colour, bright
+eyes and a free walk. Their men have no knowledge of wrinkles and grey
+hairs. Everywhere is the freshness and sparkle of the morning. The
+pleasant homes nestle in peaceful security among the lavish fruits of the
+earth. The water of the Thames flows clean and clear between its banks;
+the fragrance of flowers pervades the pages and suggests a perpetual
+summer; athletic sports are mingled with athletic occupations. There is
+little studying. History is sad and often shameful--why then study it?
+Knowledge of geography is not important; it comes to those who care to
+travel. Languages one naturally picks up from intercourse with the people
+of other countries. Political economy? When one practises good fellowship
+what need of theories? Mathematics? They would wrinkle the brow; moreover,
+one learns all that is necessary of them by building houses and bridges
+and putting things together in the right way. It is not surprising that
+in this buoyant life filled with active interests, the religion of which
+is good-will and mutual helpfulness, the thought of death is not a welcome
+one. A dweller in Nowhere admits that in the autumn he almost believes in
+death; but no one entertains such a belief longer than he must. Thus we
+get in this fair idyll the purely visible side of the society depicted.
+The depths of the human heart and of the human soul are left unsounded. To
+have what they desire, what is claimed by their hands, by their eyes, by
+their senses, is the aim of the people. Renunciation, like mathematics,
+would wrinkle the brow. Arbitrary restraint is not to be considered.
+Nothing is binding, neither marriage vow nor labour contract, or, to speak
+more precisely, neither marriage vow nor contract for labour exists. The
+people live, as we are told, as some of the so-called savages in the South
+Seas really do live,--in a state of interdependence so perfect that if an
+individual lays down an obligation the community takes it up. For the
+fading of life, for the death that may not delay till autumn to thrust
+itself upon the attention, for the development of spiritual strength to
+meet an enemy against whom art and beauty will not avail, for the battle
+with those temptations of the flesh that are not averted by health and
+comeliness, no provision is made. The author's philosophy is that work,
+under pleasant conditions will do away with all the evils of both soul and
+body.
+
+As a document for active Socialists _News from Nowhere_ is not effective.
+Absolutely without any basis of economic generalisation, it is merely the
+fabric of a vision. At the time of writing it Morris was cutting the last
+threads that bound him to conventional Socialist bodies. He was making
+ready to live again, so far as modernity would let him, the life he loved.
+"No work that cannot be done with pleasure in the doing is worth doing,"
+was a maxim counted by him of the first importance, and assuredly he had
+not found pleasure in the management of Socialist organisations. His last
+Socialist book rings with the joy of his release. On its title-page it
+appears as _Some Chapters from a Utopian Romance_, and it is interesting
+to see how he regarded the original _Utopia_, to Ralph Robinson's
+translation of which he wrote a preface, issuing it from his own press in
+1893. His interpretation of Sir Thomas More's attitude is not the
+conventional one, and is inspired chiefly by his own attitude toward the
+great social question which he continued to ponder, insisting still upon
+his hope for a new earth.
+
+"Ralph Robinson's translation of More's _Utopia_," he says, "would not
+need any foreword if it were to be looked upon merely as a beautiful book
+embodying the curious fancies of a great writer and thinker of the period
+of the Renaissance. No doubt till within the last few years it has been
+considered by the moderns as nothing more serious than a charming literary
+exercise, spiced with the interest given to it by the allusions to the
+history of the time, and by our knowledge of the career of its author. But
+the change of ideas concerning 'the best state of a publique weale,' which
+I will venture to say is the great event of the end of this century, has
+thrown a fresh light upon the book; so that now to some it seems not so
+much a regret for days which might have been, as (in its essence) a
+prediction of a state of society which will be. In short this work of the
+scholar and Catholic, of the man who resisted what has seemed to most the
+progressive movement of his own time, has in our days become a Socialist
+tract familiar to the meetings and debating rooms of the political party
+which was but lately like 'the cloud as big as a man's hand.' Doubtless
+the _Utopia_ is a necessary part of a Socialist's library; yet it seems to
+me that its value as a book for the study of sociology is rather historic
+than prophetic, and that we Socialists should look upon it as a link
+between the surviving Communism of the Middle Ages (become hopeless in
+More's time, and doomed to be soon wholly effaced by the advancing wave of
+Commercial Bureaucracy), and the hopeful and practical progressive
+movement of to-day. In fact I think More must be looked upon rather as the
+last of the old than the first of the new.
+
+"Apart from what was yet alive in him of mediæval Communist tradition, the
+spirit of association, which amongst other things produced the Gilds, and
+which was strong in the mediæval Catholic Church itself, other influences
+were at work to make him take up his parable against the new spirit of his
+age. The action of the period of transition from mediæval to commercial
+society, with all its brutalities, was before his eyes; and though he was
+not alone in his time in condemning the injustice and cruelty of the
+revolution which destroyed the peasant life of England and turned it into
+a grazing farm for the moneyed gentry; creating withal at one stroke the
+propertyless wage-earner and the masterless vagrant (hodie 'pauper'), yet
+he saw deeper into its root-causes than many other men of his own day, and
+left us little to add to his views on this point except a reasonable hope
+that those 'causes' will yield to a better form of society before long.
+
+"Moreover the spirit of the Renaissance, itself the intellectual side of
+the very movement which he strove against, was strong in him, and
+doubtless helped to create his Utopia by means of the contrast which it
+put before his eyes of the ideal free nations of the ancients, and the
+sordid welter of the struggle for power in the days of dying feudalism, of
+which he himself was a witness. This Renaissance enthusiasm has supplanted
+in him the chivalry feeling of the age just passing away. To him war is no
+longer a delight of the well-born, but rather an ugly necessity to be
+carried on, if so it must be, by ugly means. Hunting and hawking are no
+longer the choice pleasures of knight and lady, but are jeered at by him
+as foolish and unreasonable pieces of butchery; his pleasures are in the
+main the reasonable ones of learning and music. With all this, his
+imaginations of the past he must needs read into his ideal vision,
+together with his own experiences of his time and people. Not only are
+there bond slaves and a king, and priests almost adored, and cruel
+punishments for the breach of marriage contract, in that happy island, but
+there is throughout an atmosphere of asceticism which has a curiously
+blended savour of Cato the Censor and a mediæval monk.
+
+"On the subject of war, on capital punishment, the responsibility to the
+public of kings and other official personages, and such-like matters, More
+speaks words that would not be out of place in the mouth of an
+eighteenth-century Jacobin, and at first sight this seems rather to show
+sympathy with what is now mere Whigism than with Communism; but it must be
+remembered that opinions which have become (in words) the mere commonplace
+of ordinary bourgeoise politicians were then looked on as a piece of
+startlingly new and advanced thought, and do not put him on the same plane
+with the mere radical life of the last generation.
+
+[Illustration: _Study of Mrs. Morris_
+
+_Made by Rossetti for pictures called "The Day Dream"_]
+
+"In More, then, are met together the man naturally sympathetic with the
+Communistic side of mediæval society, the protestor against the ugly
+brutality of the earliest period of commercialism, the enthusiast of the
+Renaissance, ever looking toward his idealised ancient society as the type
+and example of all really intelligent human life; the man tinged with
+the asceticism at once of the classical philosopher and of the monk, an
+asceticism, indeed, which he puts forward not so much as a duty but rather
+as a kind of stern adornment of life. These are, we may say, the moods of
+the man who created _Utopia_ for us; and all are tempered and harmonised
+by a sensitive clearness and delicate beauty of style, which make the book
+a living work of art.
+
+"But lastly, we Socialists cannot forget that these qualities and
+excellences meet to produce a steady expression of the longing for a
+society of equality of condition; a society in which the individual man
+can scarcely conceive of his existence apart from the commonwealth of
+which he forms a portion. This, which is the essence of his book, is the
+essence also of the struggle in which we are engaged. Though, doubtless,
+it was the pressure of circumstances in his own days that made More what
+he was, yet that pressure forced him to give us, not a vision of the
+triumph of the new-born capitalistic society, the element in which lived
+the new learning and the freedom of thought of his epoch, but a picture
+(his own indeed, not ours) of the real New Birth which many men before him
+had desired; and which now indeed we may well hope is drawing near to
+realisation, though after such a long series of events which at the time
+of their happening seemed to nullify his hopes completely."[1]
+
+Morris's own hope was never completely nullified; nor was he ever
+indifferent to the questions which for nearly a decade had absorbed his
+energy. But there was to be little more writing for the sake of Socialism,
+save as some public incident called out a public letter. What he had done
+covered a wide field. Beside the works already mentioned he had
+collaborated with Mr. E. Belfort Bax in a history of the growth and
+outcome of Socialism, first published in the _Commonweal_ under the title
+of _Socialism from the Root Up_, had written a series of poems called
+_Chants for Socialists_, and a series of lectures for "the cause" later
+published as _Signs of Change_, and had produced numerous short addresses
+to be scattered abroad in the form of penny leaflets that must have been
+typographical eyesores to him even before the rise of his enthusiasm for
+typography of the finer sort. In addition his bibliographer has to take
+into account any number of ephemeral contributions to the press and
+"forewords" as he liked to call them, to the works of others, a feature
+rarely present in his own books. In the spring of 1890 he wrote the
+romance entitled, _The Story of the Glittering Plain_ for the _English
+Illustrated Magazine_. When it was brought out in book form the following
+year, it was printed at his own press.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+THE KELMSCOTT PRESS.
+
+
+Although Morris turned with what seemed a sudden inspiration to the study
+of typography, it was, as we have already seen, no less than his other
+occupations a direct outcome of his early tastes. As long before as 1866
+he had planned a folio edition of _The Earthly Paradise_ with woodcut
+illustrations to be designed by Burne-Jones, and printed in a more or less
+mediæval fashion. Burne-Jones made a large number of drawings for the
+projected edition, and some thirty-five of those intended for the story of
+Cupid and Psyche were cut on wood by Morris himself. Specimen pages were
+set up, but the result was not technically satisfying and the idea was
+allowed to drop. Later, as we have seen, he had in mind an illustrated and
+sumptuous edition of _Love is Enough_, which also came to nothing,
+although a number of marginal decorations were drawn and engraved for it.
+After that, however, he apparently had been content to have his books
+printed in the usual way on machine-made paper with the modern effeminate
+type, without further remonstrance than emphatic denunciation of modern
+methods in printing as in other handicrafts. About 1888 or 1889, his
+Hammersmith neighbour, Mr. Emery Walker, whose love of fine printing was
+combined with practical knowledge of methods and processes, awakened in
+him a desire for conquest in this field also. He began again collecting
+mediæval books, this time with the purpose of studying their type and
+form. Among his acquisitions were a copy of Leonard of Arezzo's _History
+of Florence_, printed by Jacobus Rubens in 1476, in a Roman type, and a
+copy of Jensen's _Pliny_ of the same year. Parts of these books Morris had
+enlarged by the hated process of photography, which in this case aided and
+abetted him to some purpose. He could thus study the individual letters
+and master the underlying principles of their design. He then proceeded to
+design a fount of type for himself with the aim of producing letters fine
+and generous in form, solid in line, without "preposterous thicks and
+thins," and not compressed laterally, "as all later type has grown to be
+owing to commercial exigencies." After he had drawn his letters on a large
+scale he had them reduced by photography to the working size and revised
+them carefully before submitting them to the typecutter. How minute was
+his attention to detail is shown in the little reproduction of one of his
+corrected letters with the accompanying notes. This first type of his,
+having been founded on the old Roman letters, is of course Roman in
+character and is very clear and beautiful in form. The strong broad
+letters designed on "something like a square" make easy reading, and there
+is nothing about the appearance of the attractive page to suggest
+archaism. The fount, consisting of eighty-one designs including stops,
+figures, and tied letters, was completed about the beginning of 1891, and
+on the 12th of January in that year, a cottage was taken at number 16
+Upper Mall, near the Kelmscott House, a compositor and a pressman were
+engaged, and the Kelmscott Press began its career. The new type, which
+Morris called the "regenerate" or "Jenson-Morris" type, received its
+formal name, "Golden type," from Caxton's _Golden Legend_, which Morris
+had intended to reprint as the first work of the Press, and which was
+undertaken as soon as _The Glittering Plain_ was out of the way. Caxton's
+first edition of 1483 was borrowed from the Cambridge University Library
+for the purpose and transcribed for the Press by the daughter of Morris's
+old friend and publisher, F. S. Ellis. No paper in the market was good
+enough for the great venture, and Morris took down to Mr. Batchelor at
+Little Chart a model dating back to the fifteenth century and had
+especially designed from it an unbleached linen paper, thin and tough, and
+somewhat transparent, made on wire moulds woven by hand for the sake of
+the slight irregularities thus caused in the texture, and "pleasing not
+only to the eye, but to the hand also; having something of the clean crisp
+quality of a new bank-note." For the three different sizes Morris
+designed three watermarks, an apple, a daisy, and a perch with a spray in
+its mouth. To print his strong type upon this handmade paper it was
+necessary to dampen the latter and use a hand-press, the ink being applied
+by pelt balls, insuring an equable covering of the surface of the type and
+a rich black impression. The quality of the ink was naturally of great
+importance and Morris yearned to manufacture his own, but for the time
+contented himself with some that he procured from Hanover and with which
+he produced excellent results. One of his happiest convictions in regard
+to his materials was that heavy paper was entirely unfit for small books.
+
+[Illustration: KELMSCOTT TYPES]
+
+Concerning spacing and the placing of the matter on the page he had
+pronounced theories derived from his study of ancient books, but directed
+by his own sound taste. He held that there should be no more white space
+between the words than just clearly cuts them off from one another, and
+that "leads" (strips of metal used to increase the space between the lines
+of type) should be sparingly employed. The two pages of a book, facing
+each other as it is opened, should be considered a unit, the edge of the
+margin that is bound in should be the smallest of the four edges, the top
+should be somewhat wider, and the front edge wider still, and the tail
+widest of all. The respective measurements of the most important of the
+Kelmscott books are, one inch for the inner margin, one and
+three-eighths inches for the head margin, two and three-quarter inches
+for the fore edge, and four inches for the tail. "I go so far as to say,"
+wrote Morris, "that any book in which the page is properly put on the
+paper is tolerable to look at, however poor the type may be (always so
+long as there is no 'ornament' which may spoil the whole thing), whereas
+any book in which the page is wrongly set on the paper is intolerable to
+look at, however good the type and ornaments may be."
+
+[Illustration: PAGE FROM KELMSCOTT "CHAUCER." ILLUSTRATION BY BURNE-JONES.
+BORDER AND INITIAL LETTER BY MORRIS]
+
+_The Golden Legend_, with its ornamented borders, its handsome initials,
+its woodcuts, and its twelve hundred and eighty-six pages, kept the one
+press busy until the middle of September, 1892. Before it was completed
+Morris had designed another fount of type greatly more pleasing to him
+than the first. This was called the Troy type from Caxton's _Historyes of
+Troye_, the first book to be issued in its larger size, and was the
+outcome of careful study of the beautiful types of Peter Schoeffer of
+Mainz, Gunther Zainer of Augsburg, and Anthony Koburger of Nuremberg. It
+was Gothic in character, but Morris strove to redeem it from the charge of
+unreadableness by using the short form of the small _s_, by diminishing
+the number of tied letters, and abolishing the abbreviations to be found
+in mediæval books. How far he succeeded is a disputed question, certainly
+not so far as to make it as easy reading for modern eyes as the Golden
+type. As time went on, however, the use of the Golden type at the
+Kelmscott Press became less and less frequent, giving place in the case of
+most of the more important books to either the Troy type or the Chaucer
+type, the latter being similar to the former, save that it is Great Pica
+instead of Primer size.
+
+Morris's success in the mechanical application of his theories was
+surprising, or would have been surprising had he not constantly proven his
+genius for success. Mr. De Vinne quotes a prominent American typefounder
+as declaring after a close scrutiny of his cuts of type that he had
+triumphantly passed the pitfalls that beset all tyros and had made types
+that in lining, fitting, and adjustment show the skill of the expert. "A
+printer of the old school may dislike many of his mannerisms of
+composition and make-up," adds Mr. De Vinne, "but he will cheerfully admit
+that his types and decorations and initials are in admirable accord: that
+the evenness of colour he maintains on his rough paper is remarkable, and
+that his registry of black with red is unexceptionable. No one can examine
+a book made by Morris without the conviction that it shows the hand of a
+master."
+
+[Illustration: TITLE-PAGE OF THE KELMSCOTT "CHAUCER"]
+
+Upon the artistic side it was natural that he should excel. His long
+practice in and love of design, his close study of the best models, and
+his exacting taste were promising of extraordinary results. None the less
+there is perhaps more room for criticism of his book decoration than of
+his plain bookmaking. He was convinced, as one would expect him to be,
+that modern methods of illustrating and decorating a book were entirely
+wrong, and he argued with indisputable logic for the unity of impression
+to be gained from ornaments and pictures forming part of the page, in
+other words, being made in line as readily printed as the type itself and
+corresponding to it in size and degree of blackness. He argued that the
+ornament to be ornament must submit to certain limitations and become
+"architectural," and also that it should be used with exuberance or
+restraint according to the matter of the book decorated. Thus "a work on
+differential calculus," he says, "a medical work, a dictionary, a
+collection of a statesman's speeches, or a treatise on manures, such
+books, though they might be handsomely and well printed, would scarcely
+receive ornament with the same exuberance as a volume of lyrical poems, or
+a standard classic, or such like. A work on Art, I think, bears less of
+ornament than any other kind of book (_non bis in idem_ is a good motto);
+again, a book that _must_ have _illustrations_, more or less utilitarian,
+should, I think, have no actual _ornament_ at all, because the ornament
+and the illustration must almost certainly fight." He designed all his
+ornaments with his own hand, from the minute leaves and flowers which took
+the place of periods on his page, to the full-page borders, titles, and
+elaborate initials. He drew with a brush, on a sheet of paper from the
+Press marked with ruled lines, showing the exact position to be occupied
+by the design. "It was most usual during the last few years of his life,"
+says Mr. Vallance, "to find him thus engaged, with his Indian ink and
+Chinese white in little saucers before him upon the table, its boards bare
+of any cloth covering, but littered with books and papers and sheets of
+MS. He did not place any value on the original drawings, regarding them as
+just temporary instruments, only fit, as soon as engraved, to be thrown
+away." Time and trouble counted for nothing with him in gaining the
+desired result. But though his ornament was always handsome, and
+occasionally exquisite, he not infrequently overloaded his page with it,
+and--preaching vigorously the necessity of restraint--allowed his fancy to
+lead him into garrulous profusion. Despite his mediæval proclivities, his
+designs for the borders of his pages are intensely modern. Compare them
+with the early books by which they were inspired, and their flowing
+elaboration, so free from unexpectedness, so impersonal, so inexpressive,
+suggests the fatal defect of all imitative work and fails in distinction.
+But he was individual enough in temper if not in execution, and he brooked
+no conventional restriction that interfered with his doing what pleased
+him. For example, the notion of making the border ornaments agree in
+spirit with the subject matter of the page was not to be entertained for a
+moment when he had in mind a fine design of grapes hanging ripe from their
+vines and a page of Chaucer's description of April to adorn.
+
+During the life of the Kelmscott Press, a period of some half dozen years,
+Morris made six hundred and forty-four designs. The illustrations proper,
+all of them woodcuts harmonising in their strong black line with the
+ornaments and type, were made, with few exceptions, by Burne-Jones. His
+designs were nearly always drawn in pencil, a medium in which his most
+characteristic effects were obtained. They were then redrawn in ink by
+another hand, revised by Burne-Jones, and finally transferred to the block
+again by that useful Cinderella of the Kelmscott Press, photography. It is
+obvious that the Kelmscott books, whatever fault may be found with them,
+could not be other than remarkable creations with Morris and Burne-Jones
+uniting their gifts to make each of them such a picture-book as Morris
+declared at the height of his ardour was "one of the very worthiest things
+toward the production of which reasonable men should strive."
+
+The list of works selected to be issued from the Press is interesting,
+indicating as it does a line of taste somewhat narrow and tangential to
+the popular taste of the time. Before the three volumes of _The Golden
+Legend_ ("the Interminable" it was called) were out of his hands, Morris
+had bought a second large press and had engaged more workmen with an idea
+in mind of printing all his own works beginning with _Sigurd the Volsung_.
+He had already, during 1891, printed in addition to _The Glittering
+Plain_, a volume of his collected verse entitled _Poems by the Way_, the
+final long poem of which, _Goldilocks and Goldilocks_, he wrote on the
+spur of the moment, after the book was set up in type, to "plump it out a
+bit" as it seemed rather scant. During the following year, before the
+appearance of _The Golden Legend_, were issued a volume of poems by
+Wilfrid Blunt, who was one of his personal friends; the chapter from
+Ruskin's _Stones of Venice_ on "The Nature of the Gothic," with which he
+had such early and such close associations, and two more of his own works,
+_The Defence of Guenevere_ and _The Dream of John Ball_. In the case of
+the four books written by himself he issued in addition to the paper
+copies a few on vellum. All these early books were small quartos and bound
+in vellum covers. Immediately following _The Golden Legend_ came the
+_Historyes of Troye_, two volumes in the new type, Mackail's _Biblia
+Innocentium_, and Caxton's _Reynarde the Foxe_ in large quarto size and
+printed in the Troy type. The year 1893 began with a comparatively modern
+book, Shakespeare's _Poems_, followed in rapid succession by Caxton's
+translation of _The Order of Chivalry_, in one volume with _The Ordination
+of Knighthood_, translated by Morris himself from a twelfth-century French
+poem; Cavendish's _Life of Cardinal Wolsey_; Caxton's history of Godefrey
+of Boloyne; Ralph Robinson's translation of Sir Thomas More's _Utopia_;
+Tennyson's _Maud_; a lecture by Morris on _Gothic Architecture_,
+forty-five copies of which he printed on vellum; and Lady Wilde's
+translation of _Sidonia the Sorceress_ from the German of William
+Meinhold, a book for which both Morris and Rossetti had a positive
+passion, Morris considering it without a rival of its kind, and an almost
+faultless reproduction of the life of the past. The year ended with two
+volumes of Rossetti's _Ballads and Narrative Poems_, and _The Tale of King
+Florus and Fair Jehane_, translated by Morris from the French of a little
+volume that forty years before had served to introduce him to mediæval
+French romance and had been treasured by him ever since.
+
+[Illustration: THE SMALLER KELMSCOTT PRESS-MARK]
+
+[Illustration: THE LARGER KELMSCOTT PRESS-MARK]
+
+[Illustration: DRAWING BY MORRIS OF THE LETTER "h" FOR KELMSCOTT TYPE,
+WITH NOTES AND CORRECTIONS]
+
+"After this continuous torrent of production," says Mr. Mackail, "the
+Press for a time slackened off a little," but the output in 1894 consisted
+of ten books as against the eleven of the previous year. The first was a
+large quarto edition of _The Glittering Plain_, printed this time in the
+Troy type and illustrated with twenty-three pictures by Walter Crane. Next
+came another little volume of mediæval romance, the story of _Amis and
+Amile_, translated in a day and a quarter; and after this, Keats's
+_Poems_.
+
+In July of the same year the bust of Keats, executed by the American
+sculptor, Miss Anne Whitney, was unveiled in the Parish Church of
+Hampstead, the first memorial to Keats on English ground. The scheme for
+such a memorial had been promoted in America, Lowell being one of the
+earliest to encourage it, and a little notice of the ceremony was printed
+at the Kelmscott Press with the card of invitation. Swinburne's _Atalanta
+in Calydon_ followed _Keats_ in a large quarto edition. Next came the
+third volume of the French romances containing _The Tale of the Emperor
+Constans_ and _The History of Oversea_. At this point Morris returned
+again to the printing of his own works, and the next book to be issued
+from the Press was _The Wood beyond the World_, with a lovely frontispiece
+by Burne-Jones representing "the Maid," the heroine of the romance, and
+one of the most charming of the visionary women created by Morris. _The
+Book of Wisdom and Lies_, a Georgian story-book of the eighteenth century,
+written by Sulkhan-Saba Orbeliani, and translated by Oliver Wardrop, was
+the next stranger to come from the Press, and after it was issued the
+first of a set of Shelley's _Poems_. A rhymed version of _The Penitential
+Psalms_ found in a manuscript of _The Hours of Our Lady_, written in the
+fifteenth century, followed it, and _The Epistola de Contemptu Mundi_, a
+letter in Italian by Savonarola, the autograph original of which belonged
+to Mr. Fairfax Murray, completed the list of this prolific year. The year
+1895 produced only five volumes, the first of them the _Tale of Beowulf_,
+which Morris with characteristic daring had translated into verse by the
+aid of a prose translation made for him by Mr. A. J. Wyatt. Not himself an
+Anglo-Saxon scholar, Morris was unable to give such a rendering of this
+chief epic of the Germanic races as would appeal to the scholarly mind,
+and his zeal for literal translation led him to employ a phraseology
+nothing short of outlandish. At the end of the book he printed a list of
+"words not commonly used now," but his constructions were even more
+obstructive than his uncommon words. In the following passage, for
+example, which opens the section describing the coming of Beowulf to the
+land of the Danes, only the word "nithing" is defined in the index, yet
+certainly the average reader may be expected to pause for the meaning:
+
+  So care that was time-long the kinsman of Healfdene
+  Still seethed without ceasing, nor might the wise warrior
+  Wend otherwhere woe, for o'er strong was the strife
+  All loathly so longsome late laid on the people,
+  Need-wrack and grim nithing, of night-bales the greatest.
+
+Morris himself found his interest wane before the work was completed, but
+he made a handsome quarto volume of it, with fine marginal decorations,
+and an exceptionally well-designed title-page. A reprint of _Syr
+Percyvelle of Gales_ after the edition printed by J. O. Halliwell from the
+MS. in the library of Lincoln Cathedral, a large quarto edition of _The
+Life and Death of Jason_; two 16mo volumes of a new romance entitled,
+_Child Christopher and Goldilands the Fair_; and Rossetti's _Hand and
+Soul_, reprinted from the _Germ_, brought the Press to its great year
+1896. This year was to see the completion of the folio _Chaucer_, which
+since early in 1892 had been in preparation, and had filled the heart of
+Morris with anxiety, anticipation, and joy. Before it came from the press
+three other books were issued. Herrick's _Poems_ came first. Then a
+selection of thirteen poems from Coleridge, "a muddle-brained
+metaphysician, who by some strange freak of fortune turned out a few real
+poems amongst the dreary flood of inanity which was his wont!"
+
+The poems chosen were, _Christabel_, _Kubla Khan_, _The Rime of the
+Ancient Mariner_, _Love_, _A Fragment of a Sexton's Tale_, _The Ballad of
+the Dark Ladie_, _Names_, _Youth and Age_, _The Improvisatore_, _Work
+without Hope_, _The Garden of Boccaccio_, _The Knight's Tomb_, and _Alice
+du Clos_. The first four were the only ones, however, concerning which
+Morris would own to feeling any interest. The Coleridge volume was
+followed by the large quarto edition of Morris's latest romance, _The Well
+at the World's End_ in two volumes, and then appeared the _Chaucer_, the
+mere printing of which had occupied a year and nine months. The first two
+copies were brought home from the binders on the second of June, in a
+season of "lots of sun" and plentiful apple-blossoms, during which Morris
+was beginning to realise that the end of his delight in seasons and in
+books was fast approaching.
+
+Mr. Ellis has declared the Kelmscott _Chaucer_ to be, "for typography,
+ornament, and illustration combined, the grandest book that has been
+issued from the press since the invention of typography." Morris lavished
+upon it the utmost wealth of his invention. The drawing of the title-page
+alone occupied a fortnight, and the splendid initial letters were each an
+elaborate work of art. The ornament indeed was too profuse to be wholly
+satisfactory, especially as much of it was repeated; nevertheless, the
+book was one of great magnificence and the glee with which Morris beheld
+it is not to be wondered at. The Chaucer type had been specially designed
+for it, and Burne-Jones had made for it eighty-seven drawings, while
+Morris himself designed for it the white pigskin binding with silver
+clasps, executed at the Doves Bindery for those purchasers who desired
+their elaborate and costly volume in a more suitable garb than the
+ordinary half holland covers which gave it the appearance of a silken
+garment under a calico apron.
+
+During the remainder of the year 1896 the Press issued the first volumes
+of the Kelmscott edition of _The Earthly Paradise_, a volume of Latin
+poems (_Laudes Beatae Mariae Virginis_), the first Kelmscott book to be
+printed in three colours, the quotation heading each stanza being in red,
+the initial letter in pale blue, and the remaining text in black: _The
+Floure and the Leafe_ and _The Shepherde's Calender_. Before _The
+Shepherde's Calender_ reached its completion, however, Morris was dead,
+and the subsequent work of the Press was merely the clearing up of a few
+books already advertised. The first of these to appear was the prose
+romance by Morris entitled _The Water of the Wondrous Isles_: this was
+issued on the first day of April, 1897, with borders and ornaments
+designed entirely by Morris save for a couple of initial words completed
+from his unfinished designs by R. Catterson-Smith. To this year belong
+also the two trial pages made for the intended folio edition of
+_Froissart_, the heraldic borders of which far surpass any of the
+_Chaucer_ ornaments, and the two old English romances, _Sire Degravaunt_
+and _Syr Ysambrace_. In 1898 came a large quarto volume of German
+woodcuts, and three more works by Morris, a small folio edition of _Sigurd
+the Volsung_, which was to have been a large folio with twenty-five
+woodcuts by Burne-Jones; _The Sundering Flood_, the last romance written
+by Morris, and a large quarto edition of _Love is Enough_. These were
+followed by a "Note" written by Morris himself on his aims in starting the
+Kelmscott Press, accompanied with facts concerning the Press, and an
+annotated list of all the books there printed, compiled by Mr. S. C.
+Cockerell, who, since July, 1894, had been secretary to the Press. This
+was the end.[2]
+
+[Illustration: _Specimen Page from the Kelmscott "Froissart"_
+
+(_Projected Edition_)]
+
+Although Morris not only neglected commercial considerations in printing
+his books, lavishing their price many times over in valuable time and
+labour and the actual expenditure of money to secure some inconspicuous
+detail; but defied commercial methods openly in the character of his type,
+the quality of his materials, and the slowness of his processes, the
+Kelmscott Press testified, as most of his enterprises did testify, to the
+practical worth of his ideals. Quite content to make just enough by his
+books to continue printing them in the most conscientious and desirable
+way he knew, he gradually obtained from them a considerable profit. The
+Press had early been moved to quarters larger than the first occupied
+by it, and three presses were kept busy. By the end of 1892 Morris had
+become his own publisher, and after that time all the Kelmscott books were
+published by him except in cases of special arrangement. A few copies,
+usually less than a dozen, of nearly all the books were printed on vellum
+and sold at a proportionately higher price than the paper copies. The
+volumes were bound either in vellum or half holland, these temporary and
+unsatisfactory covers probably having been chosen on account of the
+strength and slow-drying qualities of the ink used, a note to the
+prospectus of the _Chaucer_ stating that the book would not be fit for
+ordinary full binding with the usual pressure for at least a year after
+its issue. The issue prices charged for the books were not low, but
+certainly not exorbitant when time, labour, and expense of producing them
+are taken into consideration. They were prizes for the collector from the
+beginning, the impossibility of duplicating them and the small editions
+sent out giving them a charm and a value not easily to be resisted, and
+Morris himself and his trustees adopted measures tending to protect the
+collector's interests. After the death of Morris all the woodblocks for
+initials, ornaments, and illustrations were sent to the British Museum and
+were accepted, with the condition that they should not be reproduced or
+printed from for the space of one hundred years. The electrotypes were
+destroyed. The matter was talked over with Morris during his lifetime and
+he sanctioned this course on the part of the trustees, its aim being to
+keep the series of the Kelmscott Press "a thing apart and to prevent the
+designs becoming stale by repetition." While there is a fair ground for
+the criticism frequently made that a man urging the necessity of art for
+the people showed inconsistency by withdrawing from their reach art which
+he could control and deemed valuable, it must be remembered that in his
+mind the great result to be obtained was the stirring up the people to
+making art for themselves. Morris rightly counted the joy to be gained
+from making a beautiful thing as far higher than the joy to be gained from
+seeing one. He was never in favour of making a work of art "common" by
+reproducing or servilely imitating it. He had shown the printers of books
+his idea of the way they should manage their craft, now let them develop
+it themselves along the lines pointed out for them. And whether he was or
+was not consistent in allowing the works of the Kelmscott Press to be cut
+off from any possibility of a large circulation, his was the temperament
+to feel all the delight to be won from exclusive ownership. He had the
+true collector's passion for possession. If he was bargaining for a book,
+says his biographer, he would carry on the negotiation with the book
+tucked tightly under his arm, as if it might run away. His collection of
+old painted books gave him the keenest emotions before and after his
+acquisition of them. Of one, which finally proved unattainable, he wrote,
+"_Such_ a book! _my_ eyes! and I am beating my brains to see if I can find
+any thread of an intrigue to begin upon, so as to creep and crawl toward
+the possession of it." It is no matter for wonder if in imagination he
+beheld the love of bibliophiles for his own works upon which he had so
+ardently spent his energies, and was gratified by the prevision.
+
+Whether the Kelmscott books will increase or decrease in money value as
+time goes on is a question that stirs interest in book-buying circles.
+They have already had their rise and ebb to a certain extent, and the
+prices brought by the copies owned by Mr. Ellis at the sale of his library
+after his death indicate that a steady level of interest has been reached
+among collectors for the time being at least; only five of the copies
+printed on paper exceeding prices previously paid for them. The
+presentation copy on vellum of the great _Chaucer_ brought five hundred
+and ten pounds, certainly a remarkable sum for a modern book, under any
+conditions, and nearly a hundred pounds more than the highest price which
+Morris himself up to the summer of 1894 had ever paid for even a
+fourteenth-century book. The paper copy of the _Chaucer_ sold at the Ellis
+sale for one hundred and twelve pounds and a paper copy in ordinary
+binding sold in America in 1902 for $650, while a paper copy in the
+special pigskin binding brought $950 the same year. The issue price for
+the four hundred and twenty-five paper copies was twenty pounds apiece,
+and for the eight copies on vellum offered for sale out of the thirteen
+printed, a hundred and twenty guineas apiece. The posthumous edition of
+_Sigurd the Volsung_, the paper copies of which were issued at six guineas
+apiece, brought at the Ellis sale twenty-six pounds. _News from Nowhere_,
+issued at two guineas, has never yet brought a higher price than the five
+pounds, fifteen shillings paid for it in 1899, while Keats's _Poems_
+issued at one pound, ten shillings, rose as high as twenty-seven pounds,
+ten shillings, also in 1899. As a general measure of the advance in the
+Kelmscott books since the death of Morris, it may be noted that the series
+owned by Mr. Ellis, excluding duplicates, and including a presentation
+copy of _Jason_ and two fine bindings for the paper and the vellum
+_Chaucer_, represented a gross issue price of six hundred and twelve
+pounds, ten shillings, and realised two thousand, three hundred and
+sixty-seven pounds, two shillings. For one decade of the life of a modern
+series that is a great record, and it would be a rash prophet who should
+venture to predict future values.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+LATER WRITINGS.
+
+
+The writings of Morris's later years consist, as we have seen, chiefly of
+prose romances. The little group beginning with _The House of the
+Wolfings_ and ending with _The Sundering Flood_ were written with no
+polemical or proselytising intention, with merely his old delight in
+storytelling and in depicting the beauty of the external world and the
+kindness of men and maids. Curiosity had never played any great part in
+his mental equipment; he cared little to know or speculate further than
+the visible and tangible surface of life. "The skin of the world" was
+sufficient for him, and in these later romances all that is beautiful and
+winning has chiefly to do with the skin of the world presented in its
+spring-time freshness. The background of nature is always exquisite. With
+the landscape of the North, which had made its indelible impression upon
+him, he mingled the scenes--"the dear scenes" he would have called
+them--of his childhood and the fairer portions of the Thames shore as he
+had long and intimately known them; and in his books, as in his familiar
+letters, he constantly speaks of the weather and the seasons as matters of
+keen importance in the sum of daily happiness. Thus, whatever we miss from
+his romances, we gain, what is missing from the majority of modern books,
+familiarity with the true aspect of the outdoor world. We have the
+constant sense of ample sky and pleasant air, and green woods and cool
+waters. The mountains are near us, and often the ocean, and the freedom of
+a genuine wildwood that is no enchanted forest or ideal vision.
+Inexpressibly charming are such pictures as those of Elfhild (in _The
+Sundering Flood_) piping to her sheep and dancing on the bank of the
+river, on the bright mid-April day, whose sun dazzles her eyes with its
+brilliant shining; and of Birdalone (in _The Water of the Wondrous Isles_)
+embroidering her gown and smock in the wood of Evilshaw. What could be
+more expressive of lovely open-air peace than this description? "Who was
+glad now but Birdalone; she grew red with new pleasure, and knelt down and
+kissed the witch's hand, and then went her way to the wood with her
+precious lading, and wrought there under her oak-tree day after day, and
+all days, either there, or in the house when the weather was foul. That
+was in the middle of March, when all birds were singing, and the young
+leaves showing on the hawthorns, so that there were pale green clouds, as
+it were, betwixt the great grey boles of oak and sweet-chestnut; and by
+the lake the meadow-saffron new-thrust-up was opening its blossom; and
+March wore and April, and still she was at work happily when now it was
+later May, and the harebells were in full bloom down the bent before her
+... and still she wrought on at her gown and her smock, and it was
+well-nigh done. She had broidered the said gown with roses and lilies, and
+a tall tree springing up from amidmost the hem of the skirt, and a hart on
+either side thereof, face to face of each other. And the smock she had
+sewn daintily at the hems and the bosom with fair knots and buds. It was
+now past the middle of June hot and bright weather."
+
+And only less delightful than these glimpses of the natural world are the
+recurring portraits of half-grown boys and girls, all different and all
+lovable. The sweetness of adolescent beauty had for Morris an irresistible
+appeal, and while his characters have little of the psychological charm
+inseparable in real life from dawning qualities and undeveloped
+potentialities, they are as lovely as the morning in the brightness of
+hair, the slimness of form, the freedom of gesture with which he endows
+them. The shapely brown hands and feet of Ursula, her ruddy colour, her
+slender sturdiness, and brave young laugh are attractions as potent as the
+more delicate charm of Birdalone's serious eyes and thin face, or
+Elfhild's flower-like head and tender playfulness; and all these heroines
+are alike in a fine capability for useful toil and pride in it. When the
+old carle says to Birdalone, "It will be no such hard life for thee, for I
+have still some work in me, and thou mayst do something in spite of thy
+slender and delicate fashion," she replies with merry laughter, "Forsooth,
+good sire, I might do somewhat more than something; for I am deft in all
+such work as here ye need; so fear not but I should earn my livelihood,
+and that with joy." Ursula also knows all the craft of needlework, and all
+the manners of the fields, and finds nothing in work to weary her; and
+even in the Maid of _The Wood beyond the World_, with her magic power to
+revive flowers by the touch of her fingers, is felt the preferable human
+power to make comfort and pleasantness by the right performance of plain
+tasks.
+
+Nearly if not quite equal to Morris's expression of love for the beauty of
+nature and of fair humanity is his expression of the love for beautiful
+handicraft, to which his whole life and all his writings alike testify.
+Whatever is omitted from his stories of love and adventure, he never omits
+to familiarise his readers with the ornament lavished upon buildings and
+garments and countless accessories; hardly a dozen pages of any one of the
+romances may be turned before the description of some piece of artistic
+workmanship is met. Osberne's knife in _The Sundering Flood_ is early
+introduced to the reader as "a goodly weapon, carven with quaintnesses
+about the heft, the blade inlaid with runes done in gold and the sheath
+of silver," and the gifts he sends to Elfhild across the flood are "an
+ouch or chain or arm-ring" fashioned "quaintly and finely," or "fair
+windowed shoon, and broidered hosen and dainty smocks, and silken
+kerchiefs"; much is made of his holiday raiment of scarlet and gold, of
+his flowered green coat, and of the fine gear of gold and green for which
+Elfhild changes her grey cloak. In _The Story of the Glittering Plain_,
+filled as it is with the sterner spirit of the sagas, there is still room
+for much detail concerning the carven panelling of the shut-bed, in which
+was pictured "fair groves and gardens, with flowery grass and fruited
+trees all about," and "fair women abiding therein, and lovely young men
+and warriors, and strange beasts and many marvels, and the ending of wrath
+and beginning of pleasure, and the crowning of love," and for the account
+of the painted book, "covered outside with gold and gems" and painted
+within with woods and castles, "and burning mountains, and the wall of the
+world, and kings upon their thrones, and fair women and warriors, all most
+lovely to behold." As for the fair Birdalone, her pleasure in fine stuffs
+and rich embroideries is unsurpassed in the annals of womankind. The
+wood-wife with canny knowledge of her tastes brings her the fairy web,
+declaring that if she dare wear it she shall presently be clad as goodly
+as she can wish. Birdalone can be trusted to don any attire that meets her
+fancy (and to doff it as willingly, for she has a startling habit not
+uncommon with Morris's heroines of stripping off her garments to let the
+winds of heaven play upon her unimpeded). The wood-wife places the raiment
+she has brought on Birdalone's outstretched arms, "and it was as if the
+sunbeam had thrust through the close leafage of the oak, and made its
+shadow nought a space about Birdalone, so gleamed and glowed in shifty
+brightness the broidery of the gown; and Birdalone let it fall to earth,
+and passed over her hands and arms the fine smock sewed in yellow and
+white silk, so that the web thereof seemed of mingled cream and curd; and
+she looked on the shoon that lay beside the gown, that were done so nicely
+and finely that the work was as the feather-robe of a beauteous bird,
+whereof one scarce can say whether it be bright or grey, thousand-hued or
+all simple of colour. Birdalone quivered for joy of all the fair things,
+and crowed in her speech as she knelt before Habundia to thank her." Thus
+Morris carried into his "pleasure-work of books" the "bread-and-butter
+work" of which he was hardly less fond.
+
+But in the deeper realities of life with which even romantic fiction may
+deal, and must deal if it is to lay hold of the modern imagination, these
+romances are poor. Not one of his characters is developed by circumstance
+into a fully equipped human being thoroughly alive to the intellectual and
+moral as to the physical and emotional world. His men and women are
+eternally young and, with the physical freshness of youth, have also the
+crude, unrounded, unfinished, unmoulded character of youth. They have all
+drunk of the Well at the World's End, and the scars of experience have
+disappeared, leaving a blank surface. The range of their emotions and
+passions is as simple and narrow as with children, and life as the great
+story-tellers understand it is not shown by the chronicle of their days.
+In many of the romances, it is true, the introduction of legendary and
+unreal persons and incidents relieves the writer from all obligation to
+make his account more lifelike than a fairy-tale; but Morris is never
+content to make a fairy-tale pure and simple. Marvellous adventures told
+directly as to a child are not within his method. One of his critics has
+described _The Water of the Wondrous Isles_ as a three-volume novel in the
+environment of a fairy-tale, and the phrase perfectly characterises it. A
+sentimental atmosphere surrounds his figures, and suggests languor and
+soft moods not to be tolerated by the writer of true fairy-tales, for
+while love is certainly not alien to even the purest type of the latter,
+with its witch and its princess and its cruel step-mother and rescuing
+prince, it is not love as Morris depicts it any more than it is love as
+Dante or Shakespeare depicts it. In Morris's stories the lovers are
+neither frankly symbolic creatures of the imagination whose loves are
+secondary to their heroic or miraculous achievements, and who apparently
+exist only to give a reason for the machinery of witchcraft, nor are
+they, like the lovers of the great novels, endowed with thoughtful minds
+and spiritual qualities. They are too sophisticated not to be more
+complex. The modern taste is unsympathetic to their endless kissing and
+"fawning" and "clipping," nor would ancient taste have welcomed their
+refinements of kindness toward each other or the lack of zest in their
+adventures. Morris seems to have tried somewhat, as in the case of his
+handicrafts, to start with the traditions of the Middle Ages and to infuse
+into them a modern spirit that should make them legitimate successors and
+not mere imitations of the well-beloved mediæval types. That he did not
+entirely succeed was the fault not so much of his method as of his
+deficient insight into human nature. He could not create what he had never
+closely investigated.
+
+When we read his prose romances, their framework gives many a clue to
+their ancestry, but it is an ancestry so remote from the interest of the
+general reader as to puzzle more than charm in its influence upon the
+modern product. In _The House of the Wolfings_, _The Roots of the
+Mountains_, and especially _The Glittering Plain_, we have more or less
+modernised sagas, obviously derived from the Icelandic literature of which
+he had been drinking deep. The hero of _The Glittering Plain_ is as
+valorous a youth and as given to brave adventures as the great Sigurd, the
+environment is Norse, and so are the names of the characters--Sea-eagle,
+Long-hoary, Grey Goose of the Ravagers, and Puny Fox. Other words and
+phrases also drawn from the "word-hoard" of the Icelandic tongue are
+sprinkled over the pages. We find "nithing-stake" and byrny, and bight,
+spoke-shave and ness and watchet, sley and ashlar and ghyll, used as
+expressions of familiar parlance. The characters give each other "the sele
+of the day," retire to shut-beds at night, and look "sorry and sad and
+fell" when fortune goes against them. They wander in garths and call each
+other faring-fellow and they yea-say and nay-say and wot and wend. It is
+not altogether surprising to find some of Morris's most loyal followers
+admitting that they can make nothing of books written in this archaic
+prose.
+
+In the subsequent romances the comparative sturdiness imparted by the
+writings of the North gives place to a mildness and grace suggestive of
+those early French romances the charm of which Morris had always keenly
+felt. We still have much the same vocabulary and more or less use of the
+same magic arts, "skin-changing" holding its own as a favourite method of
+overcoming otherwise insuperable difficulties; but we have more of the
+love motive and a clearer endeavour to portray the relations of the
+characters to each other. In all, however, the French and Scandinavian
+influences are so mingled with each other and with the element provided by
+Morris alone, and so fused by his fluent prolix style, as to produce a
+result somewhat different from anything else in literature, with a
+character and interest personal to itself, and difficult to imitate in
+essence, although wofully lending itself to parody. The subject never
+seems important. There is no sense that the writer was spurred to
+expression by the pressure of an irresistible message or sentiment. We
+feel that anything may have started this copious flow of words, and that
+there is no logical end to them. The title of _The Well at the World's
+End_ was taken from an old Scottish ballad called by that name which
+Morris had never read, but the title of which struck his fancy, and the
+book reads as though it had grown without plan from the fanciful,
+meaningless title.
+
+Of these later romances, _The Glittering Plain_ is the most saga-like, and
+_The Water of the Wondrous Isles_ is most permeated by the romantic spirit
+of the Arthurian legends and their kin. Despite all defects, the latter
+has a bright bejewelled aspect that pleases the fancy although it does not
+deeply enlist the imagination. The story is leisurely and wandering. The
+heroine, Birdalone, some of whose characteristics have already been
+mentioned, is stolen in her infancy from her home near a town called
+Utterhay, by a witch-wife who brings her up on the edge of a wood called
+Evilshaw and teaches her to milk and plough and sow and reap and bake and
+shoot deer in the forest. When she is seventeen years of age she meets in
+the forest Habundia, a fairy woman, who gives her a magic ring by which
+she may make herself invisible and a lock of hair by burning a bit of
+which she may summon her in time of need. Birdalone soon after escapes
+from the witch-wife in a magic boat, and passes through fabulous scenes to
+enchanted islands, where she finds friends and enemies. Three maidens,
+Atra, Viridis, and Aurea, save her from the latter, and send her forth to
+find for them their lovers. While on her quest she travels to various
+isles,--the Isle of the Young and the Old, the Isle of the Queens, the
+Isle of the Kings, and the Isle of Nothing,--which afford opportunity for
+strange pictures and quaint conceits but have nothing to do with the
+narrative. When Birdalone finds the lovers of her friends, the Golden
+Knight, the Green Knight, and Arthur the Black Squire, called the Three
+Champions, they are charmed by her beauty and friendliness, and she
+immediately falls in love with the Black Squire, betrothed of Atra.[3] The
+Black Squire returns her prompt affection, but has grace to show himself
+moody and downcast at the thought of breaking faith with his lady.
+Presently the Three Champions go their ways to find the three maidens who
+were kind to Birdalone and who are kept on the Isle of Increase Unsought
+by a witch, sister to Birdalone's early guardian, and Birdalone, weary of
+waiting for their return, fares forth to meet adventures and lovers in
+plenty. To all the brave knights and youths who take their turn at wooing
+her she is pitiful and gentle after her fashion, and thanks them kindly,
+and praises them and suffers them to kiss her for their comfort, and deems
+them "fair and lovely and sweet," but keeps her preference for the Black
+Squire. Now, when the Three Champions come back with their ladies and find
+Birdalone fled there is much distress among them, and the knights set
+forth to find her. Meeting with her, they are set upon by the bad Red
+Knight, into whose custody she has recently been thrown, and Baudoin, the
+Golden Knight, is killed. Returning with this bad news to the three
+ladies, the two remaining knights, who have rescued Birdalone and killed
+the Red Knight, decide to ride back into the latter's domain and make war
+upon his followers. In the meantime Atra has learned that the Black Squire
+has transferred his affections from her to Birdalone, and does not attempt
+to dissemble her grief thereat, none of Morris's characters being gifted
+in the art of dissimulation, particularly where love is concerned.
+Birdalone, departing from the course which Morris elsewhere is most
+inclined to sanction, decides to renounce in Atra's favour, and betakes
+herself to the town of Greenford, where she is received into the
+broiderers' guild and works with a woman who turns out to be her own
+mother, from whom she was stolen by the witch. With her she lives for five
+years, when sickness slays Audrey, the mother, and Birdalone can no
+longer resist the temptation to seek her love, the Black Squire, again. So
+she makes her way once more through marvellous adventures into the old
+forest of Evilshaw, where she comes again upon her fairy friend Habundia,
+by whose aid she finds the Black Squire. The latter has met with
+misfortunes and is lost in the forest, where he falls ill. Birdalone
+nurses him back to health, and they decide that whether Atra be dead or
+alive they will have no more parting from one another. They are soon to be
+put to the test, as in the wood they come upon Atra and their other
+friends, who have set out to seek them, being anxious for their welfare,
+and who have been overcome by caitiffs and bound and held prisoners.
+Arthur and Birdalone rescue them, and all these friends make up their
+minds to go together and dwell in Utterhay for the rest of their lives.
+Aurea finds another lover in place of the Golden Knight she has lost, but
+Atra is faithful in heart to the Black Squire, though able to bear with
+philosophy his union with Birdalone. Thus they live happily ever after.
+Upon this skeleton of mingled reality and dream Morris built his general
+idea of happy love. The tale might easily be twisted into an allegory,
+since all the creatures of his imagination stand for either the
+satisfactions or dissatisfactions of the visible world, but nothing is
+more certain than that he meant no such interpretations to be put upon it.
+When one of his critics assumed an allegorical intention in the story
+called _The Wood Beyond the World_, he was moved to public refutation,
+writing to the _Spectator_: "It is meant to be a tale pure and simple,
+with nothing didactic about it. If I have to write or speak on social
+problems, I always try to be as direct as I possibly can." The truth of
+this is best known by those who most faithfully have followed his
+writings, and it is entirely vain to try to squeeze from his "tales" any
+ethical virtue beyond their frank expression of his singularly simple
+temperament. Nevertheless, like the rest of his work, they reveal in some
+degree his way of regarding the moral world. As we have seen, Birdalone
+has her impulse toward renunciation, and for a brief interval one feels
+that the story possibly may be allowed to run along the conventional lines
+laid down by the civilised human race for the greatest good of the
+greatest number. This, however, would have been wholly alien to the
+writer's temper, and there is no shock to those familiar with this temper
+in finding that in the end the hero and heroine eat their cake and have
+it. Renunciation on the side of the unbeloved is effected with grace and
+nobility, but it is made clear that it is a question of accepting the
+inevitable in as lofty a spirit as possible. It is perhaps the most
+obvious moral characteristic of Morris's types in general, that they are
+no more prone than children to do what they dislike unless circumstance
+forces them to it. If we were to argue from his romances alone we could
+almost imagine him contending that what one dislikes in conduct is wrong,
+just as he did contend that what one dislikes in art is bad. But if his
+men and women do not willingly renounce, at least they do not exult. The
+sight of unhappiness pains them. For stern self-denial he substitutes the
+softer virtues of amiability and sweetness of temper. A high level of
+kindliness and tenderness takes the place of more compelling and
+formidable emotions. "Kind," indeed, is one of the adjectives of which one
+soonest wearies when confined to his vocabulary, and "dear," is another.
+We read of "dear feet and legs," of dear and kind kisses, of kind
+wheedling looks, of kind and dear maidens, and dear and kind lads, and
+everyone is kind and dear who is not evil and cruel. What Morris's
+romances preach, if they preach anything, is: that we should get from life
+all the enjoyment possible, hurting others as little as may be consistent
+with our own happiness, but claiming the satisfaction of all honest
+desires; that, in thus satisfying ourselves, we should keep toward those
+about us a kind and pleasant countenance and a consideration for their
+pain even when our duty toward ourselves forces us to inflict it. It is a
+narrow and exclusive teaching, and ill adapted to foster freedom of mind
+and spirit. It is a teaching that provides no breastplate for the buffets
+of fortune, and sets before one no ideal of intellectual or spiritual life
+the attainment of which would bring pleasure austere and exquisite. There
+is no stimulus and no sting in the love depicted. Even its ardour is
+checked and wasted by its dallying with the external charms that seem to
+veil rather than to reveal the spirit within the flesh. It is the essence
+of immaturity. But while we gain from the observation of Morris's
+childlike characters, playing in a world that knows no conventions and
+consequently no shame, a foreboding of the weariness that would attend
+such a life as he plans for them, we are conscious also that he is trying
+characteristically, to go back to the beginning, and to start humanity
+aright and afresh; to show us fine and healthy sons of Adam and daughters
+of Eve, "living," to use his own words, "in the enjoyment of animal life
+at least, happy therefore, and beautiful according to the beauty of their
+race." He sets them among the surroundings he loves, gives them the
+education he values, and leaves them with us--the blithe children of a new
+world, whose maturity he is content not to forecast. With such health of
+body, he seems to say, and such innocence of heart, what noble
+commonwealth may not arise, what glory may not enter into civilisation?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+THE END.
+
+
+The end with Morris seemed to come suddenly, although for months and even
+for years there had been warnings of its approach. He had enjoyed--and
+greatly enjoyed--unusual strength and vitality up to almost his sixtieth
+year. The seeds of gout were in his constitution, and from attacks of this
+disease he occasionally suffered, but not until the one occurring in the
+spring of 1891, just as the Kelmscott Press was getting under way, did
+they give reason for alarm. At that time other complications were
+discovered and he was told that he must consider himself an invalid. After
+this, as we have seen, he plunged with rapture into new undertakings
+involving the use of all his faculties, and carried them on with no
+apparent lessening of intellectual vigour. But he had too long overtaxed
+his physical frame by his extraordinary labours, and especially by his
+activity in the cause of Socialism, which had led him out in all weathers
+and under the most adverse conditions. By the beginning of 1895 he began
+to show plainly the weakness that had been gaining on him, and to admit
+it, though still keeping busy at his various occupations. His increasing
+illness brought home to him the thought of that final check upon his
+activities which he had always found so difficult to conceive. "If," he
+said, "it merely means that I am to be laid up for a little while, it
+doesn't so much matter, you know; but if I am to be caged up here for
+months, and then it is to be the end of all things, I shouldn't like it at
+all. This has been a jolly world to me and I find plenty to do in it."
+
+As the folio _Chaucer_ advanced through the Press, he grew impatient, no
+doubt fearing that he would not see its completion, and it is pleasant to
+read of his gratification when a completed copy reached him, bound in the
+cover designed by himself. Late in July, 1896, by the recommendation of
+his physician he took a sea voyage, going to Norway for the bracing
+influences of its air and associations. No benefit was gained, however,
+and on his return a congestion of one lung set in that proved unyielding,
+while his general weakness was such that he was unable to cross the
+threshold of his room. We find him responding to an old friend who had
+urged him to try the effect of the pure air of Swainslow, that this was
+the case and he could not come, but was "absolutely delighted to find
+another beautiful place which is still in its untouched loveliness." Up
+to the last he did a little work, dictating the final passage of _The
+Sundering Flood_ less than a month before his death, which occurred in his
+home at Hammersmith on the morning of the 3rd of October, 1896. He died
+without apparent suffering, and surrounded by his friends. He had lived
+almost sixty-three years in the "jolly world" wherein he had found so much
+to do, but he left the impression of having been cut down in the flower of
+his life.
+
+His burial was in keeping with those tastes and preferences that had meant
+so much to him. The strong oak coffin in which he was laid was of an
+ancient, simple shape, with handles of wrought iron, and the pall that
+covered it was a strip of rich Anatolian velvet from his own collection of
+textiles. He was carried from Lechlade station to the little Kelmscott
+church in an open hay-cart, cheerful in colour, with bright red wheels,
+and festooned with vines, alder, and bulrushes. The bearers and the
+drivers of the country waggons in which his friends followed him to his
+grave were farmers of the neighbourhood clad in their moleskins, people
+who had lost, said one of them, "a dear good friend in Master Morris." The
+hearse, with its bright decorations and the little group of mourners wound
+their way along pleasant country roads, beaten upon by a storm of unusual
+fury. "The north-west wind bent trees and bushes," writes one of those who
+were present, "turning the leaves of the bird maples back upon their
+footstalks, making them look like poplars, and the rain beat on the
+straggling hedges, the lurid fruit, such as only grows in rural
+England,--the fruit of privet with ripe hips and haws; the foliage of the
+Guelder roses hung on the bushes; along the road a line of slabs of stone
+extended, reminding one of Portugal; ragweed and loosestrife, with rank
+hemp agrimony, were standing dry and dead, like reeds beside a lake, and
+in the rain and wind the yokels stood at the cross-roads, or at the
+openings of the bridle-paths."
+
+In _News from Nowhere_ Morris describes Kelmscott Church, with its little
+aisle divided from the nave by three round arches, its windows, "mostly of
+the graceful Oxfordshire fourteenth-century type," and the interior
+trimmed with flowers for a village merrymaking. On the day of his burial,
+by a curious coincidence it was trimmed with fruits of the harvest in
+preparation for the autumn festival. The service was read by an old
+schoolfellow and friend, and Morris was left to his rest "from patience
+and from pain" in the place he had best loved and to which in his final
+weakness he had longed to return.
+
+In regarding Morris through the medium of his work it is difficult to gain
+a coherent impression. He turned one side and another to the world with
+such rapidity of succession as to give a sense of kaleidoscopic change.
+What new combination of colour and form his activities would take was
+always impossible to forecast. And the thing that he was doing seemed to
+him at the time the one thing in the world that was worth doing, the one
+thing that "a reasonable and healthy man" would make it his pleasure to
+do. Yet, as we have seen, all these pursuits taken up by him with so much
+zest and laid down by him with such suddenness, fitted harmoniously and
+accurately into the plan of his life, which, with the decade of militant
+Socialism deducted, presented a smooth and even surface, unbroken by any
+violent change of circumstance or method or motive. He has been described
+by nearly all who have written of him as "a rebel," and a rebel he was in
+the true Quixotic sense, his lance in rest to charge at any moment against
+any windmill of convention that might offend him. A friend who was once
+talking with him about a forthcoming election to the London School Board,
+expressing a hope that the progressive party would win,--"Well," said
+Morris, striding up and down, "I am not sure that a clerical victory would
+not be a good thing. I was educated at Marlborough under clerical masters,
+and I naturally rebelled against them. Had they been advanced men, my
+spirit of rebellion would probably have led me to conservatism merely as a
+protest. One naturally defies authority, and it may be well that the
+London School Board should be controlled by Anglican parsons, in order
+that the young rebels in the schools may grow up to defy and hate church
+authority." His own "natural" defiance of authority entailed what seems to
+the ordinary toiler in harness a waste of his extraordinary gifts. His
+work was most of it in the experimental stage when he left it. He was too
+content to point the road without following to the end his own direction.
+"He did not learn a trade in the natural way, from those who knew, and
+seek then to better the teaching of his masters," says one of his
+fellow-workers in arts and crafts, "but, acknowledging no master, except
+perhaps the ancients, he would worry it out always for himself. He had a
+wonderful knack of learning that way."[4] He had a wonderful knack also of
+persuading himself that there was no other to learn, and Goldsmith's
+criticism of Burke--that he spent much of his time "cutting blocks with a
+razor"--has been happily applied to him. But it is doubtful whether he
+would have made as strong an impression on his generation as he did if he
+had devoted his time to one branch of art and worked along conventional
+lines. His greatest gift was not so much the ability to produce art,
+artistic though he was in faculty and feeling, as it was the ability to
+make people see the difference between the kind of beauty to which his
+eyes were open and the ugliness commonly preferred to it. Nothing is so
+convincing as to see a man accomplish with his own hands what he has
+declared possible for anyone to accomplish. Morris's continual
+illustration of his theories was perhaps more useful in awakening interest
+in just the matters which he had at heart than any more patient pursuit of
+an ideal less readily achieved. He had the habit when listening to
+questions and criticisms after his lectures of tracing charming rapid
+designs on paper. On a large scale that is what he did throughout his
+life: lecture people about the way to make things, and by way of proving
+his point, turn off delightful examples of the things he describes. "It is
+very easy" he seems to say; "watch me for a moment, and we will then pass
+on."
+
+Considered superficially, he appeared the very prince of paradox. Art was
+a word continually on his lips, the future and fortunes of art were
+constantly in his mind, yet for the greatest art of the world he had few
+words, and the most passing interest. The names of Raphael and Leonardo,
+Giotto, Dürer, Rembrandt, Velasquez, were seldom if ever on his lips. Art
+had for him an almost single meaning, namely, the beauty produced by
+humble workers as an every-day occurrence and for every day's enjoyment,
+art by the people and for the people. So individual that he will never be
+forgotten by those who have once seen him and heard his voice raised in
+its inevitable protest, he nevertheless preached a kind of communism in
+which any high degree of individuality must have been submerged.
+
+His preferences among books, as might be assumed, were clearly marked, and
+a list of his favourite authors contains many contrasts. Once asked to
+contribute to the _Pall Mall Gazette_ his opinions on "the best hundred
+books," he complied by naming those which, he said, had most profoundly
+impressed him, excluding all which he considered merely as tools and not
+as works of art. True to himself, he starts the list with books "of the
+kind Mazzini calls Bibles," books which are "in no sense the work of
+individuals, but have grown up from the very hearts of the people." Among
+these are "the Hebrew Bible (excluding some twice-done parts and some
+pieces of mere Jewish ecclesiasticism), _Homer_, _Hesiod_, _The Edda_
+(including some of the other early old Norse romantic genealogical poems),
+_Beowulf_, _Kalevale_, _Shahnameh_, _Mahabharata_, collections of folk
+tales headed by Grimm and the Norse ones, Irish and Welsh traditional
+poems."
+
+After these "Bibles" follow the "_real_ ancient imaginative works:
+_Herodotus_, _Plato_, _Æschylus_, _Sophocles_, _Aristophanes_,
+_Theocritus_, _Lucretius_, _Catullus_." The greater part of the Latins
+were esteemed "_sham_ classics." "I suppose," says Morris in his character
+of reasonable man, "that they have some good literary qualities; but I
+cannot help thinking that it is difficult to find out how much. I suspect
+superstition and authority have influenced our estimate of them till it
+has become a mere matter of convention. Of course I admit the
+archæological value of some of them, especially _Virgil_ and _Ovid_."
+
+Next in importance to the Latin masterpieces he puts mediæval poetry,
+Anglo-Saxon lyrical pieces (like the _Ruin_ and the _Exile_), Dante,
+Chaucer, _Piers Plowman_, _Nibelungenlied_, the Danish and Scotch-English
+Border Ballads, _Omar Khayyam_, "though I don't know how much of the charm
+of this lovely poem," he says, "is due to Fitzgerald, the translator";
+other Arab and Persian poetry, _Reynard the Fox_, and a few of the best
+rhymed romances. Mediæval story books follow, the _Morte d'Arthur_, _The
+Thousand and One Nights_, Boccaccio's _Decameron_, and the _Mabinogion_.
+After these, "modern poets" up to his own generation, "Shakespeare, Blake
+(the part of him which a mortal can understand), Coleridge, Shelley,
+Keats, Byron." German he could not read, so he left out German
+masterpieces. Milton he left out on account of his union of "cold
+classicalism with Puritanism" ("the two things which I hate most in the
+world," he said).
+
+_Pilgrim's Progress_ heads the department of modern fiction, in which is
+also included _Robinson Crusoe_, _Möll Flanders_, _Colonel Jack_, _Captain
+Singleton_, _Voyage Round the World_, Scott's novels, "except the one or
+two which he wrote when he was hardly alive," the novels of the elder
+Dumas (the "good" ones), Victor Hugo, Dickens, and George Borrow. The list
+concludes with certain unclassified works, Ruskin, Carlyle, the _Utopia_,
+and Grimm's _Teutonic Mythology_. It may safely be assumed that no other
+list sent in by the "best judges" who responded to Mr. Stead's request in
+the least resembled this one, which was compiled with high sincerity and
+represented Morris quite fairly on the bookish side of his mind. Mr.
+Mackail mentions also among the volumes oftenest in his hands and "imposed
+upon his friends unflinchingly" Surtees's famous _Mr. Jorrocks_, and
+records that he considered _Huckleberry Finn_ America's masterpiece. For
+the Uncle Remus stories he had also a peculiar fondness, and for one of
+his cotton prints he designed what he called a "Brer Rabbit pattern."
+
+The perversity that one marks in Morris beneath--or, perhaps, on the
+surface of--his essential seriousness, the tendency to whim and paradox so
+freely noted by his critics, may be attributed to his extraordinarily
+childlike spirit. His lack of restraint, his dislike of subtlety, his love
+of spontaneity, his inability to conform to conventions, his hatred of
+gloom, austerity, and introspection, his readiness to throw himself into
+enjoyment of the smallest subject that happened to come within the range
+of his interest, his unflagging vigour, his unjaded humour, all qualities
+copiously commented upon by his friends, testify to the youthfulness of
+his temperament, which was like that of a child, also in a certain
+apparently unpremeditated reticence, an inability to reveal itself fully
+or satisfactorily to even his closest intimates. What is most attractive
+and appealing in him is doubtless due to his freedom from artificialities
+and from the sophistries that ordinarily come with age, but what is
+noblest in him, and most impressive in the effect produced by his
+accomplishment, is due to a quality of which a child is and should be
+ignorant, a sense of personal responsibility. Without this he would have
+been a pitiful figure, disoriented, and inharmonious with the world into
+which he was born. It was his persistent unwearying effort to set the
+crooked straight by example as well as by precept, and in defiance of a
+certain paradoxical mental languor that flowed by the side of his energy
+and impulse, which made him an influence to be counted with among the many
+conflicting influences of his generation. While he counselled he produced,
+while he preached he laboured. Declaring that work could and should be
+lovely, he demonstrated in his own life how intensely one man loved it. He
+fought for the principle of art with the ardour other men have shown in
+fighting for the principle of political liberty. He held himself bound to
+justify his theories in his own action, and while it would be absurd to
+claim for him complete consistency and freedom from error in even this, it
+certainly guided him safely past the quicksands of empty and inflated
+rhetoric by which the expressed philosophy of his own great masters is
+marred. It will be remembered by those who share his admiration for
+Dickens that when the proprietor of Dotheboys Hall wished to teach his
+pupils to spell "window" he had them clean one. The effectiveness of such
+a method is deeper than the satire, and Morris was its most convincing
+exponent. What he learned out of books he tried at once to put into
+practice. He had the highest ideal of service:
+
+  How crown ye excellence of worth?
+  With leave to serve all men on earth,
+
+and nothing deflected him from his efforts thus to serve in his own
+person the most crying needs of humanity as he conceived them.
+
+Pretentiousness was his least defect. No priggish sense of virtue
+interfered with his consecration to what he believed were the highest
+interests of his fellow-men. The cant of the moralist was absolutely
+unused by him, and he was innocent of any intention to improve the morals
+of his companions. Get them happy, he thought, with a faith little less
+than magnificent, get them happy and they will be good. Nor was he guilty
+of æsthetic priggishness. Art was the concern of his mind and the desire
+of his heart, but it was by no means his meat and drink. He liked good
+food, and was proud of his connoisseurship in matters of cookery, and
+wines. Few things pleased him better than himself to take the cook's place
+and prove his practical skill. When asked for his opinions on the subject
+of temperance, he replied that so far as his own experience went he found
+his victuals dull without something to drink, and that tea and coffee were
+not fit liquors to be taken with food. He smoked his briarwood pipe with
+much satisfaction. In his daily habits he was thoroughly, aggressively
+human, and in nothing more so than in his candid admiration of the work of
+his own hands, a feeling in which there was no fatuity.
+
+His biographer comments on the singular element of impersonality in his
+nature, speaking of him as moving among men and women "isolated,
+self-centred, almost empty of love or hatred," and quotes his most
+intimate friend's extreme statement that he lived "absolutely without the
+need of man or woman." In this idea of him those who knew him best seemed
+to agree, but from his own letters as represented in the biography, a
+stranger to him gains a different impression. His letters to his invalid
+daughter are in themselves sufficient to evoke in the mind of the reader
+an image of unlimited and poignant tenderness impossible to associate with
+the aloofness and lack of keen personal sympathy said to be characteristic
+of him. He did not give himself readily or rashly to intense feelings; but
+he seemed to feel within himself capacity for emotions of force so violent
+as to be destructive. When his friend Faulkner was stricken with paralysis
+and other trouble came upon the family, we find him writing: "It is such a
+grievous business altogether that, rightly or wrongly, I try not to think
+of it too much lest I should give way altogether, and make an end of what
+small use there may be in my life." Leaving out the case of Rossetti,
+there is no record of his having relinquished any friendship of
+importance, nor did he weary of constant intercourse with his friends. His
+habit of breakfasting with Burne-Jones on Sunday mornings and dining with
+him on Wednesdays was unbroken for many years. "The last three Sundays of
+his life," says this oldest and closest friend, "I went to him."
+
+Loyalty, sincerity, simplicity, and earnestness, these are the qualities
+conspicuous in the fabric of his life. His influence upon his generation,
+so far as it may now be observed, has been definite but diffused. It may
+be doubted whether he would not have been best pleased to have it so, to
+know that his name will live chiefly as that of one who stimulated others
+toward art production of and interest in beautiful handiwork. But the last
+word to be said about him is that he was greater than his work.
+
+
+
+
+BIBLIOGRAPHY[5]
+
+
+1. _The Story of the Glittering Plain. Which has been also called The Land
+of Living Men or The Acre of the Undying._ Written by WILLIAM MORRIS.
+Small 4to. Golden type. Border 1. 200 paper copies at two guineas, and 6
+on vellum. Dated April 4, issued May 8, 1891. Sold by Reeves & Turner.
+Bound in stiff vellum with wash leather ties.[6]
+
+    This book was set up from Nos. 81-84 of _The English Illustrated
+    Magazine_, in which it first appeared; some of the chapter headings
+    were rearranged, and a few small corrections were made in the text. A
+    trial page, the first printed at the Kelmscott Press, was struck off
+    on January 31, 1891, but the first sheet was not printed until about a
+    month later.[7] The border was designed in January of the same year,
+    and engraved by W. H. Hooper. Mr. Morris had four of the vellum copies
+    bound in green vellum, three of which he gave to friends. Only two
+    copies on vellum were sold, at twelve and fifteen guineas. This was
+    the only book with wash leather ties. All the other vellum bound books
+    have silk ties, except _Shelley's Poems_ and _Hand and Soul_, which
+    have no ties.
+
+2. _Poems by the Way._ Written by WILLIAM MORRIS. Small 4to. Golden type.
+In black and red. Border 1. 300 paper copies at two guineas, thirteen on
+vellum at about twelve guineas. Dated September 24, issued October 20,
+1891. Sold by Reeves & Turner. Bound in stiff vellum.
+
+    This was the first book printed at the Kelmscott Press in two colours,
+    and the first book in which the smaller printer's mark appeared. After
+    _The Glittering Plain_ was finished, at the beginning of April, no
+    printing was done until May 11th. In the meanwhile the compositors
+    were busy setting up the early sheets of _The Golden Legend_. The
+    printing of _Poems by the Way_, which its author first thought of
+    calling _Flores Atramenti_, was not begun until July. The poems in it
+    were written at various times. In the manuscript, _Hafburg and Signy_
+    is dated February 4, 1870; _Hildebrand and Hillilel_, March 1, 1871;
+    and _Love's Reward_, Kelmscott, April 21, 1871. _Meeting in Winter_ is
+    a song from _The Story of Orpheus_ an unpublished poem intended for
+    the _Earthly Paradise_. The last poem in the book, _Goldilocks and
+    Goldilooks_, was written on May 20, 1891, for the purpose of adding to
+    the bulk of the volume, which was then being prepared. A few of the
+    vellum covers were stained at Merton red, yellow, indigo, and dark
+    green, but the experiment was not successful.[8]
+
+3. _The Love-Lyrics and Songs of Proteus, by Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, with
+the Love Sonnets of Proteus, by the same author, now reprinted in their
+full text with many sonnets omitted from the earlier editions._ London,
+MDCCCXCII. Small 4to. Golden type. In black and red. Border 1. 300 paper
+copies at two guineas, none on vellum. Dated January 26, issued February
+27, 1892. Sold by Reeves & Turner. Bound in stiff vellum.
+
+    This is the only book in which the initials are printed in red. This
+    was done by the author's wish.
+
+4. _The Nature of Gothic, a Chapter of the Stones of Venice._ By JOHN
+RUSKIN. With a preface by William Morris. Small 4to. Golden type. Border
+1. Diagrams in text. 500 paper copies at thirty shillings, none on vellum.
+Dated in preface, February 15, issued March 22, 1892. Published by George
+Allen. Bound in stiff vellum.
+
+    This chapter of the Stones of Venice, which Ruskin always considered
+    the most important in the book, was first printed separately, in 1854,
+    as a sixpenny pamphlet. Mr. Morris paid more than one tribute to it in
+    _Hopes and Fears for Art_. Of him Ruskin said, in 1887, "Morris is
+    beaten gold."
+
+5. _The Defence of Guenevere, and Other Poems._ By WILLIAM MORRIS. Small
+4to. Golden type. In black and red. Borders 2 and 1. 300 paper copies at
+two guineas, 10 on vellum at about twelve guineas. Dated April 2, issued
+May 19, 1892. Sold by Reeves & Turner. Bound in limp vellum.
+
+    This book was set up from a copy of the edition published by Reeves &
+    Turner in 1880, the only alteration, except a few corrections, being
+    in the eleventh line of _Summer Dawn_.[9] It is divided into three
+    parts, the poems suggested by Malory's _Morte d'Arthur_, the poems
+    inspired by Froissart's _Chronicles_, and poems on various subjects.
+    The two first sections have borders, and the last has a half border.
+    The first sheet was printed on February 17, 1892. It was the first
+    book bound in limp vellum, and the only one of which the title was
+    inscribed by hand on the back.
+
+6. _A Dream of John Ball and a King's Lesson._ By WILLIAM MORRIS. Small
+4to. Golden type. In black and red. Borders 3a, 4, and 2. With a woodcut
+designed by Sir E. Burne-Jones. 300 paper copies at thirty shillings, 11
+on vellum at ten guineas. Dated May 13, issued September 24, 1892. Sold by
+Reeves & Turner. Bound in limp vellum.
+
+    This was set up with a few alterations from a copy of Reeves &
+    Turner's third edition, and the printing was begun on April 4, 1892.
+    The frontispiece was redrawn from that to the first edition, and
+    engraved on wood by W. H. Hooper, who engraved all Sir E.
+    Burne-Jones's designs for the Kelmscott Press, except those for _The
+    Wood Beyond the World_ and _The Life and Death of Jason_. The
+    inscription below the figures,[10] and the narrow border, were
+    designed by Mr. Morris and engraved with the picture on one block,
+    which was afterwards used on a leaflet printed for the Ancoats
+    Brotherhood in February, 1894.
+
+7. _The Golden Legend._ By JACOBUS DE VORAGINE. Translated by William
+Caxton. Edited by F. S. Ellis. 3 vols. Large 4to. Golden type. Borders 5a,
+5, 6a and 7. Woodcut title and two woodcuts designed by Sir E.
+Burne-Jones. 500 copies at five guineas, none on vellum. Dated September
+12, issued November 3, 1892. Published by Bernard Quaritch. Bound in half
+Holland, with paper labels printed in the Troy type.
+
+    In July, 1890, when only a few letters of the Golden type had been
+    cut, Mr. Morris bought a copy of this book, printed by Wynkyn de Worde
+    in 1527. He soon afterwards determined to print it, and on September
+    11th entered into a formal agreement with Mr. Quaritch for its
+    publication. It was only an unforeseen difficulty about the size of
+    the first stock of paper that led to _The Golden Legend_ not being the
+    first book put in hand. It was set up from a transcript of Caxton's
+    first edition, lent by the Syndics of the Cambridge University Library
+    for the purpose. A trial page was got out in March, 1891, and fifty
+    pages were in type by May 11th, the day on which the first sheet was
+    printed. The first volume was finished, with the exception of the
+    illustrations and the preliminary matter, in October, 1891. The two
+    illustrations and the title (which was the first woodcut title
+    designed by Mr. Morris) were not engraved until June and August, 1892,
+    when the third volume was approaching completion. About half a dozen
+    impressions of the illustrations were pulled on vellum. A slip asking
+    owners of the book not to have it bound with pressure, nor to have the
+    edges cut instead of merely trimmed, was inserted in each copy.
+
+8. _The Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye._ By RAOUL LEFEVRE. Translated
+by William Caxton. Edited by H. Halliday Sparling. 2 vols. Large 4to. Troy
+type, with table of chapters and glossary in Chaucer type. In black and
+red. Borders 5a, 5, and 8. Woodcut title. 300 paper copies at nine
+guineas, 5 on vellum at eighty pounds. Dated October 14, issued November
+24, 1892. Published by Bernard Quaritch. Bound in limp vellum.
+
+    This book, begun in February, 1892, is the first book printed in Troy
+    type, and the first in which Chaucer type appears. It is a reprint of
+    the first book printed in English. It had long been a favourite with
+    William Morris, who designed a great quantity of initials and
+    ornaments for it, and wrote the following note for Mr. Quaritch's
+    catalogue: "As to the matter of the book, it makes a thoroughly
+    amusing story, instinct with mediæval thought and manners. For though
+    written at the end of the Middle Ages and dealing with classical
+    mythology, it has in it no token of the coming Renaissance, but is
+    purely mediæval. It is the last issue of that story of Troy which
+    through the whole of the Middle Ages had such a hold on men's
+    imaginations; the story built up from a rumour of the Cyclic Poets, of
+    the heroic City of Troy, defended by Priam and his gallant sons, led
+    by Hector the Preux Chevalier, and beset by the violent and brutal
+    Greeks, who were looked on as the necessary machinery for bringing
+    about the undeniable tragedy of the fall of the City. Surely this is
+    well worth reading, if only as a piece of undiluted mediævalism." 2000
+    copies of a 4to announcement, with specimen pages, were printed at the
+    Kelmscott Press in December, 1892, for distribution by the
+    publisher.[11]
+
+9. _Biblia Innocentium: Being the Story of God's Chosen People before the
+Coming of Our Lord Jesus Christ upon Earth._ Written anew for children, by
+J. W. MACKAIL, Sometime Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford. 8vo. Border 2.
+200 on paper at a guinea, none on vellum. Dated October 22, issued
+December 9, 1892. Sold by Reeves & Turner. Bound in stiff vellum.
+
+    This was the last book issued in stiff vellum except _Hand and Soul_,
+    and the last with untrimmed edges. It was the first book printed in
+    8vo.
+
+10. _The History of Reynard the Foxe._ By WILLIAM CAXTON. Reprinted from
+his edition of 1481. Edited by H. Halliday Sparling. Large 4to. Troy type,
+with Glossary in Chaucer type. In black and red. Borders 5a and 7. Woodcut
+title. 300 on paper at three guineas, 10 on vellum at fifteen guineas.
+Dated December 15, 1892, issued January 25, 1893. Published by Bernard
+Quaritch. Bound in limp vellum.
+
+    About this book, which was first announced as in the press in the list
+    dated July, 1892, William Morris wrote the following note for Mr.
+    Quaritch's catalogue: "This translation of Caxton's is one of the very
+    best of his works as to style; and being translated from a kindred
+    tongue is delightful as mere language. In its rude joviality, and
+    simple and direct delineation of character, it is a thoroughly good
+    representative of the famous ancient Beast Epic." The edges of this
+    book, and of all subsequent books, were trimmed in accordance with the
+    invariable practice of the early printers. Mr. Morris much preferred
+    the trimmed edges.
+
+11. _The Poems of William Shakespeare_, printed after the original copies
+of _Venus and Adonis_, 1593. _The Rape of Lucrece_, 1594. _Sonnets_, 1609.
+_The Lover's Complaint._ Edited by F. S. Ellis. 8vo. Golden type. In black
+and red. Borders 1 and 2. 500 paper copies at twenty-five shillings, 10 on
+vellum at ten guineas. Dated January 17, issued February 13, 1893. Sold by
+Reeves & Turner. Bound in limp vellum.
+
+    A trial page of this book was set up on November 1, 1892. Though the
+    number was large, this has become one of the rarest books issued from
+    the Press.[12]
+
+12. _News from Nowhere: or, An Epoch of Rest, Being Some Chapters from a
+Utopian Romance._ By WILLIAM MORRIS. 8vo. Golden type. In black and red.
+Borders 9a and 4, and a woodcut engraved by W. H. Hooper from a design by
+C. M. Gere. 300 on paper at two guineas, 10 on vellum at ten guineas.
+Dated November 22, 1892, issued March 24, 1893. Sold by Reeves & Turner.
+Bound in limp vellum.
+
+    The text of this book was printed before Shakespeare's _Poems and
+    Sonnets_, but it was kept back for the frontispiece, which is a
+    picture of the old manor-house in the village of Kelmscott by the
+    upper Thames, from which the Press took its name. It was set up from a
+    copy of one of Reeves & Turner's editions, and in reading it for the
+    press the author made a few slight corrections. It was the last book
+    except the _Savonarola_ (No. 31) in which he used the old paragraph
+    mark [Illustration], which was discarded in favour of the leaves,
+    which had already been used in the two large 4to books printed in the
+    Troy type.
+
+13. _The Order of Chivalry._ Translated from the French by William Caxton
+and reprinted from his edition of 1484. Edited by F. S. Ellis. And
+_L'Ordene de Chevalerie_, with translation by William Morris. Small 4to.
+Chaucer type, in black and red. Borders 9a and 4, and a woodcut designed
+by Sir Edward Burne-Jones. 225 on paper at thirty shillings, 10 on vellum
+at ten guineas. _The Order of Chivalry_ dated November 10, 1892,
+_L'Ordene de Chevalerie_ dated February 24, 1893, issued April 12, 1893.
+Sold by Reeves & Turner. Bound in limp vellum.
+
+    This was the last book printed in small 4to. The last section is in
+    8vo. It was the first book printed in the Chaucer type. The reprint
+    from Caxton was finished while _News from Nowhere_ was in the press,
+    and before Shakespeare's _Poems and Sonnets_ was begun. The French
+    poem and its translation were added as an afterthought, and have a
+    separate colophon. Some of the three-line initials which were designed
+    for _The Well at the World's End_ are used in the French poem, and
+    this is their first appearance. The translation was begun on December
+    3, 1892, and the border round the frontispiece was designed on
+    February 13, 1893.
+
+14. _The Life of Thomas Woolsey, Cardinal Archbishop of York._ Written by
+GEORGE CAVENDISH. Edited by F. S. Ellis from the author's autograph MS.
+8vo. Golden type. Border 1. 250 on paper at two guineas, 6 on vellum at
+ten guineas. Dated March 30, issued May 3, 1893. Sold by Reeves & Turner.
+Bound in limp vellum.
+
+15. _The History of Godefrey of Boloyne and of the Conquest of
+Iherusalem._ Reprinted from Caxton's edition of 1841. Edited by H.
+Halliday Sparling. Large 4to. Troy type, with list of chapter headings and
+glossary in Chaucer type. In black and red. Borders 5a and 5, and woodcut
+title. 300 on paper at six guineas, 6 on vellum at twenty guineas. Dated
+April 27, issued May 24, 1893. Published by William Morris at the
+Kelmscott Press. Bound in limp vellum.
+
+    This was the fifth and last of the Caxton reprints, with many new
+    ornaments and initials, and a new printer's mark. It was first
+    announced as in the press in the list dated December, 1892. It was the
+    first book published and sold at the Kelmscott Press. An announcement
+    and order form, with two different specimen pages, was printed at the
+    Press, besides a special invoice. A few copies were bound in half
+    holland, not for sale.
+
+16. _Utopia._ Written by SIR THOMAS MORE. A reprint of the second edition
+of Ralph Robinson's translation, with a foreword by William Morris.[13]
+Edited by F. S. Ellis. 8vo. Chaucer type, with the reprinted title in Troy
+type. In black and red. Borders 4 and 2. 300 on paper at thirty shillings,
+8 on vellum at ten guineas. Dated August 4, issued September 8, 1893. Sold
+by Reeves & Turner. Bound in limp vellum.
+
+    This book was first announced as in the press in the list dated May
+    20, 1893.
+
+17. _Maud, A Monodrama._ By ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON. 8vo. Golden type. In
+black and red. Borders 10a and 10, and woodcut title. 500 on paper at two
+guineas, 5 on vellum, not for sale. Dated August 11, issued September 30,
+1893. Published by Macmillan & Co. Bound in limp vellum.
+
+    The borders were specially designed for this book. They were both used
+    again in the Keats, and one of them appears in _The Saundering Flood_.
+    It is the first of the 8vo books with a woodcut title.
+
+18. _Gothic Architecture: A Lecture for the Arts and Crafts Exhibition
+Society._ By WILLIAM MORRIS. 16mo. Golden type. In black and red. 1500 on
+paper at two shillings and sixpence, 45 on vellum at ten and fifteen
+shillings. Bound in half holland.
+
+    This lecture was set up at Hammersmith and printed at the New Gallery
+    during the Arts and Crafts Exhibition in October and November, 1893.
+    The first copies were ready on October 21st and the book was twice
+    reprinted before the Exhibition closed. It was the first book printed
+    in 16mo. The four-line initials used in it appear here for the first
+    time. The vellum copies were sold during the Exhibition at ten
+    shillings, and the price was subsequently raised to fifteen
+    shillings.[14]
+
+19. _Sidonia the Sorceress._ By WILLIAM MEINHOLD. Translated by Francesca
+Speranza, Lady Wilde. Large 4to. Golden type. In black and red. Border 8.
+300 paper copies at four guineas, 10 on vellum at twenty guineas. Dated
+September 15, issued November 1, 1893. Published by William Morris. Bound
+in limp vellum.
+
+    Before the publication of this book a large 4to announcement and order
+    form was issued, with a specimen page and an interesting description
+    of the book and its author, written and signed by William Morris. Some
+    copies were bound in half holland not for sale.
+
+20. _Ballads and Narrative Poems by Dante Gabriel Rossetti._ 8vo. Golden
+type. In black and red. Borders 4a and 4, and woodcut title. 310 on paper
+at two guineas, 6 on vellum at ten guineas. Dated October 14, issued in
+November, 1893. Published by Ellis & Elvey. Bound in limp vellum.
+
+    This book was announced as in preparation in the list of August 1,
+    1893.
+
+21. _The Tale of King Florus and the Fair Jehane._ Translated by William
+Morris from the French of the 13th century. 16mo. Chaucer type. In black
+and red. Borders 11a and 11, and woodcut title. 350 on paper at seven
+shillings and sixpence, 15 on vellum at thirty shillings. Dated December
+16, issued December 28, 1893. Published by William Morris. Bound in half
+holland.
+
+    This story, like the three other translations with which it is
+    uniform, was taken from a little volume called _Nouvelles Françoises
+    en prose du XIIIe siècle_, Paris, Jannet, 1856. They were first
+    announced as in preparation under the heading _French Tales_ in the
+    list dated May 20, 1893. Eighty-five copies of _King Florus_ were
+    bought by J. & M. L. Tregaskis, who had them bound in all parts of the
+    world. These are now in the Rylands Library at Manchester.
+
+22. _The Story of the Glittering Plain. Which has been also called The
+Land of Living Men or The Acre of the Undying._ Written by WILLIAM MORRIS.
+Large 4to. Troy type, with list of chapters in Chaucer type. In black and
+red. Borders 12a and 12, 23 designs by Walter Crane, engraved by A.
+Leverett, and a woodcut title. 250 on paper at five guineas, 7 on vellum
+at twenty pounds. Dated January 13, issued February 17, 1894. Published by
+William Morris. Bound in limp vellum. Neither the borders in this book nor
+six out of the seven frames round the illustrations appear in any other
+book. The seventh is used round the second picture in _Love is Enough_. A
+few copies were bound in half holland.
+
+23. _Of the Friendship of Amis and Amile._ _Done out of the ancient French
+by_ WILLIAM MORRIS. 16mo. Chaucer type. In black and red. Borders 11a and
+11, and woodcut title. 500 on paper at seven shillings and sixpence, 15 on
+vellum at thirty shillings. Dated March 13th, issued April 4, 1894.
+Published by William Morris. Bound in half holland.[15]
+
+    A poem entitled _Amys and Amillion_, founded on this story, was
+    originally to have appeared in the second volume of the _Earthly
+    Paradise_, but, like some other poems announced at the same time, it
+    was not included in the book.
+
+20a. _Sonnets and Lyrical Poems by Dante Gabriel Rossetti._ 8vo. Golden
+type. In black and red. Borders 1a and 1, and woodcut title. 310 on paper
+at two guineas, 6 on vellum at ten guineas. Dated February 20, issued
+April 21, 1894. Published by Ellis & Elvey. Bound in limp vellum.
+
+    This book is uniform with No. 20, to which it forms a sequel. Both
+    volumes were read for the press by Mr. W. M. Rossetti.
+
+24. _The Poems of John Keats._ Edited by F. S. Ellis. 8vo. Golden type. In
+black and red. Borders 10a and 10, and woodcut title. 300 on paper at
+thirty shillings, 7 on vellum at nine guineas. Dated March 7, issued May
+8, 1894. Published by William Morris. Bound in limp vellum.
+
+    This is now (January, 1898) the most sought after of all the smaller
+    Kelmscott Press books. It was announced as in preparation in the lists
+    of May 27 and August 1, 1893, and as in the press in that of March 31,
+    1894, when the woodcut title still remained to be printed.[16]
+
+25. _Atalanta in Calydon: A Tragedy._ By ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE. Large
+4to. Troy type, with argument and _dramatis personæ_ in Chaucer type; the
+dedication and quotation from Euripides in Greek type designed by Selwyn
+Image. In black and red. Borders 5a and 5, and woodcut title. 250 on paper
+at two guineas, 8 on vellum at twelve guineas. Dated May 4, issued July
+24, 1894. Published by William Morris. Bound in limp vellum.
+
+    In the vellum copies of this book the colophon is not on the
+    eighty-second page as in the paper copies, but on the following page.
+
+26. _The Tale of the Emperor Coustans and of Over Sea._ Done out of
+ancient French by WILLIAM MORRIS. 16mo. Chaucer type. In black and red.
+Borders 11a and 11, both twice, and two woodcut titles. 525 on paper at
+seven shillings and sixpence, 20 on vellum at two guineas. Dated August
+30, issued September 26, 1894. Published by William Morris. Bound in half
+holland.
+
+    The first of these stories, which was the source of _The Man Born to
+    be King_ in _The Earthly Paradise_, was announced as in preparation in
+    the list of March 31, 1894.
+
+27. _The Wood Beyond the World._ By WILLIAM MORRIS. 8vo. Chaucer type. In
+black and red. Borders 13a and 13, and a frontispiece designed by Sir E.
+Burne-Jones, and engraved on wood by W. Spielmeyer. 350 on paper at two
+guineas, 8 on vellum at ten guineas. Dated May 30, issued October 16,
+1894. Published by William Morris. Bound in limp vellum.
+
+    The borders in this book, as well as the ten half borders, are here
+    used for the first time. It was first announced as in the press in the
+    list of March 31, 1894. Another edition was published by Lawrence &
+    Bullen in 1895.
+
+28. _The Book of Wisdom and Lies. A Book of Traditional Stories from
+Georgia and Asia._ Translated by Oliver Wardrop from the original of
+Sulkhan-Saba Orbeliani. 8vo. Golden type. In black and red. Borders 4a and
+4, and woodcut title. 250 on paper at two guineas, none on vellum.
+Finished September 20, issued October 29, 1894. Published by Bernard
+Quaritch. Bound in limp vellum.
+
+    The arms of Georgia, consisting of the Holy Coat, appear in the
+    woodcut title of this book.[17]
+
+29. _The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley._ Volume 1. Edited by F.
+S. Ellis. 8vo. Golden type. Borders 1a and 1, and woodcut title. 250 on
+paper at twenty-five shillings, 6 on vellum at eight guineas. Not dated,
+issued November 29, 1894. Published by William Morris. Bound in limp
+vellum without ties.
+
+    Red ink is not used in this volume, though it is used in the second
+    volume, and more sparingly in the third. Some of the half borders
+    designed for _The Wood Beyond the World_ reappear before the longer
+    poems. The Shelley was first announced as in the press in the list of
+    March 31, 1894.[18]
+
+30. _Psalmi Penitentiales. An English rhymed version of the Seven
+Penitential Psalms._ Edited by F. S. Ellis. 8vo. Chaucer type. In black
+and red. 300 on paper at seven shillings and sixpence, 12 on vellum at
+three guineas. Dated November 15, issued December 10, 1894. Published by
+William Morris. Bound in half holland.
+
+    These verses were taken from a manuscript Book of Hours, written at
+    Gloucester in the first half of the fifteenth century, but the Rev.
+    Professor Skeat has pointed out that the scribe must have copied them
+    from an older manuscript, as they are in the Kentish dialect of about
+    a century earlier. The half border on p. 34 appears for the first time
+    in this book.
+
+31. _Epistolade Contemptumundi di Frate Hieronymo da Ferrara Dellordinede
+Frati Predicatori la Quale Manda ad Elena Buonaccorsi Sua Madre._ Per
+CONSOLARLA DELLA MORTE DEL FRATELLO, _Suo Zio_. Edited by Charles Fairfax
+Murray from the original autograph letter. 8vo. Chaucer type. In black
+and red. Border 1. Woodcut on title designed by C. F. Murray and engraved
+by W. H. Hooper. 150 on paper and 6 on vellum. Dated November 30, ready
+December 12, 1894. Bound in half holland.
+
+    This little book was printed for Mr. C. Fairfax Murray, the owner of
+    the manuscript, and was not for sale in the ordinary way. The colophon
+    is in Italian, and the printer's mark is in red.
+
+32. _The Tale of Beowulf._ Done out of the old English tongue by WILLIAM
+MORRIS and A. J. WYATT. Large 4to. Troy type, with argument, side-notes,
+list of persons and places, and glossary in Chaucer type. In black and
+red. Borders 14a and 14, and woodcut title. 300 on paper at two guineas, 8
+on vellum at ten pounds. Dated January 10, issued February 2, 1895.
+Published by William Morris. Bound in limp vellum.
+
+    The borders in this book were only used once again, in the Jason. A
+    note to the reader printed on a slip in the Golden type was inserted
+    in each copy. _Beowulf_ was first announced as in preparation in the
+    list of May 20, 1893. The verse translation was begun by Mr. Morris,
+    with the aid of Mr. Wyatt's careful paraphrase of the text, on
+    February 21, 1893, and finished on April 10, 1894, but the argument
+    was not written by Mr. Morris until December 10, 1894.
+
+33. _Syr Perecyvelle of Gales._ Overseen by F. S. Ellis, after the edition
+edited by J. O. Halliwell from the Thornton MS. in the Library of Lincoln
+Cathedral. 8vo. Chaucer type. In black and red. Borders 13a and 13, and a
+woodcut designed by Sir E. Burne-Jones. 350 on paper at fifteen shillings,
+8 on vellum four guineas. Dated February 16, issued May 2, 1895. Published
+by William Morris. Bound in limp vellum.
+
+    This is the first of the series to which _Sire Degrevaunt and Syr
+    Isumbrace_ belong. They were all reprinted from the Camden Society's
+    volume of 1844, which was a favourite with Mr. Morris from his Oxford
+    days. _Syr Perecyvelle_ was first announced in the list of December 1,
+    1894. The shoulder-notes were added by Mr. Morris.
+
+34. _The Life and Death of Jason_, A Poem by WILLIAM MORRIS. Large 4to.
+Troy type, with a few words in Chaucer type. In black and red. Borders 14a
+and 14, and two woodcuts designed by Sir E. Burne-Jones and engraved on
+wood by W. Spielmeyer. 200 on paper at five guineas, 6 on vellum at twenty
+guineas. Dated May 25, issued July 5, 1895. Published by William Morris.
+Bound in limp vellum.
+
+    This book, announced as in the press in the list of April 21, 1894,
+    proceeded slowly, as several other books, notably the Chaucer, were
+    being printed at the same time. The text, which had been corrected for
+    the second edition of 1868, and for the edition of 1882, was again
+    revised by the author. The line fillings on the last page were cut on
+    metal for the book, and cast like type.
+
+29a. _The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley._ Volume 11. Edited by F.
+S. Ellis. 8vo. Golden type. In black and red. 250 on paper at twenty-five
+shillings, 6 on vellum at eight guineas. Not dated, issued March 25, 1895.
+Published by William Morris, Bound in limp vellum without ties.
+
+35. _Child Christopher and Goldilind the Fair._ By WILLIAM MORRIS. 2 vols.
+16mo. Chaucer type. In black and red. Borders 15a and 15, and woodcut
+title. 600 on paper at fifteen shillings, 12 on vellum at four guineas.
+Dated July 25, issued September 25, 1895. Published by William Morris.
+Bound in half holland, with labels printed in the Golden type.
+
+    The borders designed for this book were only used once again, in _Hand
+    and Soul_. The plot of the story was suggested by that of Havelok the
+    Dane, printed by the Early English Text Society.
+
+29b. _The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley._ Volume III. Edited by
+F. S. Ellis. 8vo. Golden type. In black and red. 250 on paper at
+twenty-five shillings, 6 on vellum at eight guineas. Dated August 21,
+issued October 28, 1895. Published by William Morris. Bound in limp vellum
+without ties.
+
+36. _Hand and Soul._ By DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. Reprinted from _The Germ_,
+for Messrs. Way & Williams, of Chicago. 16mo. Golden type. In black and
+red. Borders 15a and 15, and woodcut title. 300 paper copies and 11 vellum
+copies for America. 225 paper copies for sale in England at ten shillings,
+and 10 on vellum at thirty shillings. Dated October 24, issued December
+12, 1895. Bound in stiff vellum, without ties.
+
+    This was the only 16mo book bound in vellum. The English and American
+    copies have a slightly different colophon. The shoulder-notes were
+    added by Mr. Morris.
+
+37. _Poems Chosen out of the Works of Robert Herrick._ Edited by F. S.
+Ellis. 8vo. Golden type. In black and red. Borders 4a and 4, and woodcut
+title. 250 on paper at thirty shillings, 8 on vellum at eight guineas.
+Dated November 21, 1895, issued February 6, 1896. Published by William
+Morris. Bound in limp vellum.
+
+    This book was first announced as in preparation in the list of
+    December 1, 1894, and as in the press in that of July 1, 1895.
+
+38. _Poems Chosen out of the Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge._ Edited by
+F. S. Ellis. 8vo. Golden type. In black and red. Borders 13a and 13. 300
+on paper at a guinea, 8 on vellum at five guineas. Dated February 5,
+issued April 12, 1896. Published by William Morris. Bound in limp
+vellum.[19]
+
+    This book contains thirteen poems. It was first announced as in
+    preparation in the list of December 1, 1894, and as in the press in
+    that of November 26, 1895. It is the last of the series to which
+    Tennyson's _Maud_, and the poems of Rossetti, Keats, Shelley, and
+    Herrick belong.
+
+39. _The Well at the World's End._ By WILLIAM MORRIS. Large 4to. Double
+columns. Chaucer type. In black and red. Borders 16a, 16, 17a, 17, 18a,
+18, 19a, 19, and four woodcuts designed by Sir E. Burne-Jones. 350 on
+paper at five guineas, 8 on vellum at twenty guineas. Dated March 2,
+issued June 4, 1896. Sold by William Morris. Bound in limp vellum.
+
+    This book, delayed for various reasons, was longer on hand than any
+    other. It appears in no less than twelve lists, from that of December,
+    1892, to that of November 26, 1895, as "in the press." Trial pages,
+    including one in a single column, were ready as early as September,
+    1892, and the printing began on December 16th, of that year. The
+    edition of _The Well at the World's End_, published by Longmans, was
+    then being printed from the author's manuscript at the Chiswick Press,
+    and the Kelmscott Press edition was set up from the sheets of that
+    edition, which, though not issued until October, 1896, was finished in
+    1894. The eight borders and the six different ornaments between the
+    columns appear here for the first time, but are used again in _The
+    Water of the Wondrous Isles_, with the exception of two borders.
+
+40. _The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer._ Edited by F. S. Ellis. Folio. Chaucer
+type, with headings to the longer poems in Troy type. In black and red.
+Borders 20a to 26, woodcut title, and eighty-seven woodcut illustrations
+designed by Sir E. Burne-Jones. 425 on paper at twenty pounds, 13 on
+vellum at 120 guineas. Dated May 8, issued June 26, 1896. Published by
+William Morris. Bound in half holland.
+
+    The history of this book, which is by far the most important
+    achievement of the Kelmscott Press, is as follows:
+
+    As far back as June 11, 1891, Mr. Morris spoke of printing a Chaucer
+    with a black-letter fount, which he hoped to design. Four months
+    later, when most of the Troy type was designed and cut, he expressed
+    his intention to use it first on John Ball, and then on a Chaucer,
+    and perhaps a _Gesta Romanorum_. By January 1, 1892, the Troy type was
+    delivered, and early in that month two trial pages, one from _The
+    Cook's Tale_ and one from _Sir Thopas_, the latter in double columns,
+    were got out. It then became evident that the type was too large for a
+    Chaucer, and Mr. Morris decided to have it re-cut in the size known as
+    pica. By the end of June he was thus in possession of the type which,
+    in the list issued in December, 1892, he named the Chaucer type. In
+    July, 1892, another trial page, a passage from _The Knight's Tale_, in
+    double columns of fifty-eight lines, was got out, and found to be
+    satisfactory. The idea of the Chaucer as it now exists, with
+    illustrations by Sir Edward Burne-Jones, then took definite shape.
+
+    In a proof of the first list, dated April, 1892, there is an
+    announcement of the book as in preparation, in black-letter, large
+    quarto, but this was struck out, and does not appear in the list as
+    printed in May, nor yet in the July list. In that for December, 1892,
+    it is announced for the first time as to be in Chaucer type "with
+    about sixty designs by E. Burne-Jones." The next list, dated March 9,
+    1893, states that it will be a folio, and that it is in the press, by
+    which was meant that a few pages were in type. In the list dated
+    August 1, 1893, the probable price is given as twenty pounds. The next
+    four lists contain no fresh information, but on August 17, 1894, nine
+    days after the first sheet was printed, a notice was sent to the trade
+    that there would be 325 copies at twenty pounds, and about sixty
+    woodcut designs by Sir Edward Burne-Jones. Three months later it was
+    decided to increase the number of illustrations to upwards of seventy,
+    and to print another 100 copies of the book. A circular letter was
+    sent to the subscribers on November 14th, stating this, and giving
+    them an opportunity of cancelling their orders. Orders were not
+    withdrawn, the extra copies were immediately taken up, and the list
+    for December 1, 1894, which is the first containing full particulars,
+    announces that all paper copies are sold.[20]
+
+    Mr. Morris began designing his first folio border on February 1, 1893,
+    but was dissatisfied with the design and did not finish it. Three days
+    later he began the vine border for the first page, and finished it in
+    about a week, together with the initial word "Whan," the two lines of
+    heading, and the frame for the first picture, and Mr. Hooper engraved
+    the whole of these on one block. The first picture was engraved at
+    about the same time. A specimen of the first page (differing slightly
+    from the same page as it appears in the book) was shown at the Arts
+    and Crafts Exhibition in October and November, 1893, and was issued to
+    a few leading booksellers, but it was not until August 8, 1894, that
+    the first sheet was printed at 14, Upper Mall. On January 8, 1895,
+    another press was started at 21, Upper Mall, and from that time two
+    presses were almost exclusively at work on the Chaucer. By September
+    10th, the last page of _The Romaunt of the Rose_ was printed. In the
+    middle of February, 1896, Mr. Morris began designing the title. It was
+    finished on the 27th of the same month and engraved by Mr. Hooper in
+    March. On May 8th, a year and nine months after the printing of the
+    first sheet, the book was completed. On June 2nd, the first two copies
+    were delivered to Sir Edward Burne-Jones and Mr. Morris. Mr. Morris's
+    copy is now at Exeter College, Oxford, with other books printed at the
+    Kelmscott Press.
+
+    Besides the eighty-seven illustrations designed by Sir Edward
+    Burne-Jones, and engraved by W. H. Hooper, the Chaucer contains a
+    woodcut title, fourteen large borders, eighteen different frames
+    around the illustrations, and twenty-six large initial words designed
+    for the book by William Morris. Many of these were engraved by C. E.
+    Keats, and others by W. H. Hooper and W. Spielmeyer.
+
+    In February, 1896, a notice was issued respecting special bindings, of
+    which Mr. Morris intended to design four.
+
+    Two of these were to have been executed under Mr. Cobden-Sanderson's
+    direction at the Doves Bindery, and two by Messrs. J. & J. Leighton.
+    But the only design that he was able to complete was for a full white
+    pigskin binding, which has now been carried out at the Doves Bindery
+    on forty-eight copies, including two on vellum.[21]
+
+41. _The Earthly Paradise._ By WILLIAM MORRIS. Volume I. _Prologue: The
+Wanderers._ March: _Atalanta's Race. The Man Born to be King._ Medium
+4to. Golden type. In black and red. Borders 27a, 27, 28a, and 28, and
+woodcut title. 225 on paper at thirty shillings, 6 on vellum at seven
+guineas. Dated May 7, issued July 24, 1896. Published by William Morris.
+Bound in limp vellum.
+
+    This was the first book printed on the paper with the apple
+    water-mark. The seven other volumes followed it at intervals of a few
+    months. None of the ten borders used in the _Earthly Paradise_ appear
+    in any other book. The four different half-borders round the poems to
+    the months are also not used elsewhere. The first border was designed
+    in June, 1895.
+
+42. _Laudes Beatæ Mariæ Virginis._ Latin poems taken from a Psalter
+written in England about A.D. 1220. Edited by S. C. Cockerell. Large 4to.
+Troy type. In black, red, and blue. 250 on paper at ten shillings, 10 on
+vellum at two guineas. Dated July 7, issued August 7, 1896. Published by
+William Morris. Bound in half holland.
+
+    This was the first book printed at the Kelmscott Press in three
+    colours.[22] The manuscript from which the poems were taken was one of
+    the most beautiful of the English books in Mr. Morris's possession,
+    both as regards writing and ornament. No author's name is given to the
+    poems, but after this book was issued the Rev. E. S. Dewick pointed
+    out that they had already been printed at Tegernsee in 1579, in a 16mo
+    volume in which they are ascribed to Stephen Langton. A note to this
+    effect was printed in the Chaucer type in December 28, 1896, and
+    distributed to the subscribers.
+
+41a. _The Earthly Paradise._ By WILLIAM MORRIS. Volume II. April: _The
+Doom of King Acrisius. The Proud King._ Medium 4to. Golden type. In black
+and red. Borders 29a, 29, 28a, and 28. 225 on paper at thirty shillings, 6
+on vellum at seven guineas. Dated June 24, issued September 17, 1896.
+Published by William Morris. Bound in limp vellum.
+
+43. _The Floure and the Leafe, and The Boke of Cupide, God of Love, or The
+Cuckow and the Nightingale._ Edited by F. S. Ellis. Medium 4to. Troy type,
+with note and colophon in Chaucer type. In black and red. 300 on paper at
+ten shillings, 10 on vellum at two guineas. Dated August 21, issued
+November 2, 1896. Published at the Kelmscott Press. Bound in half holland.
+
+    Two of the initial words from the Chaucer are used in this book, one
+    at the beginning of each poem. These poems were formerly attributed to
+    Chaucer, but recent scholarship has proved that _The Floure and the
+    Leafe_ is much later than Chaucer, and that _The Cuckow and the
+    Nightingale_ was written by Sir Thomas Clanvowe about A.D. 1405-10.
+
+44. _The Shepheardes Calender: Conteyning Twelve Aeglogues, Proportionable
+to the Twelve Monethes._ By EDMUND SPENCER. Edited by F. S. Ellis. Medium
+4to. Golden type. In black and red. With twelve full page illustrations by
+A. J. Gaskin. 225 on paper at a guinea, 6 on vellum at three guineas.
+Dated October 14, issued November 26, 1896. Published at the Kelmscott
+Press. Bound in half holland.
+
+    The illustrations in this book were printed from process blocks by
+    Walker & Boutall. By an oversight, the names of author, editor, and
+    artist were omitted from the colophon.
+
+41b. _The Earthly Paradise._ By WILLIAM MORRIS. Volume III. May: _The
+Story of Cupid and Psyche. The Writing on the Image._ June: _The Love of
+Alcestis. The Lady of the Land._ Medium 4to. Golden type. In black and
+red. Borders 30a, 30, 27a, 27, 28a, 28, 29a, and 29. 225 on paper at
+thirty shillings, 6 on vellum at seven guineas. Dated August 24, issued
+December 5, 1896. Published at the Kelmscott Press. Bound in limp vellum.
+
+41c. _The Earthly Paradise._ By WILLIAM MORRIS. Volume IV. July: _The Son
+of Croesus. The Watching of the Falcon._ August: _Pygmalion and the Image.
+Ogier the Dane._ Medium 4to. Golden type. In black and red. Borders 31a,
+31, 29a, 29, 28a, 28, 30a, and 30. Dated November 25, 1896, issued
+January 22, 1897. Published at the Kelmscott Press. Bound in limp vellum.
+
+41d. _The Earthly Paradise._ By WILLIAM MORRIS. Volume V. September. _The
+Death of Paris. The Land East of the Sun and West of the Moon._ October:
+_The Story of Acontius and Cydippe. The Man Who Never Laughed Again._
+Medium 4to. Golden type. In black and red. Borders 29a, 29, 27a, 27, 28a,
+28, 31a, and 31. Finished December 24, 1896, issued March 9, 1897.
+Published at the Kelmscott Press. Bound in limp vellum.
+
+41e. _The Earthly Paradise._ By WILLIAM MORRIS. Volume VI. November: _The
+Story of Rhodope. The Lovers of Gudrun._ Medium 4to. Golden type. In black
+and red. Borders 27a, 27, 30a, and 30. Finished February 18, issued May
+11, 1897. Published at the Kelmscott Press. Bound in limp vellum.
+
+41f. _The Earthly Paradise._ By WILLIAM MORRIS. Volume VII. December: _The
+Golden Apples. The Fostering of Aslaug._ January: _Bellerophon at Argos.
+The Ring Given to Venus._ Medium 4to. Golden type. In black and red.
+Borders 29a, 29, 31a, 31, 30a, 30, 27a, and 27. Finished March 17, issued
+July 29, 1897. Published at the Kelmscott Press. Bound in limp vellum.
+
+45. _The Water of the Wondrous Isles._ By WILLIAM MORRIS. Large 4to.
+Chaucer type, in double columns, with a few lines in Troy type at the end
+of each of the seven parts. In black and red. Borders 16a, 17a, 18a, 19,
+and 19a. 250 on paper at three guineas, 6 on vellum at twelve guineas.
+Dated April 1, issued July 29, 1897. Published at the Kelmscott Press.
+Bound in limp vellum.
+
+    Unlike _The Well at the World's End_, with which it is mainly uniform,
+    this book has red shoulder-notes and no illustrations. Mr. Morris
+    began the story in verse on February 4, 1895. A few days later he
+    began it afresh in alternate prose and verse; but he was again
+    dissatisfied, and finally began it a third time in prose alone, as it
+    now stands. It was first announced as in the press in the list of June
+    1, 1896, at which date the early chapters were in type, although they
+    were not printed until about a month later. The designs for the
+    initial words "Whilom" and "Empty" were begun by William Morris
+    shortly before his death, and were finished by R. Catterson-Smith.
+    Another edition was published by Longmans on October 1, 1897.
+
+41g. _The Earthly Paradise._ By WILLIAM MORRIS. Volume VIII. February:
+_Bellerophon in Lycia. The Hill of Venus. Epilogue. L'Envoi._ Medium 4to.
+Golden type. In black and red. Borders 28a, 28, 29a, and 29. Finished
+June 10, issued September 27, 1897. Published at the Kelmscott Press.
+Bound in limp vellum.
+
+    The colophon of this final volume of _The Earthly Paradise_ contains
+    the following note: "The borders in this edition of _The Earthly
+    Paradise_ were designed by William Morris, except those on page 4 of
+    Volumes ii., iii., and iv., afterwards repeated, which were designed
+    to match the opposite borders, under William Morris's direction, by R.
+    Catterson-Smith, who also finished the initial words 'Whilom' and
+    'Empty' for _The Water of the Wondrous Isles_. All the other letters,
+    borders, title-pages, and ornaments used at the Kelmscott Press,
+    except the Greek type in _Atalanta in Calydon_, were designed by
+    William Morris."
+
+46. Two trial pages of the projected edition of Lord Berners's Translation
+of Froissart's Chronicles. Folio. Chaucer type, with heading in Troy type.
+In black and red. Border 32, containing the shields of France, the Empire,
+and England, and a half-border containing those of Reginald, Lord Cobham,
+Sir John Chandos, and Sir Walter Manny. 160 on vellum at a guinea, none on
+paper. Dated September, issued October 7, 1897. Published at the Kelmscott
+Press. Not bound.
+
+    It was the intention of Mr. Morris to make this edition of what was
+    since his college days almost his favourite book a worthy companion to
+    the Chaucer. It was to have been in two volumes folio, with new cusped
+    initials and heraldic ornament throughout. Each volume was to have had
+    a large frontispiece designed by Sir Edward Burne-Jones; the subject
+    of the first was to have been St. George, that of the second Fame. A
+    trial page was set up in the Troy type soon after it came from the
+    foundry, in January, 1892. Early in 1893 trial pages were set up in
+    the Chaucer type, and in the list for March 9th of that year the book
+    is erroneously stated to be in the press. In the three following lists
+    it is announced as in preparation. In the list dated December 1, 1893,
+    and in the three next lists, it is again announced as in the press,
+    and the number to be printed is given as 150. Meanwhile the printing
+    of the Chaucer had been begun, and as it was not feasible to carry on
+    two folios at the same time, the Froissart again comes under the
+    heading "in preparation" in the lists from December 1, 1894, to June
+    1, 1896. In the prospectus of _The Shepheardes Calender_, dated
+    November 12, 1896, it is announced as abandoned. At that time about
+    thirty-four pages were in type, but no sheet had been printed. Before
+    the type was broken up, on December 24, 1896, thirty-two copies of
+    sixteen of these pages were printed and given as a memento to personal
+    friends of the poet and printer whose death now made the completion of
+    the book impossible. This suggested the idea of printing two pages for
+    wider distribution. The half-border had been engraved in April, 1894,
+    by W. Spielmeyer, but the large border only existed as a drawing. It
+    was engraved with great skill and spirit by C. E. Keates, and the two
+    pages were printed by Stephen Mowlem, with the help of an apprentice,
+    in a manner worthy of the designs.
+
+47. _Sire Degrevaunt._ Edited by F. S. Ellis after the edition printed by
+J. O. Halliwell. 8vo. Chaucer type. In black and red. Borders 1a and 1,
+and a woodcut designed by Sir Edward Burne-Jones. 350 on paper at fifteen
+shillings, 8 on vellum at four guineas. Dated March 14, 1896, issued
+November 12, 1897. Published at the Kelmscott Press. Bound in half
+holland.
+
+    This book, subjects from which were painted by Sir Edward Burne-Jones
+    on the walls of the Red House, Upton, Bexley Heath, many years ago,
+    was always a favourite with Mr. Morris. The frontispiece was not
+    printed until October, 1897, eighteen months after the text was
+    finished.
+
+48. _Syr Ysambrace._ Edited by F. S. Ellis after the edition printed by J.
+O. Halliwell from the MS, in the Library of Lincoln Cathedral, with some
+corrections. 8vo. Chaucer type. In black and red. Borders 4a and 4, and a
+woodcut designed by Sir Edward Burne-Jones. 350 on paper at twelve
+shillings, 8 on vellum at four guineas. Dated July 14, issued November 11,
+1897. Published at the Kelmscott Press. Bound in half holland.
+
+    This is the third and last of the reprints from the Camden Society's
+    volume of Thornton Romances. The text was all set up and partly
+    printed by June, 1896, at which time it was intended to include _Sir
+    Eglamour_ in the same volume.
+
+49. _Some German Woodcuts of the Fifteenth Century. Being thirty-five
+reproductions from books that were in the library of the late William
+Morris._ Edited, with a list of the principal woodcut books in that
+library, by S. C. Cockerell. Large 4to. Golden type. In red and black. 225
+on paper at thirty shillings, 8 on vellum at five guineas. Dated December
+15, 1897, issued January 6, 1898. Published at the Kelmscott Press. Bound
+in half holland.
+
+    Of these thirty-five reproductions twenty-nine were all that were done
+    of a series chosen by Mr. Morris to illustrate a catalogue of his
+    library, and the other six were prepared by him for an article in the
+    fourth number of _Bibliographical_ part of which is reprinted as an
+    introduction to the book. The process blocks (with one exception) were
+    made by Walker & Boutall, and are of the same size as the original
+    cuts.
+
+50. _The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs._ By
+WILLIAM MORRIS. Small folio. Chaucer type, with title and headings to the
+four books in Troy type. In black and red. Borders 33a and 33, and two
+illustrations designed by Sir Edward Burne-Jones and engraved by W. H.
+Hooper. 160 on paper at six guineas, 6 on vellum at twenty guineas. Dated
+January 19, issued February 25, 1898. Published at the Kelmscott Press.
+Bound in limp vellum, with blue silk ties.
+
+    The two borders used in this book were almost the last that Mr. Morris
+    designed. They were intended for an edition of _The Hill of Venus_,
+    which was to have been written in prose by him and illustrated by Sir
+    Edward Burne-Jones. The foliage was suggested by the ornament in two
+    Psalters of the last half of the thirteenth century in the library at
+    Kelmscott House. The initial A at the beginning of the third book was
+    designed in March, 1893, for the Froissart, and does not appear
+    elsewhere.
+
+    An edition of _Sigurd the Volsung_, which Mr. Morris justly considered
+    his masterpiece, was contemplated early in the history of the
+    Kelmscott Press. An announcement appears in a proof of the first list,
+    dated April, 1892, but it was excluded from the list as issued in May.
+    It did not reappear until the list of November 26, 1895, in which, the
+    Chaucer being near its completion, _Sigurd_ comes under the heading
+    "in preparation," as a folio in Troy type, "with about twenty-five
+    illustrations by Sir Edward Burne-Jones." In the list of June 1, 1896,
+    it is finally announced as "In the press," the number of illustrations
+    is increased to forty, and other particulars are given. Four borders
+    had then been designed for it, two of which were used on pages 470 and
+    471 of the Chaucer. The other two have not been used, though one of
+    them has been engraved. Two pages only were in type, thirty-two copies
+    of which were struck off on January 11, 1897, and given to friends,
+    with the sixteen pages of Froissart mentioned above.
+
+51. _The Sundering Flood._ Written by WILLIAM MORRIS. Overseen for the
+press by May Morris. 8vo. Chaucer type. In black and red. Border 10, and a
+map. 300 on paper at two guineas. Dated November 15, 1897, issued February
+25, 1898. Published at the Kelmscott Press. Bound in half holland.
+
+    This was the last romance by William Morris. He began to write it on
+    December 21, 1895, and dictated the final words on September 8, 1896.
+    The map pasted into the cover was drawn by H. Cribb for Walker &
+    Boutall, who prepared the block. In the edition that Longmans are
+    about to issue the bands of robbers called in the Kelmscott edition
+    Red and Black Skinners appear correctly as Red and Black Skimmers. The
+    name was probably suggested by that of the pirates called "escumours
+    of the sea" on page 154 of _Godfrey of Boloyne_.
+
+52. _Love is Enough, or the Freeing of Pharamond; A Morality._ Written by
+William Morris. Large 4to. Troy type, with stage directions in Chaucer
+type. In black, red, and blue. Borders 6a and 7, and two illustrations
+designed by Sir Edward Burne-Jones. 300 on paper at two guineas, 8 on
+vellum at ten guineas. Dated December 11, 1897, issued March 24, 1898.
+Published at the Kelmscott Press. Bound in limp vellum.
+
+    This was the second book printed in three colours at the Kelmscott
+    Press. As explained in the colophon, the final picture was not
+    designed for this particular edition.
+
+53. _A Note by William Morris on his Aims in Founding the Kelmscott Press.
+Together with a Short Description of the Press_, by S. C. COCKERELL. And
+an Annotated List of the Books Printed Thereat. Octavo. Golden type, with
+five pages in the Troy and Chaucer types. In black and red. Borders 4a and
+4, and a woodcut designed by Sir E. Burne-Jones. 525 on paper at ten
+shillings, 12 on vellum at two guineas. Dated March 4, issued March 24,
+1898. Published at the Kelmscott Press. Bound in half holland.
+
+Various Lists, Leaflets, and Announcements Printed at the Kelmscott Press:
+
+Eighteen lists of the books printed or in preparation at the Kelmscott
+Press were issued to booksellers and subscribers. The dates of these are
+May, July, and December, 1892; March 9, May 20, May 27, August 1, and
+December 1, 1893; March 31, April 21, July 2, October 1 (a leaflet), and
+December 1, 1894; July 1 and November 26, 1895; June 1, 1896; February 16
+and July 28, 1897. The three lists for 1892, and some copies of that for
+March 9, 1893, were printed on Whatman paper, the last of the stock bought
+for the first edition of _The Roots of the Mountains_. Besides these,
+twenty-nine announcements, relating mainly to individual books, were
+issued; and eight leaflets, containing extracts from the lists, were
+printed for distribution by Messrs. Morris & Co. The following items, as
+having a more permanent interest than most of these announcements, merit a
+full description:
+
+1. Two forms of invitation to the annual gatherings of the Hammersmith
+Socialist Society on January 30, 1892, and February 11, 1893. Golden type.
+
+2. A four-page leaflet for the Ancoats Brotherhood, with the frontispiece
+from the Kelmscott Press edition of _A Dream of John Ball_ on the first
+page. March, 189 Golden type. 2500 copies.
+
+3. An address to Sir Lowthian Bell, Bart., from his employees, dated 30th
+June, 1894. Eight pages. Golden type. 250 on paper and 2 on vellum.
+
+4. A leaflet, with fly-leaf, headed _An American Memorial to Keats_,
+together with a form of invitation to the unveiling of his bust in
+Hampstead Parish Church on July 16, 1894. Golden type. 750 copies.
+
+5. A slip giving the text of a memorial tablet to Dr. Thomas Sadler, for
+distribution at the unveiling of it in Rosslyn Hill Chapel, Hampstead.
+November, 1894. Golden type. 450 copies.
+
+6. Scholarship certificates for the technical Education Board of the
+London County Council, printed in the oblong borders designed for the
+pictures in Chaucer's Works. One of these borders was not used in the
+book, and this is its only appearance. The first certificate was printed
+in November, 1894, and was followed in January, 1896, by eleven
+certificates; in January, 1897, by six certificates; and in February,
+1898, by eleven certificates, all differently worded. Golden type. The
+numbers varied from 12 to 2500 copies.
+
+7. Programmes of the Kelmscott Press annual _Wayzgoose_ for the years
+1892-95. These were printed without supervision from Mr. Morris.
+
+8. Specimen showing the three types used at the Press for insertion in the
+first edition of Strange's _Alphabets_ March, 1895. 2000 ordinary copies
+and 60 on large paper.
+
+9. Cards for Associates of the Deaconess Institution for the Diocese of
+Rochester. One side of this card is printed in Chaucer type; on the other
+there is a prayer in the Troy type enclosed in a small border which was
+not used elsewhere. It was designed for the illustrations of a projected
+edition of _The House of the Wolfings_, April, 1897. 250 copies.
+
+
+
+
+INDEX.
+
+
+  A
+
+  _Æneid, The_, 122-124, 144
+
+  _Æschylus_, 262
+
+  _Agamemnon_, Browning's, 124
+
+  Allingham, William, 42, 48, 70
+
+  Amiens Cathedral, article on, by Morris, 34, 36-39
+
+  _Amis and Amile_, translation by Morris, 229
+
+  Archbishop of Canterbury, 177
+
+  Aristophanes, 262
+
+  Arnold, Matthew, 149
+
+  Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society, The, 191
+
+  Art Worker's Guild, The, 192
+
+  _Atalanta in Calydon_, Swinburne's, 229
+
+  _Athenæum, The_, 152
+
+
+  B
+
+  Bagehot, Walter, quoted, 36
+
+  _Ballads and Narrative Poems_, Rossetti's, 229
+
+  Batchelor, Mr., 221
+
+  Bax, E. Belfort, 218
+
+  _Beata Beatrix_, picture by Rossetti, 55
+
+  _Beauty of Life, The_, Morris's lecture on, 65
+
+  Belgium, 110
+
+  _Beowulf, The Tale of_, 230, 231, 262
+
+  Besant, Mrs., 180
+
+  Bethel, Alfred, article on, by Morris, 34
+
+  Bible, the, 262
+
+  _Biblia Innocentium_, Mackail's, 228
+
+  Bibliographical Society, The, 192
+
+  Birkbeck Hill, Dr., 47, 73
+
+  Birmingham Society of Artists, lecture to, 62
+
+  Blackburn, 168
+
+  Blake, William, 263
+
+  "Bloody Sunday," 179
+
+  Boccaccio, 263
+
+  _Book of Wisdom and Lies, The_, 230
+
+  Borrow, George, 263
+
+  British Museum, the woodblocks of Kelmscott Press in possession of, 235
+
+  Brown, Madox, 113
+
+  Browning, Robert, his poems, 37, 39, 40, 57-59
+
+  Bryant, William Cullen, his translation of _The Odyssey_ compared with
+      Morris's translation, 142
+
+  Bulgaria, 146
+
+  Burne-Jones, Edward, 1;
+    his first meeting with Morris, 23, 24;
+    the beginning of his art, 26;
+    his trip with Morris and Fulford through Northern France, 26, 27;
+    his decision to leave college and study art, 27;
+    his admiration for Rossetti, 26, 27 _et seq._
+
+  Bury Wood, 15, 16
+
+  Byron, 236
+
+
+  C
+
+  Cambridge University Library, 221
+
+  Canterbury Cathedral, Morris's early visit to, 6
+
+  _Canterbury Tales, The_, 115
+
+  _Captain Singleton_, 263
+
+  Carlyle, Thomas, 24, 150, 263
+
+  _Carmagnole, The_, song, 178
+
+  Carpets, 89
+
+  Catterson-Smith, R., 233
+
+  Catullus, 262
+
+  _Chants for Socialists_, 218
+
+  Chartres, 27
+
+  Chaucer, 115, 116, 119, 137, 231-234, 237, 238, 256, 262
+
+  Chaucer type, the, 224
+
+  _Child Christopher and Goldilands the Fair_, 231
+
+  Chingford Hotel, 15
+
+  Chiswick Press, the, 33, 205, 206
+
+  Clarke, William, 166
+
+  Clay Road, 15
+
+  Cockerell, S. C., 234
+
+  Coleridge's _Poems_, selection from, by Morris, 232, 263
+
+  _Colonel Jack_, 263
+
+  Colour, Morris's opinions on, 83, 84, 92
+
+  _Commonweal, The_, organ of the Socialist League, 175, 183, 185, 195,
+      201, 203, 209, 210, 218
+
+  Crane, Walter, 175, 192, 229
+
+
+  D
+
+  _Daily Chronicle, The_, Morris's letters to, concerning Epping Forest,
+      12-18;
+    letter by Morris on Socialism, 186-189
+
+  _Daily News, The_, quotation from, 146-148
+
+  _Daisy Chain, The_, its influence on Morris, 24
+
+  Dante, 262
+
+  Day, Lewis, 31, 78
+
+  _Defence of Guenevere, The_, 54, 59, 228
+
+  Democratic Federation, the, 157, 168, 170, 174, 180
+
+  De Vinne, Th., on the Kelmscott Press, 224
+
+  Dickens, Charles, 263
+
+  Dixon, Canon, 34
+
+  _Dream of John Ball, A_, 195, 201-203, 228
+
+  Dumas, Alexandre, 263
+
+  Dürer, 261
+
+  Dyes, Morris's preferences in, 91
+
+
+  E
+
+  _Earthly Paradise, The_, 59, 115, 116-120, 144, 219, 233
+
+  Eastern Question Association, The, 148
+
+  _Edda, The_, 262
+
+  Ellis, F. S., 221-232, 237
+
+  _English Illustrated Magazine, The_, 218
+
+  _Epistola de Contemptu Mundi_, 230
+
+  Epping Forest, Morris's early familiarity with, 7, 11;
+    his letters concerning its destruction, 11-18
+
+  _Erewhon_, Kingsley's, 163
+
+  _Eve of Crecy_, poem by Morris, 55
+
+  Exeter College, 193
+
+  _Exile, The_, 262
+
+  _Eyrbyggja Saga, The_, 144
+
+
+  F
+
+  Fair Mead Bottom, 15
+
+  Farringdon Road, 101, 177
+
+  Faulkner, Charles, 47, 70, 73, 108, 111, 263
+
+  _Floure and the Leafe, The_, 233
+
+  Forman, Buxton, 205, 206
+
+  Freeman, E. A., 149
+
+  Froissart, 57, 233
+
+
+  G
+
+  _Germ, The_, 33
+
+  _Gertha's Lovers_, 36
+
+  _Ghirlandata, The_, picture by Rossetti, 55
+
+  Giotto, 261
+
+  Gisli, 109
+
+  Glasgow, 168
+
+  _Glittering Plain, The_, 221, 229, 246, 248
+
+  Godefrey of Boloyne, Caxton's history of, 228
+
+  _Golden Legend_, Caxton's, 221, 223, 227, 228
+
+  Golden type, the, 221
+
+  _Goldilocks and Goldilocks_, 7, 228
+
+  _Good King Wenceslas_, ballad printed at the Kelmscott Press, 4, 5
+
+  _Gothic Architecture_, lecture by Morris, 228
+
+  Green, J. R., 149
+
+  Grettir, 109
+
+  Grimm, 263
+
+  Gudrun, 109
+
+
+  H
+
+  Hammersmith, 97, 107, 108, 176, 181, 257
+
+  Hammersmith Socialist Society, The, 185, 189
+
+  _Hand and Soul_, Rossetti's, 231
+
+  _Hardy Norseman's Home of Yore_, 149
+
+  Havre, 27
+
+  _Heir of Redclyffe, The_, 24
+
+  Herodotus, 262
+
+  Herrick's _Poems_, 231
+
+  Hesiod, 262
+
+  High Beach, 17
+
+  _History of Florence_, Arezzo's, 220
+
+  _History of Oversea_, translated by Morris, 230
+
+  _Historyes of Troye_, Caxton's, 223, 228
+
+  _Hollow Land, The_, 36, 40
+
+  Homer, 262
+
+  Hornbeams, Morris's liking for, 13
+
+  _House of the Wolfings, The_, 195, 203-205, 207, 239, 246
+
+  _Huckleberry Finn_, 263
+
+  Hughes, Arthur, 49
+
+  Hugo, Victor, 263
+
+
+  I
+
+  Iceland, Morris's first voyage to, 108-110;
+    second voyage, 110
+
+  _Idylls of the King_, Tennyson's, 126, 136
+
+  Irish National League, The, 180
+
+
+  J
+
+  _Jorrocks, Mr._, 263
+
+  _Justice_, organ of the Democratic Federation, 168, 169
+
+
+  K
+
+  Kalevala, 262
+
+  Keats, John, 24, 27, 34, 229, 238, 263
+
+  Kelmscott Church, 258
+
+  Kelmscott House, 108, 221
+
+  Kelmscott Books, prices of, 238
+
+  Kelmscott Manor House, 101-108
+
+  Kelmscott Press, The, 177, 219-239, 255
+
+  _King's Lesson, A_, 203
+
+  Kingsley, Charles, 24, 25
+
+  Koburger, Anthony, 223
+
+
+  L
+
+  Lang, Andrew, 122-124
+
+  _Laudes Beatæ Mariæ Virginis_, 233
+
+  _Laxdæla Saga, The_, 116
+
+  Lechlade, 101
+
+  Leeds, 168
+
+  Leicester, 168
+
+  Leonardo, 261
+
+  _Lesser Arts, The_, lecture by Morris on, 94
+
+  _Life and Death of Jason, The_, 114, 231, 238
+
+  _Life of Cardinal Wolsey_, Cavendish's, 228
+
+  Linnell, Alfred, 180, 181
+
+  _Looking Backward_, Bellamy's, 209
+
+  Loughton, 15
+
+  _Love is Enough_, 120-122, 219, 234
+
+  _Lovers of Gudrun, The_, 116
+
+  Lowell, J. R., quoted, 57, 229
+
+  Lucretius, 262
+
+
+  M
+
+  _Mabinogion_, 263
+
+  Mackail, Mr., 24, 33, 62, 71, 97, 110, 111, 120, 122, 150, 191, 193,
+      229, 263
+
+  Maeterlinck, Morris compared to, 57
+
+  Madox-Brown, Ford, 70
+
+  Magnusson, Mr., 108, 125
+
+  _Mahabbarata_, 262
+
+  _Making the Best of It_, lecture by Morris on house-decoration, 83
+
+  Manchester, 168
+
+  Marlborough College, Morris a student in, 6, 9
+
+  Marshall, Peter Paul, 70
+
+  _Maud_, Tennyson's, 228
+
+  Meinhold, William, 229
+
+  _Men and Women_, Browning's, reviewed by Morris, 34, 39
+
+  Merton Abbey, 175, 190
+
+  Milton, 263
+
+  _Moll Flanders_, 263
+
+  Monk Wood, 15
+
+  Morris, May (Mrs. Sparling), daughter of Wm. Morris, 177
+
+  Morris, Mrs., wife of William Morris, 51, 53, 59, 66
+
+  Morris and Co., 69;
+    formation of the firm, 69;
+    prospectus of, 71, 72;
+    dissolution of, 111-113
+
+  _Morte d'Arthur_, painting from, at Oxford Union, 49, 263
+
+  Murray, Fairfax, 230
+
+
+  N
+
+  _Nature of the Gothic, The_, 160, 228
+
+  _Newcomes, The_, quotation from, 30
+
+  Newman, Jno., 25
+
+  _News from Nowhere_, 98, 102;
+    quotation from, 103-107, 163-165, 195, 200, 209-212, 213, 238, 258
+
+  _Nibelungen Lied_, 262
+
+  Njal, 109
+
+
+  O
+
+  _Odyssey, The_, 142-144, 210
+
+  _Old Story Retold, An_, see _A King's Lesson_
+
+  _Omar Khayyam_, 262
+
+  Orbeliani, Sulkhan-Saba, 230
+
+  _Order of Chivalry, The_, Caxton's translation of, 228
+
+  _Ordination of Knighthood_, Morris's translation of, 228
+
+  Ovid, 262
+
+  Oxford, 191;
+    Morris's life at, 1-29;
+    abuses at, 22-23, 31, 41, 168, 193
+
+  _Oxford and Cambridge Magazine, The_, 33
+
+  Oxford Union, paintings for, 49-52, 54
+
+
+  P
+
+  _Pall-Mall Gazette, The_, 189, 261
+
+  Paper used at Kelmscott Press, 222
+
+  Patmore, Coventry, on Oxford Union paintings, 52, 120
+
+  _Penitential Psalms, The_, 230
+
+  Pennell, Joseph, 181
+
+  _Percyvelle of Gales, Syr_, 231
+
+  _Piers Plowman_, 262
+
+  _Pilgrims of Hope, The_, poem by Morris, 195-201
+
+  _Pilgrim's Progress_, 263
+
+  Plato, 262
+
+  _Pliny_, Jensen's 220
+
+  _Poems_, Keats's, 229
+
+  _Poems_, Shakespeare's, 228
+
+  _Poems by the Way_, 7, 227
+
+  Pollen, J. Hungerford, 49
+
+  _Praise of My Lady_, poem by Morris, 52, 53
+
+  _Prinsep_, Valentine, 49
+
+  _Prioress's Tale, The_, Burne-Jones's paintings from, 47
+
+  Professorship of Poetry at Oxford, Morris declines, 149
+
+  _Proserpine_, picture by Rossetti, 54
+
+  Pugin, 31
+
+
+  Q
+
+  Queen Square, Morris's residence in, 97, 101
+
+  _Quest, The_, article by Morris in, 102
+
+
+  R
+
+  Raphael, 261
+
+  _Rapunzel_, poem by Morris, 57
+
+  Red Lion Square, 46, 71, 81
+
+  Red House, The, 61-68, 96, 97, 101, 114
+
+  Rembrandt, 261
+
+  Restoration of ancient buildings, 32
+
+  _Reynard the Fox_, 263
+
+  _Robinson Crusoe_, 263
+
+  Robinson, Ralph, 213, 228
+
+  Rome, 61
+
+  _Roots of the Mountains, The_, 195, 207-209, 246
+
+  _Rosamond_, Swinburne's, 54
+
+  Rossetti, Dante Gabriel, 1, 9, 27;
+    Morris's first meeting with, 40-42;
+    his service to Morris, 43-46;
+    at Oxford, 49-51;
+    and Jane Burden, 51;
+    _The Defence of Guenevere_ dedicated to, 54, 55;
+    his part in the formation of the firm "Morris, Marshall, Faulkner,
+      & Co.," 69-74;
+    at Kelmscott, 101-103, 108;
+    his attitude respecting the dissolution of the firm, 111-113;
+    his _Hand and Soul_, 231
+
+  Rossetti, William, 70, 112, 113
+
+  _Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, The_, 144
+
+  Rubens, Jacobus, 220
+
+  _Ruin, The_, 262
+
+  Ruskin, 19, 23, 24, 27, 151, 160, 263
+
+
+  S
+
+  St. Mark's Cathedral, 154
+
+  Savernake Forest, Morris's early familiarity with, 7
+
+  Savonarola, 230
+
+  Schoeffer, Peter, 223
+
+  Scott, Gilbert, 31, 152
+
+  Scott, Walter, 5, 19, 263
+
+  _Shahnameh_, 262
+
+  Shakespeare, 24, 137
+
+  Shaw, Bernard, on _Nupkins Awakened_, 31, 179
+
+  Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 24, 101, 230, 263
+
+  _Shepherde's Calender, The_, 233
+
+  _Sidonia the Sorceress_, Lady Wilde's, 228
+
+  _Signs of Change_, lectures by Morris, 218
+
+  Sigurd, 109
+
+  _Sir Galahad_, 54
+
+  _Sire Degravaunt_, 66, 234
+
+  Socialism, 162-218
+
+  _Socialism from the Root Up_, book by Morris and Bax, 218
+
+  Socialist League, The, 175-177, 180, 182, 185
+
+  Society for Protection of Ancient Buildings, The, 153, 157
+
+  Society of Antiquaries, 192
+
+  Sophocles, 262
+
+  _Spectator, The_, letter from Morris in, 252
+
+  Stanhope, Spencer, 49
+
+  Stanmore Tapestry, The, 99
+
+  Stead, William, 263
+
+  Stevenson, Robert Louis, his letter to his father, 9, 124
+
+  _Stones of Venice, The_, 27, 160, 228
+
+  _Story of the Glittering Plain, The_, 109, 218, 227, 243
+
+  _Story of Sigur the Volsung, The_, 125-142, 144, 146, 227, 234, 238
+
+  Street, George Edmund, 31, 42, 63
+
+  _Sundering Flood, The_, 234, 239, 240, 242, 257
+
+  Surts-hellir, cave at, 109
+
+  _Svend and his Brethren_, 36, 37
+
+  Swainslow, 256
+
+  Swinburne, A. C., 229
+
+  _Syr Ysambrace_, 234
+
+
+  T
+
+  _Tables Turned, The; or, Nupkins Awakened_, farce by Morris, 177
+
+  _Tale of the Emperor Constans, The_, translated by Morris, 230
+
+  _Tale of King Florus and Fair Tehane_, translated by Morris, 227
+
+  Taylor, George Warrington, Morris's business manager, 97
+
+  Tennyson, Alfred, 24, 177
+
+  _Teutonic Mythology_, 263
+
+  Tewkesbury, restoration of the Abbey Church at, 152
+
+  Thackeray, William M., 24
+
+  Theocritus, 262
+
+  _Thousand and One Nights, The_, 263
+
+  _Three Northern Love-Stories and Other Tales_, translations by
+      Morris, 125
+
+  Trafalgar Square, 161, 179-181
+
+  Troy Type, The, 223, 225
+
+  Tyndall, Prof., 177
+
+
+  U
+
+  _Uncle Remus_, 263
+
+  Upton, Morris's residence at, 62, 96
+
+  _Useful Work versus Useless Toil_, lecture by Morris, 165
+
+  _Utopia_, More's, 213-217, 228, 263
+
+
+  V
+
+  Van Eyck, his motto chosen by Morris, 68
+
+  Velasquez, 261
+
+  Verona, 61
+
+  Viollet-le-Duc, 31
+
+  Virgil, 122-124, 262
+
+  _Volsunga Saga, The_, 125
+
+  _Voyage Round the World_, 263
+
+
+  W
+
+  Wagner, Richard, 135, 141
+
+  _Wake, London Lads!_ ballad by Morris, 148
+
+  Walker, Emery, 22, 205, 209
+
+  Wall-papers, 81-83
+
+  Wallace, Alfred, his suggestion that Epping Forest be planted with
+      North American trees, 11
+
+  Walthamstow, 3, 10
+
+  Wardrop, Oliver, 230
+
+  Warren, Sir Charles, 179
+
+  _Water of the Wondrous Isles, The_, 233, 240, 245, 248-251
+
+  Watts-Dunton, Theodore, 69
+
+  Waverley Novels, the, Morris's early fondness for, 3
+
+  Weaving, 85, 86
+
+  Webb, Philip, architect of the Red House, 61, 70, 75, 82, 111
+
+  _Well at the World's End, The_, 232, 245, 248
+
+  Westminster Abbey, 154, 181
+
+  White Horse, The, 30
+
+  Whitney, Miss Anne, 229
+
+  Whittingham, Charles, 33
+
+  Wilde, Lady, 228
+
+  _Women and Roses_, Browning's, 39
+
+  _Wood beyond the World, The_, Morris's, 7, 230, 242, 252
+
+  Woodford Hall, home of the Morrises, 3
+
+  Working Men's College, Burne-Jones's visit to, 40
+
+  Wyatt, A. J., 230
+
+
+  Y
+
+  Yonge, Miss, 24
+
+
+  Z
+
+  Zainer, Gunther, 223
+
+
+
+
+Messrs. MORRIS & COMPANY have appointed as their general agent Mr. A. E.
+Bulkley of 42 East 14th St., New York City, and he will be pleased to give
+all information respecting the various fabrics, etc., designed by the late
+Mr. Morris and sold by MORRIS & COMPANY. These may also be obtained of Mr.
+A. H. Davenport, 96-98 Washington St., Boston.
+
+
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] When the _Utopia_ appeared with this introduction an Eton master who
+had ordered forty copies in advance, intending the books to be used as
+prizes for the boys in his school, withdrew his order, Young England not
+being allowed at that time to keep such Socialistic company.
+
+[2] The trustees are now publishing the remainder of Morris's own works in
+the type of the Kelmscott Press, though without the ornaments, that a
+uniform edition may be had.
+
+[3] The reader here is expected to note the correspondence between the
+names of the ladies and the titles of their lovers, and the same
+correspondence is carried out in the colour of the ladies' garments and
+the armour of the knights.
+
+[4] Lewis F. Day.
+
+[5] This bibliography is reprinted, with certain slight additions, from
+the bibliography prepared by S. C. Cockerell for the monograph entitled,
+"A Note by William Morris on his Aims in Founding the Kelmscott Press."
+
+[6] At the Ellis Sale (1901) a presentation vellum copy brought £114.
+
+[7] The first sheet was printed on the 2d of March, the last on the 4th of
+April.
+
+[8] At the Ellis Sale a presentation vellum copy brought £60.
+
+[9] In this line as it originally stood, "dawn" was the rhyme provided for
+"corn." In the new line the rhyme for corn is "daylight new-born;" but Mr.
+Buxton Forman writes that Morris was wont to declare that "No South
+Englishman makes any difference in ordinary talk between dawn and morn for
+instance."
+
+[10] "When Adam dalf and Eve span, who was thanne the gentleman."
+
+[11] This book realised at the Ellis Sale £8.5s. for the paper copy, and
+£61 in vellum. Since its publication it has sold as low as £2.15s. for
+paper copies, and £29 for vellum.
+
+[12] Mr. Ellis's presentation copy sold for £91.
+
+[13] This "foreword" is a socialist document occupying pp. III to VIII.
+
+[14] At the Ellis Sale a copy on vellum (not presentation) brought £9.10s.
+
+[15] This story Morris said he translated in a day and a quarter.
+
+[16] At the Ellis Sale a paper copy brought £25.10s., while in 1900 one
+brought £27.5s.
+
+[17] Mr. Vallance says, "This is noteworthy as being the sole instance of
+a heraldic device among the _published_ designs of William Morris."
+
+[18] In the list of Dec. 1st, 1894, the 2d and 3d volumes are announced to
+follow "early in the New Year." The third volume did not, however, appear
+until the autumn of 1895.
+
+[19] Dull red silk ties. Gold lettering on back.
+
+[20] Also that 7 of the 8 vellum copies have been subscribed for.
+
+[21] In the prospectus the price for full white tooled pigskin binding
+executed under Mr. Cobden-Sanderson's direction is given at £13.
+
+[22] The quotations heading each stanza are in red, the initial letters
+pale blue, the remaining text in black.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of William Morris, by Elizabeth Luther Cary
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WILLIAM MORRIS ***
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+
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
+  <head>
+    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" />
+    <title>
+      William Morris: Poet, Craftsman, Socialist, by Elisabeth Luther Cary&mdash;A Project Gutenberg eBook
+    </title>
+
+    <style type="text/css">
+
+    p {margin-top: .75em; text-align: justify; margin-bottom: .75em;}
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+    body {margin-left: 12%; margin-right: 12%;}
+
+    .pagenum {position: absolute; left: 92%; font-size: smaller; text-align: right; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal;}
+
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+
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+
+    table {margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;}
+
+    .huge {font-size: 150%}
+
+    .blockquot {margin-left: 5%; margin-right: 10%;}
+    .poem {margin-left: 15%;}
+    .note {margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%;}
+    .index {margin-left: 20%;}
+    .caption {text-align: center; font-size: small;}
+    .title {text-align: center; font-size: 150%;}
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of William Morris, by Elizabeth Luther Cary
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: William Morris
+       Poet, Craftsman, Socialist
+
+Author: Elizabeth Luther Cary
+
+Release Date: May 18, 2012 [EBook #39725]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WILLIAM MORRIS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Chris Curnow and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images generously made available by The
+Internet Archive.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;<a name="frontis" id="frontis"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/frontis.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="center"><i>William Morris</i></p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/cover.jpg" alt="WILLIAM MORRIS: POET, CRAFTSMAN, SOCIALIST BY ELISABETH LVTHER CARY ILLVSTRATED G. P. PVTNAM&#8217;S SONS THE KNICKERBOCKER PRESS NEW YORK &amp; LONDON" /></div>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Copyright</span>, 1902<br />
+BY<br />
+G. P. PUTNAM&#8217;S SONS</p>
+<p class="center">Published, October, 1902<br />
+Reprinted, June, 1903; December, 1905</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">The Knickerbocker Press, New York</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_iii" id="Page_iii">[Pg iii]</a></span></p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/banner1.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<h2>PREFACE.</h2>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="dropcap"><span class="caps">The</span> personal life of William Morris is already known to us through Mr.
+Mackail&#8217;s admirable biography as fully, probably, as we shall ever know
+it. My own endeavour has been to present a picture of Morris&#8217;s busy career
+perhaps not less vivid for the absence of much detail, and showing only
+the man and his work as they appeared to the outer public.</p>
+
+<p>I have used as a basis for my narrative, the volumes by Mr. Mackail;
+<i>William Morris, his Art, his Writings, and his Public Life</i>, by Aymer
+Vallance; <i>The Books of William Morris</i>, by H. Buxton Forman; numerous
+articles in periodicals, and Morris&#8217;s own varied works.</p>
+
+<p>I wish to express my indebtedness to Mr. Bulkley of 42 East 14th Street,
+New York City, for permission to reproduce a number of Morris patterns in
+his possession, notably a fragment of the St. James&#8217;s wall-paper.</p>
+
+<p>Much material for the letter-press and for the illustrations I have
+obtained through the Boston Public<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_iv" id="Page_iv">[Pg iv]</a></span> Library. The <i>Froissart</i> pages were
+found there and most of the Kelmscott publications from which I have
+quoted.</p>
+
+<p>The bibliography is that prepared by Mr. S. C. Cockerell for the last
+volume of Mr. Morris issued by the Kelmscott Press, under the title of <i>A
+Note by William Morris on His Aims in Founding the Kelmscott Press</i>. To
+the Cockerell bibliography have been added a few notes of my own.</p>
+
+<p><span style="margin-left: 4em;">E. L. C.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Brooklyn</span>, Sept. 10, 1902.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/botban1.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_v" id="Page_v">[Pg v]</a></span></p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/banner2.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="title">CONTENTS.</p>
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table">
+<tr><td><small>CHAPTER</small></td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td align="right"><small>PAGE</small></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_I">I.</a>&mdash;</td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Boyhood</span></td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_1">1</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_II">II.</a>&mdash;</td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Oxford Life</span></td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_21">21</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_III">III.</a>&mdash;</td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">From Rossetti to the Red House</span></td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_46">46</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_IV">IV.</a>&mdash;</td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Morris and Company</span></td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_69">69</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_V">V.</a>&mdash;</td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">From the Red House to Kelmscott</span></td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_96">96</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_VI">VI.</a>&mdash;</td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Poetry</span></td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_114">114</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_VII">VII.</a>&mdash;</td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Public Life and Socialism</span></td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_146">146</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_VIII">VIII.</a>&mdash;</td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Public Life and Socialism</span> (<i>Continued</i>)</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_174">174</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_IX">IX.</a>&mdash;</td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Literature of the Socialist Period</span></td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_194">194</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_X">X.</a>&mdash;</td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">The Kelmscott Press</span></td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_219">219</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XI">XI.</a>&mdash;</td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Later Writings</span></td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_239">239</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XII">XII.</a>&mdash;</td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">The End</span></td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_255">255</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Bibliography</span></td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_269">269</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Index</span></td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_291">291</a></td></tr></table>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_vi" id="Page_vi">[Pg vi]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/botban_a.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_vii" id="Page_vii">[Pg vii]</a></span></p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/banner3.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="title">ILLUSTRATIONS.</p>
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table">
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td align="right"><i>Page</i></td></tr>
+<tr><td><i>William Morris</i><br /><span style="margin-left: 2em;"><i>From Life.</i></span></td>
+    <td valign="bottom" align="right"><a href="#frontis"><i>Frontispiece</i></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><i>Title-page of &#8220;The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine&#8221;</i></td>
+    <td valign="bottom" align="right"><a href="#Page_32"><i>32</i></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><i>Portrait of Rossetti</i><br /><span style="margin-left: 2em;"><i>By Watts.</i></span></td>
+    <td valign="bottom" align="right"><a href="#Page_36"><i>36</i></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><i>Illustration by Rossetti to &#8220;The Lady of Shalott&#8221; in the Moxon &#8220;Tennyson.&#8221;</i><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><i>The Head of Launcelot is a Portrait of Morris</i></span></td>
+    <td valign="bottom" align="right"><a href="#Page_43"><i>42</i></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><i>Portrait of Jane Burden (Mrs. Morris)</i><br /><span style="margin-left: 2em;"><i>By Rossetti</i></span></td>
+    <td valign="bottom" align="right"><a href="#Page_58"><i>58</i></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><i>Wall-Paper and Cotton-Print Designs</i></td>
+    <td valign="bottom" align="right"><a href="#Page_61"><i>60</i></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><span style="margin-left: 2em;"><i>&#8220;Acanthus&#8221; Wall-Paper</i></span></td></tr>
+<tr><td><span style="margin-left: 2em;"><i>&#8220;Pimpernel&#8221; Wall-Paper</i></span></td></tr>
+<tr><td><span style="margin-left: 2em;"><i>&#8220;African Marigold&#8221; Cotton-Print</i></span></td></tr>
+<tr><td><span style="margin-left: 4em;"><i>&#8220;These designs must not be taken as exact as to colour afterwards</i></span><br /><span style="margin-left: 4em;"><i>used, Mr.
+Morris using the colours to his hand and afterwards</i></span><br /><span style="margin-left: 4em;"><i>superintending the actual colouring in the course of manufacture,</i></span>
+<br /><span style="margin-left: 4em;"><i> in most cases many experimental trials being made before the</i></span>
+<br /><span style="margin-left: 4em;"><i>desired colouring was actually decided upon.&#8221;</i></span></td></tr>
+<tr><td><span style="margin-left: 2em;"><i>Reproduced from examples obtained by courtesy of Mr. A. E. Bulkley.</i></span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="center"><i>The Morris designs in this book were reproduced by<br />permission of Messrs. Morris &amp; Company.</i></td></tr>
+<tr><td><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_viii" id="Page_viii">[Pg viii]</a></span><i>&#8220;The Strawberry Thief&#8221; Design for Cotton-Print</i></td>
+    <td valign="bottom" align="right"><a href="#Page_67"><i>66</i></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><i>Tulip Design for Axminster Carpet</i></td>
+    <td valign="bottom" align="right"><a href="#Page_70"><i>70</i></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><i>Peacock Design for Coarse Wool Hangings</i></td>
+    <td valign="bottom" align="right"><a href="#Page_72"><i>72</i></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><i>Painted Wall Decoration Designed by Morris</i></td>
+    <td valign="bottom" align="right"><a href="#Page_77"><i>76</i></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><i>Painted Wall Decoration Designed by Morris</i></td>
+    <td valign="bottom" align="right"><a href="#Page_80"><i>80</i></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><i>Design for St. James&#8217;s Palace Wall-Paper</i><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;"><i>Reproduced from sample obtained through courtesy of Mr. Bulkley.</i></span></td>
+    <td valign="bottom" align="right"><a href="#Page_81"><i>82</i></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><i>Early Design for Morris Wall-Paper &#8220;Daisy and Columbine&#8221;</i></td>
+    <td valign="bottom" align="right"><a href="#Page_84"><i>84</i></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><i>Chrysanthemum Design for Wall-Paper</i></td>
+    <td valign="bottom" align="right"><a href="#Page_84"><i>84</i></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><i>Anemone Pattern for Silk and Wool Curtain Material</i></td>
+    <td valign="bottom" align="right"><a href="#Page_89"><i>88</i></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><i>Portion of Hammersmith Carpet</i></td>
+    <td valign="bottom" align="right"><a href="#Page_91"><i>90</i></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><i>Secretary Designed by the Morris Co.</i><br /><span style="margin-left: 2em;"><i>In possession of Mr. Bulkley.</i></span></td>
+    <td valign="bottom" align="right"><a href="#Page_95"><i>94</i></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><i>Sofa Designed by the Morris Co.</i><br /><span style="margin-left: 2em;"><i>In possession of Mr. Bulkley.</i></span></td>
+    <td valign="bottom" align="right"><a href="#Page_95"><i>94</i></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><i>Illustration by Burne-Jones for Projected Edition of &#8220;The Earthly Paradise,&#8221;</i>
+<br /><span style="margin-left: 1em;"><i>Cut on Wood by Morris Himself</i></span></td>
+    <td valign="bottom" align="right"><a href="#Page_97"><i>98</i></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><i>Kelmscott Manor House. Two views</i></td>
+    <td valign="bottom" align="right"><a href="#Page_101"><i>100</i></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><i>Design by Rossetti for Window Executed by Morris &amp; Co. (&#8220;The Parable of</i><br /><span style="margin-left: 1em;"><i>the Vineyard&#8221;)</i></span></td>
+    <td valign="bottom" align="right"><a href="#Page_110"><i>110</i></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><i>Design by Rossetti for Stained-Glass Window Executed by the Morris Co.</i>
+<br /><span style="margin-left: 1em;"><i>(&#8220;The Parable of the Vineyard&#8221;)</i></span></td>
+    <td valign="bottom" align="right"><a href="#Page_110"><i>110</i></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_ix" id="Page_ix">[Pg ix]</a></span><i>Morris&#8217;s Bed, with Hangings Designed by Himself and Embroidered by his</i>
+<br /><span style="margin-left: 1em;"><i>Daughter</i></span></td>
+    <td valign="bottom" align="right"><a href="#Page_116"><i>114</i></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><i>Kelmscott Manor House from the Orchard</i></td>
+    <td valign="bottom" align="right"><a href="#Page_118"><i>118</i></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><i>Portrait of Edward Burne-Jones</i><br /><span style="margin-left: 2em;"><i>By Watts.</i></span></td>
+    <td valign="bottom" align="right"><a href="#Page_120"><i>120</i></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><i>William Morris</i></td>
+    <td valign="bottom" align="right"><a href="#Page_130"><i>130</i></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><i>Picture by Rossetti in which the Children&#8217;s Faces are Portraits of May Morris</i></td>
+    <td valign="bottom" align="right"><a href="#Page_148"><i>148</i></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><i>Honeysuckle Design for Linen</i></td>
+    <td valign="bottom" align="right"><a href="#Page_165"><i>162</i></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><i>Washing Cloth at the Merton Abbey Works</i></td>
+    <td valign="bottom" align="right"><a href="#Page_175"><i>174</i></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><i>Merton Abbey Works</i></td>
+    <td valign="bottom" align="right"><a href="#Page_175"><i>174</i></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><i>Portrait of Mrs. Morris</i><br /><span style="margin-left: 2em;"><i>By Rossetti.</i></span></td>
+    <td valign="bottom" align="right"><a href="#Page_201"><i>200</i></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><i>Study of Mrs. Morris</i><br /><span style="margin-left: 2em;"><i>Made by Rossetti for picture called &#8220;The Day Dream.&#8221;</i></span></td>
+    <td valign="bottom" align="right"><a href="#Page_216"><i>216</i></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><i>Kelmscott Types</i></td>
+    <td valign="bottom" align="right"><a href="#Page_222"><i>220</i></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><i>Page from Kelmscott &#8220;Chaucer.&#8221; Illustration by Burne-Jones. Border and</i><br /><span style="margin-left: 1em;"><i>Initial Letter by Morris</i></span></td>
+    <td valign="bottom" align="right"><a href="#Page_223"><i>222</i></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><i>Title-page of the Kelmscott &#8220;Chaucer&#8221;</i></td>
+    <td valign="bottom" align="right"><a href="#Page_224"><i>224</i></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><i>The Smaller Kelmscott Press-Mark</i></td>
+    <td valign="bottom" align="right"><a href="#Page_229"><i>228</i></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><i>The Larger Kelmscott Press-Mark</i></td>
+    <td valign="bottom" align="right"><a href="#Page_229"><i>228</i></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><i>Drawing by Morris of the Letter &#8220;h&#8221; for Kelmscott Type, with Notes and</i><br /><span style="margin-left: 1em;"><i>Corrections</i></span></td>
+    <td valign="bottom" align="right"><a href="#Page_229"><i>228</i></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><i>Specimen Page from the Kelmscott &#8220;Froissart&#8221;</i><br /><span style="margin-left: 2em;"><i>Projected Edition</i></span></td>
+    <td valign="bottom" align="right"><a href="#Page_234"><i>234</i></a></td></tr></table>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/banner4.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I"></a>CHAPTER I.</h2>
+<p class="title">BOYHOOD.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="dropcap"><span class="caps">There</span> is, perhaps, no single work by William Morris that stands out as a
+masterpiece in evidence of his individual genius. He was not impelled to
+give peculiar expression to his own personality. His writing was seldom
+emotionally autobiographic as Rossetti&#8217;s always was, his painting and
+designing were not the expression of a personal mood as was the case with
+Burne-Jones. But no one of his special time and group gave himself more
+fully or more freely for others. No one contributed more generously to the
+public pleasure and enlightenment. No one tried with more persistent
+effort first to create and then to satisfy a taste for the possible best
+in the lives and homes of the people. He worked toward this end in so many
+directions that a lesser energy than his must have been dissipated and a
+weaker purpose rendered impotent. His tremendous vitality saved him from
+the most humiliating of failures, the failure to make good extravagant
+promise. He never lost sight of the result in the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span> endeavour, and his
+discontent with existing mediocrity was neither formless nor empty. It was
+the motive power of all his labour; he was always trying to make
+everything &#8220;something different from what it was,&#8221; and this instinct was,
+alike for strength and weakness, says his chief biographer, &#8220;of the very
+essence of his nature.&#8221; To tell the story of his life is to write down the
+record of dreams made real, of nebulous theories brought swiftly to the
+test of experiment, of the spirit of the distant past reincarnated in the
+present. But, as with most natures of similar mould, the man was greater
+than any part of his work, and even greater than the sum of it all. He
+remains one of the not-to-be-forgotten figures of the nineteenth century,
+so interesting was he, so impressive, so simple-hearted, so nearly
+adequate to the great tasks he set himself, so well beloved by his
+companions, so useful, despite his blunders, to society at large.</p>
+
+<p>The unity that held together his manifold forms of expression was
+maintained through the different periods of his life, making him a &#8220;whole
+man&#8221; to a more than usual degree. From the earliest recorded incidents of
+his childhood we gain an impression not unlike that made by his latest
+years, and by all the interval between. The very opposite of Rossetti,
+with whose &#8220;school&#8221; he has been so long and so mistakenly identified, his
+nature was as single as his accomplishment was complex, and the only means
+by which it is possible to get a just idea of both the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span> former and the
+latter is to regard him as a man of one preoccupation amounting to an
+obsession, the reconstruction of social and industrial life according to
+an ideal based upon the more poetic aspects of the Middle Ages. From first
+to last the early English world, the English world of the thirteenth and
+fourteenth centuries, was the world to which he belonged. &#8220;Born out of his
+due time,&#8221; in truth, he began almost from his birth to accumulate
+associations with the time to which he should have been native and whose
+far off splendour lured him constantly back toward it.</p>
+
+<p>The third of nine children, he was born at Walthamstow, in Essex, England,
+on the 24th of March, 1834. On the Morris side he came of Welsh ancestry,
+a fact accounting perhaps for the mingled gloom and romance of his
+temperament. His father was a discount broker in opulent circumstances,
+and his mother was descended from a family of prosperous merchants and
+landed proprietors. On the maternal side a strong talent for music
+existed, but in the Morris family no more artistic quality can be traced
+than a devotion to general excellence, to which William Morris certainly
+fell heir. For a time he was a sickly child, and used the opportunity to
+advance his reading, being &#8220;already deep in the Waverley novels&#8221; when four
+years old, and having gone through these and many others before he was
+seven.</p>
+
+<p>In 1840 the family removed to Woodford Hall, a house belonging to the
+Georgian period, standing in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span> about fifty acres of park, on the road from
+London to Epping, and here Morris led an outdoor life with the result of
+rapidly establishing his health, steeping mind and sense in the sights and
+sounds of nature dear to him forever after, and gaining intimate
+acquaintance with the romantic and medi&aelig;val surroundings by which his
+whole career was to be influenced. The county of Essex was well adapted to
+feed his prodigious appetite for antiquities. Its churches, in numbers of
+which Norman masonry is to be found, its ancient brasses (that of the
+schoolboy Thomas Heron being among many others within easy reach of
+Woodford), and its tapestry-hung houses, all stimulated his inborn love of
+the Middle Ages and started him fairly on that path through the thirteenth
+century which he followed deviously as long as he lived. Even in his own
+home, we are told, certain of the habits of medi&aelig;val England persisted,
+such as the brewing of beer, the meal of cakes and ale at &#8220;high prime,&#8221;
+the keeping of Twelfth Night, and other such festivals. The places he
+lived in counted for much with him always, and the impressions of this
+childish period remained, like all his later impressions, keen and
+permanent. Toward the end of his life he printed at the Kelmscott Press
+the carol <i>Good King Wenceslas</i>, which begins with a lusty freshness:</p>
+
+<p class="poem">Good King Wenceslas look&#8217;d out,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">On the feast of Stephen,</span><br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span>When the snow lay round about,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Deep and crisp and even.</span><br />
+Brightly shone the moon that night,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Though the frost was cruel,</span><br />
+When a poor man came in sight<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Gath&#8217;ring winter fuel.</span></p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The legend itself,&#8221; he comments, &#8220;is a pleasing and genuine one, and the
+Christmas-like quality of it, recalling the times of my boyhood, appeals
+to me at least as a memory of past days.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Beside angling, shooting, and riding, he very early occupied much of his
+time with visits to the old churches, a pursuit of which he was never to
+weary, studying their monuments and accumulating an amount of genuine
+erudition concerning them quite out of proportion to his rather moderate
+accomplishment along the ordinary lines of study. At an age when Scott was
+scouring his native heath in search of Border ballads and antiquities,
+this almost equally precocious boy was collecting rubbings from ancient
+inscriptions, and picturing to himself, as he wandered about the region of
+his home on foot or on horseback, the lovely face of England as it looked
+in the thirteenth or fourteenth century. In one of the earliest of the
+boyish romances that appeared in the <i>Oxford and Cambridge Magazine</i>, he
+imagines himself the master-mason of a church built more than six
+centuries before, and which has vanished from the face of the earth with
+nothing to indicate its existence save earth-covered ruins &#8220;heaving the
+yellow corn into glorious waves.&#8221; His description<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span> of the carving on the
+bas-reliefs of the west front and on the tombs shows with what loving
+intensity he has studied the most minute details of the work of the
+ancient builders in whose footsteps he would have rejoiced much to tread.
+How far his family sympathised with his tastes it is impossible to say,
+but probably not deeply. We have few hints of the personal side of his
+home-life; we know that a visit to Canterbury Cathedral with his father
+was among the indelible experiences of his first decade, and that he
+possessed among his toys a little suit of armour in which he rode about
+the park after the manner of a Froissart knight, and that is about all we
+do know until we hear of the strong disapproval of his mother and one of
+his sisters for the career that finally diverted his interest from the
+Church for which they had designed him.</p>
+
+<p>His formal education began when he was sent at the age of nine to a
+preparatory school kept by a couple of maiden ladies. There he remained
+until the death of his father in 1847. In February, 1848, he went to
+Marlborough College, a nomination to which his father had purchased for
+him. The best that can be said for this school seems to be that it was
+situated in a part of England ideally suited to a boy of arch&aelig;ological
+tastes, and was provided with an excellent arch&aelig;ological and architectural
+library. Here his eager mind browsed on the literature of English Gothic,
+and his restless feet carried him far afield among pre-Celtic barrows,
+stone circles, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span> Roman villas. Savernake Forest was close at hand and
+he spent many of his holidays within it. It was doubtless the familiarity
+with all aspects of the woods, due to his pilgrimages through Savernake
+and Epping Forests and the long roving days idled away among their
+shadows, that gave rise to the allusions in his books&mdash;early and late&mdash;to
+woodland life. The passage through the thick wood and the coming at last
+to the place where the trees thin out and the light begins to shimmer
+through them is a constantly recurring figure of his verse and of his
+prose. Frequently the important scene of a romance or of a long poem is
+laid in a wildwood, as in the story entitled <i>The Wood beyond the World</i>,
+or in <i>Goldilocks and Goldilocks</i>, the concluding poem of the volume of
+<i>Poems by the Way</i>, in which the great grey boles of the trees, the
+bramble bush, the &#8220;woodlawn clear,&#8221; and the cherished oaks are as vivid as
+the human actors in the drama. His heroes seldom fail of being deft
+woodsmen, able to thread the tangle of underbrush by blind paths, and
+observant of all the common sights and sounds of the woodland, rabbits
+scuttling out of the grass, adders sunning themselves on stones in the
+cleared spaces, wild swine running grunting toward close covert, hart and
+hind bounding across the way. They know the musty savour of water dipped
+from a forest brook, they know how to go straight to the yew sticks that
+quarter best for bow-staves, they know the feeling of the boggy moss under
+their feet, and the sound of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span> the &#8220;iron wind&#8221; through the branches in the
+depth of winter; there is no detail of wild wood life of which they are
+ignorant. This intimacy with Nature in her most secluded moments, in her
+shyest and most mysterious aspect, forms an element of inexpressible charm
+in the lovely backgrounds against which Morris delighted to place his
+visionary figures. He never tired of combining the impressions stored away
+in his mind on his boyish rambles into pictures the delicate beauty of
+which can hardly be overestimated.</p>
+
+<p>While he was at school, his already highly developed imagination found an
+outlet in constant fable-making, his tales of knights and fairies and
+miraculous adventures having a considerable popularity among his comrades,
+with whom, however, he himself was not especially popular, making friends
+with them only in a superficial fashion. Judging from the autobiographic
+fragments occasionally found in his work, he was a boy of many moods, most
+of them tinged with the self-conscious melancholy of his early poetry.
+Sentiment was strong with him, and a peculiar reticence or detachment of
+temperament kept him independent of others during his school years, and
+apparently uninfluenced by the tastes or opinions of those about him, if
+we except the case of his Anglo-Catholic proclivities, which obviously
+were fed by the tendencies of the school, but which, so far from diverting
+him from the general scheme of his individual interests, fitted into them<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span>
+and served him as another link between the present and the much preferred
+past.</p>
+
+<p>Outwardly he can hardly have seemed the typical dreamer he has described
+himself as being. Beautiful of feature, of sturdy build, with a shouting
+voice, extraordinary muscular strength, and a gusty temper, he impressed
+himself upon his comrades chiefly by his impetuosity in the energetic game
+of singlestick, by the surplus vigour that led him at times to punch his
+own head with all his might to &#8220;take it out of himself,&#8221; and by the
+vehemence and enthusiasm of his argumentative talk.</p>
+
+<p>He was little of a student along the orthodox lines, and Marlborough
+College was not calculated to increase his respect&mdash;never undue&mdash;for
+pedagogic methods. A letter written when he was sixteen to his eldest and
+favourite sister reflects quite fully his pre-occupations. It has none of
+the genuine wit and literary tone of the juvenile letter written by
+Stevenson to his father, presenting his claims for reimbursements. It
+shows no such zest for bookish pursuits as Rossetti&#8217;s letters, written at
+the same age, reveal. But it is entirely free from the shallow flippancy
+that frequently characterises the correspondence of a young man&#8217;s second
+decade&mdash;that characterised Lowell&#8217;s, for example, to an almost painful
+degree; nor has it a shade of the self-magnification to which any amount
+of flippancy is preferable. It is straightforward and boyish, and
+remarkable only as showing the thorough and intelligent method<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span> with which
+its writer followed up whatever commanded his interest. Commencing with
+the description of an anthem sung at Easter by the trained choir of
+Blore&#8217;s Chapel connected with his school, he passes on to an account of
+his arch&aelig;ological investigations, giving after his characteristic fashion
+all the small details necessary to enable his correspondent to form a
+definite picture of the places he had visited. After he had made one
+pilgrimage to the Druidical circle and Roman entrenchment at Avebury, he
+had learned of the peculiar method of placing the stones which, from the
+dislocated condition of the ruins, had not been obvious to him. Therefore
+he had returned on the following day to study it out and fix the original
+arrangement firmly in his imagination, and, at the time of writing the
+letter, was able to explain it quite clearly, a result, derived from the
+expenditure of two holidays, that was completely satisfactory to him. He
+winds up with a purely boyish plea for a &#8220;good large cake&#8221; and some
+biscuit in addition to a cheese that had been promised him, and for paper
+and postage stamps and his silkworm eggs and a pen box to be sent him from
+home.</p>
+
+<p>At school he was &#8220;always thinking about home,&#8221; and when the family moved
+again to Walthamstow, within a short distance of his first home, and to a
+house boasting a moat and a wooded island, he was eagerly responsive to
+the poetic suggestions conveyed by these romantic accessories. When at
+the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span> end of 1851 he left school to prepare under a private tutor for
+Oxford, he renewed his early familiarity with Epping Forest and spent most
+of his holidays among the trees that had not apparently changed since the
+time of Edward the Confessor. The great age of the wood and its peculiarly
+English character made a profound impression upon him, and it is easy to
+imagine the fury with which he must have received the suggestion, made
+forty years later by Mr. Alfred Wallace, that in place of &#8220;a hideous
+assemblage of stunted mop-like pollards rising from a thicket of scrubby
+bushes,&#8221; North American trees should be planted and a part of the forest
+made into an &#8220;almost exact copy&#8221; of North American woodland. Indeed, a
+suppressed but unmistakable fury breathes from the letters written to the
+<i>Daily Chronicle</i>, as late as 1895, regarding the tree-felling that was
+going on ruthlessly in the forest, destroying its native character and
+individual charm. These letters, curiously recalling those written half a
+century before concerning boyish excursions through the same region, are
+well worth quoting here, where properly they belong, as they are inspired
+by the earliest of the associations and ideals cherished by Morris to the
+end of his life. They are fine examples of his own native character in
+argument, his humbly didactic tone early caught from Ruskin and never
+relinquished, his militant irony, his willingness to fortify his position
+by painstaking investigation, his moral attitude toward matters artistic,
+his superb<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span> rightness of taste in the special problem under discussion.
+They show also how closely his memory had held through his manifold
+interests the details that had appealed to him in his boyhood. The first
+letter is dated April 23rd, and addressed to the editor of the <i>Daily
+Chronicle</i>.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&#8220;<span class="smcap">Sir</span>: I venture to ask you to allow me a few words on the subject of
+the present treatment of Epping Forest. I was born and bred in its
+neighbourhood (Walthamstow and Woodford), and when I was a boy and
+young man I knew it yard by yard from Wanstead to the Theydons, and
+from Hale End to the Fairlop Oak. In those days it had no worse foes
+than the gravel stealer and the rolling-fence maker, and was always
+interesting and often very beautiful. From what I can hear it is years
+since the greater part of it has been destroyed, and I fear, Sir, that
+in spite of your late optimistic note on the subject, what is left of
+it now runs the danger of further ruin.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The special character of it was derived from the fact that by far the
+greater part was a wood of hornbeams, a tree not common save in Essex
+and Herts. It was certainly the biggest hornbeam wood in these
+islands, and I suppose in the world. The said hornbeams were all
+pollards, being shrouded every four or six years, and were
+interspersed in many places with holly thickets, and the result was a
+very curious and characteristic wood, such as can be seen nowhere<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span>
+else. And I submit that no treatment of it can be tolerable which does
+not maintain this hornbeam wood intact.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But the hornbeam, though an interesting tree to an artist and
+reasonable person, is no favourite with the landscape gardener, and I
+very much fear that the intention of the authorities is to clear the
+forest of native trees, and to plant vile weeds like deodars and
+outlandish conifers instead. We are told that a committee of &#8216;experts&#8217;
+has been formed to sit in judgment on Epping Forest; but, Sir, I
+decline to be gagged by the word &#8216;expert,&#8217; and I call on the public
+generally to take the same position. An &#8216;expert&#8217; may be a very
+dangerous person, because he is likely to narrow his views to the
+particular business (usually a commercial one) which he represents. In
+this case, for instance, we do not want to be under the thumb of
+either a wood bailiff whose business is to grow timber for the market,
+or of a botanist whose business is to collect specimens for a
+botanical garden; or of a landscape gardener whose business is to
+vulgarise a garden or landscape to the utmost extent that his patron&#8217;s
+purse will allow of. What we want is reasonable men of real artistic
+taste to take into consideration what the essential needs of the case
+are, and to advise accordingly. Now it seems to me that the
+authorities who have Epping Forest in hand may have two intentions as
+to it. First, they may intend to landscape-garden it, or turn it into
+golf grounds (and I<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span> very much fear that even the latter nuisance may
+be in their minds); or second, they may really think it necessary (as
+you suggest) to thin the hornbeams, so as to give them a better chance
+of growing. The first alternative we Londoners should protest against
+to the utmost, for if it be carried out then Epping Forest is turned
+into a mere place of vulgarity, is destroyed in fact.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;As to the second, to put our minds at rest, we ought to be assured
+that the cleared spaces would be planted again, and that almost wholly
+with hornbeam. And, further, the greatest possible care should be
+taken that not a single tree should be felled unless it is necessary
+for the growth of its fellows. Because, mind you, with comparatively
+small trees, the really beautiful effect of them can only be got by
+their standing as close together as the emergencies of growth will
+allow. We want a thicket, not a park, from Epping Forest.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;In short, a great and practically irreparable mistake will be made
+if, under the shelter of the opinion of &#8216;experts,&#8217; from mere
+carelessness and thoughtlessness, we let the matter slip out of the
+hands of the thoughtful part of the public; the essential character of
+one of the greatest ornaments of London will disappear, and no one
+will have even a sample left to show what the great north-eastern
+forest was like. I am, Sir, yours obediently,</p>
+
+<p><span style="margin-left: 4em;">&#8220;<span class="smcap">William Morris</span></span></p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Kelmscott House, Hammersmith.&#8221;</p></div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span>The second letter is written two or three weeks later, and shows Morris as
+characteristically prompt and thorough in action as he is positive in
+speech.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&#8220;Yesterday,&#8221; he says, &#8220;I carried out my intention of visiting Epping
+Forest. I went to Loughton first, and saw the work that had been done
+about Clay Road, thence to Monk Wood, thence to Theydon Woods, and
+thence to the part about the Chingford Hotel, passing by Fair Mead
+Bottom and lastly to Bury Wood and the wood on the other side of the
+road thereby.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I can verify closely your representative&#8217;s account of the doings on
+the Clay Road, which is an ugly scar originally made by the lord of
+the manor when he contemplated handing over to the builder a part of
+what he thought was his property. The fellings here seem to me all
+pure damage to the forest, and in fact were quite unaccountable to me,
+and would surely be so to any unprejudiced person. I cannot see what
+could be pleaded for them either on the side of utility or taste.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;About Monk Wood there had been much, and I should say excessive,
+felling of trees apparently quite sound. This is a very beautiful
+spot, and I was informed that the trees there had not been polled for
+a period long before the acquisition of the forest for the public; and
+nothing could be more interesting and romantic than the effect of the
+long poles of the hornbeams rising from the trunks and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span> seen against
+the mass of the wood behind. This wood should be guarded most
+jealously as a treasure of beauty so near to &#8216;the Wen.&#8217; In the Theydon
+Woods, which are mainly of beech, a great deal of felling has gone on,
+to my mind quite unnecessary, and therefore harmful. On the road
+between the Wake Arms and the King&#8217;s Oak Hotel there has been again
+much felling, obviously destructive.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;In Bury Wood (by Sewardstone Green) we saw the trunks of a great
+number of oak trees (not pollards), all of them sound, and a great
+number were yet standing in the wood marked for felling, which,
+however, we heard had been saved by a majority of the committee of
+experts. I can only say that it would have been a very great
+misfortune if they had been lost; in almost every case where the
+stumps of the felled trees showed there seemed to have been no reason
+for their destruction. The wood on the other side of the road to Bury
+Wood, called in the map Woodman&#8217;s Glade, has not suffered from
+felling, and stands as an object lesson to show how unnecessary such
+felling is. It is one of the thickest parts of the forest, and looks
+in all respects like such woods were forty years ago, the growth of
+the heads of the hornbeams being but slow; but there is no difficulty
+in getting through it in all directions, and it has a peculiar charm
+of its own not to be found in any other forest; in short, it is
+thoroughly <i>characteristic</i>. I should mention that the whole of these<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span>
+woods are composed of pollard hornbeams and &#8216;spear&#8217;&mdash;<i>i.e.</i>,
+unpolled&mdash;oaks.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I am compelled to say from what I saw in a long day&#8217;s inspection,
+that, though no doubt acting with the best intentions, the management
+of the forest is going on the wrong tack; it is making war on the
+natural aspect of the forest, which the Act of Parliament that
+conferred it on the nation expressly stipulated was to be retained.
+The tendency of all these fellings is on the one hand to turn over
+London forest into a park, which would be more or less like other
+parks, and on the other hand to grow sizable trees, as if for the
+timber market. I must beg to be allowed a short quotation here from an
+excellent little guidebook to the forest by Mr. Edward North Buxton,
+verderer of the forest (Sanford, 1885). He says, p. 38: &#8216;In the drier
+parts of the forest beeches to a great extent take the place of oaks.
+These &#8220;spear&#8221; trees will make fine timber for future generations,
+provided they receive timely attention by being <i>relieved of the
+competing growth of the unpicturesque hornbeam pollards</i>. Throughout
+the wood between Chingford and High Beech, <i>this has been recently
+done</i>, to the great advantage of the finer trees.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The italics are mine, and I ask, Sir, if we want any further evidence
+than this of one of the verderers as to the tendency of the fellings.
+Mr. Buxton declares in so many words that he wants to change the
+special character of the forest; to take<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span> away this strange,
+unexampled, and most romantic wood, and leave us nothing but a
+commonplace instead. I entirely deny his right to do so in the teeth
+of the Act of Parliament. I assert, as I did in my former letter, that
+the hornbeams are the most important trees in the forest, since they
+give it its special character. At the same time I would not encourage
+the hornbeams at the expense of the beeches, any more than I would the
+beeches at the expense of the hornbeams. I would leave them all to
+nature, which is not so niggard after all, even on Epping Forest
+gravel, as <i>e. g.</i>, one can see in places where forest fires have
+denuded spaces, and where in a short time birches spring up self-sown.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The committee of the Common Council has now had Epping Forest in hand
+for seventeen years, and has, I am told, in that time felled 100,000
+trees. I think the public may now fairly ask for a rest on behalf of
+the woods, which, if the present system of felling goes on, will be
+ruined as a natural forest; and it is good and useful to make the
+claim at once, when, in spite of all disfigurements, the northern part
+of the forest, from Sewardstone Green to beyond Epping, is still left
+to us, not to be surpassed in interest by any other wood near a great
+capital. I am, Sir, yours obediently,</p>
+
+<p><span style="margin-left: 4em;">&#8220;<span class="smcap">William Morris.</span>&#8221;</span></p></div>
+
+<p>These letters emphasise in a single instance what the close student of
+Morris will find emphasised at<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span> every turn in his career,&mdash;the persistent
+and strong influence over him of the tastes and occupations of his
+boyhood. Unless this is kept constantly in mind, it is easy to fall into
+the common error of regarding the various activities into which he threw
+himself as separate and dissociated instead of seeing them as they were,
+component parts of a perfectly simple purpose and unalterable ideal. With
+most men who are on the whole true to the analogy of the chambered
+nautilus and cast off the outworn shell of their successive phases of
+individuality as the seasons roll, the effect of early environment and
+tendency may easily be exaggerated, but Morris grew in the fashion of his
+beloved oaks, keeping the rings by which his advance in experience was
+marked; at the end all were visible. His education began and continued
+largely outside the domain of books and away from masters. His wanderings
+in the depths of the quaint and beautiful forest, his intimate
+acquaintance with the nature of Gothic architecture, his familiarity with
+Scott, his prompt adoption of Ruskin, all these formed the foundation on
+which he was to build his own theory of life, and all were his before he
+went up to Oxford. They prepared him for the many-sided profession, if
+profession it can be called, which was to absorb and at last to exhaust
+his mighty energy. It was the tangible surface of the world that most
+inspired him in boyhood and in maturity. Loving so much even as a child
+its aspects, its lights and shadows, the forms of trees and birds and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span>
+beasts, the changes of season, the lives of men living close to &#8220;the kind
+soil&#8221; and in touch with it through hearty manual labour, it was but a step
+to the occupations that finally engrossed him. He never got so far away
+from the visions of his youth as to forget them. In one form or another he
+was constantly trying to embody them that others might see them with his
+eyes and worship them with his devotion. &#8220;The spirit of the new days, of
+our days,&#8221; says the old man in <i>News from Nowhere</i>, &#8220;was to be delight in
+the life of the world, intense and almost overweening love of the very
+skin and surface of the earth on which man dwells.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/botban2.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span></p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/banner5.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II"></a>CHAPTER II.</h2>
+<p class="title">OXFORD LIFE.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="dropcap"><span class="caps">Like</span> the majority of the students who went up to Oxford in the fifties,
+Morris matriculated with the definite intention of taking holy orders.
+Unlike the majority, he was impelled not only by the sensuous beauty of
+ritualistic worship, to which, however, no one could have been more keenly
+alive than he, but by a genuine enthusiasm for a life devoted to high
+purposes. A fine buoyant desire to better existing conditions and sweep as
+much evil as possible off the face of the earth early inspired him. His
+mind turned toward the conventual life as that which combined the medi&aelig;val
+suggestions always alluring to him with the moral beauty of holiness. He
+planned a &#8220;Crusade and Holy Warfare against the Age,&#8221; sang plain song at
+daily morning service, read masses of medi&aelig;val chronicles and
+ecclesiastical Latin poetry, and hovered just this side of the Roman
+Communion. Had the ecclesiology of the University been supported at that
+time by an inward and spiritual grace sufficient to hold the heart<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span> of
+youth to a sustained allegiance, there is little doubt that Morris would
+have thrown himself ardently into the religious path. But Oxford had
+become an indolent and indifferent mother to her children. The storm of
+feeling aroused by the Tractarian movement had died down and the reaction
+from it was evident. At Balliol Jowett&#8217;s energy had made its mark, but at
+Exeter, where Morris was, the educational system deserved (and received)
+the contempt of an ambitious boy with an unusually large supply of
+stored-up intellectual force seeking outlet and guidance. Nor was the
+social life more stimulating to moral activity. The abuses recorded in
+1852 by the University Commission were in essence so shameful that in the
+light of that famous report &#8220;the sweet city with her dreaming spires&#8221;
+seems to have only the beauty of the daughter of Helios, under whose
+enchantments men were turned to swine for loving her. The clean mind and
+honest nature of Morris revolted from the excesses that went on about him.
+He wrote to his mother two years after his matriculation, defending the
+proposition that his Oxford education had not been thrown away: &#8220;If by
+living here and seeing evil and sin in its foulest and coarsest forms, as
+one does day by day, I have learned to hate any form of sin and to wish to
+fight against it, is not this well too?&#8221; It is proof of his purity of
+taste and strength of will that, despite his ample means, the wanton
+extravagance of the typical undergraduate had for him no allurement. It is
+certain that he was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span> never seen at those dinners which were pronounced by
+an official censor &#8220;a curse and a disgrace to a place of Christian
+education,&#8221; and as certainly he played no part in the mad carnivals at
+which novices were initiated into a curriculum of vice. Yet he could not
+indeed say with any truth what Gibbon had said a hundred years before,
+that the time he spent at Oxford was the most idle and unprofitable of his
+whole life. If he felt, as Gibbon did, that his formal studies were
+&#8220;equally devoid of profit and pleasure,&#8221; and if he found nothing
+ridiculous in Ruskin&#8217;s bitter complaint that Oxford taught him all the
+Latin and Greek that he would learn, but did not teach him that
+fritillaries grew in Iffley meadow, he did find a little band of helpful
+associates. With these he realised the priceless advantages which Mr.
+Bagehot says cannot be got outside a college and which he sums up as found
+&#8220;in the books that all read because all like; in what all talk of because
+all are interested; in the argumentative walk or disputatious lounge; in
+the impact of fresh thought on fresh thought, of hot thought on hot
+thought; in mirth and refutation, in ridicule and laughter.&#8221; The first of
+the few strong personal attachments in the life of Morris dates from his
+first day at Oxford. At the end of January, 1853, he went up for his
+matriculation, and beside him at the examination in the Hall sat
+Burne-Jones, who within a week of their formal entrance to the college
+became his intimate. The friendship thus spontaneously formed on the verge
+of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span> manhood lasted until Morris died. In their studies, in their truant
+reading, in their later aims and work, the two, diametrically as they
+differed in aspect and in temperament and in quality of mind, were
+sympathetic and dear companions. Together they joined a group of other
+happily gifted men&mdash;Fulford, Faulkner, Dixon, Cormell Price, and
+Macdonald&mdash;who met in one another&#8217;s rooms for the disputatious lounge over
+the exuberant ideals by which they were in common inspired. Tennyson,
+Keats, and Shelley, Shakespeare, Ruskin, Carlyle, Kingsley, Thackeray,
+Dickens, and Miss Yonge were the gods and half gods of their young and
+passionate enthusiasm. The last, curiously enough, was an influence as
+potent as any. The hero of her novel of 1853, <i>The Heir of Redclyffe</i>, was
+the pattern chosen by Morris, according to Mr. Mackail&#8217;s account, to build
+himself upon. Singular as it seems to-day that any marked impression
+should have been made upon an even fairly well-trained mind by a writer of
+such slight literary quality, it is true that the author of <i>The Daisy
+Chain</i> counted among her devoted readers men of brilliant and dominant
+intellectual power. She had the lucky touch to kindle in young minds that
+fire of sympathy with which they greet whatever shows them their own
+world, their age, themselves as they best like to see them. To Morris in
+particular the young heir of Redclyffe made the appeal of a congenial
+temperament in a position similar to his own. Like Morris, he was
+headstrong and passionate, given<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span> to excessive bursts of rage and to
+repentances not less excessive; like Morris, he united to his natural
+pride an unnatural and slightly obtrusive humility; like Morris, he was
+rich and beautiful, generous and lovable. It was no great wonder that
+Morris, poring with his characteristic absorption over the pleasant pages
+on which Guy Morville&#8217;s chivalrous life is portrayed, said as Dromio to
+Dromio, &#8220;Methinks you are my glass and not my brother; I see by you I am a
+sweet-faced youth.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Mackail notes with an accent of surprise that Kingsley was much more
+widely read than Newman, thinking the choice a curious one in the case of
+passionate Anglo-Catholics. So far as Morris was concerned, however, there
+was little enough to relish in Newman&#8217;s subtle theology and relentless
+logic. The man to whom religion as a mere sentiment was &#8220;a dream and a
+mockery&#8221; could hardly appeal to one to whom all life was a sentiment.
+Kingsley, on the other hand, although he was anti-Catholic in temper, and
+disposed to overthrow the illusions by which such romanticists as Scott,
+such dreamers as Fouqu&eacute;, had surrounded the Middle Ages, picturing their
+coarse and barbarous side with harsh realism, was happy in rendering the
+charms of outdoor life and bold adventure, and the songs of the Crusaders
+in his <i>Saint&#8217;s Tragedy</i> must have gone farther toward winning Morris than
+pages of Newman&#8217;s reasoning devotion.</p>
+
+<p>Gradually the monastic ideal faded before the brightness of art and
+literature and the life of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span> world as these became more and more
+impressed upon Morris&#8217;s consciousness. To live in the spirit and in the
+region of purely intellectual interests could not have been his choice
+after the passing of the first fanatic impulse of youth to dedicate itself
+to what is difficult, ignorant of the joy of choosing. Many influences
+united to determine the precise form into which he should shape the future
+that for all practical purposes was under his control. His interest in
+pictorial art was stimulated by Burne-Jones, who was already making
+fantastic little drawings, and studies of flowers and foliage. Of great
+art he knew nothing until he spent the Long Vacation of 1854 in travelling
+through Belgium and Northern France, where he saw Van Eyck and Memling,
+who at once became to him, as they were to Rossetti, masters of
+incontestable supremacy. On this trip he saw also the beautiful churches
+of Amiens, Beauvais, and Chartres, which in his unbridled expansiveness of
+phrase he called &#8220;the grandest, the most beautiful, the kindest, and most
+loving of all the buildings that the earth has ever borne.&#8221; The following
+year he repeated the experience, with Burne-Jones and Fulford for
+companions. This time the journey was to have been made on foot from
+motives of economy, as Burne-Jones was poor and Morris embraced the habits
+of poverty when in his company with unaffected delicacy of feeling. At
+Amiens, however, Morris went lame, and, &#8220;after filling the streets with
+imprecations on all boot-makers,&#8221; bought a pair of gay<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span> carpet slippers in
+which to continue the trip. These proved not to serve the purpose, and the
+travellers were obliged to reach Chartres by the usual methods of
+conveyance, Morris arguing with fury and futility in favour of skirting
+Paris, &#8220;even by two days&#8217; journey, so as not to see the streets of it.&#8221;
+They had with them one book, <i>Keats</i>, and their minds were filled with the
+poetic ideas of art as the expression of man&#8217;s pleasure in his toil, and
+of beauty as the natural and necessary accompaniment of productive labour,
+which Ruskin had been preaching in <i>The Stones of Venice</i> and in the
+Edinburgh lectures. By this time they had become acquainted with the work
+of the Pre-Raphaelites, and Burne-Jones had announced that of all men who
+lived on earth the one he wanted to see was Rossetti. Morris had used his
+spare time, of which we may imagine he had a considerable amount, in the
+study of medi&aelig;val design as the splendid manuscripts in the Bodleian
+Library illustrate it. An architectural newspaper also formed part of his
+regular reading outside of his studies. Thus primed for definite action,
+on this holiday filled with stimulating interests and the delicious
+freedom of roaming quite at will with the best of companions through the
+sweet fertile country of Northern France, Morris put quite aside all aims
+that had not directly to do with art. He and Burne-Jones, walking late one
+night on the quays of Havre, discussed their plans. Both gave up once and
+for all the idea of taking orders; both<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span> decided to leave Oxford as
+quickly as they could; both were to be artists, Burne-Jones a painter and
+Morris an architect.</p>
+
+<p>Although Morris was never to become a practising architect, this choice of
+a profession at the beginning of his career is both characteristic and
+significant. Buildings, as we have seen, had interested him from his
+childhood. His favourite excursions, long and short, had been to the
+region of churches. In the art of building he saw the means of elevating
+all the tastes of man. Architecture meant to him &#8220;the art of creating a
+building with all the appliances fit for carrying on a dignified and happy
+life.&#8221; It seemed to him even at the outset, before the word &#8220;socialism&#8221;
+had come into his vocabulary, incredible that people living in pleasant
+homes and engaged in making and using these appliances of which he speaks,
+should lead lives other than dignified and happy. It was much more in
+accordance with his ideal of a vocation, a ministry to man, that he should
+contribute to the daily material comfort and pleasure of the world, that
+he should make places good for the body to live in and fair for the eye to
+rest upon, and therefore soothing to the soul, than that he should
+construct abstract spiritual mansions of which he could at best form but a
+vague conception. It was, then, with a certain sense of dedication, an
+exchange of method without a change of spirit, that he gave up the thought
+of holy orders and turned to the thought of furthering the good of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span>
+mankind by working toward the beauty and order of the visible world.</p>
+
+<p>From the point of view of his later interests as a decorator of houses, he
+was showing the utmost wisdom in beginning with the framework, which must
+exist before any decoration can be applied. &#8220;I have spoken of the popular
+arts,&#8221; he says himself, in one of his lectures, &#8220;but they might all be
+summed up in that one word Architecture; they are all parts of that great
+whole, and the art of house-building begins it all. If we did not know how
+to dye or to weave; if we had neither gold nor silver nor silk, and no
+pigments to paint with but half a dozen ochres and umbers, we might yet
+frame a worthy art that would lead to everything, if we had but timber,
+stone and lime, and a few cutting tools to make these common things not
+only shelter us from wind and weather but also express the thoughts and
+aspirations that stir in us. Architecture would lead us to all the arts,
+as it did with the earlier men; but if we despise it and take no note of
+how we are housed, the other arts will have a hard time of it indeed.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>And again: &#8220;A true architectural work,&#8221; he says, &#8220;is a building duly
+provided with all the necessary furniture, decorated with all due
+ornament, according to the use, quality, and dignity of the building, from
+mere mouldings or abstract lines to the great epical works of sculpture
+and painting, which except as decorations of the nobler form of such
+buildings<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span> cannot be produced at all. So looked upon, a work of
+architecture is a harmonious, co-operative work of art, inclusive of all
+the serious arts&mdash;those which are not engaged in the production of mere
+toys or ephemeral prettinesses.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Morris communicated his momentous decision to his family as soon as it was
+made, and they received it with amazement and distress. While their origin
+was not especially aristocratic, their tastes ran toward the symbols of
+aristocracy. When Morris was nine years old, his father obtained a grant
+of arms from the Heralds&#8217; College, and the son had no small liking for the
+bearings assigned&mdash;bearings which included a horse&#8217;s head erased argent
+between three horseshoes. The horse&#8217;s head he introduced on the tiles and
+glass of the house he built for himself in later years, and he was in the
+habit of making a yearly pilgrimage to the famous White Horse of the
+Berkshire Downs, connecting it in some obscure way with his ancestry. In
+England, during the fifties, nothing was less calculated to appeal to an
+aristocratic tendency than any form of art considered as a profession. In
+<i>The Newcomes</i> Mr. Honeyman remarks with bland dignity to his aspiring
+young relative; &#8220;My dear Clive, there are degrees in society which we must
+respect. You surely cannot think of being a professional artist.&#8221; In much
+this spirit, apparently, Mrs. Morris received her son&#8217;s announcement,
+conveyed in a long and affectionate letter stating in detail the motives
+that had led him to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span> his resolution. After defending his chosen profession
+at some length, calling it with characteristic avoidance of pompous
+phraseology, &#8220;a useful trade,&#8221; he dwells upon the moderation of his hopes
+and expectations. He does not hope &#8220;to be great at all in anything,&#8221; but
+thinks he may look forward to reasonable happiness in his work. It will be
+grievous to his pride and self-will, he says, to have to do just as he is
+told for three long years, but &#8220;good for it, too,&#8221; and he looks forward
+with little delight to the drudgery of learning a new trade, but is pretty
+confident of success, and is happy in being able to pay &#8220;the premium and
+all that&#8221; without laying any fresh burden of expense upon his mother.
+Finally he proposes taking as his master George Edmund Street, who was
+living in Oxford as architect of the diocese, and whose enthusiasm for the
+thirteenth century could hardly have failed to claim the sympathy of
+Morris. Certainly it seemed precisely the fitting opportunity that
+offered. There could have been no better moment for him to follow the
+advice he so frequently gave to others&mdash;to turn his back upon an ugly age,
+choose the epoch that suited him best, and identify himself with that.
+Gothic to the core, he had come to Oxford, not, as Mr. Day has suggested,
+to catch the infection of medi&aelig;valism abroad there, but to assimilate and
+thrive upon all the influences to which his independently medi&aelig;val spirit
+was acutely susceptible. Scott, Pugin, Shaw, Viollet-le-Duc, had broken
+the way through popular prejudice, and Street was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span> engaged at the time
+Morris went to him in the work of restoring ancient churches and designing
+Gothic buildings. &#8220;Restoration&#8221; had not then so evil a sound to Morris as
+it later came to have. Some thirty years after, he was to say: &#8220;No man or
+no body of men, however learned they may be in ancient art, whatever skill
+in design or love of beauty they may have, can persuade, or bribe, or
+force our workmen of to-day to do their work in the same way as the
+workmen of King Edward I. did theirs. Wake up Theodoric the Goth from his
+sleep of centuries and place him on the throne of Italy, turn our modern
+House of Commons into the Witenagemote (or Meeting of the Wise Men) of
+King Alfred the Great!&mdash;no less a feat is the restoration of an ancient
+building.&#8221; In 1855, however, he had not fully arrived at this conviction.
+It was then the period of &#8220;fresh hope and partial insight&#8221; which,
+regarding it retrospectively, he says, &#8220;produced many interesting
+buildings and other works of art, and afforded a pleasant time indeed to
+the hopeful but very small minority engaged in it, in spite of all
+vexations and disappointments.&#8221; There seemed no reason to suppose that,
+helped as he was by his predilections and by his environment, he could not
+become the master-builder of the house beautiful that constantly haunted
+his imagination.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img01.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="caption">TITLE-PAGE OF &#8220;THE OXFORD AND CAMBRIDGE MAGAZINE&#8221;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>He was not to begin at once, however. In deference to his mother&#8217;s wish he
+went through his final term, passed in the Final Schools without
+difficulty,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span> and, together with his companions&mdash;The Brotherhood as they
+now called themselves,&mdash;gave distinction to his last year at the
+University, where despite all drawbacks he had been aboundingly happy, by
+founding the since famous little <i>Oxford and Cambridge Magazine</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Like the Pre-Raphaelite <i>Germ</i>, this periodical aimed at an unusually high
+standard. It was printed at the Chiswick Press with some pretensions to
+typographical beauty. Each number had upon its title-page an ornamental
+heading designed by one of Charles Whittingham&#8217;s daughters and engraved by
+Mary Byfield. On the green wrappers the name of the magazine was printed
+in the old-fashioned type which the Chiswick Press was the first to
+revive, and although, unlike <i>The Germ</i>, it was not illustrated,
+photographs of Woolner&#8217;s medallions of Carlyle and Tennyson were mounted
+to bind with it and sold at a shilling apiece to subscribers. The price of
+each number was also a shilling, and twelve monthly numbers appeared,
+making it thrice as long lived as its prototype, <i>The Germ</i>. The financial
+responsibility, says Mr. Mackail, was undertaken wholly by Morris, and he
+at first attempted the general control. This he was soon glad to
+relinquish, paying a salary of a hundred pounds a year to his editor. The
+title, which in full read <i>The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine, Conducted by
+Members of the Two Universities</i>, indicates rather more co-operation than
+existed, the magazine being conducted entirely by Oxford men<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span> and fully
+two-thirds written by them. The tone of the contributions was to be
+impeccable. &#8220;It is unanimously agreed,&#8221; wrote Price, &#8220;that there is to be
+no shewing off, no quips, no sneers, no lampooning in our Magazine.&#8221;
+Politics were to be almost eschewed, &#8220;Tales, Poetry, friendly Critiques,
+and social articles&#8221; making up the body of the text.</p>
+
+<p>First among the contributors in quantity and regularity of supply was
+Morris. During his second year at the University he had discovered that he
+could write poetry, and had communicated the fact to his companions
+without loss of time. Canon Dixon, recalling the very thrilling occasion
+of his reading his first poem to the group gathered in the old Exeter
+rooms occupied by Burne-Jones, affirms that he reached his perfection at
+once, that nothing could have been altered for the better, and also quotes
+him as saying, &#8220;Well, if this is poetry, it is very easy to write.&#8221; He was
+not one to let a capability fust in him unused. Poetry and prose, equally
+easy to him, poured after this from his pen, giving expression with some
+confusion and incoherence to his boyish raptures over the things he best
+loved and most thought about. During the twelve months of the magazine&#8217;s
+life he contributed to it five poems, eight prose tales, a review of
+Browning&#8217;s <i>Men and Women</i>, and two special articles, one on a couple of
+engravings by Alfred Bethel and one on the Cathedral at Amiens. In all
+this early work, filled with superabundant imagery, self-conscious,
+sensuous, <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span>unsubstantial, pictorial, we have Morris the writer as he was
+at the beginning and much as he was again at the end. His first strange
+little romances pass before the eyes as his late ones do, like strips of
+beautiful fabric, deeply dyed with colours both dim and rich, and printed
+with faintly outlined figures in postures illustrating the dreamy events
+of dreamy lives. Many of the pages echo with the sound of trumpets and the
+clash of arms, but the echo is from so far away that the heart of the
+reader declines to leap. Passionate emotions are portrayed in passionate
+language. Men and women love and die with wild adventure. Splendid
+sacrifices are made, and dark revenges taken. But the effect is of
+marionettes, admirably costumed and ingeniously managed yet inevitably
+suggesting artifice and failing to suggest life. Nevertheless Morris wrote
+in the fashion commonly supposed to impart vitality if nothing else to
+composition. He sat up late of nights, after the manner of young writers,
+and let his words stand as they fell hot and unpremeditated on the page.
+The labour of learning the art, as his favourite, Keats, learned it, by
+indefatigable practice in finding the perfect word, the one exquisite
+phrase, was quite outside his method. As long as he lived, he preferred
+rewriting to revising a manuscript. The austerity of mind that leads to
+impatience of superfluous colour or tone, and that dreads as the plague
+superfluous sentiment, was foreign to him, nor did he ever acquire it as
+even the Epicurean temperament may do by ardent<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span> self-restraint. In most
+of the romances and poems the scene is laid somewhat vaguely but
+unmistakably in the Middle Ages. We rarely surprise the young writer in a
+date, but the atmosphere is that of the thirteenth century though with
+many thirteenth-century characteristics left out. The incidents appeal to
+what Bagehot calls &#8220;that kind of boyish fancy which idolises medi&aelig;val
+society as the &#8216;fighting time.&#8217;&#8221; The distinction lies in the fertility and
+beauty of the descriptions. On nearly every page is some passage that has
+the quality of a picture. In <i>The Hollow Land</i>, in <i>Gertha&#8217;s Lovers</i>, in
+<i>Svend and his Brethren</i>, and especially in the article on the Amiens
+Cathedral, are exquisite landscapes and backgrounds against which the
+personages group themselves with perfect fittingness. &#8220;I must paint Gertha
+before I die,&#8221; said Burne-Jones, after Morris himself was dead, recalling
+the charm of this story which was written in his company, under the
+willows by the riverside. &#8220;The opening and the closing sentences always
+invited me in an indescribable way, but the motive <i>par excellence</i> was
+that of Gertha after death, in the chapter entitled &#8216;What Edith the
+Handmaiden Saw from the War Saddle,&#8217; where the beautiful queen lies on the
+battle-field with the blue speedwell about her pale face, while a soft
+wind rustles the sunset-lit aspens overhead.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img02.jpg" alt="" /><br /><img src="images/img02sig.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="center"><i>Portrait of Rossetti</i><br /><i>By Watts</i></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>To his genius for evoking a scene from memory or imagination with a grace
+and delicacy missing in the designs he was later to make with tools more
+rebellious than words, Morris added a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span> singular ability to convey to
+his readers the most significant quality of what he admired, to impress
+them with the feature that had most impressed him. The fancy for gold,
+inspired perhaps by study of medi&aelig;val illumination, runs like a glittering
+thread through the story of <i>Svend and his Brethren</i>. Cissela&#8217;s gold hair,
+her crown of gold, the golden ring she breaks with her lover, the gold
+cloth over which she walks across the trampled battle-field, the samite of
+purple wrought with gold stars, the golden letters on the
+sword-blade,&mdash;all these recur like so many bright accents from which the
+attention cannot escape. Again, in the description of Amiens Cathedral, we
+get from simple verbal repetition the effect of massive modelling, the
+sense of weight in the design as Morris felt it in one of the sculptured
+figures of the niches: &#8220;A stately figure with a king&#8217;s crown on his head,
+and hair falling in three waves over his shoulders; a very kingly face
+looking straight onward; a great jewelled collar falling heavily to his
+elbows: his right hand holding a heavy sceptre formed of many budding
+flowers, and his left just touching in front the folds of his raiment that
+falls heavily, very heavily to the ground over his feet. Saul, King of
+Israel.&#8221; In another passage describing with minute detail the figures of
+the Virgin and Child, a similar emphasis is laid on the quality of
+restfulness. &#8220;The two figures are very full of rest; everything about them
+expresses it from the broad forehead of the Virgin, to the resting of the
+feet of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span> the Child (who is almost self-balanced) in the fold of the robe
+that she holds gently, to the falling of the quiet lines of her robe over
+her feet, to the resting of its folds between them.&#8221; And if the effect to
+be rendered is one of colour, a touch of finer eloquence is added to this
+somewhat crude method. The final passage of the account of the great
+Cathedral is a genuine triumph of poetic observation, carrying the fancy
+of the reader lightly over the silvery loveliness of the picture as it lay
+before the boy enraptured by it: &#8220;And now, farewell to the church that I
+love, to the carved temple-mountain that rises so high above the
+water-meadows of the Somme, above the grey roofs of the good town.
+Farewell to the sweep of the arches, up from the bronze bishops lying at
+the west end, up to the belt of solemn windows, where, through the painted
+glass, the light comes solemnly. Farewell to the cavernous porches of the
+west front, so grey under the fading August sun, grey with the
+wind-storms, grey with the rain-storms, grey with the beat of many days&#8217;
+sun, from sunrise to sunset; showing white sometimes, too, when the sun
+strikes it strongly; snowy-white, sometimes, when the moon is on it, and
+the shadows growing blacker; but grey now, fretted into deeper grey,
+fretted into black by the mitres of the bishops, by the solemn covered
+heads of the prophets, by the company of the risen, and the long robes of
+the judgment-angels by hell-mouth and its flames gaping there, and the
+devils that feed it; by the saved souls and the crowning<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span> angels; by the
+presence of the Judge, and by the roses growing above them all forever.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The review of Browning&#8217;s <i>Men and Women</i>, then recently published, is more
+valuable as testifying to the impression produced by Browning upon his
+young contemporary, than for any especial illumination it throws upon the
+poems themselves. Browning was popular with the students of Oxford long
+before he gained his wider audience, and although Morris did not follow
+him far in his investigation of the human soul and came heartily to
+dislike &#8220;his constant dwelling on sin and probing of the secrets of the
+heart,&#8221; he placed him at the time of writing his criticism &#8220;high among the
+poets of all time&#8221; and he &#8220;hardly knew whether first or second in our
+own,&#8221; and his defence of him, bristling with ejaculations, and couched in
+boyish phrases, shows in part a more than boyish divination. &#8220;It does not
+help poems much to <i>solve</i> them,&#8221; he says, after what, in truth, is a
+somewhat disastrous attempt to interpret the meaning of <i>Women and Roses</i>,
+&#8220;because there are in poems so many exquisitely small and delicate turns
+of thought running through their music, and along with it, that cannot be
+done into prose, any more than the infinite variety of form, and shadow,
+and colour in a great picture can be rendered by a coloured woodcut.&#8221; It
+was &#8220;a bitter thing&#8221; to him to see the way in which the poet had been
+received by &#8220;almost everybody,&#8221; and he assured his little world that what
+the critics called obscurity in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span> Browning&#8217;s poems resulted from depth of
+thought and greatness of subject on the poet&#8217;s part, and on his readers&#8217;
+part, &#8220;from their shallower brains and more bounded knowledge,&#8221; if not
+indeed from &#8220;mere wanton ignorance and idleness,&#8221; and to this kind of
+obscurity one had little right to object. It was the first tilt in the
+lists, the beginning of the long combat against the Philistines upon which
+Morris entered with high resolve and firm conviction, which he lustily
+enjoyed, and in which despite many a broken lance he bore himself as a
+bold and skilful knight.</p>
+
+<p>In the little tale called <i>The Hollow Land</i>, written for the magazine just
+before it &#8220;went to smash,&#8221; to use Burne-Jones&#8217;s expressive phrase, an
+amusingly significant sentence occurs: &#8220;Then I tried to learn painting,&#8221;
+says the hero, &#8220;till I thought I should die, but at last learned through
+very much pain and grief.&#8221; Here it is not difficult to recognise an
+autobiographic touch. Painting was already beginning to beckon Morris away
+from the profession he had so recently chosen. At the end of 1855, during
+the Christmas vacation, and just before Morris entered Street&#8217;s office,
+Burne-Jones had made a visit to London, where at a monthly meeting at the
+Working Men&#8217;s College he for the first time saw Rossetti, and later heard
+him rend in pieces the opinions of those who differed with him, and
+stoutly support his infrangible theory that all men should be painters.
+How ready Burne-Jones was to yield himself<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span> to this potent influence, how
+promptly Rossetti&#8217;s vivid and original temperament acted upon his admirer,
+is clear from the latter&#8217;s description, written many years after, of the
+first encounter&mdash;the young undergraduate sitting half-frightened,
+embarrassed and worshipping, among strangers, eating thick bread and
+butter, and listening to speeches about the progress of the college, until
+the entrance of his idol, whose sensitive, gentle, indolent face, with its
+flickering of humour and the fire of genius, entirely satisfied his poetic
+imagination. The great qualities of Rossetti in those days revealed
+themselves in his face, and his imperious will and keen intellect were no
+less obvious in his talk. Burne-Jones returned to Oxford with the idea of
+dedicating himself to art more than ever firmly fixed in his mind.
+Rossetti had approved the drawings which he had brought to him for
+consideration, and had pronounced the seven months still to elapse before
+he could take his degree time too valuable to waste outside of art,
+counselling him to fling the University and all its works behind him and
+begin painting at once. With mingled delight and terror Burne-Jones, in
+spite of small means and weak health, followed his leader, who, however
+rash to advise, was not one to neglect his charge, and who worked loyally
+to bring him through with triumph, criticising, teaching, approving,
+encouraging without stint, and presently, after his own inimitable
+fashion, bringing patrons to him, bidding them buy, which obediently they
+did.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span>It was inevitable that Morris should be stirred to emulation by this step
+on the part of his friend. After Burne-Jones went to London to begin
+painting under Rossetti&#8217;s direction, Morris spent nearly all his Sundays
+with him at his lodgings in Chelsea. These holidays were full of
+excitement. It was a glorious little world that opened out under
+Rossetti&#8217;s enthusiastic, dogmatic, and continuous talk and argument.
+Morris was deeply impressed by his notion that everyone should be a
+painter, and after Street moved his office to London and Morris and
+Burne-Jones took lodgings together, the former tried the characteristic
+experiment of combining painting with architecture, attempting to get six
+hours a day at his drawing in addition to his office work. It is
+interesting to find him writing at this juncture that he cannot enter into
+politico-social subjects with any interest, that things are in a muddle
+and that he has no power to set them right in the smallest degree, that
+<i>his</i> work is the embodiment of dreams in one form or another. What
+Rossetti thought of his two disciples is seen in a letter written by him
+to William Allingham in December, 1856, when Morris had been nearly a year
+with Street. He found both &#8220;wonders after their kind.&#8221; &#8220;Jones is doing
+designs which quite put one to shame,&#8221; he wrote, &#8220;so full are they of
+everything&mdash;Aurora Leighs of art. He will take the lead in no time.&#8221;
+Morris he deemed &#8220;one of the finest little fellows alive&mdash;with a touch of
+the incoherent, but a real man,&#8221; and &#8220;in <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span>all illumination and work of
+that kind&#8221; he considered him quite unrivalled by anything modern that he
+knew. With a guide thus confident and inspiring, it is not strange that
+Morris presently yielded to the spell, and renounced architecture to
+pursue painting as an end and aim in itself, although, like the hero of
+his romance, he learned with much pain and grief.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img03.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="caption">ILLUSTRATION BY ROSSETTI TO &#8220;THE LADY OF SHALOTT&#8221;<br />IN THE MOXON &#8220;TENNYSON.&#8221; THE HEAD OF<br />LAUNCELOT IS A PORTRAIT OF MORRIS</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>Rossetti&#8217;s service to Morris is difficult to estimate. For a brief period
+his influence over him was supreme. Perhaps in the work and temper of this
+Italian, Morris saw more deeply into the heart of the medi&aelig;val world than
+all his churches and illuminated manuscripts could help him to see. At all
+events, he was for the time close to genius and dominated by it. His
+devotion to his master partook of the violence inseparable from his
+temperament. He was soon ready to say, when Burne-Jones complained that he
+worked better in Rossetti&#8217;s manner than in his own: &#8220;I have got beyond
+that; I want to imitate Gabriel as much as I can.&#8221; But he was never to be
+for very long under any personal influence. Nor could he be persuaded by
+the most brilliant eloquence in the world that good could be got out of
+doing what he did not enjoy; and he never enjoyed any labour that required
+long patience and persistent concentration of effort. Without being
+fickle, his mind was so restless as to produce the effect of fickleness
+and to preclude the possibility of his doing really great work. While he
+was trying,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span> under Rossetti&#8217;s stimulating but peremptory rule, to master a
+painter&#8217;s methods he became gloomy and despondent. &#8220;How long Rossetti&#8217;s
+daily influence might have kept him labouring at what he could not do,&#8221;
+writes Mr. Mackail with a tinge of bitterness, &#8220;when there was work all
+round that he could do, on the whole, better than any man living, it is
+needless to inquire.&#8221; But that Rossetti did manage to keep him for a
+couple of years at the study of painting cannot be counted a misfortune.
+Probably that experience, together with his brief term under Street, did
+as much as anything to save his design from mediocrity and imitativeness.
+He did not make himself an architect, and he never learned to draw
+anything that remotely resembled the actual structure of the human form,
+but he must have gained through his study some knowledge of the inviolable
+laws of art that he could not have gained by passive observation however
+keen, or by sympathy however ardent. Rossetti can hardly have been the
+best master for him. His own nature was too undisciplined, and he had as
+few of the academic virtues as any man on record of the same technical
+ability. But his was the supreme faculty of rousing enthusiasm. It may be
+doubted whether any other painter in England could have kept Morris at the
+appointed and impossible task for so long a time. It is easy to imagine
+how the impatient spirit of the latter rebelled against the slow process
+of learning to draw the human figure in its complicated and subtle<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span> beauty
+of construction and surface. The fact that he stopped so far short of
+satisfactory accomplishment seems to account for many of the defects to be
+found in his later designs, which at their best were never to be entirely
+beautiful, though full of zest and freedom. His tendency to drop any
+branch of his work as soon as it became tedious to him, to turn to
+something else, kept his creative impulse continually fresh and effective;
+but kept him also from achieving the penetrating distinction of artistic
+self-possession. Whatever helped him in any degree toward this
+self-possession, whatever he got in the way of discipline of mind and
+hand, should be acknowledged by his admirers with gratitude, and it is but
+just to recognise in Rossetti the one man who seems to have kept the
+prodigious impetuosity of Morris down without promptly losing hold upon
+his interest. Add to this the clear vision of a romantic ideal which all
+who worked with Rossetti were privileged to share, and the constant
+inspiration of the drama of sentiment and emotion rendered in his colour
+and line and in his exotic treatment of form, and we must own that nowhere
+else could Morris have found such food for an imagination already
+quickened by influences reaching it from a remote time and an alien world.
+Nowhere else could he have come so close to the concealed mysteries of the
+human soul, despite the disillusionment he was bound to feel in daily
+contact with a character as contradictory as it was compelling.</p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span></p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/banner6.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III"></a>CHAPTER III.</h2>
+<p class="title">FROM ROSSETTI TO THE RED HOUSE.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="dropcap"><span class="caps">Although</span> a blight of discouragement seems to have fallen upon Morris under
+Rossetti&#8217;s tuition, there were some blithe compensations. Not the least of
+these was the fitting up of the rooms at 17 Red Lion Square where he and
+Burne-Jones took quarters. &#8220;Topsy and I live together,&#8221; wrote Burne-Jones,
+&#8220;in the quaintest room in all London, hung with brasses of old knights and
+drawings of Albert D&uuml;rer.&#8221; For the furniture, Morris, who, Rossetti said,
+was &#8220;bent on doing the magnificent,&#8221; made designs to be carried out in
+deal by a carpenter of the neighbourhood. Everything was very large and
+heavy, intensely medi&aelig;val, and doubtless rather ugly in an honest fashion,
+but in the end it was furniture to be coveted, for it offered great spaces
+for decoration, and Rossetti as well as Morris and Burne-Jones painted on
+it subjects from Chaucer and Dante and the Arthurian stories. The panels
+of a cupboard glowed with Rossetti&#8217;s beautiful pictures representing Dante
+and Beatrice meeting in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span> Florence and meeting in Paradise, and on the wide
+backs of the chairs he painted scenes from some of the poems Morris had
+written. The wardrobe was decorated by Burne-Jones with paintings from
+<i>The Prioress&#8217;s Tale</i>. On the walls of the room were hung, no doubt, the
+several water-colours bought from Rossetti, to the lovely names of which
+Morris promptly wrote ballads. An owl was co-tenant with the young
+artists, and they were served and also criticised by a housemaid of
+literary ambitions. In this highly individual apartment, where, curiously
+enough, Rossetti and his friend Deverell had had their studio together
+five or six years before, life was not all labour and striving. There
+were, moreover, holidays spent at the Zo&ouml;logical Gardens, evenings at the
+theatre, night-long sessions in Rossetti&#8217;s rooms, and excursions on the
+Thames. One of the latter is vividly described in Dr. Birkbeck Hill&#8217;s
+<i>Letters of Gabriel Rossetti to William Allingham</i>, giving a joyous
+picture of Morris at the mercy of his ungovernable temper. The party,
+consisting of Hill, Morris, and Faulkner, had started out to row down the
+Thames from Oxford to a London suburb. By the time they had reached Henley
+they had spent all their money except enough for Faulkner&#8217;s return ticket
+to Oxford, where he was to attend a college meeting. For this he departed,
+promising to bring back a supply of money in the evening. &#8220;The weather was
+unusually hot,&#8221; writes Dr. Hill, &#8220;Morris and I sauntered along the
+river-side. I have not forgotten the longing<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span> glances he cast on a large
+basket of strawberries. He had always been so plentifully supplied with
+money that he bore with far greater impatience than I did this privation.
+At last the shadows had grown long and the heat was more bearable. We went
+with light hearts to the railway station to meet our comrade. &#8216;Well,
+Faulkner,&#8217; cried out Morris, cheerfully, &#8216;how much money have you
+brought?&#8217; Our friend gave a start. &#8216;Good heavens,&#8217; he replied, &#8216;I forgot
+all about it.&#8217; Morris thrust both his hands into his long dark curly hair,
+tugged at it wildly, ground his teeth, swore like a trooper, and stamped
+up and down the platform&mdash;in fact, behaved just like Sinbad&#8217;s captain when
+he found that his ship was driving upon the rocks. His outbursts of rage,
+I hasten to say, were always harmless. They left no sullenness behind, and
+as each rapidly passed away he was ready to join in a hearty laugh at it.
+Faulkner, who was not the most patient of men, noticed that passengers,
+station-master, porters, engine-driver, and stoker were all gazing in
+astonishment. He, too, lost his temper, and, though in a far lower key,
+stormed back. Morris soon quieted down, and a council of war was held. He
+fortunately had a gold watch-chain on which he raised enough to pay all
+needful expenses. I remember well how the rest of our journey we rowed by
+many a tavern on the bank as effectually constrained as ever was Ulysses
+not to listen to its siren call. It was through no earthly paradise that
+the young poet and artist passed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span> on the afternoon of our last day.&#8221; When
+they landed they had just a penny among them, and were still some six or
+seven miles from their destination, so they were obliged to hire a cab and
+trust to good fortune for not coming to a turnpike gate before arriving at
+Red Lion Square.</p>
+
+<p>About this time also Rossetti and Morris made an excursion to Oxford for
+the purpose of visiting Benjamin Woodward, the architect and Rossetti&#8217;s
+friend. Mr. Woodward had recently erected a building for the Oxford Union,
+a society composed of past and present members of the University. In
+exhibiting the building to Rossetti it was suggested that the blank
+stretch of wall which ran around the top of the Debating Room afforded an
+admirable opportunity for decoration, and Rossetti with prompt enthusiasm
+evolved a plan for a co&ouml;perative enterprise. He and Morris, with several
+other willing spirits,&mdash;Burne-Jones, of course, Arthur Hughes, Valentine
+Prinsep, Spencer Stanhope, and J. Hungerford Pollen,&mdash;were to go up to
+Oxford in a body. Each was to choose a subject from the <i>Morte d&#8217;Arthur</i>,
+and execute it to the best of his ability on the walls of the Debating
+Room. The whole affair was to be a matter of a few weeks. The artists
+offered their services for nothing; their expenses (which turned out to be
+as free as their offer) were to be paid by the Union. It is easy to
+imagine the ensuing bustle and ardour. Rossetti eagerly managing, Morris
+delighted with the charmingly medi&aelig;val situation,&mdash;a few humble painters<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span>
+working together piously, without hope of glory or thought of gain,&mdash;the
+others following their leader with lamb-like docility. Had their knowledge
+of methods been equal to their zeal, the walls of the Debating Room must
+have become the loveliest of realised visions and the delight of many
+generations. The young workmen sat for each other, Morris, Burne-Jones,
+and Rossetti all possessing fine paintable heads. They clambered up and
+down endless ladders to gain a satisfactory view of their performance, and
+attacked the most stupendous difficulties with patience and ingenuity. The
+faces in the subject undertaken by Burne-Jones were painted, for example,
+in three planes at right angles to one another, owing to the projection of
+a string-course of bricks straight across the space to be filled by the
+heads of the figures. Some studies by Rossetti have been preserved, and
+show that his part at least of the decoration was conceived in a fresh
+poetic spirit, with fulness and quaintness of expression and suggestion.
+But the congenial band had entered upon their labours with a carelessness
+that can only be described as wanton. Not one of them knew how to paint in
+tempera, and the new damp walls were smeared over with a thin coat of
+white lime wash laid upon the bare bricks as sole preparation for a sort
+of water-colour painting that blossomed like a flower under the gifted
+hands of the artists, and faded almost as soon away. The effect at the
+time was so brilliant as to make the walls, according to Mr.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span> Coventry
+Patmore&#8217;s contemporaneous testimony, &#8220;look like the margin of an
+illuminated manuscript,&#8221; but in the course of a few months the colours had
+sunk into the sponge-like surface to such an extent that the designs were
+already dim and indistinguishable.</p>
+
+<p>Morris, with characteristic promptness, was the first on the field, and
+his picture was finished in advance of any of the others. He was, however,
+no better instructed than his companions in the special requirements of
+his material, and presently all that was left of his painting was the head
+of his brave knight peering over the tops of multitudinous sunflowers. The
+decoration of the ceiling was also assigned to him, and he made his design
+for it in a single day. Later, in 1875, he repainted it, but most of the
+art of this merry period has receded into complete oblivion. The stay in
+Oxford lengthened into months as complications increased, and finally the
+enterprise was abandoned with the work unfinished. It had led, however, to
+an event of paramount importance to Morris, and of considerable importance
+to Rossetti&mdash;the meeting with Miss Burden, who was to figure in so many of
+Rossetti&#8217;s symbolic pictures, and who became the wife of Morris. Her
+remarkable beauty had attracted the attention of the young men one night
+at the little Oxford theatre. &#8220;My brother was the first to observe her,&#8221;
+writes William Rossetti; &#8220;her face was at once tragic, mystic, passionate,
+calm, beautiful, and gracious&mdash;a face for a sculptor and a face for a
+painter&mdash;a face solitary in England,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span> and not at all like that of an
+English woman, but rather of an Ionian Greek.&#8221; In Rossetti&#8217;s portrait of
+her at eighteen, painted shortly after this meeting, we see the grave,
+unusual features almost precisely as they are drawn with words in a poem
+by Morris, entitled <i>Praise of My Lady</i>, which Mr. Mackail says was
+written during a visit to the Manchester Exhibition of 1857, but which
+assuredly is no earlier than the date of his acquaintance with Jane
+Burden. The description, Pre-Raphaelite in its detail, runs through the
+first half of the poem:</p>
+
+<p class="poem">My Lady seems of ivory<br />
+Forehead, straight nose, and cheeks that be<br />
+Hollow&#8217;d a little mournfully.<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Beata mea Domina!</span><br />
+<br />
+Her forehead, overshadow&#8217;d much<br />
+By bows of hair, has a wave such<br />
+As God was good to make for me.<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Beata mea Domina!</span><br />
+<br />
+Not greatly long my lady&#8217;s hair,<br />
+Nor yet with yellow color fair,<br />
+But thick and crisped wonderfully;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Beata mea Domina!</span><br />
+<br />
+Heavy to make the pale face sad,<br />
+And dark, but dead as though it had<br />
+Been forged by God most wonderfully;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Beata mea Domina!</span><br />
+<br />
+Of some strange metal, thread by thread,<br />
+To stand out from my lady&#8217;s head,<br />
+Not moving much to tangle me.<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Beata mea Domina!</span><br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span><br />
+Beneath her brows the lids fall slow,<br />
+The lashes a clear shadow throw<br />
+Where I would wish my lips to be.<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Beata mea Domina!</span><br />
+<br />
+Her great eyes, standing far apart,<br />
+Draw up some memory from her heart,<br />
+And gaze out very mournfully;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Beata mea Domina!</span><br />
+<br />
+So beautiful and kind they are,<br />
+But most times looking out afar,<br />
+Waiting for something, not for me.<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Beata mea Domina!</span><br />
+<br />
+I wonder if the lashes long<br />
+Are those that do her bright eyes wrong,<br />
+For always half tears seem to be.<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Beata mea Domina!</span><br />
+<br />
+Lurking below the underlid,<br />
+Darkening the place where they lie hid&mdash;<br />
+If they should rise and flow for me!<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Beata mea Domina!</span><br />
+<br />
+Her full lips being made to kiss,<br />
+Curl&#8217;d up and pensive each one is;<br />
+This makes me faint to stand and see.<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Beata mea Domina!</span></p>
+
+<p>It was the force of this attraction that kept Morris long at Oxford after
+Rossetti and Burne-Jones had returned to London, leaving the walls of the
+Oxford Union to their sad fate. But it was no love in idleness for him,
+rather a time of many beginnings. He was carving in stone, modelling in
+clay, making designs for stained glass windows, even &#8220;doing<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span> worsted
+work,&#8221; in Rossetti&#8217;s contemptuous phrase for his efforts at reviving the
+lost art of embroidery, with a frame made from an old model and wools dyed
+especially for him. Most of all he was writing poetry, the proper
+occupation of a lover so &aelig;sthetically endowed. Early in 1858 he had <i>The
+Defence of Guenevere</i>, a collection of thirty poems, ready to bring out.
+Save for a slim little pamphlet entitled <i>Sir Galahad: A Christmas
+Mystery</i>, the contents of which were included in it, it was his first
+volume and, like Swinburne&#8217;s <i>Rosamond</i> published two years later, it was
+dedicated to Rossetti.</p>
+
+<p>In this youthful, fantastic, emotional poetry we get the very essence of
+the writer&#8217;s early spirit without the strange shadow of foreboding, the
+constant sense of swiftly passing time, that comes into the poetry of his
+maturity. Technically, the poems could hardly be more picturesquely
+defective than they are. The one giving the volume its name is nearly
+unintelligible in parts, even when the reader is aware of the incidents of
+Guenevere&#8217;s story, and prepared to interpret the hysterical ravings of a
+woman overcome by sorrow, shame, and love.</p>
+
+<p>But no poems, except Rossetti&#8217;s own, have so suggested romantic art in
+strange shapes and unbridled colour. They, too, like the wall-paintings of
+that early and unrivalled time, resemble the margins of an illuminated
+manuscript, reminding one of nothing in nature, but flashing the richness
+of medi&aelig;val symbolism upon the imagination in more or less<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span> awkward forms.
+If Morris could not &#8220;imitate Gabriel&#8221; in his pictures, he could at least
+imitate Gabriel&#8217;s pictures in his poems. From the <i>Beata Beatrix</i>, from
+the <i>Ghirlandata</i>, from the <i>Proserpine</i>, from almost any of Rossetti&#8217;s
+paintings of women, these curious and affected lines, for example, might
+have been gleaned:</p>
+
+<p class="poem">See through my long throat how the words go up<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">In ripples to my mouth; how in my hand</span><br />
+The shadow lies like wine within a cup<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Of marvellously colour&#8217;d gold.</span></p>
+
+<p>In <i>The Eve of Crecy</i> we have the glitter of gold and the splendour of
+material things, rendered with a childish abandon, as in the prose
+romances:</p>
+
+<p class="poem">Gold on her head and gold on her feet,<br />
+And gold where the hems of her kirtle meet,<br />
+And a golden girdle round my sweet;&mdash;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Ah! qu&#8217;elle est belle, La Marguerite.</span><br />
+<br />
+Yet even now it is good to think<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span></span><br />
+Of Margaret sitting glorious there,<br />
+In glory of gold and glory of hair,<br />
+And glory of glorious face most fair;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Ah! qu&#8217;elle est belle, La Marguerite.</span></p>
+
+<p>The full hues that had for the decorators of medi&aelig;val missals a religious
+significance recur again and again in lines that have much more to do with
+earth than with heaven, and show less concern with the human soul than
+with the human heart. Damozels hold scarlet lilies such as Maiden
+Margaret<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span> bears &#8220;on the great church walls;&#8221; ladies walk in their gardens
+clad in white and scarlet; the vision of Christ appears to Galahad &#8220;with
+raiment half blood-red, half white as snow&#8221;; angels appear clad in white
+with scarlet wings; scarlet is the predominating colour throughout, if we
+except gold, which serves as background and ornament to everything. Next
+to scarlet comes green, which Morris was later to call &#8220;the workaday
+colour,&#8221; and we find occasional patches of blue and of grey in painted
+boats and in hangings. The following stanza shows a favourite method of
+emphasising the prevailing colour of a poem:</p>
+
+<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 4em;">The water slips,</span><br />
+The red-bill&#8217;d heron dips,<br />
+Sweet kisses on red lips,<br />
+Alas! the red rust grips,<br />
+And the blood-red dagger rips,<br />
+Yet, O knight, come to me!</p>
+
+<p>For pure incoherence, the quality that Rossetti discerned in Morris at
+their first meeting, the song from which this stanza is taken is
+unsurpassed. Yet an emotional effect is gained in it. What we chiefly miss
+in the little craft sailing under such vivid colours, is that
+&#8220;deep-grasping keel of reason&#8221; which, Lowell says, &#8220;alone can steady and
+give direction&#8221; to verse. Excitable and impatient, in pursuit of a vague
+ideal, gifted with the power to bring out the pictorial quality of
+detached scenes, but without a fine metrical sense, and averse to lucid
+statement, the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span> young poet introduced himself to the world as a symbolist
+in the modern acceptation of the word. One of his poems, <i>Rapunzel</i>, has
+been said to forecast Maeterlinck&#8217;s manner and spirit, and the general
+characteristics of the poem&mdash;a fairy tale somewhat too &#8220;grown-up&#8221; in
+treatment&mdash;certainly suggest the comparison. In all this work physical
+characteristics play an important part. Long hands with &#8220;tenderly shadowed
+fingers,&#8221; &#8220;long lips&#8221; that &#8220;cleave&#8221; to the fingers they kiss, lips &#8220;damp
+with tears,&#8221; that &#8220;shudder with a kiss,&#8221; lips &#8220;like a curved sword,&#8221; warm
+arms, long, fair arms, lithe arms, twining arms, broad fair eyelids, long
+necks, and unlimited hair, form an equipment somewhat dangerous for a poet
+with anything short of genius to sustain him. For themes Morris had gone
+chiefly to the Arthurian stories and to the chronicles of Froissart. His
+style, he himself thought, was more like Browning&#8217;s than anyone else&#8217;s,
+though the difference that lay between him and Browning even at the
+beginning forbade any essential likeness. Browning&#8217;s effort was always to
+render an idea which was perfectly clear in his own mind. His volubility
+and obscurity and roughness frequently arose from his over-eagerness to
+express his idea in a variety of ways, leading him to break off with half
+statements and begin afresh, to throw out imperfect suggestions and follow
+them with others equally imperfect. But all his stutterings and broken
+sentences failed to disguise the fact that an intellectual conception
+underlay<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span> the turbulent method, giving substance and life to the poem
+however much it might lack grace and form. With Morris the intellectual
+conception was as weak as with Browning it was strong, and apparently
+existed chiefly to give an excuse for the pictures following one another
+in rapid succession through every poem, short or long, dramatic or lyric,
+of both his youth and maturity. In this early volume there was, to be
+sure, an obvious effort toward rendering psychological effects. Most of
+the longer poems are miniature dramas with a march toward some great event
+in the lives of the actors. The author observes the dramatic requirement
+of sinking himself in the identity of his characters. Knights are slain
+and ladies die of love and witch-bound maidens are rescued by their
+princes without the sounding of a personal note on the part of their
+creator. And in two instances, <i>Sir Peter Harpdon&#8217;s End</i> and <i>The Haystack
+in the Floods</i>, there is ruddy human blood in the tortured beings whose
+extremity moves the reader with a genuine emotion. In these two poems the
+voice might indeed be the voice of Browning, though the hand is still
+unmistakably the hand of Morris. In the main, however, the appeal that is
+made is to the imagination concerned with the visible aspect of
+brilliantly coloured objects and with the delirious expression of
+overwrought feelings.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img04.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="center"><i>Portrait of Jane Burden (Mrs. Morris)</i><br /><i>By Rossetti</i></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>One defect, calculated to interfere with a warm reception of the volume on
+the part of the general public, Morris shared with Browning, possessing
+even<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span> more than Browning the merit attending it. Familiarity with the
+art and literature of the Middle Ages made it natural for him to preserve
+the thin new wine of his youthful poetry in the old bottles of the defunct
+past, using motives and scenes and accessories alien to our modern life,
+and only dimly understood by the modern reader. The true spirit of that
+past it is hardly necessary to say he did not revive,&mdash;no writer has ever
+revived the true spirit of any age antecedent to his own,&mdash;and Morris,
+with his remarkable faculty for eliminating from his mental conceptions
+whatever did not please his taste, was wholly unfitted by temperament,
+however well fitted by his acquirements, to carry through successfully a
+task so tremendous.</p>
+
+<p><i>The Defence of Guenevere</i> was received by the public without enthusiasm.
+About half an edition of five hundred copies was sold and given away, and
+the remainder lingered for a dozen years or more until the publication of
+<i>The Earthly Paradise</i> stimulated the interest of readers in the previous
+work of its author.</p>
+
+<p>Whatever disappointment Morris may have felt must soon have given way to
+the excitement of the plunge he now made into a new life and the most
+intense personal interests. On the twenty-sixth of April, 1859, he was
+married to Jane Burden, and after a brief interval of travel he began to
+build the beautiful house which he then supposed would be his home for the
+rest of his days.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span>His personal attractiveness at this time was keenly felt by his
+companions. He had been &#8220;making himself,&#8221; as the phrase is, since his
+childhood, and if Stevenson&#8217;s dictum&mdash;to know what you like is the
+beginning of wisdom and of old age&mdash;be applied to him he can never have
+been wholly ignorant or a child. Knowledge of what he liked, and even more
+definitely of what he did not like, was his earliest as well as his most
+notable acquirement. But he was a boy, too, in his excessive restless
+vitality, and hitherto with all his enthusiasms he had been a somewhat
+cold boy. Just now he was beginning to &#8220;take a fancy for the human,&#8221; as
+one of his friends put it. He was connecting his vague schemes and
+ambitions with a personal and practical enterprise. His ideals dropped
+from a region always too rare for them to an atmosphere of activities and
+interests in which the vast general public could breathe as easily as he.
+In building his new home to his fancy he was unconsciously laying the
+corner-stones of the many homes throughout England into which his
+influence was afterward to enter. He was just twenty-five, filled with
+energy, generous impulse, honesty, and kindness. The bourgeois touch which
+his biographer declares was inherent in his nature was far from obvious as
+yet. Society for its own sake he liked little, and was not above getting
+out of unwelcome invitations by subterfuge, if fair means would not avail.
+He affected a Bohemian carelessness in dress, and his hair was uniformly
+wild. His language was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span> generally forcible, often violent, always
+expressive. He lived in the company of his intimates and cared for nothing
+beyond the range of his fixed interests. The remark made long after&mdash;&#8220;Do
+you suppose that I should see anything in Rome that I can&#8217;t see in
+Whitechapel?&#8221;&mdash;was perfectly indicative of his mood toward everything that
+failed to arouse his intellectual curiosity. But the places and things
+that did arouse it were never tawdry or valueless, and his reasons for
+caring for them, of which he was always remarkably prolific, were such as
+appeal strongly to the mind in which homely associations hold a constant
+place. It must be an out and out classicist who fails to detect in himself
+a pulsation of sympathy in response to the wail which Morris once sent
+home from Verona: &#8220;Yes, and even in these magnificent and wonderful towns
+I long rather for the heap of grey stones with a grey roof that we call a
+house north-away.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table">
+<tr><td><img src="images/img05.jpg" alt="" /></td>
+    <td><img src="images/img05b.jpg" alt="" /></td>
+    <td><img src="images/img05c.jpg" alt="" /></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top" align="center"><small>&#8220;ACANTHUS&#8221; WALL-PAPER</small></td>
+    <td valign="top" align="center"><small>&#8220;PIMPERNEL&#8221; WALL-PAPER</small></td>
+    <td valign="top" align="center"><small>&#8220;AFRICAN MARIGOLD&#8221;<br />COTTON-PRINT</small></td></tr></table>
+<p class="caption">WALL-PAPER AND COTTON-PRINT DESIGNS<br />(<i>Reproduced from examples obtained by courtesy of Mr. A. E. Bulkley</i>)</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>His first house, in which he took unlimited delight, was not, however, a
+heap of grey stones, but a structure of brick, its name, the Red House,
+indicating its striking and then unusual colour. Its architect was Philip
+Webb, who had been an associate of Morris during the brief period passed
+in Mr. Street&#8217;s office. Situated not far from London, on the outskirts of
+the village of Upton and in the midst of a pleasant orchard, whose trees
+dropped their fruit into its windows, the Red House wore an emphatically
+Gothic aspect. It was L-shaped, with numerous irregularities<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span> of plan, and
+entirely without frippery of applied ornament. Its great sloping roof, the
+pointed arches of its doorways, the deep simple porches, the large hall,
+with its long table in place of an entrance alley the open-timbered roof
+over the staircase, the panelled screen dividing the great hall from a
+lesser one,&mdash;all these were characteristic of the old English house before
+the day of Italian invasion, while the mobile Gothic style, adapting
+itself readily to individual needs, prevailed. It stood among the old and
+gnarled trees, only two stories in height, but with an effect of rambling
+spaciousness and hospitality, and the garden that lay close to it was as
+individual and old-fashioned as itself. Morris prided himself, Mr. Mackail
+tells us, on his knowledge of gardening, and his advice to the Birmingham
+Society of Artists in one of the lectures of his later years shows how
+thoughtfully he considered the subject. As he always acted so far as he
+could upon his theories, we may be fairly sure that the Red House garden
+was planned in conformity with the ideal place sketched in this lecture,
+and may assume in it a profusion of single flowers mixed to avoid great
+masses of colour, among them the old columbine, where the clustering doves
+are unmistakable and distinct, the old china aster, the single snowdrop,
+and the sunflower, these planted in little squares, divided from each
+other by grassy walks, and hedged in by wild rose or sweet-briar
+trellises. We may be sure the place contained no curiosities from the
+jungle or tropical waste, that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span> everything was excluded which was not
+native to the English soil, and that ferns and brakes from the woodland
+were not enticed from the place of their origin to take away the
+characteristic domestic look of a spot that ought to seem &#8220;like a part of
+the house.&#8221; &#8220;It will be a key to right thinking about gardens,&#8221; says
+Morris, &#8220;if you consider in what kind of places a garden is most desired.
+In a very beautiful country, especially if it be mountainous, we can do
+without it well enough, whereas in a flat and dull country we crave after
+it, and there it is often the very making of the homestead; while in great
+towns, gardens both private and public are positive necessities if the
+citizens are to live reasonable and healthy lives in body and mind.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Passing from this first necessity of reasonable and healthy living through
+the rose-masked doorway into the Red House itself, we find it equally
+suggestive of its master&#8217;s personal tastes and beliefs. For everything
+Morris had his persuasive reason. His windows had small leaded panes of
+glass, because the large windows found &#8220;in most decent houses or what are
+so called,&#8221; let in a flood of light &#8220;in a haphazard and ill-considered
+way,&#8221; which the indwellers are &#8220;forced to obscure again by shutters,
+blinds, curtains, screens, heavy upholsteries, and such other nuisances.&#8221;
+By all means, therefore, fill the window with moderate-sized panes of
+glass set in solid sash bars&mdash;&#8220;we shall then at all events feel as if we
+were indoors on a cold day&#8221;&mdash;as if we had a roof over our<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span> heads. The fact
+that small windows were used in medi&aelig;val times and must therefore of
+necessity be superior is not brought forward in this argument, and the
+charm of the reasoning is not marred by any reminder of the actual
+conditions of which small heavily leaded windows are a survival&mdash;such as
+the fortress style of building belonging to a warlike time, and the great
+costliness of glass, and the inability to support large panes by leads.</p>
+
+<p>Morris could always be trusted to support his fundamental liking for a
+thing by a host of assurances as to its sensible merits and practical
+advantages, but the mere fact that he liked it was quite sufficient for
+his own satisfaction of mind. When one of his comrades once suggested to
+him that personal feeling ought not to count for too much, and that not
+liking a thing did not make it bad, he replied: &#8220;Oh, don&#8217;t it though! What
+we don&#8217;t like <i>is</i> bad.&#8221; And he had a fashion which must have produced an
+irritating effect upon some of his hearers, of declaring that the people
+who did not hold his ideas must be unhealthy either in body or mind or
+both. Certainly the aspect of the Red House suggested health within its
+walls. With a slight stretch of imagination one could argue from its
+furnishings that its master was a northerner, a middle-class man, the
+admirer of a rough age, a sturdy art, a plain habit of life; that he was a
+worker whose dreams tormented him to speedy and vigorous action, a
+creature whose vitality was too great even for his strong frame and
+physical power. He liked a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span> massive chair, and well he might, for one of
+his amusements was to twist his legs about it in such a way that a lightly
+built affair must instantly succumb. He liked a floor that he could stamp
+on with impunity; he liked a table on which he could pound with his fists
+without danger to its equilibrium. In the Red House these requirements
+were fully met. In the lecture called <i>The Beauty of Life</i> is an account
+of the fittings &#8220;necessary to the sitting-room of a healthy person.&#8221;
+Beside the table that will &#8220;keep steady when you work upon it,&#8221; and the
+chairs &#8220;that you can move about,&#8221; the good floor, and the small carpet
+&#8220;which can be bundled out of the room in two minutes,&#8221; there must be &#8220;a
+bookcase with a great many books in it,&#8221; a bench &#8220;that you can sit or lie
+upon,&#8221; a cupboard with drawers, and, &#8220;unless either the bookcase or the
+cupboard be very beautiful with painting or carving,&#8221; pictures or
+engravings on the wall, &#8220;or else the wall itself must be ornamented with
+some beautiful and restful pattern,&#8221; then a vase or two, and fireplaces as
+unlike as possible to &#8220;the modern mean, miserable, and showy affairs,
+plastered about with wretched sham ornament, trumpery of cast iron, and
+brass and polished steel, and what not&mdash;offensive to look at and a
+nuisance to clean.&#8221; To these necessaries, &#8220;unless we are musical and need
+a piano, in which case as far as beauty is concerned we are in a bad way,&#8221;
+we can add very little without &#8220;troubling ourselves, and hindering our
+work, our thought, and our rest.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span>In accordance with these opinions, but with a fulness and richness of
+ornament not suggested by the simplicity of their expression, the pleasant
+building at Upton gradually took on great beauty and individuality. The
+walls were hung with embroidered fabrics worked by Mrs. Morris and her
+friends, or painted by Burne-Jones, who, undeterred by the Oxford episode,
+started an elaborate series of mural decorations in illustration of the
+wonderful adventures of Sire Degravant, the hero of an ancient romance.
+Another series of scenes from the War of Troy was started for the walls of
+the staircase, and although both schemes were abandoned, enough was done
+to give an effect of splendour to the rooms. Up to the large drawing-room
+came the ponderous and mighty settle which had cost so many expletives in
+the course of its adjustment to the old room in Red Lion Square, and which
+was now embellished by a balcony at the top to which a stairway led up.
+All minor accessories were thoughtfully considered and for the most part
+designed by Morris or by friends pressed into service at his eager demand.
+He found little to content him in the articles of commerce on sale at the
+orthodox shops in the early sixties. &#8220;In looking at an old house,&#8221; he says
+in one of his books, &#8220;we please ourselves by thinking of all the
+generations of men that have passed through it, remembering how it has
+received their joy and borne their sorrow and not even their folly has
+left sourness on it; and in looking at a new<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span> house if built as it
+should be, we feel a pleasure in thinking how he who built it has left a
+piece of his soul behind him to greet the newcomers one after another,
+long after he is gone.&#8221; Such an impress he left upon the Red House, so
+that no one passing it or even hearing of it can fail to think of it as
+belonging to William Morris, whoever may have the fortune to live in it
+hereafter, and fall heir to the associations with which he invested it.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img06.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="caption">&#8220;THE STRAWBERRY THIEF&#8221;<br />DESIGN FOR COTTON PRINT</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>During the time of building and furnishing he was exuberantly happy and
+wholly in his element. Turning constantly from one thing to another, yet
+keeping along the line of his united interests, giving his magnificent
+energy free scope in doing and accomplishing, seeing grow into visible
+form the theories and tastes so dear to his heart, letting out his
+enthusiasms and carrying others along on their current, setting a
+practical example in what he believed to be of the deepest importance by
+requiring for himself artistic handicraft, acting out a vigorous protest
+against the mechanical arts and the shams of the commercial world,&mdash;all
+this was meat and drink to him, and out of it grew an enterprise
+representing what to the public has been probably the most valuable side
+of his many-sided career, the establishment of a firm engaged in various
+forms of decorative art. At about this time he adopted, after the fashion
+of the master-workman of the Middle Ages, a device or legend expressive in
+one way or another of his aim. He chose the one used by Van Eyck, &#8220;Als
+ich<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span> kanne,&#8221;&mdash;if I can,&mdash;and distributed it in French translation and in
+English over his house, on windows and tiles and in tapestry hangings. The
+modesty of the words was no doubt as sincere in his case as in the case of
+the old Flemish painter who excelled all his contemporaries, but the
+extent to which he could and did in the new business on which he was about
+to enter has been the wonder of his followers.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/botban3.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span></p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/banner7.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV"></a>CHAPTER IV.</h2>
+<p class="title">MORRIS AND COMPANY.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="dropcap"><span class="caps">The</span> formation of the firm of &#8220;Morris, Marshall, Faulkner, &amp; Company,&#8221; as
+it was first called, appears to have been highly incidental in character,
+despite the assertion of Morris himself in a letter to his old tutor, that
+he had long meant to be a decorator, and to that end mainly had built his
+fine house. &#8220;One evening a lot of us were together,&#8221; says Rossetti, in the
+account given by Mr. Watts-Dunton, &#8220;and we got to talking about the way in
+which artists did all kinds of things in olden times, designed every kind
+of decoration and most kinds of furniture, and someone suggested&mdash;as a
+joke more than anything else&mdash;that we should each put down five pounds and
+form a company. Fivers were blossoms of a rare growth among us in those
+days, and I won&#8217;t swear that the table bristled with fivers. Anyhow the
+firm was formed, but of course there was no deed or anything of that kind.
+In fact it was a mere playing at business, and Morris was elected manager,
+not because we ever dreamed he<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span> would turn out a man of business, but
+because he was the only one among us who had both time and money to spare.
+We had no idea whatever of commercial success, but it succeeded almost in
+our own despite.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>In the mind of Morris it doubtless promised to be the sort of association
+about which he was constantly dreaming; a group of intelligent craftsmen
+interested in making the details of daily life as full as possible of
+beauty, each man fitted to his task and loving it, each in his way a
+master-workman of the guild, counting his craft honourable and spending
+his best thought and labour on it. There was ground enough for faith in
+the artistic if not in the commercial outcome of the enterprise. The
+associates, beside Morris, Rossetti, and Burne-Jones, were Madox-Brown,
+then an artist of established reputation, Webb, the architect of the Red
+House, who was also a designer of furniture and ornament; Peter Paul
+Marshall, to whom Mr. William Rossetti ascribes the first suggestion of
+the formation of the firm, a &#8220;capable artist&#8221; although an amateur; and
+Charles Faulkner of the Oxford group, who had followed his mates to London
+unable to endure the loneliness of Oxford without them. They proposed to
+open what Rossetti called &#8220;an actual shop,&#8221; and sell whatever their united
+talent produced. &#8220;We are not intending to compete with &mdash;&mdash;&#8217;s costly
+rubbish or anything of that sort,&#8221; Rossetti wrote to his friend Allingham,
+&#8220;but to give real good taste at the price as far as possible of ordinary
+furniture.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img07.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="caption">TULIP DESIGN FOR AXMINSTER CARPET</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span>In the Spring of 1861, premises were taken over a jeweller&#8217;s shop at 8 Red
+Lion Square. Two floors and a part of the basement were used by the firm,
+and about a dozen men and boys were presently employed. There were regular
+weekly meetings carried on with the boisterousness of youth and high
+spirits, but with thorough efficiency, nevertheless, where plans that were
+to modify and influence the household decoration of all England were gaily
+formed and put into practice.</p>
+
+<p>The prospectus, in which Mr. Mackail discerns Rossetti&#8217;s &#8220;slashing hand
+and imperious accent,&#8221; was not entirely calculated to mollify rival
+decorators, calling attention to the fact that attempts at decorative art
+up to that time had been crude and fragmentary, and emphasising the want
+of some one place where work of &#8220;a genuine and beautiful character could
+be obtained.&#8221; The new firm pledged itself to execute in a business-like
+manner:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I. Mural Decoration, either in Pictures or in Pattern Work, or merely in
+the arrangement of Colours, as applied to dwelling-houses, churches, or
+public buildings.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;II. Carving generally, as applied to Architecture.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;III. Stained Glass, especially with reference to its harmony with Mural
+Decoration.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;IV. Metal Work in all its branches, including jewellery.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;V. Furniture, either depending for its beauty on its own design, on the
+application of materials<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span> hitherto overlooked, or on its conjunction with
+Figure and Pattern Painting. Under this head is included Embroidery of all
+kinds, Stamped Leather, and ornamental work in other such materials,
+besides every article necessary for domestic use.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Clearly this was not the usual thing, nor was the business conducted in
+the usual way. According to Mr. William Rossetti, the young reformers
+adopted a tone of &#8220;something very like dictatorial irony&#8221; toward their
+customers, permitting no compromise, and laying down the law without
+concession to individual taste or want of taste. You could have things
+such as the firm chose them to be or you could go without them.</p>
+
+<p>The finance of the company began, Mr. Mackail says, with a call of one
+pound per share and a loan of a hundred pounds from Mrs. Morris of Leyton.
+In 1862 a further call of nineteen pounds a share was made on the
+partners, raising the paid-up capital to one hundred and forty pounds,
+which &#8220;was never increased until the dissolution of the firm in 1874.&#8221; A
+few hundred pounds additional were loaned by Morris and his mother. Each
+piece of work contributed by any member of the firm was paid for at the
+time, and Morris as general manager received a salary of a hundred and
+fifty pounds a year.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img08.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="caption">PEACOCK DESIGN FOR COARSE WOOL HANGINGS</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>It is obvious that with this slender financial basis the business required
+the utmost energy, industry, skill, and talent to keep it from being
+promptly wrecked on the very uncertain coast of public opinion.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span> During
+the first year all the members of the firm were active, although even at
+the first Morris led the rest. A stimulus was provided by the
+International Exhibition of 1862, whither they sent examples of their
+work, at the cost, wrote Faulkner, of &#8220;more tribulation and swearing to
+Topsy than three exhibitions will be worth.&#8221; The exhibits attracted
+attention, and were awarded medals, in the case of the stained glass, &#8220;for
+artistic qualities of colour and design,&#8221; and in the case of the
+furniture, hangings, and so forth, for the &#8220;closeness with which the style
+of the Middle Ages was rendered.&#8221; It happened that the chief work in
+stained glass in the exhibit of the firm consisted of a set of windows
+designed by Rossetti, and giving, according to a Belgian critic, &#8220;an
+impression of colour, dazzling and magnificent, velvety and harmonious,
+resembling the Flemish stained glass windows decorating the Gothic
+cathedrals.&#8221; Thus, fortunately, the first appearance of the firm was
+distinguished by the splendour which Rossetti alone among the group of
+workers could achieve, but his interest and activity shortly flagged and
+were absorbed in his individual work outside the company.</p>
+
+<p>At first, despite the lordly prospectus, there were occasional blunders.
+Dr. Birkbeck Hill tells of a study table and an arm-chair, neither one of
+which was so thorough a piece of workmanship as the firm would have turned
+out later on, and Mr. Hughes remembers a sofa with a long bar beneath
+projecting six inches at each end so that it tripped up anyone<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span> who
+hastily went round it. These, however, were blunders of a kind soon
+remedied by experience. So long as the associates kept up their enthusiasm
+there were among them ample skill to grapple with technicalities, and
+ample artistic faculty to defy all ordinary competition. Whoever dropped
+behind from time to time in this most essential quality of enthusiasm it
+was never Morris, and all accounts agree in attributing to his energy and
+industry and unutterable zest the success of the novel and interesting
+experiment. &#8220;He is the only man I have known,&#8221; said Rossetti once, &#8220;who
+beats every other man at his own game.&#8221; The men he had to beat at this
+game of decoration were for the most part unworthy foes. Decorative art
+was at a low ebb in the early Victorian age, the age of antimacassars,
+stucco, and veneer. From this cheap vulgarity and pretentiousness Morris
+turned back&mdash;as he was wont to do on every occasion that offered
+excuse&mdash;to the thirteenth century as the purest fount of English
+tradition, where, if anywhere, could be found models showing logical
+principles of construction and genuine workmanship. His companions either
+caught from him the infection of the medi&aelig;val attitude or were already in
+sympathy with it, and the work of the firm took on an emphatically Gothic
+aspect from the beginning. How great or how important a part each member
+played in the sum of the production is very difficult to estimate owing to
+the co&ouml;perative plan by which several artists frequently united in
+executing one and the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span> same piece of work. Sometimes Burne-Jones would
+draw the figures, Webb the birds, and Morris the foliage for a piece of
+drapery or wall-paper. Again portions of separate designs would be used
+over and over in different combinations for different places. This free
+co&ouml;peration, this moving about within the limits of a general plan, suited
+the restless spirit of Morris, and chimed also with his profound
+admiration for the way in which the medi&aelig;val works of art were brought
+about, no one man standing high above the others or trying to preserve his
+name and the fame of his performance. Working for the pleasure of the work
+was of the very essence of his philosophy, and nothing could be more
+unjust than the sneers from time to time launched at him because his
+venture proved a commercial triumph. Perhaps it would be going too far to
+say that money-getting was never in his mind, but there is no question
+that it was never first in his mind, and never in the slightest degree
+crowded his desire to put forth sincere, fine work, worth its price to the
+last detail, and worthy of praise and liking without regard to its price.
+There was not the slightest suggestion of pose or sham of any kind in his
+thought when he wrote, as he often did, against the greed of gain and in
+praise of the kind of labour that may be delighted in without regard to
+pounds and pence. He could say quite faithfully that he shared the
+humility of the early craftsmen, of whom he speaks with reverence.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;In most sober earnest,&#8221; he says in one of his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span> lectures, &#8220;when we hear it
+said, as it often is said, that extra money payment is necessary under all
+circumstances to produce great works of art, and that men of special
+talent will not use those talents without being bribed by mere gross
+material advantages, we, I say, shall know what to reply. We can appeal to
+the witness of those lovely works still left to us, whose unknown, unnamed
+creators were content to give them to the world, with little more extra
+wages than what their pleasure in their work and their sense of usefulness
+in it might bestow on them.&#8221; There is no room for doubt that he approached
+his work in precisely the spirit here described by him. He was willing to
+exercise his faculties on the humblest undertakings, with no other aim
+than to make a common thing pleasant to look upon and agreeable to use.
+Half a century ago &#8220;craft&#8221; was not the fashionable word for the kind of
+work with which the firm chiefly concerned itself, and in doing the
+greater part of what he did Morris was merely writing himself down, in the
+language of the general public, an artisan. Conforming to the truest of
+principles he raised his work by getting under it. Nothing was too
+laborious or too lowly for him. Pride of position was unknown to him in
+any sense that would prevent him from indulging in manual labour. His real
+pride lay in making something which he considered beautiful take the place
+of something ugly in the world. If it were a fabric to be made lovely with
+long disused or unfamiliar dyes, his hands were <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span>in the vat. If tapestry
+were to be woven, he was at the loom by dawn. In his workman&#8217;s blouse,
+steeped in indigo, and with his hair outstanding wildly, he was in the
+habit of presenting himself cheerfully at the houses of his friends,
+relying upon his native dignity to save appearances, or, to speak more
+truly, not thinking of appearances at all, but entirely happy in his r&ocirc;le
+of workman, though frankly desirous that the business should prosper
+beyond all danger of the &#8220;smash&#8221; that would, he owned, &#8220;be a terrible
+nuisance.&#8221; &#8220;I have not time on my hands,&#8221; he said, &#8220;to be ruined and get
+really poor.&#8221; It was to the peculiar union of the ideal and the practical
+in his nature that his success in the fields on which he ventured is due.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img09.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="caption">PAINTED WALL DECORATION<br />DESIGNED BY MORRIS</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>It must be admitted, however, that while his soul and vigour found vent in
+his designing and in the journeyman work&mdash;&#8220;delightful work, hard for the
+body and easy for the mind&#8221;&mdash;at which he was so ready to lend a hand, his
+artistic product lacked somewhat in the qualities that come from the
+exercise of the higher intellectual gifts. It was more than an attempt to
+revive old Gothic forms; it was an adoption of old forms with an infusion
+of modern spirit; but it missed the native and personal character of work
+growing out of contemporaneous conditions and tastes. Imaginative
+craftsman as he was, Morris was never quite an artist in the strict sense
+of the word. He had a fine sense of colour and, within certain limits, a
+right feeling for pattern; but his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span> invention was too exuberant for
+repose, and he displayed in the greater part of his work an ornamental
+luxuriance that destroyed dignity and simplicity of effect. He did not
+like the restraints of art, and he seems to have been incapable of
+entering the sphere of abstract thought in which the principles governing
+great art are found. &#8220;No schools of art,&#8221; he says with his superbly
+inaccurate generalisation, &#8220;have ever been contented to use abstract lines
+and forms and colours&mdash;that is, lines and so forth without any meaning.&#8221;
+Such ornament he deemed &#8220;outlandish.&#8221; He wanted his patterns, especially
+his wall-paper patterns, to remind people of pleasant scenes: &#8220;of the
+close vine trellis that keeps out the sun by the Nile side; or of the wild
+woods and their streams with the dogs panting beside them; or of the
+swallows sweeping above the garden boughs toward the house eaves where
+their nestlings are, while the sun breaks the clouds on them; or of the
+many-flowered summer meadows of Picardy,&#8221;&mdash;all very charming things to
+think about, but as really pertinent to wall-paper designing as the
+pleasant memory of a hard road with a fast horse speeding over it would be
+to the designing of a carpet. He preached the closest observation of
+nature and the most delicate understanding of it before attempting
+conventionalisation, but he did not hesitate to break all the laws of
+nature in his designs when he happened to want to do so. He did not
+hesitate, as Mr. Day has said, to make an acorn grow from two stalks or to
+give a lily five<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span> petals. Fitness in ornament was one of his fundamental
+principles, and he made his designs for the place in which they were to be
+seen and with direct reference to the limitations of opportunities of that
+place. It was never his way to turn a wall-paper loose on the market for
+any chance purchaser. He must know, if possible, something of the walls to
+which the design was to be applied and of the room in which it was to
+live, and he then adapted his design to his idea of what was required.
+This idea, however, was commonly much influenced by certain pre-conceived
+theories. He believed, for example, that there should be a sense of
+mystery in every pattern designed. This mystery he tried to get, not by
+masking the geometrical structure upon which a recurring pattern must be
+based, but by covering the ground equably and richly, so that the observer
+may not &#8220;be able to read the whole thing at once.&#8221; Thus many of his
+designs are so over-elaborated as to give the effect of restlessness,
+whereas &#8220;rest&#8221; was the word oftenest on his lips in connection with
+domestic art. In common with most designers who derive their ideals from
+medi&aelig;val sources, he was less impressed by the tranquillity gained from
+calm clean spaces, the measure, order, and stateliness brought about by
+the simple relation of abstract lines, the repose of the rhythmical play
+of mass in perfect proportion, undisturbed by decorative detail, than by
+the charm of highly vitalised imagery. But though he erred on the side of
+luxuriance&mdash;while<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span> preaching simplicity&mdash;he never allowed his design to
+sink into vulgarity or petty picturesqueness. He might be intricate but he
+was not vague. &#8220;Run any risk of failure rather than involve yourself in a
+tangle of poor weak lines that people can&#8217;t make out,&#8221; he says. &#8220;Definite
+form bounded by firm outline is a necessity for all ornament. You ought
+always to go for positive patterns when they may be had.&#8221; They might
+always be had from him. And it is due to his positive quality, his
+uncompromising certainty of the rightness of the thing that he is doing,
+that even when he is most imitative he gives an impression of originality,
+and is in fact original in the sense that he has thought out for himself
+the methods and motives of the ancient art by which he is consciously and
+intentionally influenced.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img10.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="caption">PAINTED WALL DECORATION<br />DESIGNED BY MORRIS</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>Finish, it need hardly be said, was not prized by him. It was one of his
+assumptions that &#8220;the better is the enemy of the good,&#8221; and he preferred
+the roughness of incompleteness to the suavity of perfect workmanship. He
+dreaded the suggestion of the machine that lurks in the polished surface
+and the perfect curve. Nor did he at any time believe in the subdivision
+of labour by which a workman learns to do one thing with the utmost
+efficiency, holding that no workman could enjoy such specialised work, and
+therefore, of course, could not through it give pleasure to others. The
+following is the creed which, according to his &#8220;compact with himself,&#8221;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span>
+he made it a duty to repeat when he and his fellow-men came together to
+discuss art:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;We ought to get to understand the value of intelligent work, the work of
+men&#8217;s hands guided by their brains, and to take that, though it be rough,
+rather than the unintelligent work of machines or slaves though it be
+delicate; to refuse altogether to use machine-made work unless where the
+nature of the thing compels it, or where the machine does what mere human
+suffering would otherwise have to do; to have a high standard of
+excellence in wares and not to accept make-shifts for the real thing, but
+rather to go without&mdash;to have no ornament merely for fashion&#8217;s sake, but
+only because we really think it beautiful, otherwise to go without it; not
+to live in an ugly and squalid place (such as London) for the sake of mere
+excitement or the like, but only because our duties bind us to it&mdash;to
+treat the natural beauty of the earth as a holy thing not to be rashly
+dealt with for any consideration; to treat with the utmost care whatever
+of architecture and the like is left us of the times of art.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img11.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="caption">DESIGN FOR ST. JAMES&#8217;S PALACE WALL-PAPER<br />(<i>Reproduced by courtesy of Mr. Bulkley</i>)</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>Wall-papers were among the earliest staple products of the firm in Red
+Lion Square, although Morris always regarded them in the light of a
+compromise; an altogether unsatisfactory substitute for the hand-painting,
+or tapestry or silk or printed cotton hangings, which he considered the
+proper covering for the bare walls which, of course, no one not in &#8220;an
+unhealthy state of mind and probably of body also&#8221;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span> could endure to leave
+bare. The first to be designed, the <i>Trellis</i> paper, was the combined work
+of Morris and Webb, the former being responsible for the rose-trellis
+intended, we may suppose, to bring with it pleasant recollections of
+gardens in June and inspired by his own sweet garden at Upton, the latter
+for the birds that cling to the lattice or dart upward among the heavily
+thorned stems. In the early papers the designs were very simple and
+direct, often more quaint than beautiful, as in the case of the well-known
+<i>Daisy</i> paper, and depending greatly on the colouring for the
+attractiveness they possessed. Later came such intricate patterns as the
+<i>Pimpernel</i>, the <i>Acanthus</i>, so elaborate as to require a double set of
+blocks and no less than thirty-two printings, and the paper designed for
+St. James&#8217;s Palace, as large and magnificent as the environment in which
+it was to be placed demanded. It is quite obvious from these designs that
+Morris did not regard his wall-hangings as backgrounds but as decorations
+in themselves. As a matter of fact he did not fancy pictures for his
+walls. After his early burst of enthusiasm over Rossetti&#8217;s paintings he
+bought few pictures if any, and they do not seem ever to have entered into
+his schemes of decoration. The wall of a room was always important to him,
+and despite his discontent with paper coverings for it, he was anxious to
+have such coverings as ornamental as possible, admitting them to be useful
+&#8220;as things go,&#8221; and treating them in considerable detail in his lectures
+on the decorative arts. <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span>He advised making up for the poverty of the
+material by great thoughtfulness in the design: &#8220;The more and the more
+mysteriously you interweave your sprays and stems, the better for your
+purpose, as the whole thing has to be pasted flat upon a wall and the cost
+of all this intricacy will but come out of your own brain and hand.&#8221;
+Concerning colour he was equally specific. In his lecture
+characteristically called <i>Making the Best of It</i>, in which with an accent
+of discouragement he endeavours to show his audience how at the time of
+his speaking to make a middle-class home &#8220;endurable,&#8221; he lays down certain
+rules which indicate at one and the same time his mastery of his subject
+and the incommunicability of right taste in this direction, although many
+of his ideas may be pondered to great advantage by even the mind untrained
+in colour schemes. He begins with his usual preliminary statement as to
+the health of those who disagree with him. &#8220;Though we may each have our
+special preferences,&#8221; he says, &#8220;among the main colours, which we shall do
+quite right to indulge, it is a sign of disease in an artist to have a
+prejudice against any particular colour, though such prejudices are common
+and violent enough among people imperfectly educated in art, or with
+naturally dull perceptions of it. Still colours have their ways in
+decoration, so to say, both positively in themselves, and relatively to
+each man&#8217;s way of using them. So I may be excused for setting down some
+things I seem to have noticed about these ways.&#8221;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span> After thus establishing
+friendly relations with his audience, he instructs them that yellow is a
+colour to be used sparingly and in connection with &#8220;gleaming materials&#8221;
+such as silk; that red to be at its finest must be deep and full and
+between crimson and scarlet; that purple no one in his senses would think
+of using bright and in masses, and that the best shade of it tends toward
+russet; green, he continues, must seldom be used both bright and strong.
+&#8220;On the other hand,&#8221; he adds, &#8220;do not fall into the trap of a dingy,
+bilious-looking yellow-green, a colour to which I have a special and
+personal hatred, because (if you will excuse my mentioning personal
+matters) I have been supposed to have somewhat brought it into vogue.&#8221;
+Dingy colours were abhorred by him in all cases, and his patience with
+those customers who demanded them was extremely limited. Blue was his
+&#8220;holiday colour,&#8221; and &#8220;if you duly guard against getting it cold if it
+tend toward red, or rank if it tends toward green,&#8221; you &#8220;need not be much
+afraid of its brightness.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img12.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="caption">EARLY DESIGN FOR MORRIS WALL-PAPER &#8220;DAISY AND COLUMBINE&#8221;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img13.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="caption">CHRYSANTHEMUM DESIGN FOR WALL-PAPER</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>From his hatred of mechanical methods grew his preferences among the
+lesser arts. He once complained that he never could see any scene &#8220;with a
+frame as it were around it,&#8221; and the less necessity there was for bounding
+and limiting his design the happier he was in making it. Embroidery he
+loved, for here the worker had an almost absolutely free hand. There was
+no &#8220;excuse&#8221; in embroidery for anything short of striking beauty. &#8220;It is
+not worth <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span>doing,&#8221; he said, &#8220;unless it is either very copious and rich,
+or very delicate&mdash;or both. For such an art nothing patchy or scrappy, or
+half-starved should be done.&#8221; Tapestry-weaving stood next in freedom of
+method, and this was not only a favourite art with him, but one which he
+carried to an extraordinary degree of perfection, he and Burne-Jones
+combining their designs to produce results coming nearer to the old Arras
+effects than to the work of modern weavers. In tapestry-weaving Morris
+used the <i>haute lisse</i> or &#8220;high loom,&#8221; the weaver holding apart with his
+left hand the threads of the warp which stands upright before him as with
+his right hand he works his bobbins in and out, seeing the picture he is
+making in a mirror placed on the other side of the loom. The interest of
+Morris in the weaving craft is said to have been first awakened by the
+sight of a man in the street selling toy models of weaving machines, one
+of which he promptly bought for experimental purposes. It was many years
+before he could find a full-sized loom of the kind he wanted, which had
+become obsolete or nearly so, and which was the only style of loom he
+would consider using as it was most like the looms on which the splendid
+fabrics of medi&aelig;val times had been woven. By such difficulties he was
+rarely baffled. In the case of his tapestries the method he proposed to
+revive had died out in Cromwell&#8217;s time and there was no working model
+which could be used as a guide. But there was an old French official
+handbook that came in his way,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span> from which he was able to pick up the
+details of the craft and this sufficed. His personal familiarity with his
+process is apparent in his various discussions of it. He speaks with the
+authority of a workman whose hand has held the tool. This practical and
+positive knowledge saved him from the sentimentalism into which his
+theories might otherwise have led him. He designed his patterns fully
+aware of the way in which they were going to behave in the process of
+application. When in 1882 he was called upon to give evidence before the
+Royal Commission appointed to inquire into the subject of technical
+instruction, he urged the necessity of this working-knowledge on the part
+of every designer. &#8220;I think it essential,&#8221; he said, &#8220;that a designer
+should learn the practical way of carrying out the work for which he
+designs; he ought to be able to weave himself.&#8221; In all his talk about art
+he tried to tell people how to do only the things he himself had done, in
+which he differed widely and wholesomely from his master Ruskin whose
+teachings were so often on his lips. The activity of his hand was a needed
+and to a great extent an effective check upon the activity of his
+sentiment. But&mdash;like Ruskin here&mdash;he found it hard to stay long away from
+the moral or emotional significance of the art he was discussing. The art
+that speaks to the mind he did not completely understand. The art that
+speaks to the senses he abundantly explained. The amazingly ingenious
+point of view from which he defends his preoccupation<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span> with what he has
+named &#8220;the lesser arts&#8221; is displayed in the following passage, beginning
+with the almost inevitable formula:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;A healthy and sane person being asked with what kind of art he would
+clothe his walls, might well answer, &#8216;with the best art,&#8217; and so end the
+question. Yet out on it! So complex is human life, that even this
+seemingly most reasonable answer may turn out to be little better than an
+evasion. For I suppose the best art to be the pictured representation of
+men&#8217;s imaginings: what they have thought has happened to the world before
+their time, or what they deem they have seen with the eyes of the body or
+the soul; and the imaginings thus represented are always beautiful indeed,
+but oftenest stirring to men&#8217;s passions and aspirations and not seldom
+sorrowful or even terrible.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Stories that tell of men&#8217;s aspirations for more than material life can
+give them, their struggle for the future welfare of the race, their
+unselfish love, their unrequited service; things like this are the
+subjects for the best art; in such subjects there is hope surely, yet the
+aspect of them is likely to be sorrowful enough: defeat, the seed of
+victory, and death, the seed of life, will be shown on the face of most of
+them.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Take note, too, that in the best art all these solemn and awful things
+are expressed clearly and without any vagueness, with such life and power
+that they impress the beholder so deeply that he is<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span> brought face to face
+with the very scenes, and lives among them for a time: so raising his life
+above the daily tangle of small things that wearies him to the level of
+the heroism which they represent. This is the best art, and who can deny
+that it is good for us all that it should be at hand to stir the emotions;
+yet its very greatness makes it a thing to be handled carefully, for we
+cannot always be having our emotions deeply stirred: that wearies us body
+and soul; and man, an animal that longs for rest like other animals,
+defends himself against that weariness by hardening his heart and refusing
+to be moved every hour of the day by tragic emotions,&mdash;nay, even by beauty
+that claims his attention overmuch. Such callousness is bad, both for the
+arts and our own selves, and therefore it is not so good to have the best
+art forever under our eyes, though it is abundantly good that we should be
+able to get at it from time to time.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Meantime, I cannot allow that it is good for any hour of the day to be
+wholly stripped of life and beauty, therefore we must provide ourselves
+with lesser (I will not say worse) art with which to surround our common
+work-a-day or restful times; and for those times I think it will be enough
+for us to clothe our daily and domestic walls with ornament that reminds
+us of the outward face of the earth, of the innocent love of animals, or
+man passing his days between work and rest as he does. I say with ornament
+that reminds us of these things and sets our<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span> minds and memories at work
+easily creating them; because scientific representation of them would
+again involve us in the problems of hard fact and the troubles of life,
+and so once more destroy our rest for us.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img14.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="caption">ANEMONE PATTERN FOR SILK AND<br />WOOL CURTAIN MATERIAL</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>Was ever a craftsman of the ancient guilds so at pains to make clear the
+propriety and usefulness of his wood-carving or enamelling or niello! Like
+the early workman, however, he moved with marvellous facility from one
+branch of his art to another. From wall-papers it was but a step to cotton
+prints which in a way were the playthings of a mind at leisure. They might
+be as gay as one chose to make them, and &#8220;could not well go wrong so long
+as they avoided commonplace and kept somewhat on the daylight side of
+nightmare.&#8221; From the weaving of hangings to the weaving of carpets was a
+step as easily taken, and when the impulse seized him to carry on the
+great but dying art of Persia in this direction, Morris so effectively
+applied himself to mastering the conditions under which the beautiful
+Eastern carpets were brought to their perfection as to produce at least
+one example&mdash;that called <i>The Buller&#8217;s Wood Carpet</i>&mdash;that fairly competes
+with the splendour of its prototypes. Stained glass for a time baffled
+him. &#8220;His was not the temperament,&#8221; says one of his critics, &#8220;patiently to
+study the chemistry of glass colour; or to prove by long experiment the
+dependence to be placed upon a flux.&#8221; Although many windows were made by
+the firm,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span> the larger number of them designed by Burne-Jones, Morris being
+responsible for the colour, he never seemed to forget that he had come
+near to being worsted in his fight with the technical difficulties of this
+most difficult art, and economised his enthusiasm for it accordingly.
+Hand-painted tiles, however, which he was the first to introduce into
+England, were favourites with him, and in them he perpetuated some of his
+attempts at drawing the human figure. Furniture, though an important
+feature of the work undertaken by the firm, did not appeal to him, and he
+left it to his associates. His experiments in vegetable dyes produced
+interesting results, although here also his technical knowledge was not
+entirely adequate to his task. In connection with his textile work he
+early felt the imperative necessity of having finer colours than the
+market offered. To get them as he wanted them he was obliged to go back as
+far as Pliny, but this was a small matter to one whose mind was always
+ready to provide him with an Aladdin&#8217;s carpet. Back to Pliny he went to
+learn old methods, and in addition he called to his aid ancient herbals
+and French books of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, finally
+setting up his own vats and becks and very literally plunging in. At first
+he complained of &#8220;looking such a beast,&#8221; but his enthusiasm soon overcame
+this rather remarkable display of concern for his personal appearance, and
+he wrote most joyously of working in sabots and blouse in the dye-house
+&#8220;pretty much<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span> all day long.&#8221; Out of his vats came the blue of his
+indigo, the red of his madder, the yellow of weld or Persian berry, the
+rich brown of walnut juice, making beautiful combinations, which, when
+they faded, changed into paler tints of the same colour and were not
+unpleasant to look upon. The aniline dyes, which in 1860 were the latest
+wonder of science, and in a very crude stage of their development, called
+out his most picturesque invective. Each colour was hideous in itself,
+crude, livid, cheap, and loathed by every person of taste, the &#8220;foul blot
+of the capitalist dyer.&#8221; In brief, the invention supposed to be for the
+benefit of an art &#8220;the very existence of which depends upon its producing
+beauty&#8221; was &#8220;on the road; and very far advanced on it, towards destroying
+all beauty in the art.&#8221; The only thing to do was to turn one&#8217;s back on the
+chemical dyes, relegate them to a museum of scientific curiosities, and go
+back &#8220;if not to the days of the Pharaohs yet at least to those of
+Tintoret.&#8221; It was highly characteristic of him that he chose the remedy of
+&#8220;going back&#8221; in place of progressing with the new material as far as
+possible.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img15.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="caption">PORTION OF HAMMERSMITH CARPET</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>His work with silks and with wools was naturally greatly enriched by his
+use of his own full, soft and brilliant colours, and his personal
+attention to the art of dyeing counted for so much that one of his most
+accomplished pupils in embroidery is quoted by Mr. Mackail as saying that
+she promptly felt the difference when Morris ceased to dye with his own
+hands, that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span> the colours became more monotonous and prosy and the very
+lustre of the silk was less beautiful. It is, however, difficult to
+impress yourself upon the public precisely as you are, whatever vigour
+your personality may have. Morris, with his intense love of bright full
+hues, has come down as the promoter of the so-called &#8220;&aelig;sthetic&#8221; dulness of
+colour, and his name has been especially associated with the peacock blue
+and the &#8220;sage-green&#8221; to which he had an especial aversion. It was one of
+his doctrines that a room should be kept cheerful in tone, and how happily
+he could carry out this doctrine is seen in more than one of the rooms
+decorated by the firm. A visitor to Stanmore Hall, for example, has noted
+the delicate tones of the painted ceilings as looking like embroidery on
+old white silk, giving a bright yet light and a&euml;rial effect, and forming
+with the woodwork of untouched oak an impression of delightful gayety.</p>
+
+<p>That Morris made himself a master of so many crafts and grappled even so
+successfully as he did with the technical difficulties involved would be
+somewhat remarkable had he attempted none of the other undertakings in
+which he gained for himself a name to be remembered. His eagerness to
+express his ideals in a practical form led him on indefinitely. To the
+very last a new world to conquer roused his spirit and made him tingle to
+be off. For a man with the trace of the plodder in him such a career would
+have been an impossible one, but Morris went blithely from craft to craft
+by a series of leaps and bounds.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span> He stayed with each just long enough to
+understand its working principles and to make himself efficient to teach
+others its peculiar virtues and demands, and he then passed on. &#8220;Each
+separate enterprise on which he entered,&#8221; says one of his biographers,
+&#8220;seems for a time to have moved him to extraordinary energy. He thought it
+out, installed it, set it going, designed for it, trained men and women in
+the work to be done, and then by degrees, as the work began to run
+smoothly and could be trusted to go on without him, his interest became
+less active: a new idea generated in his mind, or an old one burst into
+bud, and his energies burst out afresh in some new doing.&#8221; As time went on
+he had less and less practically to do with the firm of which he was the
+head and of which he continued to the end to be the consulting adviser. He
+gathered about him co&ouml;perators who not only were sympathetic with his
+methods but absorbed his style. His distinction as a designer was neither
+so great nor so personal that it could not to a considerable degree be
+communicated, and this accounts for the enduring quality of his influence
+which has been handed down to us through others without too much
+subtracted from it, with many of the characteristics most to be cherished
+still present. Greater decorators have existed, indeed, but it may be
+questioned if anyone has been quite so inspiriting; has had the matter
+quite so much at heart. He persuaded the multitude from the intensity of
+his own conviction, and he persuaded them<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span> on the whole toward good things
+and toward beauty. He made other men&#8217;s ideas his own but he adopted them
+body and soul. He followed his own fashion, inveighing with vigour and
+frequently with logic against nearly all the fashions of his time. It is
+not surprising that he himself became the great fashion of the nineteenth
+century in matters of decoration. And this certainly was what he wanted,
+in the sense of wanting everyone in England to see as he did the
+possibilities of household art and to share in furthering them by turning
+their backs upon the sham art with which the commercial world was largely
+occupied. But he made no effort toward gaining the patronage of those
+unwilling to admit that what he disliked was intolerable. His was never a
+conciliatory policy. The following passage from his lecture on <i>The Lesser
+Arts</i> reveals his attitude in his own phrasing:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;People say to me often enough: If you want to make your art succeed and
+flourish, you must make it the fashion: a phrase which I confess annoys
+me: for they mean by it that I should spend one day over my work to two
+days in trying to convince rich, and supposed influential people, that
+they care very much for what they really do not care in the least, so that
+it may happen according to the proverb: <i>Bell-wether took the leap and we
+all went over</i>; well, such advisers are right if they are content with the
+thing lasting but a little while: say till you can make a little money, if
+you don&#8217;t get pinched by the door shutting too quickly: otherwise they are
+wrong: the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span> people they are thinking of have too many strings to their
+bow, and can turn their backs too easily on a thing that fails, for it to
+be safe work trusting to their whims: it is not their fault, they cannot
+help it, but they have no chance of spending time enough over the arts to
+know anything practical of them, and they must of necessity be in the
+hands of those who spend their time in pushing fashion this way and that
+for their own advantage.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img16.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="caption">SOFA DESIGNED BY THE MORRIS CO.<br />(<i>Reproduced by courtesy of Mr. Bulkley</i>)</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img17.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="caption">SECRETARY DESIGNED BY THE MORRIS CO.<br />(<i>Reproduced by courtesy of Mr. Bulkley</i>)</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Sirs, there is no help to be got out of these latter, or those who let
+themselves be led by them: the only real help for the decorative arts must
+come from those who work in them: nor must they be led, they must lead.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You whose hands make those things that should be works of art, you must
+all be artists, and good artists too, before the public at large can take
+real interest in such things; and when you have become so, I promise you
+that you shall lead the fashion; fashion shall follow your hands
+obediently enough.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/botban4.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span></p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/banner8.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V"></a>CHAPTER V.</h2>
+<p class="title">FROM THE RED HOUSE TO KELMSCOTT.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="dropcap"><span class="caps">While</span> Morris was developing the industries of the firm with essential
+steadiness, despite the rapid transitions from one pursuit to another, he
+was going through a variety of personal experiences, some of which
+involved his disappointment in deeply cherished plans. For one thing, and
+this perhaps the most grievous, he was obliged to give up the Red House
+upon which so much joyous labour had been spent. Several causes
+contributed to the unhappy necessity, chief among them an attack of
+rheumatic fever that made him sensitive to the bleak winds which the
+exposed situation of the building invited. The distance between London and
+Upton became also a serious matter after his illness, as he found it
+almost impossible to make the daily journeys required by his attention to
+the business. Several compromises were thought of, the most enticing being
+the removal of the works from Red Lion Square to Upton, and the addition
+of a wing to the Red House for Burne-Jones and his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span> family; but in the end
+the beautiful house was sold, Morris, after leaving it, never again
+setting eyes upon it.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img18.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="caption">ILLUSTRATION BY BURNE-JONES FOR PROJECTED EDITION OF<br />&#8220;THE EARTHLY PARADISE,&#8221; CUT ON WOOD BY MORRIS HIMSELF</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>The first move was to Queen Square, London, where Morris and the business
+became house-mates in the autumn of 1865, remaining together there, with
+more or less interruption, for seven years. Queen Square is in Bloomsbury,
+not far from the British Museum, and a part of the ugly London
+middle-class region for which Morris had so little liking, but as a place
+to carry on the rapidly increasing work of the firm it possessed great
+advantages. The number of the house was 26, and adjacent buildings and
+grounds were used for the workshops. At this time Mr. George Warrington
+Taylor was made business manager for the company, and Morris gained by his
+accession much valuable time, not only for designing and experimenting,
+but for the literary work that again began to claim his attention. He was
+still, however, a familiar figure in &#8220;the shop,&#8221; acting as salesman,
+showman, designer, or manual labourer. His aspect as he strode along the
+streets of the dull neighbourhood must have been refreshing. Those who
+knew him have repeatedly described him as the image of a sea-captain in
+general appearance. He wore habitually a suit of navy-blue serge cut in
+nautical fashion, and his manner was bluff and hearty as that of the
+proverbial seaman. Mr. Mackail gives a breezy picture of him in his
+workman&#8217;s blouse, hatless, with his ruddy complexion and rocking<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span> walk,
+bound for the Faulkners&#8217; house where once upon a time a new maid took him
+for the butcher. To have seen him in these days was to have seen one of
+his own ideal workmen out of <i>News from Nowhere</i>. As a master of men he
+seems to have been singularly successful, despite the temper which led him
+at times to commit acts of positive violence. His splendid zest for work
+must have been stimulating and to a degree contagious. Merely to be in the
+company of one who thought hearty manual labour so interesting and so
+pleasant and so heartily to be desired by everyone, must have had its
+vivifying effect. He was stating the simple truth when he said that he
+should die of despair and weariness if his daily work were taken from him
+unless he could at once make something else his daily work, and he is
+constantly drawing persuasive pictures of the charm of the various
+handicrafts&mdash;that of weaving for example, his description of which would
+invite the most discontented mind. He does not call the weaver&#8217;s craft a
+dull one: &#8220;If he be set to doing things which are worth doing&mdash;to watch
+the web growing day by day almost magically, in anticipation of the time
+when it is to be taken out and one can see it on the right side in all its
+well-schemed beauty&mdash;to make something beautiful that will last out of a
+few threads of silk and wool, seems to me not an unpleasant way of earning
+one&#8217;s livelihood, so long only as one lives and works in a pleasant place,
+with work-day not too long, and a book or <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span>two to be got at.&#8221; His own
+weavers were some of them boys trained in the shop from a condition of
+absolute ignorance of drawing and of the craft to such an efficiency as
+enabled them to weave the Stanmore tapestry, one panel of which took two
+years to the making, and which was of the utmost elaboration and
+magnificence of design. The exigencies of the business presently made it
+necessary to devote the whole of the premises in Queen Square to the work
+going on there, and the Morris family removed in 1872 to a small house
+between Hammersmith and Turnham Green, near Chiswick Lane, Morris
+retaining a couple of rooms in the Queen Square house for his use when
+busy there. Even the extended quarters soon proved insufficient, however,
+and in 1877 rooms were taken in Oxford Street for showing and selling the
+work of the firm, the manufacturing departments being still ensconced in
+Queen Square. In 1881 these also were transferred to more suitable
+premises. The dyeing and cotton-printing demanded workshops by the side of
+some stream of clear water &#8220;fit to dye with,&#8221; and after much search Morris
+found an ideal situation on the banks of the little Wandle River, near
+Wimbledon. There were the ruins of Merton Abbey where the Barons once gave
+their famous answer &#8220;Nolumus leges Angli&aelig; mutari,&#8221; and there manufactures
+had been carried on for centuries. In the long low-roofed worksheds on the
+river&#8217;s bank his workmen could move about in ample space,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span> practising
+ancient methods of dyeing, printing, and weaving, seven miles from Charing
+Cross. It is anything but a typical manufactory that has been depicted by
+visitors to the Merton Abbey works. We read of an old walled garden gay
+with old-fashioned flowers and shrubs, of the swift little Wandle River
+rushing along between the buildings, its trout leaping under the windows,
+a water-wheel revolving at ease, hanks of yarn, fresh from the vats,
+drying in the pure air, calico lying &#8220;clearing&#8221; on the meadow grass in an
+enclosure made by young poplar trees, a sunlit picture of peaceful work
+carried on by unharried workers among surroundings of fresh and wholesome
+charm. Women and men were both employed, some of them old and not all of
+them competent, but none of them overworked or underpaid. Though Morris
+had somewhat scant courtesy of manner toward those who worked for and with
+him, he had at least the undeviating desire to promote their welfare. If
+he expected work of his work-people, as certainly he did, he expected it
+only under the most healthful and agreeable conditions. Judging others by
+himself, he could not conceive anyone as happy in idleness, but neither
+did he expect anyone to be happy without leisure. In his own business he
+proved what the nineteenth century found hard to believe, that honest,
+thorough, and artistic workmanship, accomplished under reasonable
+exactions by people enjoying their occupation, could be combined with
+commercial prosperity. That the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span> products of such labour could not be
+bought by the poorer classes was due, he argued, to a social order wrong
+at the root. The time when art could be made &#8220;by the people and for the
+people, as a happiness to the maker and the user,&#8221; was a far-off dream.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img19.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="center"><i>Kelmscott Manor House</i></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img20.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="center"><i>Kelmscott Manor House</i></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>Shortly before Morris abandoned Queen Square as a place of residence, he
+discovered for himself a &#8220;heaven on earth,&#8221; in which he could spend his
+vacations from town, and free himself from the contamination of London
+streets. This was Kelmscott Manor House, which he rented&mdash;at first jointly
+with Rossetti&mdash;in 1871, and in which he took infinite satisfaction for the
+remainder of his life. The beautiful old place was in its way as
+characteristic of him and of his tastes as the Red House had been, and has
+become intimately associated with him in the minds of all who knew him
+during his later years, his passion for places investing those for which
+he cared with a sentiment not to be ignored or slighted in making up the
+sum of his interests. For a couple of years Rossetti was an inmate of
+Kelmscott Manor, and through his letters many vivid glimpses of it are
+obtained. The village of Kelmscott was at the time no more than a hamlet
+containing a hundred and seventeen people, and situated two and a half
+miles from the nearest town, Lechlade, to whose churchyard Shelley lent
+distinction by writing a poem there. The nearest station-town was
+Farringdon, so far off that the carrier who brought railway parcels to the
+occupants of the Manor charged six shillings and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span> sixpence for each trip.
+&#8220;Thus,&#8221; writes Rossetti, who was chronically short of money, &#8220;a good deal
+of inconvenience tempers the attractions of the place.&#8221; Nothing, however,
+unless the presence of Rossetti, who was &#8220;unromantically discontented&#8221;
+there, tempered them for Morris. In an article for <i>The Quest</i> for
+November, 1895, he describes the house in the most minute detail,
+accentuating its charms with a touch of comment for each that falls like a
+caress. The roofs are covered with the beautiful stone slates of the
+district, &#8220;the most lovely covering which a roof can have.&#8221; The
+&#8220;battering&#8221; or leaning back of the walls is by no means a defect but a
+beauty, &#8220;taking from the building a rigidity which otherwise would mar
+it,&#8221; and the stout studded partitions of the entrance passage are &#8220;very
+agreeable to anyone who does not want cabinet work to supplant carpentry.&#8221;
+To the building of it all must have gone, he thinks, &#8220;some thin thread of
+tradition, a half-anxious sense of the delight of meadow and acre and wood
+and river, a certain amount (not too much, let us hope) of common-sense, a
+liking for making materials serve one&#8217;s turn, and perhaps at bottom some
+little grain of sentiment.&#8221; And from Rossetti we hear of the primitive
+Kelmscott church &#8220;looking just as one fancies chapels in the <i>Mort
+d&#8217;Arthur</i>,&#8221; of clouds of starlings sinking in the copses &#8220;clamourous like
+mill-waters at wild play,&#8221; of &#8220;mustering rooks innumerable,&#8221; of a
+&#8220;delicious&#8221; garden and meadows leading to the river brink, of apple
+blossoms<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span> and marigolds and arrow-heads and white lilies &#8220;divinely
+lovely,&#8221; of an island by the boat-house rich in wild periwinkles, and of
+many another exquisite aspect of a place whose unvexed quietness was
+nevertheless powerless to soothe the turmoil of that tormented soul.</p>
+
+<p>To realise fully how Morris himself felt toward it, one must turn to his
+description in <i>News from Nowhere</i>. There he is supposed to see it through
+the kindly mist of time, returning to it from a regenerate and beautified
+world, and his problem is to write of it with the penetrating eloquence
+and melancholy associated with remembered happiness. It is supremely
+characteristic of him that he could perfectly strike this note while still
+living in hale activity upon the spot he is to praise with the tenderness
+of reminiscence. The great virtue of his temperament lay in this peculiar
+intensity of realisation. He needed neither loss nor change to spur his
+sensibility and awaken his recognition of the worth or special quality of
+what he loved. Vital as few men are, he seems, nevertheless, always to
+have dwelt in sight of death and to have grasped life as though the next
+moment he was to be torn from it. The burden of the song which Ogier the
+Dane hears on a fair May morning:</p>
+
+<p class="poem">Kiss me love! for who knoweth<br />
+What thing cometh after death?</p>
+
+<p>so often quoted in evidence of his fainting and dejected spirit, embodies
+indeed the sentiment of his attitude toward the pleasures and
+satisfactions to be<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span> drawn from the visible and perishable world, but does
+not hint at the energy with which he seized those pleasures, the
+sturdiness with which he filled himself with those satisfactions. When
+<i>News from Nowhere</i> was written, Morris had lived the better part of
+twenty years in close relation with the Kelmscott house, but custom had
+not staled for him its infinite variety. This is what he writes of it and
+of its surroundings in his romance of <i>An Epoch of Rest</i>: He and his
+companions have approached it by way of the river.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Presently we saw before us a bank of elm trees, which told us of a house
+amidst them. In a few minutes we had passed through a deep eddying pool
+into the sharp stream that ran from the ford, and beached our craft on a
+tiny strand of limestone gravel, and stepped ashore.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Mounting on the cart-road that ran along the river some feet above the
+water, I looked round about me. The river came down through a wide meadow
+on my left, which was grey now with the ripened seeding grasses; the
+gleaming water was lost presently by a turn of the bank, but over the
+meadow I could see the gables of a building where I knew the lock must be.
+A low wooded ridge bounded the river-plain to the south and south-east,
+whence we had come, and a few low houses lay about its feet and up its
+slope. I turned a little to my right and through the hawthorn sprays and
+long shoots of the wild roses could see the flat country spreading<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span> out
+far away under the sun of the calm evening, till something that might be
+called hills with a look of sheep pastures about them bounded it with a
+soft blue line. Before one, the elm boughs still hid most of what houses
+there might be in this river-side dwelling of men; but to the right of the
+cart-road a few grey buildings of the simplest kind showed here and there.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I had a mind to say that I did not know the way thither, and that the
+river-side dwellers should lead: but almost without my will my feet moved
+on along the road they knew. The raised way led us into a little field
+bounded by a backwater of the river on one side: on the right hand we
+could see a cluster of small houses and barns and a wall partly overgrown
+with ivy, over which a few grey gables showed. The village road ended in
+the shallow of the aforesaid backwater. We crossed the road, and again
+almost without my will my hand raised the latch of a door in the wall, and
+we stood presently on a stone path which led up to the old house to which
+fate in the shape of Dick had so strangely brought me in this world of
+men. My companion gave a sigh of pleased surprise and enjoyment, nor did I
+wonder, for the garden between the wall and the house was redolent of the
+June flowers, and the roses were rolling over one another with that
+delicious superabundance of small well-tended gardens which at first sight
+takes away all thought from the beholder save that of beauty. The
+blackbirds were<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span> singing their loudest, the doves were cooing on the
+roof-ridge, the rooks in the high elm trees beyond were garrulous among
+the young leaves, and the swifts wheeled, whining, about the gables. And
+the house itself was a fit guardian for all the beauty of this heart of
+summer.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Once again Ellen echoed my thoughts as she said: &#8216;Yes, friend, this is
+what I came out to see; this many-gabled old house built by the simple
+country-folk of the long-past times, regardless of all the turmoil that
+was going on in cities and courts, is lovely still amidst all the beauty
+which these latter days have created; and I do not wonder at our friends
+&#8217;tending it so carefully and making much of it. It seems to me as if it
+had waited for these happy days, and held in it the gathered crumbs of
+happiness of the confused and turbulent past.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;She led me up close to the house and laid her shapely sun-browned hand
+and arm upon the lichened wall as if to embrace it, and cried out: &#8216;O me!
+O me! How I love the earth and the seasons and weather, and all the things
+that deal with it and all that grows out of it,&mdash;as this has done!&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;We went in and found no soul in any room as we wandered from room to
+room&mdash;from the rose-covered porch to the strange and quaint garrets
+amongst the great timbers of the roof, where of old time the tillers and
+herdsmen of the manor slept, but which a-nights seemed now, by the small
+size of the beds, and the litter of useless and disregarded
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span>matters&mdash;bunches of dying flowers, feathers of birds, shells of
+starling&#8217;s eggs, caddis worms in mugs and the like,&mdash;seemed to be
+inhabited for the time by children.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Everywhere there was but little furniture, and that only the most
+necessary, and of the simplest forms. The extravagant love of ornament
+which I had noted in this people elsewhere, seemed here to have given
+place to the feeling that the house itself and its associations was the
+ornament of the country life amidst which it had been left stranded from
+old times, and that to reornament it would but take away its use as a
+piece of natural beauty.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;We sat down at last in a room over the wall which Ellen had caressed, and
+which was still hung with old tapestry, originally of no artistic value,
+but now faded into pleasant grey tones which harmonised thoroughly well
+with the quiet of the place, and which would have been ill supplanted by
+brighter and more striking decoration.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I asked a few questions of Ellen as we sat there, but scarcely listened
+to her answers, and presently became silent, and then scarce conscious of
+anything but that I was there in that old room, the doves crooning from
+the roofs of the barn and dovecot beyond the window opposite.&#8221;</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 25%;" />
+
+<p>In 1878 Morris took a London house on the Upper Mall, Hammersmith, which
+he occupied alternately with Kelmscott Manor. This place, which Mr.
+Mackail describes as &#8220;ugly without being mean,&#8221;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span> was also on the banks of
+the river, and Morris gained much satisfaction from the thought that the
+water flowing by it had come in its due course past the beloved Kelmscott
+garden. A somewhat inconvenient touch of sentiment caused him to give his
+Hammersmith home the name of &#8220;Kelmscott House&#8221; in compliment to the home
+actually situated at Kelmscott, the latter being distinguished by the
+title of &#8220;Manor,&#8221; a title that seems to belong to it by courtesy alone.</p>
+
+<p>From the great fondness felt by Morris for these places on which he
+lavished his art until they spoke more eloquently than his words of the
+aims and theories so dear to him, the domesticity of his life would
+naturally be inferred. Nor was he an eager traveller judged by modern
+standards. Nevertheless, he managed to find time for some extended trips
+just as he found time for everything that came in his way with an appeal
+to his liking. The most important of these was a voyage to Iceland, made
+in company with Faulkner and two other friends during the summer of 1871,
+just after the acquisition of Kelmscott Manor, in which he left Rossetti.
+His mind was ripe for the experience. He had already published
+translations from the Icelandic sagas made in collaboration with Mr.
+Magnusson, and his interest in the bracing Northern literature was
+reaching its height. Long years after, Rossetti said of him, &#8220;There goes
+the last of the Vikings!&#8221; and his mood in visiting Iceland was not unlike
+that of a modernised<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span> Viking returning to his home. Thoughts of the
+country&#8217;s great past were constantly with him. The boiling geysers, the
+conventional attraction for tourists who &#8220;never heard the names of Sigurd
+and Brunhild, of Njal, or Gunnar, or Grettir, or Gisli, or Gudrun,&#8221; were a
+source of irritation to him. His pilgrimages to the homes of the ancient
+traditions were the episodes of his journey worth thinking about, and
+about them he thought much and vigorously, seeing in imagination the
+figures of the old heroes going about summer and winter, attending to
+their haymaking and fishing and live stock, eating almost the same food
+and living on the same ground as the less imposing Norsemen of the
+present. &#8220;Lord!&#8221; he writes, &#8220;what littleness and helplessness has taken
+the place of the old passion and violence that had place here once&mdash;and
+all is unforgotten; so that one has no power to pass it by unnoticed.&#8221; His
+two months spent among the scenes of the greater sagas left him with an
+intense impression of a land stern and terrible, of toothed rocks and
+black slopes and desolate green, a land that intensified his melancholy by
+its suggestion of short-lived glory and early death, and intensified also
+his enjoyment of life by the sense of adventure, the rugged riding, and
+the fresh keen air. One of the important events of the trip was the
+exploration of the great cave at Surts-hellir, and twenty years after,
+many of its incidents were embodied in the book called <i>The Story of the
+Glittering Plain</i>, wherein<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span> Hallblithe and the three Seekers make their
+way through the stony tangle of the wilderness seeing &#8220;nought save the wan
+rocks under the sun.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Two years later he made a still more adventurous journey across the arid
+tableland occupying the central portion of Iceland and across the northern
+mountains to the sea. It was highly characteristic of him that for the
+time he yielded himself utterly to the influence of the strange and awful
+land upon his imagination, and that for years afterward his writing was
+flooded by the impressions that continually swept back upon his mind as he
+reverted to these experiences. Mr. Mackail gives an amusing instance of
+the way in which the interest uppermost with him became an obsession
+leading to the most childlike extravagances. During a holiday tour in
+Belgium he came to a place where neither French nor English was spoken. He
+therefore &#8220;made a desperate effort at making himself understood by
+haranguing the amazed inn-keeper in Icelandic.&#8221; His first visit to Italy,
+made between the first and second visits to Iceland, took faint hold upon
+him, nor was the second Italian journey, made some years later, and marked
+by a troublesome attack of gout, notably successful. He was a man of the
+North as surely as Rossetti was a man of the South, and it would have been
+a renaissance indeed that could have turned him into a Florentine or a
+Venetian.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img21.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="caption">DESIGN BY ROSSETTI FOR WINDOW EXECUTED BY MORRIS &amp; CO.<br />(<i>THE PARABLE OF THE VINEYARD</i>)</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img22.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="caption">DESIGN BY ROSSETTI FOR STAINED-GLASS WINDOW EXECUTED BY THE MORRIS CO.<br />(<i>THE PARABLE OF THE VINEYARD</i>)</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>During this middle period of his life, at the height of his great
+activity, an event occurred involving the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span> element of tragedy, if the
+breaking of friendships be accounted tragic. In 1875 the firm was
+dissolved. Following Mr. Mackail&#8217;s account of the circumstances that led
+to the dissolution, we find that the business had become one in which
+Morris supplied practically all the capital, invention, and control. It
+was also the chief source of his income. On the other hand, his partners
+might find themselves at any time seriously involved in the liabilities of
+a business which was rapidly extending. Hence the desirability of the
+dissolution and reconstitution of the firm. But in connection with this
+step an embarrassing situation arose. Under the original instrument, each
+partner had equal rights in the assets of the firm. After the first year
+or two the profits had never been divided, and the six partners of Morris,
+for the hundred and twenty pounds by which they were represented in the
+contributed capital at the beginning, had now claims on the business for
+some seven or eight thousand pounds. If these claims were insisted upon,
+Morris would be placed in a position of considerable financial difficulty.
+Burne-Jones, Webb, and Faulkner refused to accept any consideration. &#8220;The
+other three,&#8221; says Mr. Mackail, &#8220;stood on the strict letter of their legal
+rights.&#8221; Naturally the relations between Morris and the latter became
+grievously strained, and with Rossetti the break was absolute and
+irremediable. In passing out of Morris&#8217;s life, as he then did, he
+certainly left it more serene, but with him went also the vivifying<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span>
+influence of his genius. In considering the very unfortunate part played
+by him in the conflict among the members of the firm, it is fair to give a
+certain weight to details emphasised in Mr. William Rossetti&#8217;s account as
+modifying&mdash;to a slight degree, it is true, but still modifying&mdash;the sordid
+aspect of Rossetti&#8217;s action. Madox Brown, who was one of the partners
+wishing not to forego their legal rights, was getting on in years and was
+a comparatively poor man. He had always counted on the firm &#8220;as an
+important eventual accession to his professional earnings.&#8221; No one
+familiar with Rossetti&#8217;s character can doubt that a desire to stand by his
+old friend and teacher in such a matter would have a strong influence with
+him. To his brother&#8217;s mind, his attitude was throughout &#8220;one of
+conciliation,&#8221; with the wish &#8220;to adjust contending claims had that but
+been possible.&#8221; &#8220;He himself,&#8221; says Mr. William Rossetti, &#8220;retired from the
+firm without desiring any compensation for his own benefit. A sum was,
+however, assigned to him. He laid it apart for the eventual advantage of a
+member of the Morris family, but, ere his death, circumstances had induced
+him to trench upon it not a little.&#8221; It is easy to imagine circumstances
+trenching upon any sum of money under Rossetti&#8217;s direct control, and in
+the absence of any testimony the reader acquainted with his prodigal
+disposition may very well be pardoned for doubting whether any member of
+the Morris family became appreciably the richer for his impulse.
+Nevertheless, it is a reasonable<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span> conclusion that he was not actuated by a
+sordid motive in opposing the essentially just claim made by Morris, but
+was to his own mind acting in accordance with the demands of a friendship
+older and closer than that between him and Morris. It must be noted,
+however, that a reconciliation was effected in the course of time between
+Morris and Madox Brown, while in Rossetti&#8217;s case the wound never healed.
+The outcome of the negotiations was that Madox Brown was bought out,
+&#8220;receiving a handsome sum,&#8221; says Mr. William Rossetti, and the business
+went on under the sole management and proprietorship of Morris.</p>
+
+<p>In addition to the annoyance and real trouble of mind caused Morris by
+these transactions, he had the further anxiety at about this time of a
+breakdown of a serious and permanent nature in the health of his eldest
+daughter. This he took deeply to heart, losing spirits to a marked degree,
+but nothing human had power to stay his fertile brain and busy hand.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/botban5.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span></p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/banner9.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI"></a>CHAPTER VI.</h2>
+<p class="title">POETRY.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="dropcap"><span class="caps">Intent</span> as he was upon the artistic success of his work in decoration, and
+ardent in giving time and thought to achieving this success, Morris was
+far from excluding poetry from the sum of his occupations. The five years
+following his marriage (1859-1864), indeed, were barren of any important
+literary work. He had planned, somewhat anticipating the large scale of
+his later verse, a cycle of twelve poems on the Trojan War, but he
+completed only six of the twelve, and the project was presently abandoned.
+After the Red House was sold, however, and he was back in London with the
+time on his hands saved from the daily journey, he began at once to make
+poetry of a form entirely different from anything he had previously
+written. The little sheaf of poems contained in his early volume had been
+put together by the hand of a boy. The poem published in June, 1867, under
+the title <i>The Life and Death of Jason</i>, was the work of a man in full
+possession of his faculty. It was simple, certain, musical, and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span>predestined to speedy popularity, even Tennyson, with whom Morris was
+not a favourite, liking the Jason. It flowed with sustained if monotonous
+sweetness through seventeen books in rhymed pentameter, occasionally
+broken by octosyllabic songs. Although published as a separate poem, on
+account of the length to which it ran, apparently almost in despite of its
+author&#8217;s will, it had been intended to form part of the series called <i>The
+Earthly Paradise</i>, the first division of which followed it in 1868. This
+ambitious work was suggested by Chaucer&#8217;s <i>Canterbury Tales</i>, and consists
+of no fewer than twenty-four long narrative poems, set in a framework of
+delicate descriptive verse containing passages that are the very flower of
+Morris&#8217;s poetic charm. The scheme of the arrangement is interesting. A
+little band of Greeks, &#8220;the seed of the Ionian race,&#8221; are found living
+upon a nameless island in a distant sea. Hither at the end of the
+fourteenth century&mdash;the time of Chaucer&mdash;come certain wanderers of
+Germanic, Norse, and Celtic blood who have set out on a voyage in search
+of a land that is free from death, driven from their homes by the
+pestilence sweeping over them. Hospitably received, the wanderers spend
+their time upon the island entertaining their hosts with the legends
+current in their day throughout Western Europe, and in turn are
+entertained with the Hellenic legends which have followed the line of
+living Greek tradition and are told by the fourteenth-century islanders in
+the medi&aelig;val form and manner proper to them at<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span> that time. Among the
+wanderers are a Breton and a Suabian, and the sources from which the
+stories are drawn have a wide range. They were at first, indeed, intended
+to represent the whole stock of the world&#8217;s legends, but this field was
+too vast for even the great facility of Morris, and much was set aside. At
+the end we find <i>The Lovers of Gudrun</i>, taken from the Laxd&aelig;la Saga of
+Iceland, and bearing witness in the grimness of its tragedy and the
+fierceness of its Northern spirit to the powerful influence of the
+Icelandic literature upon the mind of Morris. It is the only story in the
+collection which has dominated his dreamy medi&aelig;valism and struck fire from
+his pen.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img23.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="center"><i>Morris&#8217;s Bed, with Hangings designed by himself<br />and embroidered by his Daughter</i></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>In <i>The Earthly Paradise</i> we have all the qualities that make its author
+dear to most of his readers. The mind is steeped in the beauty of imagery,
+and content to have emotion and thought lulled by the long, melancholy
+swing of lines that seem like the echo of great poetry without its living
+voice. Such poetry is what Morris wished his decorations to be&mdash;the
+&#8220;lesser art&#8221; that brings repose from the quickening of soul with which a
+masterpiece is greeted. The spirit revealed through the fluent murmur of
+the melodious words is very true to him and lies at the root of all his
+efforts toward making life fair to the eyes and soothing to the heart. The
+&#8220;unimpassioned grief,&#8221; the plaintive longing with which he regarded the
+fleeting and unsatisfying aspects of a world so beautiful and so
+sorrowful, never found more exquisite expression than in passage after
+passage of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span> this pellucid and lovely verse. The flight from death and the
+seeking after eternal life on this material globe constitute a theme that
+had for him a singular fitness. No one could have rendered with more
+sensitive appreciation the mood of men who set their life at an unmeasured
+price. No one could have expressed the dread of dying with more poetic
+sympathy. The preludes to the stories told on the island are poems
+addressed to the months of the changing year, and not one is free from the
+grievous suggestion of loss or the weary burden of fear and dejection.
+Read without the intervening narratives, they wrap the mind in an
+atmosphere of foreboding. There is no welcome unaccompanied by the shadow
+of farewell. There is no leaping of the heart to meet sunshine and fair
+weather without its corresponding faintness of shrinking from the clouds
+and darkness certain to follow. With a brave determination to seize
+exultation on the wing, he cries to March:</p>
+
+<p class="poem">Yea, welcome March! and though I die ere June,<br />
+Yet for the hope of life I give thee praise,<br />
+Striving to swell the burden of the tune<br />
+That even now I hear thy brown birds raise,<br />
+Unmindful of the past or coming days;<br />
+Who sing: &#8220;O joy! a new year is begun:<br />
+What happiness to look upon the sun!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>But what follows? The sure reminder of the silence that shall come after
+the singing:</p>
+
+<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 1em;">Ah, what begetteth all this storm of bliss</span><br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span>But Death himself, who crying solemnly,<br />
+E&#8217;en from the heart of sweet Forgetfulness,<br />
+Bids us &#8220;Rejoice, lest pleasureless ye die.<br />
+Within a little time must ye go by.<br />
+Stretch forth your open hands, and while ye live<br />
+Take all the gifts that Death and Life may give.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>And in the stanzas for October, written, Mr. Mackail tells us, in memory
+of a happy autumn holiday, we have the most poignant note of which he was
+
+capable:</p>
+
+<p class="poem">Come down, O Love; may not our hands still meet,<br />
+Since still we live to-day, forgetting June,<br />
+Forgetting May, deeming October sweet&mdash;<br />
+&mdash;O hearken, hearken! through the afternoon,<br />
+The grey tower sings a strange old tinkling tune!<br />
+Sweet, sweet, and sad, the toiling year&#8217;s last breath,<br />
+Too satiate of life to strive with death.<br />
+<br />
+And we too&mdash;will it not be soft and kind,<br />
+That rest from life, from patience and from pain;<br />
+That rest from bliss we know not when we find;<br />
+That rest from Love which ne&#8217;er the end can gain?&mdash;<br />
+Hark, how the tune swells, that erewhile did wane?<br />
+Look up, Love!&mdash;ah, cling close and never move!<br />
+How can I have enough of life and love?</p>
+
+<p>June, the high tide of the year, he selects as the fitting month in which
+to tell of something sad:</p>
+
+<p class="poem">Sad, because though a glorious end it tells,<br />
+Yet on the end of glorious life it dwells.</p>
+
+<p>In February he asks:</p>
+
+<p class="poem">Shalt thou not hope for joy new born again,<br />
+Since no grief ever born can ever die<br />
+Through changeless change of seasons passing by?</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img24.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="center"><i>Kelmscott Manor House from the Orchard</i></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span>Thus across the charming images of French romance, Hellenic legend, and
+Norse drama, falls the suggestion of his own personality, and it is due to
+this pervading personal mood or sentiment that <i>The Earthly Paradise</i> has
+a power to stir the imagination almost wholly lacking to his later work.
+It cannot be said that even here he is able to awaken a strong emotion.
+But the human element is felt. A warm intelligence of sympathy creeps in
+among dreams and shadows, the reader is aware of a living presence near
+him and responds to the appeal of human weakness and depression. It is
+because Morris in the languid cadences of <i>The Earthly Paradise</i> spoke
+with his own voice and took his readers into the confidence of his
+hopeless thoughts, that the book will remain for the multitude the chief
+among his works, the only one that portrays for us in its most
+characteristic form the inmost quality of his temperament. Nor does he
+seem to have had for any other book of his making quite the intimate
+affection he so frankly bestowed upon this. The final stanzas in which the
+well-known message is sent to &#8220;my Master, Geoffrey Chaucer,&#8221; confide the
+autobiographic vein in which it was written. Says the Book of its maker:</p>
+
+<p class="poem">I have beheld him tremble oft enough<br />
+At things he could not choose but trust to me,<br />
+Although he knew the world was wise and rough:<br />
+And never did he fail to let me see<br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span>His love,&mdash;his folly and faithlessness, maybe;<br />
+And still in turn I gave him voice to pray<br />
+Such prayers as cling about an empty day.<br />
+<br />
+Thou, keen-eyed, reading me, mayst read him through,<br />
+For surely little is there left behind;<br />
+No power great deeds unnameable to do;<br />
+No knowledge for which words he may not find;<br />
+No love of things as vague as autumn wind&mdash;<br />
+Earth of the earth lies hidden by my clay,<br />
+The idle singer of an empty day.</p>
+
+<p>Written at great speed, one day being marked by a product of seven hundred
+lines, the last of <i>The Earthly Paradise</i> was in the hands of the printers
+by the end of 1870, and Morris was free for his Icelandic journey and new
+interests.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img25.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="center"><i>Portrait of Edward Burne-Jones</i><br /><i>By Watts</i></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>He was no sooner home from Iceland than he set to work upon a curious
+literary experiment&mdash;a dramatic poem of very complicated construction,
+called <i>Love is Enough, or the Freeing of Pharamond: A Morality</i>, the
+intricate metrical design of which is interestingly explained by Mr.
+Mackail. Rossetti and Coventry Patmore both spoke in terms of enthusiasm
+of its unusual beauty. The story is that of a king, Pharamond, who has
+been gallant on the field and wise on the throne, but is haunted by
+visions of an ideal love sapping his energy and driving peace from his
+heart. He deserts his people, and with his henchman, Oliver, wanders
+through the world until he encounters Azalais, a low-born maiden, who
+satisfies his dream. He returns to find that his people have become
+estranged from him and he abdicates at once, to retire into obscurity with
+his love. There<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span> has been an obvious struggle on the part of the poet
+to obtain a strong emotional effect, and certain passages have indeed the
+&#8220;passionate lyric quality&#8221; ascribed to them by Rossetti; but as a drama it
+hardly carries conviction. The songs written to be sung between the scenes
+have nevertheless much of the haunting beauty soon to be lost from his
+work, and of these the following is a felicitous example:</p>
+
+<p class="poem">Love is enough: it grew up without heeding<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">In the days when ye knew not its name nor its measure,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">And its leaflets untrodden by the light feet of pleasure</span><br />
+Had no boast of the blossom, no sign of the seeding,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">As the morning and evening passed over its treasure.</span><br />
+<br />
+And what do ye say then?&mdash;that Spring long departed<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Has brought forth no child to the softness and showers;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">That we slept and we dreamed through the Summer of flowers;</span><br />
+We dreamed of the Winter, and waking dead-hearted<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Found Winter upon us and waste of dull hours.</span><br />
+<br />
+Nay, Spring was o&#8217;er happy and knew not the reason,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">And Summer dreamed sadly, for she thought all was ended</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">In her fulness of wealth that might not be amended,</span><br />
+But this is the harvest and the garnering season,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">And the leaf and the blossom in the ripe fruit are blended.</span><br />
+<br />
+It sprang without sowing, it grew without heeding,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Ye knew not its name and ye knew not its measure,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Ye noted it not &#8217;mid your hope and your pleasure;</span><br />
+There was pain in its blossom, despair in its seeding,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">But daylong your bosom now nurseth its treasure.</span></p>
+
+<p>Although Morris planned a beautifully decorated edition of the poem which
+was highly valued by him, its failure to impress itself upon the public
+was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span> no great grief to him, and he put it cheerfully out of mind to devote
+himself to translation and to Icelandic literature.</p>
+
+<p>The surprising task to which he first turned was a verse translation of
+Virgil&#8217;s <i>&AElig;neid</i>, in which he attempted to give the closest possible
+rendering of the Latin and to emphasise the romantic side of Virgil&#8217;s
+genius. He followed with an almost word-for-word accuracy the lines and
+periods of the original using, and he threw over the poem a glamour of
+romance, but Mr. Mackail says truly that he had taken his life in his
+hands in essaying a classic subject with his inadequate training and
+unclassic taste. The same authority, who on this subject, certainly, is
+not to be disputed by the lay reader, considers the result a success from
+Morris&#8217;s own point of view, declaring that he &#8220;vindicated the claim of the
+romantic school to a joint ownership with the classicists in the poem
+which is not only the crowning achievement of classical Latin, but the
+fountain-head of romanticism in European literature.&#8221; The opposing critics
+are fairly represented by Mr. Andrew Lang, who, in this case as in many
+another, is an ideal intermediary between scholar and general reader.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;There is no more literal verse-translation of any classic poem in
+English,&#8221; he says, &#8220;but Mr. Morris&#8217;s manner and method appear to me to be
+mistaken. Virgil&#8217;s great charm is his perfection of style and the
+exquisite harmony of his numbers. These are not represented by the
+singularly rude measures and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span> archaistic language of Mr. Morris. Like Mr.
+Morris, Virgil was a learned antiquarian, and perhaps very accomplished
+scholars may detect traces of voluntary archaism in his language and
+style. But these, if they exist, certainly do not thrust themselves on the
+notice of most readers of the <i>&AElig;neid</i>. Mr. Morris&#8217;s phrases would almost
+seem uncouth in a rendering of Ennius. For example, take</p>
+
+<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 7em;">&#8216;manet alta mente repostum</span><br />
+Judicium Paridis, spret&aelig;que injuria form&aelig;.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>This is rendered in a prose version by a fine and versatile scholar, &#8216;deep
+in her soul lies stored the judgment of Paris, the insult of her slighted
+beauty.&#8217; Mr. Morris translates:</p>
+
+<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 7em;">&#8216;her inmost heart still sorely did enfold</span><br />
+That grief of body set at naught by Paris&#8217; doomful deed.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>Can anything be much less Virgilian? Is it even intelligible without the
+Latin? What modern poet would naturally speak of &#8216;grief of body set at
+naught,&#8217; or call the judgment of Paris &#8216;Paris&#8217; doomful deed&#8217;? Then &#8216;manet
+alta mente repostum&#8217; is strangely rendered by &#8216;her inmost heart still
+sorely did enfold.&#8217; This is an example of the translation at its worst,
+but defects of the sort illustrated are so common as to leave an
+impression of wilful ruggedness, and even obscurity, than which what can
+be less like Virgil? Where Virgil describes the death of Troilus, &#8216;et
+versa pulvis inscribitus hasta&#8217; (&#8216;and his reversed spear scores the
+dust&#8217;), Mr. Morris has<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span> &#8216;his wrested spear a-writing in the dust,&#8217; and
+Troilus has just been &#8216;a-fleeing weaponless.&#8217; Our doomful deed, is that to
+be a-translating thus is to write with wrested pen, and to give a
+rendering of Virgil as unsatisfactory as it is technically literal. In
+short, Mr. Morris&#8217;s <i>&AElig;neid</i> seems on a par with Mr. Browning&#8217;s
+<i>Agamemnon</i>. But this,&#8221; Mr. Lang is careful to add, &#8220;is a purely personal
+verdict: better scholars and better critics have expressed a far higher
+opinion of Mr. Morris&#8217;s translation of Virgil.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Lang&#8217;s whimsical despair over the affectations of language which
+abound in the translation of the <i>&AElig;neid</i> with less pertinence than in many
+other writings of Morris where also they abound, recalls the remonstrance
+that Stevenson could not resist writing out in the form of a letter
+although it was never sent on its mission. Acknowledging his debt to
+Morris for many &#8220;unforgettable poems,&#8221; the younger writer and more
+accomplished student of language protests against the indiscriminate use
+of the word <i>whereas</i> in the translations from the sagas. &#8220;For surely,
+Master,&#8221; he says, &#8220;that tongue that we write, and that you have
+illustrated so nobly, is yet alive. She has her rights and laws, and is
+our mother, our queen, and our instrument. Now in that living tongue,
+<i>where</i> has one sense, <i>whereas</i> another.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The translation of the <i>&AElig;neid</i> was published under the title of <i>The
+&AElig;neids</i>, in the autumn of 1875. Morris had written a good part of it in
+the course of his trips back and forth on the Underground Railway,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span> using
+for these first drafts a stiff-covered copybook, which was his constant
+companion. In the summer of the same year he had brought out a volume of
+the translations from the Icelandic which he was making in collaboration
+with Mr. Magnusson, calling it <i>Three Northern Love-Stories and Other
+Tales</i>. He had still, he declared &#8220;but few converts to Saga-ism,&#8221; and he
+regarded his translating from the Icelandic as a pure luxury, adopting it
+for a Sunday amusement. During the winter of 1875-76, however, he was
+embarked on a cognate enterprise of the utmost importance to him, although
+he thought, and with truth, that his public would be indifferent to it.
+This was the epic poem which he called <i>The Story of Sigurd the Volsung</i>,
+based on the Volsunga Saga, the story of the great Northern heroes told
+and re-told from generation to generation, polished and perfected until
+the final form, in which it preserves the traditions of the people who
+cherish it, is the noblest attained in the Icelandic legends. Morris had
+published a prose translation of the saga in 1870, and the following
+passage from his preface shows how deeply his emotions were stirred by his
+subject:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;As to the literary quality of this work we might say much,&#8221; he writes,
+&#8220;but we think we may well trust the reader of poetic insight to break
+through whatever entanglement of strange manners or unused element may at
+first trouble him, and to meet the nature and beauty with which it is
+filled: we cannot doubt that such a reader will be intensely touched by<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span>
+finding amidst all its wildness and remoteness such startling realism,
+such subtlety, such close sympathy with all the passions that may move
+himself to-day. In conclusion, we must again say how strange it seems to
+us, that this Volsung Tale, which is in fact an unversified poem, should
+never before have been translated into English. For this is the Great
+Story of the North, which should be to all our race what the tale of Troy
+was to the Greeks&mdash;to all our race first, and afterwards, when the change
+of the world has made our race nothing more than a name of what has
+been&mdash;a story too&mdash;then should it be to those that come after us no less
+than the Tale of Troy has been to us.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>In the course of the following six years, during which he was constantly
+increasing his intimacy with the literature of the North, an impulse not
+unlike that which tempted Tennyson toward the <i>Idylls of the King</i> led him
+to try the winning of a wider audience for the tale of great deeds and
+elemental passions by which he himself had been so much inspired. In the
+prose translation he had given the Volsunga Saga to the public as it had
+been created for an earlier public of more savage tastes and fiercer
+tendencies. Now he proposed to divest it of some of the childish and ugly
+details that formed a stumbling block to the modern reader (though
+plausible and interesting enough to those for whom they were invented),
+and to add to the &#8220;unversified poem&#8221; rhyme and metre, emphasising the
+essential points and such characteristics<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span> of the actors as most appealed
+to him. A comparison of the saga with the poem will show that in his
+effort to preserve the heroic character of the antique conception by
+accentuating everything pleasing, leaving out much of the rudeness and
+cruelty, and adorning it with copious descriptive passages, he robs the
+story of a great part of the wild life stirring in its ancient forms, and
+more or less confuses and involves it. The modern poem really requires for
+its right understanding a mind more instructed in its subject than the
+prose translation of the old saga, and readers to whom the latter is
+unfamiliar may find a plain outline of the story not superfluous.</p>
+
+<p>In the translation, the origin of the noble Volsung race, of which Sigurd
+is the flower and crown, is traced to Sigi, called the son of Odin, and
+sent out from his father&#8217;s land for killing a thrall. He is fortunate in
+war, marries a noble wife, and rules over the land of the Huns. His son is
+named Rerir. Volsung is the son of Rerir, and thus the great-grandson of
+Odin himself. He marries the daughter of a giant, and the ten sons and one
+daughter of this union are strong in sinew and huge in size, the Volsung
+race having the fame of being &#8220;great men and high-minded and far above the
+most of men both in cunning and in prowess and all things high and
+mighty.&#8221; Volsung becomes in his turn king over Hunland, and builds for
+himself a noble Hall in the centre of which grows an oak-tree whose limbs<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span>
+&#8220;blossom fair out over the roof of the hall,&#8221; and the trunk of which is
+called Branstock.</p>
+
+<p>The poem opens with the description of a wedding-feast held in this Hall
+for Signy, King Volsung&#8217;s daughter, who has been sought in marriage by
+Siggeir, King of the Goths, a smaller and meaner race than the Volsungs.
+Signy is not content with her fate, but her father has deemed the match to
+be a wise one, and, eminent in filial obedience as in all things else, she
+yields. From this point for some distance saga and poem march together
+save for certain minor changes intended to increase Signy&#8217;s charm. During
+the feasting a one-eyed stranger enters the Hall and thrusts his sword up
+to its hilt into the tree-trunk, saying that who should draw the sword
+from the trunk should have it for his own and find it the best he had ever
+borne in his hand. This, of course, is Odin. Siggeir tries to draw the
+sword, and after him his nobles, and then the sons of King Volsung, but
+none succeeds until Sigmund, the twin of Signy, draws it lightly forth as
+an easy task. Siggeir is wroth and offers to buy the sword for thrice its
+weight in gold, but Sigmund will not part with it, and Siggeir sets sail
+for home in dudgeon, though concealing his feelings from the Volsungs and
+inviting them cordially to visit him in Gothland. Signy reads the future,
+and implores her father to undo the marriage and let Siggeir depart
+without her. (In the poem Morris has her offer herself as a sacrifice if
+her father will but remain in his kingdom and decline<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span> Siggeir&#8217;s
+invitation.) King Volsung, however, insists on keeping his troth, and
+Signy and Siggeir depart, followed in due time by King Volsung and his
+sons and nobles in response to Siggeir&#8217;s request. What Signy prophesied
+comes to pass and King Volsung falls at the hands of the Goths while his
+ten sons are taken captive. Now Signy prays her husband that her brothers
+be put for a time in the stocks, since home to her mind comes &#8220;the saw
+that says <i>Sweet to eye while seen</i>.&#8221; Siggeir is delighted to consent
+though he deems her &#8220;mad and witless&#8221; to wish longer suffering for her
+brothers. Here the poem departs from the original in that Morris puts the
+idea of the stocks into the mind of Siggeir in answer to Signy&#8217;s
+suggestion that her brothers be spared for a little time. Sigmund and the
+rest of the brothers are taken to the wildwood, and a beam is placed on
+their feet, and night by night for nine nights a she-wolf comes to devour
+one of them. (In the poem Morris hastens matters somewhat by having two
+wolves appear each night to despatch the brothers two at a time.) Each
+morning Signy sends a messenger to the wildwood who brings back the woeful
+news. Finally she thinks of a ruse, and on the tenth night the messenger
+is sent to smear the face of Sigmund, now the sole remaining brother, with
+honey, putting some also into his mouth. When the wolf comes she licks his
+face, and then puts her tongue into his mouth to get the last delicious
+drop. Sigmund promptly closes his teeth upon her tongue<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span> and in the
+struggle that ensues Sigmund&#8217;s bonds are burst and the wolf escapes,
+leaving her tongue between his teeth. This incident was probably not
+sufficiently heroic to please Morris, and in the poem no mention is made
+of Signy&#8217;s clever device, Sigmund gaining his freedom in a more dignified
+fashion and the details being slurred over lightly, with a vague and
+general allusion to snapping &#8220;with greedy teeth.&#8221; Sigmund dwells in the
+wildwood in hiding, and Signy sends to him in turn her two sons by King
+Siggeir, that he may test their fitness to help avenge the fate of her
+family. Here again Morris mitigates the stern temper of Signy for a more
+womanly type. In the saga when Signy finds that the boys are not stout
+enough of heart to accomplish her purpose she bids Sigmund kill them at
+once: &#8220;Why should such as they live longer?&#8221; In the poem, however, when
+Signy sends her son to Sigmund he is delivered with the diplomatic message
+that if his heart avail not he may &#8220;wend the ways of his fate,&#8221; and when
+it is found that his heart does not avail, he is returned in safety to his
+mother, Sigmund awaiting the slow coming of the competent one.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img26.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="center"><i>William Morris</i><br /><i>From painting by Watts</i></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>The story of the birth of Sinfjotli, in whose veins runs unmixed the blood
+of the Volsungs, is given a certain dignity not accorded it in Wagner&#8217;s
+familiar version of the legend as Mr. Buxton Forman, Morris&#8217;s most devoted
+critic, has pointed out, but true to the account in the original saga. The
+saga is followed, also, in the burning of Siggeir&#8217;s Hall by<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span> Sigmund
+and Sinfjotli, but the Signy who kisses her brother in &#8220;soft and sweet&#8221;
+farewell certainly fails to recall to the mind the vengeful creature of
+the original. Sigmund returns to the Hall of the Volsungs with Sinfjotli,
+and marries Borghild. Presently Sinfjotli sails abroad with the brother of
+Queen Borghild, Gudrod by name, and kills him for reason&mdash;as given in the
+translation&mdash;of their rivalry in loving &#8220;an exceeding fair woman.&#8221; In the
+poem, however, Morris records a shabby trick played upon Sinfjotli by
+Gudrod in the dividing of their spoils of battle, making this the cause of
+the duel in which Gudrod was killed. Sinfjotli returns to his home with
+the news of Gudrod&#8217;s death, and Borghild in revenge poisons him. Sigmund
+then sends her away and takes for his wife fair Hiordis, meeting his death
+at the hand of Odin himself, who appears to him in battle and shatters the
+sword he had drawn in his youth from the Volsung Branstock. As he lies
+dying he tells Hiordis that she must take good care of their child, who is
+to carry on the Volsung tradition, and must guard well the shards of
+Odin&#8217;s sword for him. Then comes the carrying away of Hiordis by a
+sea-king to his kingdom in Denmark, and here ends, rightly speaking, the
+epic of Sigmund&#8217;s career, which, as Mr. Mackail has said, is a separate
+story neither subordinate to nor coherent with the later epic of Sigurd,
+but which Morris could not forbear uniting to it. Sigurd the Volsung, the
+golden-haired, the shining one, the symbol of the sun, is born of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span> Hiordis
+in the home of King Elf, and fostered by Regin, an aged man and &#8220;deft in
+every cunning save the dealings of the sword.&#8221; When Sigurd has grown to be
+a boy of high mind and stout heart, Regin urges him to ask of King Elf a
+horse. This he does, and is sent to choose one for himself. He chooses the
+best horse in the world and names him, Greyfell in the poem, Grani in the
+prose. Regin now presses him to attack Fafnir the &#8220;ling-worm,&#8221; or dragon,
+who guards a vast hoard of treasure in the desert. According to the saga,
+Sigurd is not ashamed to own to a slight hesitation in attacking a
+creature of whose size and malignity he has heard much, but in the poem he
+is ready for the deed, merely hinting that &#8220;the wary foot is the surest
+and the hasty oft turns back.&#8221; Thereupon follows the tale of the treasure
+told by Regin with great directness in the prose, and with much
+circumlocution in the poem.</p>
+
+<p>When Sigurd learns that Fafnir is the brother of Regin, and is keeping him
+out of his share of treasure belonging to them both, on which, however, a
+curse is laid, he pities Regin, and promises that if he will make him a
+sword worthy of the deed he will kill Fafnir for him. This Regin attempts
+to do and fails until Sigurd brings him the shards of Odin&#8217;s mighty sword,
+his inheritance from his father Sigmund. With a sword forged from the
+shards and named by him &#8220;the Wrath,&#8221; Sigurd sets out on Greyfell,
+accompanied by Regin, to attack the dragon. The description in the poem of
+the ride<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span> across the desert is rich in the fruits of Morris&#8217;s own
+experience, and reflects very closely his impressions of the mournful
+place of &#8220;short-lived eagerness and glory.&#8221; Sigurd and Regin ride to the
+westward.</p>
+
+<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 7em;">... and huge were the mountains grown</span><br />
+And the floor of heaven was mingled with that tossing world of stone;<br />
+And they rode till the moon was forgotten and the sun was waxen low,<br />
+And they tarried not though he perished, and the world grew dark below.<br />
+Then they rode a mighty desert, a glimmering place and wide,<br />
+And into a narrow pass high-walled on either side<br />
+By the blackness of the mountains, and barred aback and in face<br />
+By the empty night of the shadow; a windless silent place:<br />
+But the white moon shone o&#8217;erhead mid the small sharp stars and pale,<br />
+And each as a man alone they rode on the highway of bale.<br />
+<br />
+So ever they wended upward, and the midnight hour was o&#8217;er,<br />
+And the stars grew pale and paler, and failed from the heaven&#8217;s floor,<br />
+And the moon was a long while dead, but where was the promise of day?<br />
+No change came over the darkness, no streak of the dawning grey;<br />
+No sound of the wind&#8217;s uprising adown the night there ran:<br />
+It was blind as the Gaping Gulf ere the first of the worlds began.</p>
+
+<p>The fight with the dragon, the roasting of the dragon&#8217;s heart, the tasting
+of the blood by Sigurd, and his instant knowledge of the hearts of men and
+beasts and of the speech of birds, follow with close adherence of poem to
+saga, the most marked divergence being the substitution of eagles for the
+woodpeckers who sing to Sigurd of his future. Through<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span> his new
+accomplishment Sigurd is able to read Regin&#8217;s heart, and sees therein a
+traitorous intent, therefore he kills Regin, loads Greyfell with the
+treasure, and rides to the mountain where Brynhild, the warrior maiden
+struck with slumber by Odin in punishment for disobedience to him, is
+lying in her armour guarded by flames. Sigurd wins through the fire, and
+awakens her, and they hold loving converse together on the mountain,
+Brynhild teaching him wisdom in runes and in the saga, bringing him beer
+in a beaker, &#8220;the drink of love,&#8221; although in the poem this hospitable
+ceremony is omitted. After a time they part, plighting troth, and later,
+when they meet at the home of Brynhild in Lymdale, they again exchange
+vows of faith.</p>
+
+<p>Then Sigurd rides to a realm south of the Rhine, where dwell the Niblung
+brothers with their sister Gudrun and their fierce-hearted mother,
+Grimhild, who brews for Sigurd a philter that makes him forget the vows he
+exchanged with Brynhild and become enamoured of Gudrun. Completely under
+the power of the charm, he weds the latter and undertakes to woo and win
+Brynhild for her brother Gunnar. This he does by assuming Gunnar&#8217;s
+semblance, and riding once more through the fire that guards Brynhild,
+reminding her of her oath to marry whomever should perform this feat, and
+returning to his own form after gaining her promise for Gunnar. This ruse
+is made known to Brynhild (after she has wedded Gunnar) by Gudrun, who is
+not averse to marring the peace<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span> of the greatest of women, and Brynhild
+makes the air ring with her wailing over the woeful fact that Gudrun has
+the braver man for her husband. In the saga she is a very outspoken lady
+and in a wild temper, and even in the poem her grief fails in noble and
+dignified expression. At her instigation Sigurd is killed by Gunnar and
+his brethren. The vengeance brings no happiness, however, and Brynhild
+pierces her breast with a sword that she and Sigurd may lie on one funeral
+pyre! Lovers of Wagner opera will remember that the story as there told
+ends with this climax, but Morris carries it on to Gudrun&#8217;s marriage with
+King Atli, Brynhild&#8217;s brother, and to the struggle between him and the
+Niblungs for the fatal treasure, which results in the murder of the
+Niblungs (Gudrun&#8217;s brothers) and the irrevocable loss of the treasure.
+Although Gudrun has approved Atli&#8217;s deed, she finds she can no longer
+abide with him after it has been accomplished, and accordingly sets fire
+to his house and throws herself into the sea. Morris omits the grewsome
+incident of the supper prepared for Atli by Gudrun from the roasted hearts
+of their children whom she had killed, and also leaves out the subsequent
+account of the bringing ashore of Gudrun and the wedding and slaying of
+Swanhild, her daughter by Sigurd.</p>
+
+<p>To the poetic and symbolic elements of this strange old saga, Morris has
+been abundantly sensitive. The curse attending the desire for gold, which
+is the pointed moral of the saga, is brought<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span> out, not dramatically, but
+by allusions and suggestions, not always apparent at a casual reading. The
+conception of Sigurd as the sun-god destroying the powers of darkness and
+illuminating a shadowy world is constantly hinted at, as when he threatens
+Regin with the light he sheds on good and ill, and when Regin, looking
+toward him as he sits on Greyfell, sees that the light of his presence
+blazes as the glory of the sun. The heroism of Sigurd, his r&ocirc;le as the
+ideal lover and warrior and spiritual saviour of his race, is perhaps
+over-emphasised. As King Arthur certainly lost in interest by Tennyson&#8217;s
+re-creation of him, so Sigurd is more lovely and fair and golden and
+glorious in the poem than in the saga, and considerably less human and
+attractive withal. In fact, none of the characters in the poem&mdash;all so
+intensely alive to Morris himself&mdash;lives in quite a like degree for his
+readers. His power to probe beneath externals and rouse emotions of
+spiritual force was curiously limited. There are indications in his
+biography that his business with crafts and &#8220;word-spinning,&#8221; as he called
+it, served him as a kind of armour, protecting him from the wounds of
+feelings too poignant to handle freely, too deadly to invite. We read of
+his agony of apprehension, for example, when in Iceland he did not hear
+from his home for a considerable period. &#8220;Why does not one drop down or
+faint or do something of that sort when it comes to the uttermost in such
+matters!&#8221; he exclaims. But in his writing it is mainly<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span> the surface of the
+earth and the surface of the mind with which he deals. It is in the nature
+of his genius, says one of his most accomplished critics, to dispense with
+those deeper thoughts of life which for Chaucer and for Shakespeare were
+&#8220;the very air breathed by the persons living in their verse.&#8221;
+Nevertheless, his service to English literature, in translating the
+Northern sagas as none but a poet could have translated them, was very
+great, and his <i>Story of Sigurd</i> is in many respects a splendid
+performance. In writing it he endeavoured to infuse into his style the
+energy and passion of the literature from which he drew his material, and
+to brace it with the sturdy fibre of the Icelandic tongue. His efforts to
+de-Latinise his sentences had already lent his translations a vigour
+lacking in his earlier work. He had captured something of the Northern
+freshness corresponding very truly to his external aspect if not to the
+workings of his brain. The chief defect from which his story of Sigurd
+suffers lies in the extreme garrulity of the narrative. A single passage,
+set by the side of the translation, will suffice to show the manner in
+which a direct statement is smothered and amplified until the reader&#8217;s
+brain is dull with repetition, and the episode or description is extended
+to three or four times its original length. Thus in the saga we are told
+that after Sigurd had eaten of the dragon&#8217;s heart &#8220;he leapt on his horse
+and rode along the trail of the worm Fafnir, and so right unto his
+abiding-place; and he found it open, and beheld<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span> all the doors and the
+gear of them that they were wrought of iron; yea, and all the beams of the
+house; and it was dug down deep into the earth: there found Sigurd gold
+exceeding plenteous, and the sword Rotti; and thence he took the Helm of
+Awe, and the Gold Byrny, and many things fair and good. So much gold he
+found there, that he thought verily that scarce might two horses, or three
+belike, bear it thence. So he took all the gold and laid it in two great
+chests, and set them on the horse Grani, and took the reins of him, but
+nowise will he stir, neither will he abide smiting. Then Sigurd knows the
+mind of the horse, and leaps on the back of him, and smites spurs into
+him, and off the horse goes even as if he were unladen.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>From this comparatively unvarnished tale Morris evolves the following:</p>
+
+<p class="poem">Now Sigurd eats of the heart that once in the Dwarf-king lay,<br />
+The hoard of the wisdom begrudged, the might of the earlier day.<br />
+Then wise of heart was he waxen, but longing in him grew<br />
+To sow the seed he had gotten, and till the field he knew.<br />
+So he leapeth aback of Greyfell, and rideth the desert bare,<br />
+And the hollow slot of Fafnir that led to the Serpent&#8217;s lair.<br />
+Then long he rode adown it, and the ernes flew overhead,<br />
+And tidings great and glorious of that Treasure of old they said,<br />
+So far o&#8217;er the waste he wended, and when the night was come<br />
+He saw the earth-old dwelling, the dread Gold-wallowers home.<br />
+On the skirts of the Heath it was builded by a tumbled stony bent;<br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span>High went that house to the heavens, down &#8217;neath the earth it went,<br />
+Of unwrought iron fashioned for the heart of a greedy king:<br />
+&#8217;Twas a mountain, blind without, and within was its plenishing<br />
+But the Hoard of Andvari the ancient, and the sleeping Curse unseen,<br />
+The Gold of the Gods that spared not and the greedy that have been.<br />
+Through the door strode Sigurd the Volsung, and the grey moon and the sword<br />
+Fell in on the tawny gold-heaps of the ancient hapless Hoard:<br />
+Gold gear of hosts unburied, and the coin of cities dead,<br />
+Great spoil of the ages of battle, lay there on the Serpent&#8217;s bed:<br />
+Huge blocks from mid-earth quarried, where none but the Dwarfs have mined,<br />
+Wide sands of the golden rivers no foot of man may find,<br />
+Lay &#8217;neath the spoils of the mighty and the ruddy rings of yore:<br />
+But amidst was the Helm of Aweing that the Fear of earth-folk bore,<br />
+And there gleamed a wonder beside it, the Hauberk all of gold,<br />
+Whose like is not in the heavens nor has earth of its fellow told:<br />
+There Sigurd seeth moreover Andvari&#8217;s Ring of Gain,<br />
+The hope of Loki&#8217;s finger, the Ransom&#8217;s utmost grain;<br />
+For it shone on the midmost gold-heap like the first star set in the sky,<br />
+In the yellow space of even when the moon-rise draweth anigh.<br />
+Then laughed the Son of Sigmund, and stooped to the golden land,<br />
+And gathered that first of the harvest and set it on his hand;<br />
+And he did on the Helm of Aweing, and the Hauberk all of gold,&mdash;<br />
+Whose like is not in the heavens nor has earth of its fellow told:<br />
+Then he praised the day of the Volsungs amid the yellow light,<br />
+And he set his hand to the labour and put forth his kingly might;<br />
+He dragged forth gold to the moon, on the desert&#8217;s face he laid<br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span>The innermost earth&#8217;s adornment, and rings for the nameless made;<br />
+He toiled and loaded Greyfell, and the cloudy war-steed shone,<br />
+And the gear of Sigurd rattled in the flood of moonlight wan;<br />
+There he toiled and loaded Greyfell, and the Volsung&#8217;s armour rang<br />
+&#8217;Mid the yellow bed of the Serpent&mdash;but without the eagles sang:<br />
+<br />
+&#8220;Bind the red rings, O Sigurd! let the gold shine free and clear!<br />
+For what hath the Son of the Volsungs the ancient Curse to fear?<br />
+<br />
+&#8220;Bind the red rings, O Sigurd! for thy tale is well begun,<br />
+And the world shall be good and gladdened by the Gold lit up by the sun.<br />
+<br />
+&#8220;Bind the red rings, O Sigurd! and gladden all thine heart!<br />
+For the world shall make thee merry ere thou and she depart.<br />
+<br />
+&#8220;Bind the red rings, O Sigurd! for the ways go green below,<br />
+Go green to the dwelling of Kings, and the halls that the Queen-folk know.<br />
+<br />
+&#8220;Bind the red rings, O Sigurd! for what is there bides by the way,<br />
+Save the joy of folk to awaken, and the dawn of the merry day?<br />
+<br />
+&#8220;Bind the red rings, O Sigurd! for the strife awaits thine hand<br />
+And a plenteous war-field&#8217;s reaping, and the praise of many a land.<br />
+<br />
+&#8220;Bind the red rings, O Sigurd! but how shall storehouse hold<br />
+That glory of thy winning and the tidings to be told?&#8221;<br />
+<br />
+Now the moon was dead and the star-worlds were great on the heavenly plain,<br />
+When the steed was fully laden; then Sigurd taketh the rein<br />
+And turns to the ruined rock-wall that the lair was built beneath,<br />
+For there he deemed was the gate and the door of the Glittering Heath,<br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span>But not a whit moved Greyfell for aught that the King might do;<br />
+Then Sigurd pondered awhile, till the heart of the beast he knew,<br />
+And clad in all his war-gear he leaped to the saddle-stead,<br />
+And with pride and mirth neighed Greyfell and tossed aloft his head,<br />
+And sprang unspurred o&#8217;er the waste, and light and swift he went,<br />
+And breasted the broken rampart, the stony tumbled bent;<br />
+And over the brow he clomb, and there beyond was the world,<br />
+A place of many mountains and great crags together hurled.<br />
+So down to the west he wendeth, and goeth swift and light,<br />
+And the stars are beginning to wane, and the day is mingled with night;<br />
+For full fain was the sun to arise and look on the Gold set free,<br />
+And the Dwarf-wrought rings of the Treasure and the gifts from the floor of the sea.</p>
+
+<p>Beautiful and full of poetic spirit and suggestion as this phraseology is,
+a reader may be forgiven if it recalls the reply of Hamlet when asked by
+Polonius what it is he reads. Compared with the swift dramatic method
+employed by Wagner to make the heroes and heroines of this same saga live
+for our time, it must be admitted that the latter drives home with the
+greater energy and conviction. Morris himself, however, was &#8220;not much
+interested&#8221; in anything Wagner did, looking upon it &#8220;as nothing short of
+desecration to bring such a tremendous and world-wide subject under the
+gaslights of an opera, the most rococo and degraded of all forms of art.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>To the group of translations and adaptations already described must be
+added one other ambitious effort which belongs to it, properly speaking,
+although separated from it in time by more than ten years.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span> In 1887 Morris
+published a translation of the <i>Odyssey</i>, written in anap&aelig;stic couplets,
+and rendered as literally as by the prose crib of which he made frank use.
+Mr. Watts-Dunton finds in this translation the Homeric eagerness, although
+the Homeric dignity is lacking. The majority of competent critics were
+against it, however, nor is a high degree of classical training necessary
+to perceive in it an incoherence and clumsiness of diction impossible to
+associate with the lucid images of the Greeks. Compare, for example,
+Morris&#8217;s account of the recognition of Ulysses by Argus with Bryant&#8217;s
+limpid rendering of the same episode, and the tortured style of the former
+is obvious at once. Bryant&#8217;s translation reads:</p>
+
+<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 10em;">There lay</span><br />
+Argus, devoured with vermin. As he saw<br />
+Ulysses drawing near, he wagged his tail<br />
+And dropped his ears, but found that he could come<br />
+No nearer to his master. Seeing this<br />
+Ulysses wiped away a tear unmark&#8217;d<br />
+By the good swineherd whom he questioned thus:<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">&#8220;Eum&aelig;us, this I marvel at,&mdash;this dog</span><br />
+That lies upon the dunghill, beautiful<br />
+In form, but whether in the chase as fleet<br />
+As he is fairly shaped I cannot tell.<br />
+Worthless, perchance, as house-dogs often are<br />
+Whose masters keep them for the sake of show.&#8221;<br />
+<br />
+And thus, Eum&aelig;us, thou didst make reply:<br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">&#8220;The dog belongs to one who died afar.</span><br />
+Had he the power of limb which once he had<br />
+For feats of hunting when Ulysses sailed<br />
+For Troy and left him, thou wouldst be amazed<br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span>Both at his swiftness and his strength. No beast<br />
+In the thick forest depths which once he saw,<br />
+Or even tracked by footprints, could escape.<br />
+And now he is a sufferer, since his lord<br />
+Has perished far from his own land. No more<br />
+The careless women heed the creature&#8217;s wants;<br />
+For, when the master is no longer near,<br />
+The servants cease from their appointed tasks,<br />
+And on the day that one becomes a slave<br />
+The Thunderer, Jove takes half his worth away.&#8221;<br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">He spake, and, entering that fair dwelling-place,</span><br />
+Passed through to where the illustrious suitors sat,<br />
+While over Argus the black night of death<br />
+Came suddenly as soon as he had seen<br />
+Ulysses, absent now for twenty years.</p>
+
+<p>And here is the description by Morris of the infinitely touching scene:</p>
+
+<p class="poem">There then did the woodhound Argus all full of ticks abide;<br />
+But now so soon as he noted Odysseus drawing anear<br />
+He wagged his tail, and fawning he laid down either ear,<br />
+But had no might to drag him nigher from where he lay<br />
+To his master, who beheld him and wiped a tear away<br />
+That he lightly hid from Eum&aelig;us, unto whom he spake and said:<br />
+<br />
+&#8220;Eum&aelig;us, much I marvel at the dog on the dung-heap laid;<br />
+Fair-shapen is his body, but nought I know indeed<br />
+If unto this his fairness he hath good running speed,<br />
+Or is but like unto some&mdash;men&#8217;s table-dogs I mean,<br />
+Which but because of their fairness lords cherish to be seen.&#8221;<br />
+<br />
+Then thou, O swineherd Eum&aelig;us, didst speak and answer thus:<br />
+<br />
+&#8220;Yea, this is the hound of the man that hath died aloof from us;<br />
+And if yet to do and to look on he were even such an one<br />
+As Odysseus left behind him when to Troy he gat him gone<br />
+Then wouldest thou wonder beholding his speed and hardihood,<br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span>For no monster that he followed through the depths of the tangled wood<br />
+Would he blench from, and well he wotted of their trail and where it led.<br />
+But now ill he hath, since his master in an alien land is dead,<br />
+And no care of him have the women, that are heedless here and light;<br />
+Since thralls whenso they are missing their masters&#8217; rule and might.<br />
+No longer are they willing to do the thing that should be;<br />
+For Zeus, the loud-voiced, taketh half a man&#8217;s valiancy<br />
+Whenso the day of thralldom hath hold of him at last.&#8221;<br />
+<br />
+So saying into the homestead of the happy place he passed<br />
+And straight to the hall he wended &#8217;mid the Wooers overbold.<br />
+But the murky doom of the death-day of Argus now took hold<br />
+When he had looked on Odysseus in this the twentieth year.</p>
+
+<p>The decade between the publication of <i>The Earthly Paradise</i> and <i>Sigurd
+the Volsung</i> had been one of sustained literary effort varied, as we have
+seen, but hardly interrupted by the work in decoration. The latter Morris
+called his &#8220;bread-and-cheese work,&#8221; the former his &#8220;pleasure work of
+books.&#8221; The time had not yet come for a complete union between the two,
+although it was foreshadowed by the illuminated manuscripts made for
+friends during these years. A selection from his own poems, a translation
+of the <i>Eyrbyggja Saga</i>, a copy of Fitzgerald&#8217;s <i>Rubaiyat of Omar
+Khayyam</i>, and the <i>&AElig;neid</i> of Virgil were among the works that Morris
+undertook to transcribe with his own hand on vellum, with decorative
+margins with results of great beauty. He had now long been happy in work
+calling out all this enthusiasm, but the world was going on without, to
+use his own words, &#8220;beautiful and strange and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span> dreadful and worshipful.&#8221;
+He was approaching the time when his conscience would no longer let him
+rest in the thought that he was &#8220;not born to set the crooked straight.&#8221;</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/botban6.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span></p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/banner10.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII"></a>CHAPTER VII.</h2>
+<p class="title">PUBLIC LIFE AND SOCIALISM.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="dropcap"><span class="caps">In</span> the autumn of 1876, just after the publication of <i>Sigurd the Volsung</i>,
+Morris took his first dip in the ocean of public affairs, the waves of
+which were presently almost to submerge him. He was forty-two years of
+age, and had thus far managed to keep well within the range of his
+individual interests and away from the political and social questions that
+none the less stirred in his mind from time to time, and pricked him to
+random assertions that he would have nothing to do with them, that his
+business was with dreams, and that he would remain &#8220;the idle singer of an
+empty day.&#8221; He was roused to action, however, by the barbarous massacre on
+the part of the Mussulman soldiery of men, women, and children in
+Bulgaria, the news of which moved the heart of England to a frenzy of
+indignation. When Russia intervened, the possibility that England might
+take up arms on the side of Turkey in order to erect a barrier against
+Russian aggression was intolerable to him, and he wrote to the <i>Daily
+News</i> in eloquent<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span> protestation. &#8220;I who am writing this,&#8221; he said, with a
+just appreciation of his ordinary attitude toward political matters, &#8220;am
+one of a large class of men&mdash;quiet men, who usually go about their own
+business, heeding public matters less than they ought, and afraid to speak
+in such a huge concourse as the English nation, however much they may
+feel, but who are now stung into bitterness by thinking how helpless they
+are in a public matter that touches them so closely.&#8221; &#8220;I appeal,&#8221; he
+continued, &#8220;to the workingmen, and pray them to look to it that if this
+shame falls upon them they will certainly remember it and be burdened by
+it when their day clears for them and they attain all and more than all
+they are now striving for.&#8221; Again in the spring of 1877, when war seemed
+imminent, Morris appealed &#8220;to the workingmen of England,&#8221; issuing a
+manifesto which was practically his first Socialist document and heralded
+the long series of lectures and addresses, poems, articles, and treatises,
+presently to take the place of romances and epics in his literary life.
+After declaring that the people who were bringing on the war were &#8220;greedy
+gamblers on the Stock Exchange, idle officers of the army and navy (poor
+fellows!), worn-out mockers of the clubs, desperate purveyors of exciting
+war-news for the comfortable breakfast-tables of those who have nothing to
+lose by war, and lastly, in the place of honour, the Tory Rump, that we
+fools, weary of peace, reason, and justice, chose at the last election to
+represent us,&#8221; he added a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span> passage that reads like the outcome of many a
+heated discussion with brethren of his own social class.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Workingmen of England, one word of warning yet,&#8221; he said: &#8220;I doubt if you
+know the bitterness of hatred against freedom and progress that lies at
+the hearts of a certain part of the richer classes in this country; their
+newspapers veil it in a kind of decent language, but do but hear them
+talking amongst themselves, as I have often, and I know not whether scorn
+or anger would prevail in you at their folly and insolence. These men
+cannot speak of your order, of its aims, of its leaders, without a sneer
+or an insult; these men, if they had the power (may England perish
+rather!) would thwart your just aspirations, would silence you, would
+deliver you bound hand and foot forever to irresponsible capital.
+Fellow-citizens, look to it, and if you have any wrongs to be redressed,
+if you cherish your most worthy hope of raising your whole order
+peacefully and solidly, if you thirst for leisure and knowledge, if you
+long to lessen these inequalities which have been our stumbling-block
+since the beginning of the world, then cast aside sloth and cry out
+against an Unjust War, and urge us of the middle classes to do no less.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img27.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="center"><i>Picture by Rossetti in which the Children&#8217;s Faces<br />are Portraits of May Morris</i></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>By this time he was treasurer of the Eastern Question Association, and
+working with all his might against the principles of the war party in
+England, contributing to the general agitation the political ballad called
+<i>Wake, London Lads!</i> which was sung<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span> with much enthusiasm at one of the
+meetings to the appropriate air, <i>The Hardy Norseman&#8217;s Home of Yore</i>, and
+was afterwards freely distributed in the form of a leaflet among the
+mechanics of London. It was during this period of political activity that
+J. R. Green wrote of him to E. A. Freeman: &#8220;I rejoiced to see the poet
+Morris&mdash;whom Oliphant setteth even above you for his un-Latinisms&mdash;brought
+to grief by being prayed to draw up a circular on certain Eastern matters,
+and gravelled to find &#8216;English words.&#8217; I insidiously persuaded him that
+the literary committee had fixed on him to write one of a series of
+pamphlets which Gladstone wants brought out for the public enlightenment,
+and that the subject assigned him was &#8216;The Results of the Incidence of
+Direct Taxation on the Christian Rayah,&#8217; but that he was forbidden to
+speak of the &#8216;onfall of straight geld,&#8217; or other such &#8216;English&#8217; forms. I
+left him musing and miserable.&#8221; Musing and miserable he may well have been
+at finding that his duty, as he conceived it, was leading him into such
+unlovely paths, but the English of his polemical writings was unmistakable
+enough and unconfused by any affectations, Saxon or Latin. In declining to
+stand for the Professorship of Poetry at Oxford on the occasion of Matthew
+Arnold&#8217;s withdrawal from it, he had confessed to a peculiar inaptitude for
+expressing himself except in the one way in which his gift lay, and it was
+true that his mind was singularly inept outside its natural course. He had
+not a reasoning mind.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span> His opinions, dictated as they were chiefly by
+sentiment, were not worked out by the careful processes dear to genuine
+thinkers. But he was before all things a believer. No man was ever more
+certain of the absolute rectitude of his views, and by this sincerity of
+conviction they were driven home to his public. He was so eager to make
+others feel as he felt that he spent his utmost skill upon the delivery of
+his message, using the simple and downright phrases that could be
+understood by the least cultivated of his hearers. It was impossible to
+listen to him, says one of his friends, not a convert to his views,
+without for the time at least agreeing with him. Thus he conquered the
+&#8220;peculiar inaptitude&#8221; of which he speaks by the force of his great
+integrity, and although he complained that &#8220;the cursed words&#8221; went to
+water between his fingers, they accomplished their object.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;When the crisis in the East was past,&#8221; says Mr. Mackail, &#8220;it left Morris
+thoroughly in touch with the Radical leaders of the working class in
+London, and well acquainted with the social and economic ideas which,
+under the influence of widening education and of the international
+movement among the working classes, were beginning to transform their
+political creed from an individualist Radicalism into a more or less
+definite doctrine of State Socialism.&#8221; This contact was sufficient to
+kindle into activity the ideas implanted in his own mind during his
+college days. Carlyle had then thundered forth his amazing<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span> anathemas
+against modern civilisation and had declaimed that Gurth born thrall of
+Cedric, with a brass collar round his neck, was happy in comparison with
+the poor of to-day enjoying their &#8220;liberty to die by starvation,&#8221; no
+displeasing gospel to a young medi&aelig;valist; while Ruskin had preached with
+vociferous eloquence the doctrine that happiness in labour is the end and
+aim of life. From the beginning of his work in decorative art Morris had
+shown the influence of these beliefs in peace. He was now to let them lead
+him into war.</p>
+
+<p>Before he wrote himself down a Socialist, however, he set on foot a
+movement not so important in the eyes of the public, but much more
+characteristic of his personal mission in the world of life and art. He
+had long before learned from Ruskin that the so-called restoration of
+public monuments meant &#8220;the most total destruction which a building can
+suffer: a destruction out of which no remnants can be gathered: a
+destruction accompanied with false description of the thing destroyed.&#8221;
+Whatever his feeling may have been concerning the destructive restoration,
+of which he must have seen manifold examples before this period of his
+middle age, he seems to have awakened rather suddenly to the necessity of
+taking some active measure to check the ravages of the restorer. Goaded,
+finally, by the sight of alterations going on in one of the beautiful
+parish churches near Kelmscott, he conceived the idea of forming a society
+of protest. Early in 1877<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span> the impending fate of the Abbey Church at
+Tewkesbury, under the devastating hands of Sir Gilbert Scott, prompted him
+to put the idea at once before the public, and he wrote to the <i>Athen&aelig;um</i>
+a letter in which he went straight to the heart of his subject with
+clearness and simplicity.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;My eye just now caught the word &#8216;restoration&#8217; in the morning paper,&#8221; he
+wrote, &#8220;and on looking closer, I saw that this time it is nothing less
+than the Minster of Tewkesbury that is to be destroyed by Sir Gilbert
+Scott. Is it altogether too late to do something to save it,&mdash;it and
+whatever else of beautiful and historical is still left us on the sites of
+the ancient buildings we were once so famous for? Would it not be of some
+use once for all, and with the least delay possible, to set on foot an
+association for the purpose of watching over and protecting these relics
+which, scanty as they are now become, are still wonderful treasures, all
+the more priceless in this age of the world, when the newly-invented study
+of living history is the chief joy of so many of our lives?</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Your paper has so steadily and courageously opposed itself to these acts
+of barbarism which the modern architect, parson, and squire call
+&#8216;restoration,&#8217; that it would be waste of words here to enlarge on the ruin
+that has been wrought by their hands; but, for the saving of what is left,
+I think I may write you a word of encouragement, and say that you by no
+means stand alone in the matter, and that there<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span> are many thoughtful
+people who would be glad to sacrifice time, money, and comfort in defence
+of those ancient monuments; besides, though I admit that the architects
+are, with very few exceptions, hopeless, because interest, habit, and an
+ignorance yet grosser, bind them; still there must be many people whose
+ignorance is accidental rather than inveterate, whose good sense could
+surely be touched if it were clearly put to them that they were destroying
+what they, or more surely still, their sons and sons&#8217; sons would one day
+fervently long for, and which no wealth or energy could ever buy again for
+them.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What I wish for, therefore, is that an association should be set on foot
+to keep a watch on old monuments, to protest against all &#8216;restoration&#8217;
+that means more than keeping out wind and weather, and, by all means,
+literary and other, to awaken a feeling that our ancient buildings are not
+mere ecclesiastical toys, but sacred monuments of the nation&#8217;s growth and
+hope.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>In less than a month the association was formed under the title of the
+&#8220;Society for Protection of Ancient Buildings,&#8221; abbreviated by Morris to
+the &#8220;Anti-Scrape Society,&#8221; in cheerful reference to the pernicious
+scraping and pointing indulged in by the restorers. Morris was made
+secretary of the Society, and, as long as he lived, worked loyally in its
+behalf, giving, in addition to time and money, the labour, which to him
+was grievous, of lecturing for it. He wrote a prospectus that was
+translated<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span> into French, German, Italian, and Dutch, and among the more
+important of his protests were those against the demolition of some of the
+most beautiful portions of St. Mark&#8217;s at Venice, and the &#8220;bedizening&#8221; of
+the interior of Westminster Abbey.</p>
+
+<p>For the sentiment which inspired him, the inextinguishable love in his
+heart toward every example however humble of the art he reverenced, we may
+turn to one of the most eloquently reasonable passages of his numerous
+lectures. Closing his account of pattern designing with a reference to the
+creation of modern or Gothic art, he says: &#8220;Never until the time of that
+death or cataleptic sleep of the so-called Renaissance did it forget its
+origin, or fail altogether in fulfilling its mission of turning the
+ancient curse of labour into something more like a blessing.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;As to the way in which it did its work,&#8221; he continues, &#8220;as I have no
+time, so also I have but little need to speak, since there is none of us
+but has seen and felt some portion of the glory which it left behind, but
+has shared some portion of that most kind gift it gave the world; for even
+in this our turbulent island, the home of rough and homely men, so far
+away from the centres of art and thought which I have been speaking of,
+did simple folk labour for those that shall come after them. Here in the
+land we yet love they built their homes and temples; if not so
+majestically as many peoples have done, yet in such sweet accord with the
+familiar nature amidst which they dwelt, that when by some happy chance<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span>
+we come across the work they wrought, untouched by any but natural change,
+it fills us with a satisfying untroubled happiness that few things else
+could bring us. Must our necessities destroy, must our restless ambition
+mar, the sources of this innocent pleasure, which rich and poor may share
+alike&mdash;this communion with the very hearts of the departed men? Must we
+sweep away these touching memories of our stout forefathers and their
+troublous days that won our present peace and liberties?</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;If our necessities compel us to it, I say we are an unhappy people; if
+our vanity lure us into it, I say we are a foolish and light-minded
+people, who have not the wits to take a little trouble to avoid spoiling
+our own goods. Our own goods? Yes, the goods of the people of England, now
+and in time to come: we who are now alive are but life-renters of them.
+Any of us who pretend to any culture know well that in destroying or
+injuring one of these buildings we are destroying the pleasure, the
+culture&mdash;in a word, the humanity&mdash;of unborn generations. It is speaking
+very mildly to say that we have no right to do this for our temporary
+convenience. It is speaking too mildly. I say any such destruction is an
+act of brutal dishonesty.... It is in the interest of living art and
+living history that I oppose &#8216;restoration.&#8217; What history can there be in a
+building bedaubed with ornament, which cannot at best be anything but a
+hopeless and lifeless imitation of the hope and vigour of the earlier
+world? As to the art<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span> that is concerned in it, a strange folly it seems to
+me for us who live among these bricken masses of hideousness, to waste the
+energies of our short lives in feebly trying to add new beauty to what is
+already beautiful. Is that all the surgery we have for the curing of
+England&#8217;s spreading sore? Don&#8217;t let us vex ourselves to cure the
+antepenultimate blunders of the world, but fall to on our own blunders.
+Let us leave the dead alone, and, ourselves living, build for the living
+and those that shall live. Meantime, my plea for our Society is this, that
+since it is disputed whether restoration be good or not, and since we are
+confessedly living in a time when architecture has come on the one hand to
+Jerry building, and on the other to experimental designing (good, very
+good experiments some of them), let us take breath and wait; let us
+sedulously repair our ancient buildings, and watch every stone of them as
+if they were built of jewels (as indeed they are), but otherwise let the
+dispute rest till we have once more learned architecture, till we once
+more have among us a reasonable, noble, and universally used style. Then
+let the dispute be settled. I am not afraid of the issue. If that day ever
+comes, we shall know what beauty, romance, and history mean, and the
+technical meaning of the word &#8216;restoration&#8217; will be forgotten.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Is not this a reasonable plea? It means prudence. If the buildings are
+not worth anything they are not worth restoring; if they are worth
+anything<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span> they are at least worth treating with common sense and prudence.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Come now, I invite you to support the most prudent Society in all
+England.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>It is easy to understand from such examples as this how Morris gained his
+popularity as a lecturer. In the printed sentences you read the eager,
+persuasive accent, so convincing because so convinced. On the platform he
+stood, say his friends, like a conqueror, stalwart and sturdy, his good
+grey eyes flashing or twinkling, his voice deepening with feeling, his
+gesture and speech sudden and spontaneous, his aspect that of an
+insurgent, a fighter against custom and orthodoxy.</p>
+
+<p>It was not long after the formation of the Society for the Protection of
+Ancient Buildings that he began to show himself a rebel in more than words
+against existing social laws. The steps by which he reached his membership
+in the Democratic Federation in the year 1883 are not very easily traced.
+Comments on the distressing gulf between rich and poor and on the
+conditions under which the modern workingman did his task became more
+frequent in his letters and addresses. His mind seemed to be gradually
+adjusting itself to the thought that the only hope for obtaining ideal
+conditions in which&mdash;this was always the ultimate goal&mdash;art might be
+constantly associated with handicraft, was perhaps to let art go for the
+time being, and upset society and all its conventions in preparation for a
+new earth.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span> &#8220;Art must go under,&#8221; he wrote in one of his private letters
+&#8220;where or however it may come up again.&#8221; But it was always the fate of art
+that concerned him. He never really understood what Socialism technically
+and economically speaking meant. He read its books with labour and sorrow,
+and struggled with its theories in support of his antagonism to the
+commercial methods of modern business, but he gained no firm grasp of any
+underlying political principle. In most of his later addresses he talked
+pure sentiment concerning social questions, characteristically declaring
+it to be the purest reason. His avowed belief was that &#8220;workmen should be
+artists and artists workmen,&#8221; and this, he felt, could only be attained
+under the freest conditions. A workman should not be clothed in shabby
+garments, should not be wretchedly housed, overworked, or underfed. But
+neither will it profit him much if he wear good clothes, and keep short
+hours, and eat wholesome food, and contribute to the ugliness of the wares
+turned out by commerce. The idea that a man works only to earn leisure in
+which he does no work was shocking to him as it had been to Ruskin.
+Pleasant work to do, leisure for other work of a different pleasantness,
+this was what the workingman really wanted if only he knew it. It was
+clear to Morris that he himself worked &#8220;not the least in the world for the
+sake of earning leisure by it,&#8221; but &#8220;partly driven by the fear of
+starvation and disgrace,&#8221; and partly because he loved the work itself;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span>
+and while he was ready to confess that he spent a part of his leisure &#8220;as
+a dog does&#8221; in contemplation, and liked it well enough, he also spent part
+of it in work which gave him as much pleasure as his bread-earning work,
+neither more nor less. Obviously if there are men with whom such is not
+the case it is because they have not the right kind of work to do, and are
+not doing it in the right way, and it is equally obvious that the wrong
+work and the wrong way of doing it are forced upon them. Left to
+themselves they are bound to do what pleases them and what will please
+others of right minds. The ideal handicraftsman developing under an ideal
+social order &#8220;shall put his own individual intelligence and enthusiasm
+into the goods he fashions. So far from his labour being &#8216;divided,&#8217; which
+is the technical phrase for his always doing one minute piece of work and
+never being allowed to think of any other, so far from that, he must know
+all about the ware he is making and its relation to similar wares; he must
+have a natural aptitude for his work so strong that no education can force
+him away from his special bent. He must be allowed to think of what he is
+doing and to vary his work as the circumstances of it vary, and his own
+moods. He must be forever stirring to make the piece he is at work at
+better than the last. He must refuse at anybody&#8217;s bidding to turn out, I
+won&#8217;t say a bad, but even an indifferent piece of work, whatever the
+public want or think they want. He must have a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span> voice, and a voice worth
+listening to in the whole affair.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>This attitude is almost identical with that of Ruskin. To see how the
+theories of master and pupil coincide one has only to read <i>The Stones of
+Venice</i> and compare with the passage quoted above the famous chapter on
+<i>The Nature of the Gothic</i>.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It is verily this degradation of the operative into a machine,&#8221; says
+Ruskin, &#8220;which, more than any other evil of the times, is leading the mass
+of the nations everywhere into vain, incoherent, destructive struggling
+for a freedom of which they cannot explain the nature to themselves. Their
+universal outcry against wealth and against nobility is not forced from
+them either by the pressure of famine or the sting of mortified pride.
+These do much, and have done much in all ages; but the foundations of
+society were never yet shaken as they are at this day. It is not that men
+are ill-fed, but that they have no pleasure in the work by which they make
+their bread, and therefore look to wealth as the only means of pleasure.
+It is not that men are pained by the scorn of the upper classes, but they
+cannot endure their own; for they feel that the kind of labour to which
+they are condemned is verily a degrading one, and makes them less than
+men.... We have much studied and much perfected, of late, the great
+civilised invention of the division of labour; only we give it a false
+name. It is not, truly speaking, the labour that is divided; but the
+men&mdash;divided<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span> into mere segments of men&mdash;broken into small fragments and
+crumbs of life, so that all the little piece of intelligence that is left
+in a man is not enough to make a pin or a nail, but exhausts itself in
+making the point of a pin, or the head of a nail.... And the great cry
+that rises from all our manufacturing cities, louder than their furnace
+blast, is all in very deed for this,&mdash;that we manufacture everything there
+except men.... And all the evil to which that cry is urging our myriads
+can be met only ... by a right understanding on the part of all classes,
+of what kinds of labour are good for men, raising them and making them
+happy; by a determined sacrifice of such convenience, or beauty, or
+cheapness as is to be got only by the degradation of the workman.&#8221; But
+Ruskin was altogether too much of an aristocrat, too much of an egoist, to
+root out classes. We can hardly imagine him preaching as Morris finally
+came to preach a revolution which should make it impossible for him to
+condescend. He could devote seven thousand pounds of his own money to
+establishing a St. George Society, but it would probably never have
+occurred to him to head a riot in Trafalgar Square.</p>
+
+<p>When Morris, under the influence of old theories and new associations,
+came to consider not only the desirability but the possibility of
+establishing a social order in which men could work quite happily and art
+could get loose from handcuffs welded and locked by commercialism, it was
+a necessity of his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span> temperament that he should turn his back on halfway
+methods and urge drastic reforms. His way was not the way of compromise,
+and he seriously believed that if &#8220;civilisation&#8221; could be swept out of the
+path by a revolution which should destroy all class distinctions and all
+machinery and machine-made goods, which should do away with commercialism
+and strip the world to its bare bones, so that men could start afresh, all
+equal and all freed from the superfluities of life, there would grow up a
+charming communism in which kind hearts would take the place of coronets,
+and cheerful labour the place of hopeless toil. We find him writing in a
+private letter&mdash;madly, yet with the downright force that kindled where it
+struck&mdash;that he has &#8220;faith more than a grain of mustard seed in the future
+history of civilisation,&#8221; that he now knows it to be doomed to
+destruction, and that it is a consolation and joy to him to think of
+barbarism once more flooding the world, &#8220;and real feelings and passions,
+however rudimentary, taking the place of our wretched hypocrisies.&#8221; It was
+thus he thought, or felt, about the new field of labour upon which he was
+entering, and it is from this point of view that he must be defended
+against the slurs that have been cast at him as a &#8220;Capitalist-Socialist.&#8221;
+He did not ignore the ideal of renunciation which had tempted him in his
+youth, and which he again thought of in his middle age&mdash;though less
+tempted, perhaps. But he reasoned, logically enough, that for one man or a
+few<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span> men to divide his or their wealth with the poor would not advance
+the world by a furlong or a foot toward the state of things which he had
+at heart to bring about. It might raise the beneficiaries a little higher
+in the ranks&mdash;in other words, bring them a little closer to the dangerous
+middle-class, from which came the worst of their troubles, and it might
+also have the effect of making them a trifle more content with existing
+conditions. Neither effect was desirable in his eyes. A divine discontent
+to be spread throughout all classes was the end and aim of such Socialism
+as he accepted. Nothing could be done except through the antagonism of
+classes, which seemed in itself to provide a remedy. In <i>News from
+Nowhere</i>, his best known Socialistic romance, the name of which was
+perhaps suggested by Kingsley&#8217;s Utopian and anagrammatic <i>Erewhon</i>, he
+puts into the mouth of an old man who is himself a survival from the days
+of &#8220;class slavery,&#8221; a description of the imaginary change to an ideal
+Communism. Toward the end of the nineteenth century, it is assumed, a
+federation of labour made it possible for the workmen or &#8220;slaves&#8221; to
+establish from time to time important strikes that would sometimes stop an
+industry altogether for a while, and to impose upon their &#8220;masters&#8221; other
+restrictions that seriously interfered with the systematic conduct of
+commerce. The resulting &#8220;bad times&#8221; reached a crisis in the year 1952,
+when the &#8220;Combined Workers&#8221; determined upon the bold step of demanding a
+practical<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span> reversal of classes, by which they should have the management
+of the whole natural resources of the country, together with the machinery
+for using them. The upper classes resisting, riots ensued, then the &#8220;Great
+Strike.&#8221; &#8220;The railways did not run,&#8221; the old man recalls; &#8220;the telegraph
+wires were unserved; flesh, fish, and green stuff brought to market was
+allowed to lie there still packed and perishing; the thousands of
+middle-class families, who were utterly dependent for the next meal on the
+workers, made frantic efforts through their more energetic members to
+cater for the needs of the day, and amongst those of them who could not
+throw off the fear of what was to follow, there was, I am told, a certain
+enjoyment of this unexpected picnic&mdash;a forecast of the days to come in
+which all labour grew pleasant.&#8221; Out of all this came civil war, with
+destruction of wares and machinery and also the destruction of the spirit
+of commercialism. With the removal of the spur of competition it is
+admitted that there was a temporary danger of making men dull by giving
+them too much time for thought or idle musing. How was this danger
+overcome? By a growing interest in art, to be sure. The people, all
+workmen now, and providing very simply for their simple needs, &#8220;no longer
+driven desperately to painful and terrible overwork,&#8221; began to wish to
+make the work they had in hand as attractive as possible, and rudely and
+awkwardly to ornament the wares they produced.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span> &#8220;Thus at last and by slow
+degrees,&#8221; the old man concludes, &#8220;we got pleasure into our work; then we
+became conscious of that pleasure, and cultivated it, and took care that
+we had our fill of it, and then all was gained and we were happy.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img28.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="caption">HONEYSUCKLE DESIGN FOR LINEN</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>There is little here to charm the logically constructive mind, acquainted
+with human nature, and in the lectures setting forth in more detail and
+with more attempt at practical teaching the methods by which society could
+be enlightened and raised to his standard of excellence, Morris boldly
+invites the scorn of the political economist by the wholly visionary
+character of his pathetically &#8220;reasonable&#8221; views. Nevertheless, he was not
+without an instinct for distinguishing social evils and suggesting right
+remedies. Strip his doctrines of their exaggerated conclusions from false
+premises, and it is possible to find in them the seeds of many reforms
+that have come about to the inestimable benefit of the modern world. In
+his lecture on <i>Useful Work versus Useless Toil</i>, the very title of which
+is a flash of genius, he advocates the kind of education that is directed
+toward finding out what different people are fit for, and helping them
+along the road which they are inclined to take. He would have young people
+taught &#8220;such handicrafts as they had a turn for as a part of their
+education, the discipline of their minds and bodies; and adults would also
+have opportunities of learning in the same schools.&#8221; He preaches the
+necessity of agreeable surroundings,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span> claiming that science duly applied
+would get rid of the smoke, stench, and noise of factories, and that
+factories and buildings in which work is carried on should be made decent,
+convenient, and beautiful, while workers should be given opportunities of
+living in quiet country homes, in small towns, or in industrial colleges,
+instead of being obliged to &#8220;pig together&#8221; in close city quarters. Not one
+of these considerations is ignored by the organisations now endeavouring
+in the name of civilisation to raise the standard of the community. Manual
+training schools, free kindergartens, health protective associations,
+model tenement societies, have all arisen to meet in their own ways the
+needs to which Morris was so keenly alive. It was not the word reform,
+however, but the word revolution, that he constantly reiterated, and
+declined to relinquish in favour of any milder term. His friend William
+Clarke has summed up in a single paragraph the substance of many
+conversations held with him on the subject of social progress. &#8220;Existing
+society is, he thinks, gradually, but with increasing momentum,
+disintegrating through its own rottenness. The capitalist system of
+production is breaking down fast and is compelled to exploit new regions
+in Africa and other parts, where, he thinks, its term will be short.
+Economically, socially, morally, politically, religiously, civilisation is
+becoming bankrupt. Meanwhile it is for the Socialist to take advantage of
+this disintegration by spreading <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span>discontent, by preaching economic
+truths, and by any kind of demonstration which may harass the authorities
+and develop among the people an <i>esprit de corps</i>. By these means the
+people will, in some way or other, be ready to take up the industry of the
+world when the capitalist class is no longer able to direct or control
+it.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The expression &#8220;in some way or other&#8221; very well indicates the essential
+vagueness underlying Morris&#8217;s definite speech. He had no idea of the means
+by which the people could be educated to the assumption of unfamiliar
+control. The utmost that he could suggest was that they should be awakened
+to the beauty of life as he saw it in his dreams. This beauty he
+continually set before them in phrases as simple and as eloquent as he
+could make them. Nor did he shirk the responsibilities raised by his
+extreme point of view. Nothing testifies more truly to his fidelity of
+nature and devotion to his ideal than his readiness to put aside the
+pursuits he loved with his whole heart and take up activities detested by
+him for many years of that gifted, interesting life of his, in the hope of
+bringing about, for people whom he really cared for only in the mass, who
+did not understand him and whom he did not very well understand, an order
+of things which should in time, but not in his time, make them&mdash;so he
+thought&mdash;quite happy. The extent to which he renounced was not slight.</p>
+
+<p>Now indeed was the time when his friends might<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span> justly lament that he was
+being kept labouring at what he could not do, with work all round that he
+could do so well. First he joined the Democratic Federation and was
+promptly put on its executive committee. We find him writing that it is
+naturally harder to understand the subject of Socialism in detail as he
+gets alongside of it, and that he often gets beaten in argument even when
+he knows he is right, which only drives him to more desperate attempts to
+justify his theories by the study of other people&#8217;s arguments. While he
+was a member of the Federation (a definitely Socialist body at the time)
+he delivered a lecture at Oxford with the effect of rousing consternation
+in the University despite the fact that he had taken pains to inform the
+authorities of his position as an active Socialist. They did not
+understand the extent of his activity, and when he wound up an agreeable
+talk by frankly appealing to the undergraduates of the Russell Club, at
+whose invitation he was speaking, to join the Democratic Federation, the
+Master of University was brought to his feet to explain that nothing of
+the kind had been foreseen when Mr. Morris was asked to express there &#8220;his
+opinion on art under a democracy.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Besides his lecturing, which went on in London, or at Manchester, Leeds,
+Blackburn, Leicester, Glasgow, and anywhere else where a hopeful
+opportunity afforded, he was writing for the weekly paper of the
+Federation, the little sheet called <i>Justice</i>,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span> and also writing pamphlets
+for distribution among the people. The measures urged in <i>Justice</i> for
+immediate adoption as remedies for the evils of existing society were:</p>
+
+<p>Free Compulsory Education for all classes, together with the provision of
+at least one wholesome meal a day in each school.</p>
+
+<p>Eight Hours or less to be the normal Working day in all trades.</p>
+
+<p>Cumulative Taxation upon all incomes above a fixed minimum not exceeding
+&pound;300 a year.</p>
+
+<p>State Appropriation of Railways, with or without compensation.</p>
+
+<p>The Establishment of National Banks, which shall absorb all private
+institutions that derive a profit from operations in money or credit.</p>
+
+<p>Rapid Extinction of the National Debt.</p>
+
+<p>Nationalisation of the Land and organisation of agricultural and
+industrial armies under State control on Co&ouml;perative principles.</p>
+
+<p>The objects of the Federation were: &#8220;To unite the various Associations of
+Democrats and Workers throughout Great Britain and Ireland for the purpose
+of securing equal rights for all, and forming a permanent centre of
+organisation; to agitate for the ultimate adoption of the programme of the
+Federation; to aid all Social and political movements in the direction of
+these reforms.&#8221; Morris believed himself to be in full sympathy with the
+fundamental principles of the Federation, and faithfully resented the
+assumption<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span> of a kindly intentioned critic who stated that his imperfect
+sympathy with them must in charity be supposed. To the implication that he
+cared only for art and not for the other side of the social questions he
+had been writing about, he responded: &#8220;Much as I love art and ornament, I
+value it chiefly as a token of the happiness of the people, and I would
+rather it were all swept away from the world than that the mass of the
+people should suffer oppression&#8221;; but he continued with the familiar
+challenge, opportunity to utter which was seldom lost, &#8220;At the same time,
+Sir, I will beg you earnestly to consider if my contention is not true,
+that genuine Art is always an expression of pleasure in Labour?&#8221; In
+explaining his point of view to the public before whom he placed his
+little collection of Socialist lectures, he expressed his conviction that
+all the ugliness and vulgarity of civilisation, which his own work had
+forced him to look upon with grief and pain are &#8220;but the outward
+expression of the innate moral baseness into which we are forced by our
+present form of society.&#8221; The ethical and practical sides of the problem
+he was trying to face honestly, grew up in his mind as he dwelt upon its
+artistic side, and he made noble efforts to evolve schemes of practical
+expediency. In his reasonableness he went so far as to admit the possible
+usefulness of machinery in the new order toward which he was directing the
+attention of his followers; but he is swift to add, &#8220;for the consolation
+of the artists,&#8221; that this<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span> usefulness will probably be but temporary;
+that a state of social order would lead, at first, perhaps, to a great
+development of machinery for really useful purposes, &#8220;because people will
+still be anxious about getting through the work necessary to holding
+society together&#8221;; but after a while they will find that there is not so
+much work to do as they expected and will have leisure to reconsider the
+whole subject, and then &#8220;if it seems to them that a certain industry would
+be carried on more pleasantly as regards the worker, and more effectually
+as regards the goods, by using hand-work rather than machinery they will
+certainly get rid of their machinery, because it will be possible for them
+to do so.&#8221; &#8220;It isn&#8217;t possible now,&#8221; he adds; &#8220;we are not at liberty to do
+so; we are slaves to the monsters we have created. And I have a kind of
+hope that the very elaboration of machinery in a society whose purpose is
+not the multiplication of labour, as it now is, but the carrying on of a
+pleasant life, as it would be under social order,&mdash;that the elaboration of
+machinery, I say, will lead to the simplification of life, and so once
+more to the limitation of machinery.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Although the discussion of methods and external forms was entirely foreign
+to Morris&#8217;s habit of mind, he was not averse to discussing the history of
+society. He was not much more an historian than he was an economist in the
+strict sense. He ignored, idealised, and blackened at will, always<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span>
+perfectly certain that he was setting forth the contrast between the past
+and the present in its true light; but his delight in the medi&aelig;val past,
+which was the only past to which he gave much attention, lends to his
+pictures of it a charm most appealing to those who have not too prodding a
+prejudice in favour of historical accuracy. He is at his best when he
+breaks from his grapple with the subject of the commercial classes and
+their development to evoke the visions which neither history nor economics
+could obscure in his mind. &#8220;Not seldom I please myself with trying to
+realise the face of medi&aelig;val England,&#8221; he says to the motley audience
+gathering at a street corner or in some dingy little hall or shed to
+listen to him, &#8220;the many chases and great woods, the stretches of common
+tillage and common pasture quite unenclosed; the rough husbandry of the
+tilled parts, the unimproved breeds of cattle, sheep, and swine;
+especially the latter, so lank and long and lathy, looking so strange to
+us; the strings of packhorses along the bridle-roads; of the scantiness of
+the wheel-roads, scarce any except those left by the Romans, and those
+made from monastery to monastery; the scarcity of bridges, and people
+using ferries instead, or fords where they could; the little towns, well
+bechurched, often walled; the villages just where they are now (except for
+those that have nothing but the church left to tell of them), but better
+and more populous; their churches, some big and handsome, some small<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span> and
+curious, but all crowded with altars and furniture, and gay with pictures
+and ornament; the many religious houses, with their glorious architecture;
+the beautiful manor-houses, some of them castles once, and survivals from
+an earlier period; some new and elegant; some out of all proportion small
+for the importance of their lords. How strange it would be to us if we
+could be landed in fourteenth-century England; unless we saw the crest of
+some familiar hill like that which yet bears upon it a symbol of an
+English tribe, and from which, looking down on the plain where Alfred was
+born, I once had many such ponderings, we should not know into what
+country of the world we were come: the name is left, scarce a thing
+else.&#8221;</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/botban7.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span></p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/banner11.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VIII" id="CHAPTER_VIII"></a>CHAPTER VIII.</h2>
+<p class="title">PUBLIC LIFE AND SOCIALISM (<i>Continued</i>).</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="dropcap"><span class="caps">By</span> the latter part of 1884 the political agitations and internal
+differences in the Federation, now called The Social Democratic
+Federation, became so violent as to force Morris to leave the association
+in which he had had no desire to be a leader, but had been unable to keep
+the position of acquiescent follower. In his connection with this and
+other public organisations, the underlying gentleness and real humility of
+his nature was clearly to be seen. He learned patience through his
+conflict with unsympathetic minds. From the weary experience of working in
+constant intercourse with men whose temper and practice and many of whose
+theories were directly antagonistic to his own, although identified with
+them in the public mind by a common responsibility, he learned to subdue
+those elements of his temperament that worked against the success of what
+he had most loyally at heart. From self-confidence, a critical habit, an
+overbearing positiveness of assertion, he<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span> passed to comparative
+reticence, tolerance, even docility. To his equals it was painful to see
+ignorant men assign to him his task, but he never failed to comply
+instantly with their orders.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img29.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="caption">MERTON ABBEY WORKS</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img30.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="caption">WASHING CLOTH AT THE MERTON ABBEY WORKS</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>It could not, however, have been an education in which he could take
+conscious pleasure, and at this juncture he doubtless would have been
+happy indeed could he have gone quietly back to the weaving and dyeing and
+writing of poetry with which his new preoccupation had seriously
+interfered. His conscience, however, was too deeply involved to permit a
+desertion, which would, he said, be dastardly. The question now constantly
+in his mind was how he would have felt against the system under which he
+lived had he himself been poor. He was convinced that he would have found
+it unendurable. Therefore, with a longing glance at his chintz bleaching
+in the sunlight and pure air of Merton Abbey, he put his shoulder to the
+wheel again, and, gathering together a few of his sympathisers,
+inaugurated a new party, the Socialist League, with the famous little
+<i>Commonweal</i> for its organ, a monthly paper now the joy of collectors on
+account of the beautiful headings of Walter Crane and the remarkable
+quality of the contributions by Morris himself. In this new society, for
+which he was primarily responsible, Morris found his work redoubled. He
+was editor of the <i>Commonweal</i> as well as contributor to it. He continued
+his lecturing, often under the most depressing conditions, speaking to
+small and indifferent<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span> audiences in small and miserable quarters. At
+Hammersmith he instituted a branch of the League in the room previously
+given up to his carpet-weaving, and there he gave Sunday evening
+addresses. On Saturday afternoons and Sunday mornings he spoke at the
+outdoor meetings which were to be the insidious foes of his health, and
+which more than once brought him into personal notoriety of a disagreeable
+kind.</p>
+
+<p>The first of these occasions was on the 21st of September, 1885, when a
+number of people were arrested for gathering together that Sunday morning
+at the corner of Dod Street and Burdett Road against orders from the
+authorities to the effect that meetings at that place&mdash;a favourite spot
+with open-air speakers&mdash;must be stopped. Morris, with other members of the
+League, was present in court when the prisoners were brought up, and
+joined in the hisses and cries of &#8220;Shame!&#8221; when one prisoner was sentenced
+to two months&#8217; hard labour and the others were fined. Morris was arrested,
+subjected to a little questioning from the magistrate, and dismissed. The
+following Sunday another meeting, comprising many thousands of people, was
+held on the forbidden corner; nothing occurred, and they dispersed
+victoriously. The next year a Sunday-morning meeting in a street off
+Edgeware Road was interfered with by the police, and Morris was summoned
+to the police court and fined a shilling and costs for the offence of
+obstructing the highway.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span>Out of these experiences resulted, we may very well imagine, the farce
+entitled: <i>The Tables Turned; or, Nupkins Awakened</i>, given at an
+entertainment in the Hall of the Socialist League, at Farringdon Road, on
+October 15, 1887. Copies of it are still in existence&mdash;sorry little
+pamphlets in blue wrappers, bearing no kinship to the aristocratic
+products of the Kelmscott Press so soon to follow, but extremely
+entertaining as showing Morris in his least conventional and most
+aggressive public mood. As the pamphlet is quite rare, a brief description
+of its contents is not, perhaps, superfluous, although its literary merit
+amounts to as little as possible considering its authorship. It opens with
+a scene in a court of justice, Justice Nupkins presiding, in which a Mr.
+La-di-da is found guilty of swindling and of robbing the widow and the
+orphan. He is sentenced to imprisonment for the space of one calendar
+month. Next Mary Pinch, a poor woman (the part was taken by Morris&#8217;s
+daughter May), is accused of stealing three loaves of bread, and, after
+absurd and contradictory testimony by witnesses for the prosecution
+(constables and sergeants), is sentenced to eighteen months of hard
+labour. Next, John Freeman, a Socialist, is accused of conspiracy,
+sedition, and obstruction of the highway. The Archbishop of Canterbury
+(this r&ocirc;le enacted by Morris), Lord Tennyson, and Professor Tyndall are
+called as witnesses and give testimony, the manner and speech of the
+renowned originals being somewhat rudely parodied.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span> After contradictory
+evidence by these witnesses and the former ones, the prisoner is sentenced
+to six years&#8217; penal servitude with a fine of one hundred pounds, his
+offence having been an open-air speech advocating the principles of
+Socialism. As his sentence is pronounced the <i>Marseillaise</i> is heard, and
+a Socialist ensign enters with news that the Revolution has begun.</p>
+
+<p>It is in the second part that the tables are turned upon Nupkins. The
+scene this time is laid in the fields near a country village, with a copse
+close by. The time is after the Revolution. Justice Nupkins is found
+skulking in the copse, half mad with fear at the reversal of social
+conditions, his past cruelty giving him small reason to hope for gentle
+treatment at the hands of the former &#8220;lower classes,&#8221; who are now running
+affairs to suit themselves. He meets Mary Pinch, who pities his deplorable
+aspect and invites him to her house, now a pleasant and prosperous home.
+He cannot believe in the sincerity of her apparent kindness, and flees
+from her in a panic, only to meet other of his former victims who further
+alarm him by pretending to arrest him and give him a mock trial, during
+which he thinks he is to be sentenced to death. He learns at last that
+under the beautiful new order he is free to do what he pleases, and may
+dig potatoes and earn his own living by such tilling of the soil. The
+citizens dance about him singing the following words to the tune of the
+<i>Carmagnole</i>:</p>
+
+<p class="poem"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span>
+What&#8217;s this that the days and the days have done?<br />
+Man&#8217;s lordship over man hath gone.<br />
+<br />
+How fares it, then, with high and low?<br />
+Equal on earth they thrive and grow.<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Bright is the sun for everyone;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Dance we, dance we the Carmagnole.</span><br />
+<br />
+How deal ye, then, with pleasure and pain?<br />
+Alike we share and bear the twain.<br />
+<br />
+And what&#8217;s the craft whereby ye live?<br />
+Earth and man&#8217;s work to all men give.<br />
+<br />
+How crown ye excellence of worth?<br />
+With leave to serve all men on earth.<br />
+<br />
+What gain that lordship&#8217;s past and done?<br />
+World&#8217;s wealth for all and everyone.</p>
+
+<p>This somewhat childlike but not too bland revenge on the powers of the law
+met with an enthusiastic reception at the Hall of the Socialist League;
+Mr. Bernard Shaw, who was present, declaring that there had been no such
+successful &#8220;first night&#8221; within living memory.</p>
+
+<p>The year 1887 was marked, however, by events much more serious than the
+acting of a little farce. On the 13th of November,&mdash;&#8220;Bloody Sunday&#8221; it was
+called,&mdash;the efforts of the Government to check open-air speaking
+culminated in an organised riot on the part of the Socialists in alliance
+with the extreme Radicals. Sir Charles Warren had prohibited by
+proclamation the holding of any meeting in Trafalgar Square,&mdash;a meeting
+having been announced to take<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span> place there to protest against the Irish
+policy of the Government. Thereupon it was agreed by the Socialist League,
+the Social Democratic Federation, the Irish National League, and certain
+Radical clubs that their members should assemble at various centres and
+march toward Trafalgar Square. Morris put himself at the head of the
+Clerkenwell contingent, first delivering a short speech mounted on a cart
+in company with Mrs. Besant and others. He declared that wherever it was
+attempted to put down free speech it was a bounden duty to resist the
+attempt by every possible means, and told his audience that he thought
+their business was to get to the Square by some means or other; that he
+intended to do his best to get there, whatever the consequences might be,
+and that they must press on like orderly people and good citizens. Thus
+pressing on, with flags flying and bands playing, they were met at the
+Bloomsbury end of St. Martin&#8217;s Lane by the police, mounted and on foot,
+who charged in among them, striking right and left, and causing complete
+disorder in the ranks. The triumph of law and order over the various
+columns of the demonstrators was soon complete, and the outcome consisted
+of the arrest of three hundred men or more (many of whom were sent to
+prison and a few condemned to penal servitude) and the killing of three.
+The first to die was Alfred Linnell, for whom a public funeral was
+given&mdash;great masses of men marching in perfect and solemn order to Bow
+Cemetery, where he was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span> buried, the service at the grave being read by the
+light of a lantern. Such an event would inevitably stir Morris to
+sympathetic rage, and the dirge written by him to be sung as poor Linnell
+was buried has an inflammatory sound despite the obvious effort at
+restraint:</p>
+
+<p class="poem">We asked them for a life of toilsome earning,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">They bade us bide their leisure for our bread;</span><br />
+We craved to speak to tell our woful learning,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">We came back speechless, bearing back our dead!</span></p>
+
+<p>Thus time was spent. Sometimes Morris was heading processions &#8220;with the
+face of a Crusader,&#8221; says Joseph Pennell, describing one occasion on which
+he led a crowd, &#8220;among the red flags, singing with all his might the
+<i>Marseillaise</i>&#8221;&mdash;into Westminster Abbey to attend the Sunday services.
+Sometimes he was bailing out his friends who had been &#8220;run in&#8221; by the
+police. Sometimes he was tramping, whatever the weather, at the head of
+the workless workers of Hammersmith to interview the Guardians of the
+Poor. Sometimes he was delivering his lectures among woful hovels in
+tumbledown sheds to a score or so of people of whose comprehension he felt
+most doubtful. Always he was preaching &#8220;Education toward Revolution,&#8221; but
+with an ever-increasing consciousness that a vast amount of education was
+needed before revolution could be effectively reforming. His imagination
+had formed great ideals and had pictured those ideals in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span> triumphant
+practice, but his practical sense was sufficient to show him the futility
+of unintelligent action. He had spent much money, not in profit-sharing
+among his workmen (although this obtained to a certain extent in his
+business), but in bearing the various and heavy expenses imposed by the
+publication of the organs of Socialism, which he supported almost as
+largely by his purse as by his pen, and by a thousand other needs of the
+cause to which in 1882 he had also sacrificed the greater part of his
+valuable library. He had spent much time, which, to one so deeply
+interested in pursuits for which any one life is far too short, meant
+infinitely more than the expenditure of money or the relinquishing of
+property that, after all, may be got back again. And he had worked against
+the grain with all sorts and conditions of companions, from whom he was as
+widely separated as the east is from the west&mdash;never more widely than when
+he was marching by their side toward a goal that neither could see
+clearly. He was now longing more and more to get back to his own life and
+away from a life so foreign. As he had said in the first flush of his
+enthusiasm, &#8220;Art must go under,&#8221; he was now prepared &#8220;to see all organised
+Socialism run into the sand for a while.&#8221; It is not surprising that he
+&#8220;somehow did not seem to care much&#8221; when the Socialist League became
+disintegrated and insolvent. He had done his best for it, but its
+strongest members had drifted away from it, the executive control had been
+gained by a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span> group of Anarchists, and Morris had been by these deposed
+from the editorship of the <i>Commonweal</i>. Before the society reached its
+lowest depths he resigned, giving expression in the <i>Commonweal</i> for the
+15th of November, 1890, to his feeling in the form it then took toward the
+movement which so long had carried him out of his course and kept him in
+turbulent waters. This movement had then been going on for about seven
+years. Those concerned in it had made, he thought, &#8220;about as many mistakes
+as any other party in a similar space of time.&#8221; When he first joined it he
+hoped that some leaders would turn up among the workingmen who &#8220;would push
+aside all middle-class help and become great historical figures.&#8221; This
+hope he had pretty well relinquished. In the beginning there had been
+little said about anything save the great ideals of Socialism, but as the
+Socialist idea had become more and more impressed upon the epoch a
+somewhat vulgarised and partial realisation of these ideals had pressed
+upon the friends of the cause. They began to think of methods, and mostly
+of &#8220;methods of impatience,&#8221; as Morris from his ripened and moderated point
+of view now designated them. &#8220;There are two tendencies in this matter of
+methods,&#8221; he said; &#8220;on the one hand is our old acquaintance, palliation,
+elevated now into vastly greater importance than it used to have, because
+of the growing discontent, and the obvious advance of Socialism; on the
+other is the method of partial,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span> necessarily futile, inconsequent revolt,
+or riot rather, against the authorities, who are our absolute masters, and
+can easily put it down.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;With both these methods I disagree; and that the more because the
+palliatives have to be clamoured for, and the riots carried out by men who
+do not know what Socialism is, and have no idea what their next step is to
+be, if, contrary to all calculation, they should happen to be successful.
+Therefore, at the best, our masters would be our masters still, because
+there would be nothing to take their place. <i>We are not ready for such a
+change as that!</i>&#8221; The time was favourable, he thought, for preaching the
+simple principles of Socialism regardless of the policy of the passing
+hour, nor was any more active work desirable. &#8220;I say, for us <i>to make
+Socialists</i>,&#8221; he concluded, &#8220;is <i>the</i> business at present, and at present
+I do not think we can have any other useful business. Those who are not
+really Socialists&mdash;who are Trades Unionists, disturbance-breeders, or what
+not&mdash;will do what they are impelled to do, and we cannot help it. At the
+worst there will be some good in what they do; but we need not and cannot
+heartily work with them, when we know that their methods are beside the
+right way.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Our business, I repeat, is the making of Socialists, <i>i.e.</i>, convincing
+people that Socialism is good for them and is possible. When we have
+enough people of that way of thinking, <i>they</i> will find out what action is
+necessary for putting their<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span> principles in practice. Therefore, I say,
+make Socialists. We Socialists can do nothing else that is useful.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>This was practically the end of militant Socialism for Morris. Together
+with a handful of his true followers and sympathisers he did organise or
+reorganise under very simple rules a little society named the Hammersmith
+Socialist Society, which took the place of the Hammersmith Branch of the
+Socialist League. The manifesto explained that the separation had been
+made because the members of the new society did not hold the Anarchistic
+views of the majority of the old society&#8217;s members, and would be likely to
+waste in bickering time &#8220;which should be spent in attacking capitalism.&#8221;
+The business of the Hammersmith Society was to spread the principles of
+Socialism, the method so warmly recommended by Morris in his <i>Commonweal</i>
+article. But it was obvious that his interest was no longer keen in even
+this passive mode of advancing the cause for which he had laboured so long
+and, on the whole, so thanklessly. He set himself dutifully to work at
+writing the manifesto, but complained, &#8220;I would so much rather go on with
+my Saga work.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>It cannot be said, however, that he was inconsistent. He had gone into
+militant Socialism as he went into everything, with a superabundant energy
+that must work itself off in activity. But there was more vehemence than
+narrowness in his partisanship. When his party forsook the principles for
+the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span> sake of which he had joined it, he forsook the party. He learned of
+human nature much that was discouraging during his efforts to make many of
+his fellows work together in harmony, but he brought out of the fiery
+experience an unharmed ideal. And among the clashing of creeds and the
+warring of minds he played the part of peacemaker to an extent remarkable
+in so impulsive a nature. &#8220;It seemed as though he wanted to have all his
+own way,&#8221; says one of his acquaintances, &#8220;yet put him in the chair at a
+meeting and he was as patient as the mildest of us.&#8221; His inmost belief was
+much the same at the end as at the beginning,&mdash;matured by study and
+tempered by practical failures, but holding to the fundamental idea that
+art is the great source of pleasure in human life as well as pleasure&#8217;s
+best result, and must be made possible for everyone to practise with a
+free mind and a body unwearied by hopeless toil. The letter to the <i>Daily
+Chronicle</i> of the 10th of November, 1893, on &#8220;Help for the Miners, the
+Deeper Meaning of the Struggle,&#8221; sounds the familiar note as positively as
+ever, and contains all that is required to represent the creed of his
+later years. &#8220;I hold firmly to the opinion,&#8221; he says in this letter, &#8220;that
+all worthy schools of art must be in the future, as they have been in the
+past, the outcome of the aspirations of the people towards the beauty and
+true pleasure of life. And, further, now that democracy is building up a
+new order, which is slowly emerging from the confusion of the commercial
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span>period, these aspirations of the people towards beauty can only be born
+from a condition of practical equality, of economical condition amongst
+the whole population. Lastly, I am so confident that this equality will be
+gained that I am prepared to accept, as a consequence of the process of
+that gain, the apparent disappearance of what art is now left us, because
+I am sure that that will be but a temporary loss, to be followed by a
+genuine new birth of art which will be the spontaneous expression of the
+pleasure of life innate in the whole people. This, I say, is the art which
+I look forward to, not as a vague dream, but as a practical certainty,
+founded on the general well-being of the people. It is true that the
+blossom of it I shall not see; therefore I may be excused if, in common
+with other artists, I try to express myself through the art of to-day,
+which seems to us to be only a survival of the organic art of the past, in
+which the people shared, whatever the other drawbacks of their condition
+might have been.... Yet if we shall not (those of us who are as old as I
+am) see the New Art, the expression of the general pleasure of life, we
+are even now seeing the seed of it beginning to germinate. For if genuine
+art be impossible without the help of the useful classes, how can these
+turn their attention to it if they are living amidst sordid cares which
+press upon them day in, day out? The first step, therefore, towards the
+new birth of art must be a definite rise in the condition of the workers;
+their livelihood must (to say the least of it) be<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span> less niggardly and less
+precarious, and their hours of labour shorter; and this improvement must
+be a general one and confirmed against the chances of the market by
+legislation. But, again, this change for the better can only be realised
+by the efforts of the workers themselves. &#8216;By us, and not for us,&#8217; must be
+their motto.... What these staunch miners have been doing in the face of
+such tremendous odds other workmen can and will do; and when life is
+easier and fuller of pleasure people will have time to look around them
+and find out what they desire in the matter of art, and will also have
+time to compass their desires.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Just why Morris with his extreme independence stopped short of Anarchism
+is difficult to see unless it be attributed to an instinct for order
+inherited from the sturdy stock to which he belonged. The necessity of a
+public rule of action was always, however, quite clear to him. He
+contended that you have a right to do as you like so long as you do not
+interfere with your neighbour&#8217;s right to do as he likes, a contention
+which not even a fairly conservative mind finds very difficult to uphold:
+he was not willing to admit the right of an individual to act
+&#8220;unsocially.&#8221; Indeed all the charm of his pictures of the ideal life
+derives from the atmosphere of loving-kindness and mutual helpfulness with
+which he surrounds them. The Golden Rule was always in his mind as he
+built up in his imagination his Paradise on earth. He possessed the
+optimism of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span> the kind-hearted, the faith in his fellow men that made him
+sure of their right acting could they only start afresh with a field clear
+of injury and abuse. He never dreamed in all his dreaming that these would
+again grow up and destroy the beautiful fabric of his new Society, so
+bright and unspotted in his mind. Of course there would be a social
+conscience &#8220;which, being social, is common to every man.&#8221; Without that
+there could be no society; and &#8220;Man without society is not only impossible
+but inconceivable.&#8221; Thus he argued and thus he believed. His militant
+Socialism had, while it lasted, a very dangerous side. His Socialist
+&#8220;principles&#8221; are easily torn to ribbons by the political economist in
+possession of facts showing the increasing prosperity of the working
+classes and their increasing interest under existing conditions in the
+arts and in education; but regarding his views merely as representing one
+aspect of his impressive personality, it is easy to find them attractive.
+To quote what the <i>Pall Mall Gazette</i> said of the Sunday evenings at the
+Hammersmith Hall, &#8220;They are patches of bright colour in the great drab,
+dreary, dull, and dirty world.&#8221; They bring with them such thoughts as
+Arnold had of the repose that has fled &#8220;for ever the course of the river
+of Time.&#8221; The spirit breathed through them in strong contrast to the
+spirit of many of his co-workers, ennobles all efforts toward true reform,
+diffuses the love of humanity among a cold people, and makes for the
+innocent and exquisite happiness<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span> which our human nature is so apt
+paradoxically to deny us. In Morris&#8217;s world we should all be very happy if
+we were like Morris. He was not very happy in our world, yet perhaps he
+managed to get out of it as much of the joy of doing as it can be made to
+yield to any one man. His Socialism, from one point of view, was certainly
+a tremendous failure, but no other side of his life visible to the public
+at large showed so plainly his moral virtues, his generosity, his
+sincerity, his power of self-sacrifice, his effort toward self-control. It
+was significant that when, with a last rally of his forces to active work
+for the cause, he joined in a concerted effort to unite all Socialists
+into a single party, he was chosen as the best man for the purpose, all
+the societies having &#8220;a deep regard and respect for him.&#8221; It is even more
+significant that his own employees in his large business also esteemed him
+highly, feeling the sincerity with which he tried to make his practices
+accord with his theories. If his business was a successful one it was not
+because he tried to get from his workmen the utmost he could claim in time
+and labour. The eight-hour working-day was in practice in the Merton
+factory, and the wages paid were the highest known in the trade. He was
+free from the self-complacency that gives to justice the name of charity,
+and he was not distinguished for civility toward the people under his
+direction, but he was, they said in their emphatic and expressive
+vernacular, &#8220;the sort of bloke you always could depend upon.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span>Toward the end of his activity for the cause of Socialism he became
+connected with a society which perhaps would not have existed without his
+influence, although he was not directly responsible for its formation.
+This was the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society [founded in 1888], the
+aims of which were described by one of its members in the following words:
+&#8220;To assert the possibilities of Art in design, applied even to the least
+pretentious purpose and in every kind of handicraft; to protest against
+the absolute subjection of Art in its applied form to the interests of
+that extravagant waste of human energy which is called economic
+production; to claim for the artist or handicraftsman, whose identity it
+has been the rule to hide and whose artistic impulse it has been the
+custom to curb (until he was really in danger of becoming, in fact as in
+name, a mere hand), some recognition and some measure of appreciation; to
+try and discover whether the public cared at all, or could be brought to
+care, for the Art which, good or bad, is continually under their eyes; and
+whether there might not be, in association with manufacture, or apart from
+it, if that were out of the question, some scope for handicraft, some hope
+for Art.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Morris&#8217;s point of view is apparent in these aims, and the society was
+composed chiefly of young men who, says Mr. Mackail, &#8220;without following
+his principles to their logical issues or joining any Socialist
+organisation, were profoundly permeated<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span> with his ideas on their most
+fruitful side,&mdash;that of the regeneration, by continued and combined
+individual effort, of the decaying arts of life.&#8221; The Art Workers&#8217; Guild,
+dating from 1884, was the source from which the new society sprang, the
+immediate purpose of the latter being to get the work of men who combined
+art with handicraft before the public by means of exhibitions, the
+committees of the Royal Academy and kindred associations refusing to
+accept examples of applied art for the exhibitions which they devoted to
+what they called &#8220;fine art proper.&#8221; Mr. Mackail calls attention to the
+fact that Morris at this stage of his life was so thoroughly imbued with
+the idea that the general public were ignorant of and indifferent to
+decorative art, as to feel more sceptical of the success of the
+exhibitions than was justified by their outcome. He lent his aid, however,
+with his customary energy, guaranteeing a considerable sum of money, and
+contributing some valuable papers and lectures, the exhibitions being
+combined with instruction by acknowledged masters of handicraft. In 1891
+he was elected President of the Society, holding that office until the
+time of his death, when he was succeeded by Walter Crane. He was a member
+of the Art Workers&#8217; Guild as well, and was elected Master of the Guild in
+1892. He also belonged to the Bibliographical Society formed in that year,
+and in 1894 was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London.
+The societies were all directly concerned with <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span>questions in which Morris
+had all his life been interested, and his connection with them was not
+only natural but almost inevitable. He was not a man to whom public
+business made a strong appeal. He undertook it with reluctance and
+relinquished it with delight. Nor did he care for the labels of
+distinction for which most men, even among the greatly distinguished, have
+a measure of regard. He was, however, gratified when, in 1882, he was
+unanimously elected Honorary Fellow of Exeter College at Oxford, an honour
+which is rarely conferred, and is generally reserved, says Mr. Mackail,
+&#8220;for old members who have attained the highest official rank in their
+profession.&#8221;</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/botban8.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span></p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/banner12.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IX" id="CHAPTER_IX"></a>CHAPTER IX.</h2>
+<p class="title">LITERATURE OF THE SOCIALIST PERIOD.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="dropcap"><span class="caps">Despite</span> the large amount of time and comparatively unproductive thought
+given by Morris to his Socialism, the period of his greatest activity in
+this direction was not without result in the field of pure literature. The
+years from 1884 to 1890 were crowded with pamphlets, leaflets, newspaper
+articles, manifestoes, and treatises, all with the one object&mdash;the making
+of Socialists. Many of these were more or less works of art&mdash;but of art in
+fetters; in the main they bore sad witness to the havoc made in the
+&aelig;sthetic life of their author by his propagandising policy, and in their
+deadly dulness betrayed the unwillingness of his mind to labour in a field
+so foreign to it. Not even the overwhelming tasks imposed upon him
+sufficed, however, to subdue entirely his restless imagination. From time
+to time in the arid desert of his writings for &#8220;the cause&#8221; a poem of
+romance appeared of a quality to show that the sap still ran in the
+products of his mind. Between the first issue<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span> of <i>The Commonweal</i> and the
+inauguration of the Kelmscott Press he wrote in the following order: <i>The
+Pilgrims of Hope</i>, <i>A Dream of John Ball</i>, <i>The House of the Wolfings</i>,
+<i>The Roots of the Mountains</i>, and <i>News from Nowhere</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Each is interesting as throwing a varied yet steady light upon his mental
+processes, and the first is especially interesting despite its conspicuous
+defects, as one of the very few examples of its author&#8217;s style when
+treating a subject belonging to the actual present, not to the past or
+future. In it the reader leaves dreamland and is confronted by modern
+problems and situations set forth in plain modern English. A garden is no
+longer a garth, a dwelling-place is no longer a stead, the writer no
+longer wots and meseems. So violent a change in vocabulary could hardly be
+accomplished with entire success; at all events it was not, and much of
+the phraseology is an affliction to the ear, showing a peculiarly
+deficient taste in the use of a style uninspired by medi&aelig;val tradition.
+Yet, withal, <i>The Pilgrims of Hope</i> is touched with life, as many of
+Morris&#8217;s more artful compositions are not. The old bottles will not always
+serve for the new wine, Lowell warns us, and there is a noticeably
+quickening element in this wine poured from the bottle of the day. It is
+mentioned in Mr. Mackail&#8217;s biography that Morris once began to write a
+modern novel, but left it unfinished. The fabric of <i>The Pilgrims of Hope</i>
+is that of a modern novel, and the characters<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span> and incidents are such as
+Morris might easily have found in his daily path. A country couple leading
+a life of peaceful simplicity go down to London, and among the sordid
+influences of the town become converts to Socialism. Much that follows may
+be considered a record of Morris&#8217;s personal experience. The husband in the
+poem tries, as Morris tried, to learn the grounds of the Socialist faith,
+and takes up, as he did, the burden of spreading it among an indifferent
+people. The following description might very well have been culled from
+the diary kept by Morris during a part of his period of militant
+Socialism, but it must be confessed that the balance of poetic charm is
+all in favour of the account in the diary.</p>
+
+<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 10em;">I read day after day</span><br />
+Whatever books I could handle, and heard about and about<br />
+What talk was going amongst them; and I burned up doubt after doubt,<br />
+Until it befell at last that to others I needs must speak<br />
+(Indeed, they pressed me to that while yet I was weaker than weak).<br />
+So I began the business, and in street-corners I spake<br />
+To knots of men. Indeed, that made my very heart ache,<br />
+So hopeless it seemed, for some stood by like men of wood.<br />
+And some, though fain to listen, but a few words understood;<br />
+And some but hooted and jeered: but whiles across some I came<br />
+Who were keen and eager to hear; as in dry flax the flame<br />
+So the quick thought flickered amongst them: and that indeed was a feast.<br />
+So about the streets I went, and the work on my hands increased;<br />
+And to say the very truth, betwixt the smooth and the rough<br />
+It was work, and hope went with it, and I liked it well enough.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span>A similar passage, also showing the style at its worst, renders the actual
+scene encountered by Morris at many a lecture, and contains a careful
+portrait of himself as he appeared in his own eyes on such occasions. For
+the sake of its accuracy its touch of self-consciousness may well be
+forgiven. Not a conceited man, and curiously averse to mirrors, Morris was
+not in the habit of using their psychological counterparts, and it is
+impossible to surprise him in the act of posing to himself in becoming
+attitudes. There is, therefore, no irritation to the mind in his
+occasional frank assumption of interest in himself as a feature of the
+landscape, so to speak. Here he is on the Socialist platform as the
+Pilgrim of Hope beholds him, the Pilgrim explaining how it happened that
+he got upon his track.</p>
+
+<p class="poem">This is how it befell: a workman of mine had heard<br />
+Some bitter speech in my mouth, and he took me up at the word,<br />
+And said: &#8220;Come over to-morrow to our Radical spouting-place;<br />
+For there, if we hear nothing new, at least we shall see a new face;<br />
+He is one of those Communist chaps, and &#8217;tis like that you two may agree.&#8221;<br />
+So we went, and the street was as dull and as common as aught you could see.<br />
+Dull and dirty the room. Just over the chairman&#8217;s chair<br />
+Was a bust, a Quaker&#8217;s face with nose cocked up in the air.<br />
+There were common prints on the walls of the heads of the party fray,<br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span>And Mazzini dark and lean amidst them gone astray.<br />
+Some thirty men we were of the kind that I knew full well,<br />
+Listless, rubbed down to the type of our easy-going hell.<br />
+My heart sank down as I entered, and wearily there I sat<br />
+While the chairman strove to end his maunder of this and that.<br />
+<br />
+And partly shy he seemed, and partly indeed ashamed<br />
+Of the grizzled man beside him as his name to us he named;<br />
+He rose, thickset and short, and dressed in shabby blue,<br />
+And even as he began it seemed as though I knew<br />
+The thing he was going to say, though I never heard it before.<br />
+He spoke, were it well, were it ill, as though a message he bore.<br />
+A word that he could not refrain from many a million of men.<br />
+Nor aught seemed the sordid room and the few that were listening then<br />
+Save the hall of the labouring earth and the world which was to be,<br />
+Bitter to many the message, but sweet indeed unto me,<br />
+And every soul rejoicing in the sweet and bitter of life:<br />
+Of peace and good-will he told, and I knew that in faith he spake,<br />
+But his words were my very thoughts, and I saw the battle awake,<br />
+And I followed from end to end! and triumph grew in my heart<br />
+As he called on each that heard him to arise and play his part<br />
+In the tale of the new-told gospel, lest as slaves they should live and die.<br />
+<br />
+He ceased, and I thought the hearers would rise up with one cry,<br />
+And bid him straight enroll them; but they, they applauded indeed,<br />
+For the man was grown full eager, and had made them hearken and heed.<br />
+But they sat and made no sign, and two of the glibber kind<br />
+Stood up to jeer and to carp his fiery words to blind.<br />
+<br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span>I did not listen to them, but failed not his voice to hear<br />
+When he rose to answer the carpers, striving to make more clear<br />
+That which was clear already; not overwell, I knew<br />
+He answered the sneers and the silence, so hot and eager he grew;<br />
+But my hope full well he answered, and when he called again<br />
+On men to band together lest they live and die in vain,<br />
+In fear lest he should escape me, I rose ere the meeting was done,<br />
+And gave him my name and my faith&mdash;and I was the only one.<br />
+He smiled as he heard the jeers, and there was a shake of the hand,<br />
+He spoke like a friend long known; and lo! I was one of the band.</p>
+
+<p>There is nothing impressive in such rhyming save its message, the form
+costing little trouble and awakening little interest. Here, obviously,
+Morris, like Dante, would rather his readers should find his doctrine
+sweet than his verses. Parts of the poem are, however, upon a much higher
+plane of accomplishment. The first section, called <i>The Message of the
+March Wind</i>, contains exquisite images and moves to a fresh elastic
+measure; a world both real and lovely being evoked by the opening stanzas:</p>
+
+<p class="poem">Fair now is the springtide, now earth lies beholding<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">With the eyes of a lover the face of the sun;</span><br />
+Long lasteth the daylight, and hope is enfolding<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The green-growing acres with increase begun.</span><br />
+<br />
+Now sweet, sweet it is through the land to be straying<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">&#8217;Mid the birds and the blossoms and the beasts of the fields;</span><br />
+Love mingles with love and no evil is weighing<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">On thy heart or mine, where all sorrow is healed.</span><br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span><br />
+From township to township, o&#8217;er down and by tillage<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Fair, far have we wandered and long was the day,</span><br />
+But now cometh eve at the end of the village,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Where o&#8217;er the grey wall the church riseth grey.</span><br />
+<br />
+There is wind in the twilight; in the white road before us<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The straw from the ox-yard is blowing about;</span><br />
+The moon&#8217;s rim is rising, a star glitters o&#8217;er us,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And the vane on the spire-top is swinging in doubt.</span><br />
+<br />
+Down there dips the highway, toward the bridge crossing over<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The brook that runs on to the Thames and the sea.</span><br />
+Draw closer, my sweet, we are lover and lover;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">This eve art thou given to gladness and me.</span></p>
+
+<p>In the course of the poem the Pilgrims are called to Paris by the voice of
+the Revolution, and there the wife is killed. Interwoven with the main
+incidents is the domestic tragedy most familiar to fiction, the alienation
+of the wife&#8217;s affections by one of the husband&#8217;s friends. Morris in his
+treatment of this situation shows a peculiarly fine and tender quality,
+sufficiently rare in life itself and seldom to be found in pictures of
+life. He preserves the dignity of his unhappy characters by a delicate
+sincerity in their attitude toward one another and by an immeasurable
+gentleness and self-forgetfulness on the part of the one most wronged. A
+similar situation in <i>News from Nowhere</i> is made trivial and consequently
+revolting by the impression it gives that it was created to illustrate a
+theory. In no place does <i>The Pilgrims of Hope</i> give such an impression.
+It is a drawing from life, clumsy and summary enough in outline,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span> yet
+firm and expressive of the thing seen, and with power to convey a genuine
+emotion.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img31.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="center"><i>Portrait of Mrs. Morris</i><br /><i>By Rossetti</i></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p><i>The Pilgrims of Hope</i> appeared serially in <i>The Commonweal</i> during
+1885-1886. It was soon followed by a romance called <i>The Dream of John
+Ball</i>. This subject with its medi&aelig;val setting suited Morris well, and was
+treated by him in his ripest and strongest vein. Although the story opens
+in a lightly facetious manner, never a particularly happy one with him,
+its tone as it proceeds is that of subdued and stately pathos. The writer
+dreams himself in a village of Kent, where men are hanging upon the words
+of that poor tutor of Oxford, the &#8220;Mad Priest,&#8221; preaching the equality of
+gentle and villein on the text</p>
+
+<p class="poem">When Adam dalf, and Eve span<br />
+Who was thanne a gentilman?</p>
+
+<p>Apparently the dream is the result of a mournfully retrospective mood. The
+dreamer hears the plain and stirring speech of John Ball, listens to his
+eager appeal to the men of Kent that they help their brethren of Essex
+cast off the yoke placed upon them by bailiff and lord, and to his
+prophecies that in the days to come, when they are free from masters, &#8220;man
+shall help man, and the saints in heaven shall be glad, because men no
+more fear each other ... and fellowship shall be established in heaven and
+on the earth.&#8221; But knowledge of the later time penetrates the dream, and
+the dreamer ponders &#8220;how men fight<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span> and lose the battle, and the thing
+that they fought for comes about in spite of their defeat, and when it
+comes it turns out not to be what they meant, and other men have to fight
+for what they meant under another name.&#8221; At this time Morris was realising
+in some bitterness of heart that the thing for which he had fought was
+turning out to be not what he had meant, and the talk between John Ball
+and the dreamer concerning the future, of which the latter can reveal the
+secret, is eloquent of sober and noble resignation. The reformer of the
+earlier age receives with serenity the assurance that his sacrifice will
+count only as failure in the eyes of the coming generations, since with it
+goes the further assurance that men will continue to seek a remedy for
+their wrongs. But we read in the conception the author&#8217;s foreboding that
+his own efforts toward the reconstitution of society are also doomed. The
+dreamer meditates, with an insight born of personal experience and
+disappointment, upon the darkness of our vision and the difficulty of
+directing our steps toward our actual goal. Morris obviously traced in
+John Ball&#8217;s action a parallel to his own. What happened to the one was
+what might happen to the other. The hope that inspired the one was the
+same as inspired the other. The mistakes of the one were akin to the
+mistakes of the other. Thus, this prose romance, of all that Morris wrote,
+is warmest and most personal. The historical setting is an aid, not an
+obstacle, to the imagination. The pathos of the real life touched<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span> upon,
+the knowledge that the hopeful spirit of the preacher was once alive in
+the land, and that the response of the men of Kent was given in truth and
+with the might of angry, living hearts, lends a certain solidity and
+vitality to the figures and inspires Morris to a sturdier treatment of his
+material than legends could force from him. Had some of the marvellous
+activity that later went toward the making of purely imaginary situations
+and characters been spent upon realising for us the individual lives of
+more of the medi&aelig;val workers and thinkers, so vivid to Morris and so dim
+to most of us, the result might not have been history, but it would have
+been literature of a rare and felicitous type.</p>
+
+<p>In April, 1888, <i>The Dream of John Ball</i> was reprinted from <i>The
+Commonweal</i> in one volume, together with a short story based on the life
+of Matthias Corvinus, King of Hungary, and called <i>A King&#8217;s Lesson</i>. This
+also had appeared in <i>The Commonweal</i> under the title of &#8220;An Old Story
+Retold.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Hard upon this little volume followed <i>The House of the Wolfings</i>, a
+war-story of the early Middle Ages, and significant as forming, with its
+immediate successor, a link between old interests and new, marking its
+author&#8217;s return to the writing of pure romance, and also his first
+awakening to an active interest in the typography of his books. The
+subject is derived from the ancient literature, half myth, half history,
+in which he had long been steeped, but in its treatment lurks a suggestion
+of the great moral excitement<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span> of the Socialist campaign. Thiodulf, the
+hero, beloved by a goddess, is the war-duke of a Gothic host and, on the
+verge of battle with Roman legionaries, is deceived into wearing a hauberk
+wrought by the dwarfs, the peculiar quality of which lies in its power to
+preserve the wearer&#8217;s life at the cost of defeat for his army. Learning of
+this, Thiodulf removes the magic armour in time to gain his victory, but
+in the moment of triumph he is killed. His exaltation of mood in thus
+renouncing life suggests a spiritual ambition different from that commonly
+associated with the gods and heroes of the early world, and conveys the
+message by which Morris was at once burdened and inspired: that individual
+life may cheerfully be sacrificed if the life of the many is saved or
+elevated thereby. How far a war-duke of the Goths would have felt the
+compensatory sense that he was gaining immortality through the effect of
+his deeds on the destiny of his people was probably not in his mind. He
+himself, despite his constitutional horror of death, would perhaps not
+have been sorry at this time to lay off his hauberk if he could have been
+certain of the victory. Throughout the history of Thiodulf runs an
+elevated ethical intention absent from Morris&#8217;s later romances. The
+dignity and seriousness of the women, the nobility of the men, the social
+unity of the Marksmen, and the high standard of thought and action
+maintained by them as a community place the interest on a high plane. The
+shadow of an idealised Socialism intensifies the <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span>relations of the
+characters to one another, and the reader familiar with the course of the
+author&#8217;s life interprets the narrative as an expression of personal
+feeling and moral conviction not without pathos in its contrast to the
+actual world in which Morris was moving and in which he found what he
+conceived to be his duty so repugnant to his tastes.</p>
+
+<p>Indirectly the book was to open the way for his escape by filling his mind
+with an enthusiasm along the natural line of his gifts, a zest for further
+accomplishment in the field he loved that was not to be withstood. It was
+printed at the Chiswick Press, and owing to a new interest in fine
+printing due to his intercourse with Mr. Emery Walker, Morris chose for it
+a quaint and little-known fount of type cut by Howard half a century
+before, and gave much attention to the details of its appearance. With all
+his familiarity with medi&aelig;val books, and his delight in illustration and
+illumination, he was still ignorant of the art of spacing and type
+designing. He had characteristically concentrated his attention on the
+special feature in which he was interested,&mdash;in the case of the old books,
+the woodcuts and ornaments,&mdash;and had passed over even the most marked
+characteristics which later were to absorb his whole attention. An
+anecdote told by Mr. Buxton Forman shows the extent to which he
+subordinated all other questions to the now supreme problem of a handsome
+page, and also the adaptability of his mind, never at a loss to meet an
+emergency. Mr. Forman had run across<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span> him at the Chiswick Press, whither
+he had repaired to settle some final points concerning his title-page.
+Presently down came the proof of the page. &#8220;It did not read quite as now,&#8221;
+says Mr. Forman; &#8220;the difference, I think, was in the fourth and fifth
+lines where the words stood &#8216;written in prose and verse by William
+Morris.&#8217; Now unhappily the words and the type did not so accord as to come
+up to Morris&#8217;s standard of decorativeness. The line wanted tightening up;
+there was a three-cornered consultation between the Author, the Manager,
+and myself. The word <i>in</i> was to be inserted&mdash;&#8216;written in prose and in
+verse&#8217;&mdash;to gain the necessary fulness of line. I mildly protested that the
+former reading was the better sense and that it should not be sacrificed
+to avoid a slight excess of white that no one would notice. &#8216;Ha!&#8217; said
+Morris, &#8216;now what would you say if I told you that the verses on the
+title-page were written just to fill up the great white lower half? Well,
+that was what happened!&#8217;&#8221; The verses thus produced to fill a purely
+decorative need were the following, as delicate and filled with tender
+sentiment as any written by Morris under the most genuine inspiration&mdash;if
+one may assume that any inspiration was more genuine with him than the
+spur of a problem in decoration:</p>
+
+<p class="poem">Whiles in the early winter eve<br />
+We pass amid the gathering night<br />
+Some homestead that we had to leave<br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span>Years past; and see its candles bright<br />
+Shine in the room beside the door<br />
+Where we were merry years agone<br />
+But now must never enter more,<br />
+As still the dark road drives us on.<br />
+E&#8217;en so the world of men may turn<br />
+At even of some hurried day<br />
+And see the ancient glimmer burn<br />
+Across the waste that hath no way;<br />
+Then with that faint light in its eyes<br />
+Awhile I bid it linger near<br />
+And nurse in wavering memories<br />
+The bitter-sweet of days that were.</p>
+
+<p>In glee over the fine appearance of <i>The House of the Wolfings</i> as it came
+from the press, Morris passed on to his next book, <i>The Roots of the
+Mountains</i>, also a romance suggesting the saga literature, but without the
+mythological element. The setting hints at history without belonging to
+any especial time or place. The plan is quite complicated in incident, and
+the love-story involved has a modern tinge. Gold-mane, a chieftain of
+Burgdale, is betrothed to a damsel somewhat prematurely named the Bride.
+By a magic spell he is drawn through the woods to the Shadowy Vale where
+he meets a daughter of the Kindred of the Wolf, called Sunbeam, with whom
+he falls in love. It is a touch characteristic of Morris that makes
+Gold-mane in describing his old love to the new loyally give the former
+all the credit of her charm. &#8220;Each day she groweth fairer,&#8221; he says to the
+maiden who is already her rival in his affections; &#8220;there is no man&#8217;s son
+and no daughter of woman that does not love her; yea, the very beasts of
+field and fold love<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span> her.&#8221; Presently an alliance is formed between the men
+of Burgdale and the Kindred of the Wolf for the purpose of attacking their
+common enemy, the Dusky Men, who belong to a race of Huns. Attached to the
+allied forces is a band of Amazons, and the two brave ladies, the Sunbeam
+and the Bride, show themselves valorous in battle. The attack on the Dusky
+Men is victorious, and peace returns to the valleys. In the meantime
+Gold-mane has firmly, though with gentle words, told the Bride of his
+intention of breaking his pledge to her, and the Sunbeam&#8217;s brother,
+Folkmight, has been moved by compassion and finally by love for the
+deserted maiden, who consents to be his wife. It is quite in accord with
+the ideal established by Morris in his works of fiction, as indeed in his
+life, that sincerity takes the leading place among the virtues of his
+characters. It requires a certain defiance of the conventional modern mood
+to tolerate Gold-mane, the deserter, as he deals out cold comfort to the
+Bride, yet the downright frankness of all these people is a quality so
+native to their author as to pierce their unreality and give them the
+touch of nature without which they would be made wholly of dreams.</p>
+
+<p><i>The Roots of the Mountains</i> was written rapidly and issued with unrelaxed
+attention to typographical problems. Its title-page was made even more
+satisfactory than that of its predecessor, and the device of introducing a
+little poem to fill up the ugly white space in the centre was again
+employed. The lines<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span> in this case have nothing to do with the contents of
+the book, though forced into a relation with the author&#8217;s purpose of
+providing &#8220;rest&#8221; for the reader. They were, in fact, founded upon an
+incident of a railway trip when the train passed through meadows in which
+hay-making was going on. Mr. Emery Walker was with Morris, and as they saw
+the hay-cocks defrauded by the summer breeze he exclaimed, &#8220;A subject for
+your title-page!&#8221; &#8220;Aye,&#8221; said Morris, and jotted it down in his manuscript
+book.</p>
+
+<p><i>The Roots of the Mountains</i> was a favourite with Morris, and he planned
+for it an edition on Whatman paper and bound in two patterns of Morris and
+Company&#8217;s chintz. Some of the paper ordered for this edition was left
+over, and eventually was used by Morris for the first little post-quarto
+catalogues and prospectuses printed at Hammersmith. Thus the book formed a
+material link between the Chiswick Press and the Kelmscott Press.</p>
+
+<p>Before the establishment of the latter, however, Morris gave one more book
+to Socialism. His <i>News from Nowhere</i> was the last of his works to appear
+in <i>The Commonweal</i> and was almost immediately reprinted from its pages by
+an American publisher. It is an account of the civilised world as it might
+be made, according to Morris&#8217;s belief, by the application of his
+principles of Socialism to life in general and in particular. In 1889 he
+had reviewed for <i>The Commonweal</i> Mr. Bellamy&#8217;s <i>Looking Backward</i>, with
+how much approbation may readily be imagined.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span> As an expression of the
+temperament of its author he considered it interesting, but as a
+reconstructive theory unsafe and misleading. &#8220;I believe,&#8221; he said, &#8220;that
+the ideal of the future does not point to the lessening of man&#8217;s energy by
+the reduction of <i>labour</i> to a minimum, but rather to the reduction of
+<i>pain in labour</i> to a minimum so small that it will cease to be pain; a
+gain to humanity which can only be dreamed of till men are more completely
+equal than Mr. Bellamy&#8217;s Utopia would allow them to be, but which will
+most assuredly come about when men are really equal in condition; although
+it is probable that much of our so-called &#8216;refinement,&#8217; our luxury,&mdash;in
+short, our civilisation,&mdash;will have to be sacrificed to it.&#8221; Early in 1890
+appeared the first instalment of <i>News from Nowhere</i>, in which Morris set
+himself the task of correcting the impression produced by Mr. Bellamy&#8217;s
+views of the future by substituting his own picture of a reconstructed
+society, from which all the machinery that in <i>Looking Backward</i> was
+brought to so high a degree of efficiency is banished, and the natural
+energies of man are employed to his complete satisfaction. Homer&#8217;s
+<i>Odyssey</i>, which Morris at this time was translating by way of refreshment
+and amusement, may well have served as a partial inspiration for the
+brilliant, delicate descriptions of handicrafts practised by the
+art-loving people of Nowhere. We read in both of lovely embroideries; of
+fine woven stuffs, soft and pliant in texture,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span> and deeply dyed in rich
+forgotten colours of antiquity; of the quaint elaboration and charm of
+metals wrought into intricate designs; of all beautiful ornament to be
+gained from the zeal of skilled and sensitive fingers. The image is before
+us in <i>News from Nowhere</i> of a life as busy and as bright as that of the
+ancient Greeks, whose cunning hands could do everything save divide use
+from beauty. As a natural consequence of happy labour, the inhabitants of
+Nowhere have also the superb health and personal beauty of the Greeks.
+Their women of forty and fifty have smooth skins and fresh colour, bright
+eyes and a free walk. Their men have no knowledge of wrinkles and grey
+hairs. Everywhere is the freshness and sparkle of the morning. The
+pleasant homes nestle in peaceful security among the lavish fruits of the
+earth. The water of the Thames flows clean and clear between its banks;
+the fragrance of flowers pervades the pages and suggests a perpetual
+summer; athletic sports are mingled with athletic occupations. There is
+little studying. History is sad and often shameful&mdash;why then study it?
+Knowledge of geography is not important; it comes to those who care to
+travel. Languages one naturally picks up from intercourse with the people
+of other countries. Political economy? When one practises good fellowship
+what need of theories? Mathematics? They would wrinkle the brow; moreover,
+one learns all that is necessary of them by building houses and bridges
+and putting things together in the right way. It<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span> is not surprising that
+in this buoyant life filled with active interests, the religion of which
+is good-will and mutual helpfulness, the thought of death is not a welcome
+one. A dweller in Nowhere admits that in the autumn he almost believes in
+death; but no one entertains such a belief longer than he must. Thus we
+get in this fair idyll the purely visible side of the society depicted.
+The depths of the human heart and of the human soul are left unsounded. To
+have what they desire, what is claimed by their hands, by their eyes, by
+their senses, is the aim of the people. Renunciation, like mathematics,
+would wrinkle the brow. Arbitrary restraint is not to be considered.
+Nothing is binding, neither marriage vow nor labour contract, or, to speak
+more precisely, neither marriage vow nor contract for labour exists. The
+people live, as we are told, as some of the so-called savages in the South
+Seas really do live,&mdash;in a state of interdependence so perfect that if an
+individual lays down an obligation the community takes it up. For the
+fading of life, for the death that may not delay till autumn to thrust
+itself upon the attention, for the development of spiritual strength to
+meet an enemy against whom art and beauty will not avail, for the battle
+with those temptations of the flesh that are not averted by health and
+comeliness, no provision is made. The author&#8217;s philosophy is that work,
+under pleasant conditions will do away with all the evils of both soul and
+body.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span>As a document for active Socialists <i>News from Nowhere</i> is not effective.
+Absolutely without any basis of economic generalisation, it is merely the
+fabric of a vision. At the time of writing it Morris was cutting the last
+threads that bound him to conventional Socialist bodies. He was making
+ready to live again, so far as modernity would let him, the life he loved.
+&#8220;No work that cannot be done with pleasure in the doing is worth doing,&#8221;
+was a maxim counted by him of the first importance, and assuredly he had
+not found pleasure in the management of Socialist organisations. His last
+Socialist book rings with the joy of his release. On its title-page it
+appears as <i>Some Chapters from a Utopian Romance</i>, and it is interesting
+to see how he regarded the original <i>Utopia</i>, to Ralph Robinson&#8217;s
+translation of which he wrote a preface, issuing it from his own press in
+1893. His interpretation of Sir Thomas More&#8217;s attitude is not the
+conventional one, and is inspired chiefly by his own attitude toward the
+great social question which he continued to ponder, insisting still upon
+his hope for a new earth.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Ralph Robinson&#8217;s translation of More&#8217;s <i>Utopia</i>,&#8221; he says, &#8220;would not
+need any foreword if it were to be looked upon merely as a beautiful book
+embodying the curious fancies of a great writer and thinker of the period
+of the Renaissance. No doubt till within the last few years it has been
+considered by the moderns as nothing more serious than a charming literary
+exercise, spiced with the interest given<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span> to it by the allusions to the
+history of the time, and by our knowledge of the career of its author. But
+the change of ideas concerning &#8216;the best state of a publique weale,&#8217; which
+I will venture to say is the great event of the end of this century, has
+thrown a fresh light upon the book; so that now to some it seems not so
+much a regret for days which might have been, as (in its essence) a
+prediction of a state of society which will be. In short this work of the
+scholar and Catholic, of the man who resisted what has seemed to most the
+progressive movement of his own time, has in our days become a Socialist
+tract familiar to the meetings and debating rooms of the political party
+which was but lately like &#8216;the cloud as big as a man&#8217;s hand.&#8217; Doubtless
+the <i>Utopia</i> is a necessary part of a Socialist&#8217;s library; yet it seems to
+me that its value as a book for the study of sociology is rather historic
+than prophetic, and that we Socialists should look upon it as a link
+between the surviving Communism of the Middle Ages (become hopeless in
+More&#8217;s time, and doomed to be soon wholly effaced by the advancing wave of
+Commercial Bureaucracy), and the hopeful and practical progressive
+movement of to-day. In fact I think More must be looked upon rather as the
+last of the old than the first of the new.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Apart from what was yet alive in him of medi&aelig;val Communist tradition, the
+spirit of association, which amongst other things produced the Gilds, and
+which was strong in the medi&aelig;val<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span> Catholic Church itself, other influences
+were at work to make him take up his parable against the new spirit of his
+age. The action of the period of transition from medi&aelig;val to commercial
+society, with all its brutalities, was before his eyes; and though he was
+not alone in his time in condemning the injustice and cruelty of the
+revolution which destroyed the peasant life of England and turned it into
+a grazing farm for the moneyed gentry; creating withal at one stroke the
+propertyless wage-earner and the masterless vagrant (hodie &#8216;pauper&#8217;), yet
+he saw deeper into its root-causes than many other men of his own day, and
+left us little to add to his views on this point except a reasonable hope
+that those &#8216;causes&#8217; will yield to a better form of society before long.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Moreover the spirit of the Renaissance, itself the intellectual side of
+the very movement which he strove against, was strong in him, and
+doubtless helped to create his Utopia by means of the contrast which it
+put before his eyes of the ideal free nations of the ancients, and the
+sordid welter of the struggle for power in the days of dying feudalism, of
+which he himself was a witness. This Renaissance enthusiasm has supplanted
+in him the chivalry feeling of the age just passing away. To him war is no
+longer a delight of the well-born, but rather an ugly necessity to be
+carried on, if so it must be, by ugly means. Hunting and hawking are no
+longer the choice pleasures of knight and lady, but are jeered at by him
+as<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span> foolish and unreasonable pieces of butchery; his pleasures are in the
+main the reasonable ones of learning and music. With all this, his
+imaginations of the past he must needs read into his ideal vision,
+together with his own experiences of his time and people. Not only are
+there bond slaves and a king, and priests almost adored, and cruel
+punishments for the breach of marriage contract, in that happy island, but
+there is throughout an atmosphere of asceticism which has a curiously
+blended savour of Cato the Censor and a medi&aelig;val monk.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;On the subject of war, on capital punishment, the responsibility to the
+public of kings and other official personages, and such-like matters, More
+speaks words that would not be out of place in the mouth of an
+eighteenth-century Jacobin, and at first sight this seems rather to show
+sympathy with what is now mere Whigism than with Communism; but it must be
+remembered that opinions which have become (in words) the mere commonplace
+of ordinary bourgeoise politicians were then looked on as a piece of
+startlingly new and advanced thought, and do not put him on the same plane
+with the mere radical life of the last generation.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img32.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="center"><i>Study of Mrs. Morris</i><br /><i>Made by Rossetti for pictures called &#8220;The Day Dream&#8221;</i></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;In More, then, are met together the man naturally sympathetic with the
+Communistic side of medi&aelig;val society, the protestor against the ugly
+brutality of the earliest period of commercialism, the enthusiast of the
+Renaissance, ever looking toward his idealised ancient society as the type
+and example of all really <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span>intelligent human life; the man tinged with
+the asceticism at once of the classical philosopher and of the monk, an
+asceticism, indeed, which he puts forward not so much as a duty but rather
+as a kind of stern adornment of life. These are, we may say, the moods of
+the man who created <i>Utopia</i> for us; and all are tempered and harmonised
+by a sensitive clearness and delicate beauty of style, which make the book
+a living work of art.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But lastly, we Socialists cannot forget that these qualities and
+excellences meet to produce a steady expression of the longing for a
+society of equality of condition; a society in which the individual man
+can scarcely conceive of his existence apart from the commonwealth of
+which he forms a portion. This, which is the essence of his book, is the
+essence also of the struggle in which we are engaged. Though, doubtless,
+it was the pressure of circumstances in his own days that made More what
+he was, yet that pressure forced him to give us, not a vision of the
+triumph of the new-born capitalistic society, the element in which lived
+the new learning and the freedom of thought of his epoch, but a picture
+(his own indeed, not ours) of the real New Birth which many men before him
+had desired; and which now indeed we may well hope is drawing near to
+realisation, though after such a long series of events which at the time
+of their happening seemed to nullify his hopes completely.&#8221;<a name='fna_1' id='fna_1' href='#f_1'><small>[1]</small></a></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span>Morris&#8217;s own hope was never completely nullified; nor was he ever
+indifferent to the questions which for nearly a decade had absorbed his
+energy. But there was to be little more writing for the sake of Socialism,
+save as some public incident called out a public letter. What he had done
+covered a wide field. Beside the works already mentioned he had
+collaborated with Mr. E. Belfort Bax in a history of the growth and
+outcome of Socialism, first published in the <i>Commonweal</i> under the title
+of <i>Socialism from the Root Up</i>, had written a series of poems called
+<i>Chants for Socialists</i>, and a series of lectures for &#8220;the cause&#8221; later
+published as <i>Signs of Change</i>, and had produced numerous short addresses
+to be scattered abroad in the form of penny leaflets that must have been
+typographical eyesores to him even before the rise of his enthusiasm for
+typography of the finer sort. In addition his bibliographer has to take
+into account any number of ephemeral contributions to the press and
+&#8220;forewords&#8221; as he liked to call them, to the works of others, a feature
+rarely present in his own books. In the spring of 1890 he wrote the
+romance entitled, <i>The Story of the Glittering Plain</i> for the <i>English
+Illustrated Magazine</i>. When it was brought out in book form the following
+year, it was printed at his own press.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/botban9a.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span></p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/banner13.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_X" id="CHAPTER_X"></a>CHAPTER X.</h2>
+<p class="title">THE KELMSCOTT PRESS.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="dropcap"><span class="caps">Although</span> Morris turned with what seemed a sudden inspiration to the study
+of typography, it was, as we have already seen, no less than his other
+occupations a direct outcome of his early tastes. As long before as 1866
+he had planned a folio edition of <i>The Earthly Paradise</i> with woodcut
+illustrations to be designed by Burne-Jones, and printed in a more or less
+medi&aelig;val fashion. Burne-Jones made a large number of drawings for the
+projected edition, and some thirty-five of those intended for the story of
+Cupid and Psyche were cut on wood by Morris himself. Specimen pages were
+set up, but the result was not technically satisfying and the idea was
+allowed to drop. Later, as we have seen, he had in mind an illustrated and
+sumptuous edition of <i>Love is Enough</i>, which also came to nothing,
+although a number of marginal decorations were drawn and engraved for it.
+After that, however, he apparently had been content to have his books
+printed in the usual way on machine-made paper with the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span> modern effeminate
+type, without further remonstrance than emphatic denunciation of modern
+methods in printing as in other handicrafts. About 1888 or 1889, his
+Hammersmith neighbour, Mr. Emery Walker, whose love of fine printing was
+combined with practical knowledge of methods and processes, awakened in
+him a desire for conquest in this field also. He began again collecting
+medi&aelig;val books, this time with the purpose of studying their type and
+form. Among his acquisitions were a copy of Leonard of Arezzo&#8217;s <i>History
+of Florence</i>, printed by Jacobus Rubens in 1476, in a Roman type, and a
+copy of Jensen&#8217;s <i>Pliny</i> of the same year. Parts of these books Morris had
+enlarged by the hated process of photography, which in this case aided and
+abetted him to some purpose. He could thus study the individual letters
+and master the underlying principles of their design. He then proceeded to
+design a fount of type for himself with the aim of producing letters fine
+and generous in form, solid in line, without &#8220;preposterous thicks and
+thins,&#8221; and not compressed laterally, &#8220;as all later type has grown to be
+owing to commercial exigencies.&#8221; After he had drawn his letters on a large
+scale he had them reduced by photography to the working size and revised
+them carefully before submitting them to the typecutter. How minute was
+his attention to detail is shown in the little reproduction of one of his
+corrected letters with the accompanying notes. This first type of his,
+having been founded on the old Roman letters, is of course<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span> Roman in
+character and is very clear and beautiful in form. The strong broad
+letters designed on &#8220;something like a square&#8221; make easy reading, and there
+is nothing about the appearance of the attractive page to suggest
+archaism. The fount, consisting of eighty-one designs including stops,
+figures, and tied letters, was completed about the beginning of 1891, and
+on the 12th of January in that year, a cottage was taken at number 16
+Upper Mall, near the Kelmscott House, a compositor and a pressman were
+engaged, and the Kelmscott Press began its career. The new type, which
+Morris called the &#8220;regenerate&#8221; or &#8220;Jenson-Morris&#8221; type, received its
+formal name, &#8220;Golden type,&#8221; from Caxton&#8217;s <i>Golden Legend</i>, which Morris
+had intended to reprint as the first work of the Press, and which was
+undertaken as soon as <i>The Glittering Plain</i> was out of the way. Caxton&#8217;s
+first edition of 1483 was borrowed from the Cambridge University Library
+for the purpose and transcribed for the Press by the daughter of Morris&#8217;s
+old friend and publisher, F. S. Ellis. No paper in the market was good
+enough for the great venture, and Morris took down to Mr. Batchelor at
+Little Chart a model dating back to the fifteenth century and had
+especially designed from it an unbleached linen paper, thin and tough, and
+somewhat transparent, made on wire moulds woven by hand for the sake of
+the slight irregularities thus caused in the texture, and &#8220;pleasing not
+only to the eye, but to the hand also; having something of the clean crisp
+quality of a new bank-note.&#8221; For the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span> three different sizes Morris
+designed three watermarks, an apple, a daisy, and a perch with a spray in
+its mouth. To print his strong type upon this handmade paper it was
+necessary to dampen the latter and use a hand-press, the ink being applied
+by pelt balls, insuring an equable covering of the surface of the type and
+a rich black impression. The quality of the ink was naturally of great
+importance and Morris yearned to manufacture his own, but for the time
+contented himself with some that he procured from Hanover and with which
+he produced excellent results. One of his happiest convictions in regard
+to his materials was that heavy paper was entirely unfit for small books.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img33.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="caption">KELMSCOTT TYPES</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>Concerning spacing and the placing of the matter on the page he had
+pronounced theories derived from his study of ancient books, but directed
+by his own sound taste. He held that there should be no more white space
+between the words than just clearly cuts them off from one another, and
+that &#8220;leads&#8221; (strips of metal used to increase the space between the lines
+of type) should be sparingly employed. The two pages of a book, facing
+each other as it is opened, should be considered a unit, the edge of the
+margin that is bound in should be the smallest of the four edges, the top
+should be somewhat wider, and the front edge wider still, and the tail
+widest of all. The respective measurements of the most important of the
+Kelmscott books are, one inch for the inner margin, one and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span>three-eighths inches for the head margin, two and three-quarter inches
+for the fore edge, and four inches for the tail. &#8220;I go so far as to say,&#8221;
+wrote Morris, &#8220;that any book in which the page is properly put on the
+paper is tolerable to look at, however poor the type may be (always so
+long as there is no &#8216;ornament&#8217; which may spoil the whole thing), whereas
+any book in which the page is wrongly set on the paper is intolerable to
+look at, however good the type and ornaments may be.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img34.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="caption">PAGE FROM KELMSCOTT &#8220;CHAUCER.&#8221;<br />ILLUSTRATION BY BURNE-JONES.<br />BORDER AND INITIAL LETTER BY MORRIS</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p><i>The Golden Legend</i>, with its ornamented borders, its handsome initials,
+its woodcuts, and its twelve hundred and eighty-six pages, kept the one
+press busy until the middle of September, 1892. Before it was completed
+Morris had designed another fount of type greatly more pleasing to him
+than the first. This was called the Troy type from Caxton&#8217;s <i>Historyes of
+Troye</i>, the first book to be issued in its larger size, and was the
+outcome of careful study of the beautiful types of Peter Schoeffer of
+Mainz, Gunther Zainer of Augsburg, and Anthony Koburger of Nuremberg. It
+was Gothic in character, but Morris strove to redeem it from the charge of
+unreadableness by using the short form of the small <i>s</i>, by diminishing
+the number of tied letters, and abolishing the abbreviations to be found
+in medi&aelig;val books. How far he succeeded is a disputed question, certainly
+not so far as to make it as easy reading for modern eyes as the Golden
+type. As time went on, however, the use of the Golden type at<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span> the
+Kelmscott Press became less and less frequent, giving place in the case of
+most of the more important books to either the Troy type or the Chaucer
+type, the latter being similar to the former, save that it is Great Pica
+instead of Primer size.</p>
+
+<p>Morris&#8217;s success in the mechanical application of his theories was
+surprising, or would have been surprising had he not constantly proven his
+genius for success. Mr. De Vinne quotes a prominent American typefounder
+as declaring after a close scrutiny of his cuts of type that he had
+triumphantly passed the pitfalls that beset all tyros and had made types
+that in lining, fitting, and adjustment show the skill of the expert. &#8220;A
+printer of the old school may dislike many of his mannerisms of
+composition and make-up,&#8221; adds Mr. De Vinne, &#8220;but he will cheerfully admit
+that his types and decorations and initials are in admirable accord: that
+the evenness of colour he maintains on his rough paper is remarkable, and
+that his registry of black with red is unexceptionable. No one can examine
+a book made by Morris without the conviction that it shows the hand of a
+master.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img35.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="caption">TITLE-PAGE OF THE KELMSCOTT &#8220;CHAUCER&#8221;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>Upon the artistic side it was natural that he should excel. His long
+practice in and love of design, his close study of the best models, and
+his exacting taste were promising of extraordinary results. None the less
+there is perhaps more room for criticism of his book decoration than of
+his plain bookmaking. He was convinced, as one would expect him to be,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span>
+that modern methods of illustrating and decorating a book were entirely
+wrong, and he argued with indisputable logic for the unity of impression
+to be gained from ornaments and pictures forming part of the page, in
+other words, being made in line as readily printed as the type itself and
+corresponding to it in size and degree of blackness. He argued that the
+ornament to be ornament must submit to certain limitations and become
+&#8220;architectural,&#8221; and also that it should be used with exuberance or
+restraint according to the matter of the book decorated. Thus &#8220;a work on
+differential calculus,&#8221; he says, &#8220;a medical work, a dictionary, a
+collection of a statesman&#8217;s speeches, or a treatise on manures, such
+books, though they might be handsomely and well printed, would scarcely
+receive ornament with the same exuberance as a volume of lyrical poems, or
+a standard classic, or such like. A work on Art, I think, bears less of
+ornament than any other kind of book (<i>non bis in idem</i> is a good motto);
+again, a book that <i>must</i> have <i>illustrations</i>, more or less utilitarian,
+should, I think, have no actual <i>ornament</i> at all, because the ornament
+and the illustration must almost certainly fight.&#8221; He designed all his
+ornaments with his own hand, from the minute leaves and flowers which took
+the place of periods on his page, to the full-page borders, titles, and
+elaborate initials. He drew with a brush, on a sheet of paper from the
+Press marked with ruled lines, showing the exact position to be occupied<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span>
+by the design. &#8220;It was most usual during the last few years of his life,&#8221;
+says Mr. Vallance, &#8220;to find him thus engaged, with his Indian ink and
+Chinese white in little saucers before him upon the table, its boards bare
+of any cloth covering, but littered with books and papers and sheets of
+MS. He did not place any value on the original drawings, regarding them as
+just temporary instruments, only fit, as soon as engraved, to be thrown
+away.&#8221; Time and trouble counted for nothing with him in gaining the
+desired result. But though his ornament was always handsome, and
+occasionally exquisite, he not infrequently overloaded his page with it,
+and&mdash;preaching vigorously the necessity of restraint&mdash;allowed his fancy to
+lead him into garrulous profusion. Despite his medi&aelig;val proclivities, his
+designs for the borders of his pages are intensely modern. Compare them
+with the early books by which they were inspired, and their flowing
+elaboration, so free from unexpectedness, so impersonal, so inexpressive,
+suggests the fatal defect of all imitative work and fails in distinction.
+But he was individual enough in temper if not in execution, and he brooked
+no conventional restriction that interfered with his doing what pleased
+him. For example, the notion of making the border ornaments agree in
+spirit with the subject matter of the page was not to be entertained for a
+moment when he had in mind a fine design of grapes hanging ripe from their
+vines and a page of Chaucer&#8217;s description of April to adorn.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span>During the life of the Kelmscott Press, a period of some half dozen years,
+Morris made six hundred and forty-four designs. The illustrations proper,
+all of them woodcuts harmonising in their strong black line with the
+ornaments and type, were made, with few exceptions, by Burne-Jones. His
+designs were nearly always drawn in pencil, a medium in which his most
+characteristic effects were obtained. They were then redrawn in ink by
+another hand, revised by Burne-Jones, and finally transferred to the block
+again by that useful Cinderella of the Kelmscott Press, photography. It is
+obvious that the Kelmscott books, whatever fault may be found with them,
+could not be other than remarkable creations with Morris and Burne-Jones
+uniting their gifts to make each of them such a picture-book as Morris
+declared at the height of his ardour was &#8220;one of the very worthiest things
+toward the production of which reasonable men should strive.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The list of works selected to be issued from the Press is interesting,
+indicating as it does a line of taste somewhat narrow and tangential to
+the popular taste of the time. Before the three volumes of <i>The Golden
+Legend</i> (&#8220;the Interminable&#8221; it was called) were out of his hands, Morris
+had bought a second large press and had engaged more workmen with an idea
+in mind of printing all his own works beginning with <i>Sigurd the Volsung</i>.
+He had already, during 1891, printed in addition to <i>The Glittering
+Plain</i>, a volume of his collected verse entitled <i>Poems by the Way</i>, the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span>
+final long poem of which, <i>Goldilocks and Goldilocks</i>, he wrote on the
+spur of the moment, after the book was set up in type, to &#8220;plump it out a
+bit&#8221; as it seemed rather scant. During the following year, before the
+appearance of <i>The Golden Legend</i>, were issued a volume of poems by
+Wilfrid Blunt, who was one of his personal friends; the chapter from
+Ruskin&#8217;s <i>Stones of Venice</i> on &#8220;The Nature of the Gothic,&#8221; with which he
+had such early and such close associations, and two more of his own works,
+<i>The Defence of Guenevere</i> and <i>The Dream of John Ball</i>. In the case of
+the four books written by himself he issued in addition to the paper
+copies a few on vellum. All these early books were small quartos and bound
+in vellum covers. Immediately following <i>The Golden Legend</i> came the
+<i>Historyes of Troye</i>, two volumes in the new type, Mackail&#8217;s <i>Biblia
+Innocentium</i>, and Caxton&#8217;s <i>Reynarde the Foxe</i> in large quarto size and
+printed in the Troy type. The year 1893 began with a comparatively modern
+book, Shakespeare&#8217;s <i>Poems</i>, followed in rapid succession by Caxton&#8217;s
+translation of <i>The Order of Chivalry</i>, in one volume with <i>The Ordination
+of Knighthood</i>, translated by Morris himself from a twelfth-century French
+poem; Cavendish&#8217;s <i>Life of Cardinal Wolsey</i>; Caxton&#8217;s history of Godefrey
+of Boloyne; Ralph Robinson&#8217;s translation of Sir Thomas More&#8217;s <i>Utopia</i>;
+Tennyson&#8217;s <i>Maud</i>; a lecture by Morris on <i>Gothic Architecture</i>,
+forty-five copies of which he printed on vellum; and Lady Wilde&#8217;s
+translation of <i>Sidonia the Sorceress</i> from the German<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span> of William
+Meinhold, a book for which both Morris and Rossetti had a positive
+passion, Morris considering it without a rival of its kind, and an almost
+faultless reproduction of the life of the past. The year ended with two
+volumes of Rossetti&#8217;s <i>Ballads and Narrative Poems</i>, and <i>The Tale of King
+Florus and Fair Jehane</i>, translated by Morris from the French of a little
+volume that forty years before had served to introduce him to medi&aelig;val
+French romance and had been treasured by him ever since.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img36.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="caption">THE SMALLER KELMSCOTT PRESS-MARK</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img37.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="caption">THE LARGER KELMSCOTT PRESS-MARK</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img38.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="caption">DRAWING BY MORRIS OF THE LETTER &#8220;h&#8221; FOR KELMSCOTT TYPE,<br />WITH NOTES AND CORRECTIONS</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;After this continuous torrent of production,&#8221; says Mr. Mackail, &#8220;the
+Press for a time slackened off a little,&#8221; but the output in 1894 consisted
+of ten books as against the eleven of the previous year. The first was a
+large quarto edition of <i>The Glittering Plain</i>, printed this time in the
+Troy type and illustrated with twenty-three pictures by Walter Crane. Next
+came another little volume of medi&aelig;val romance, the story of <i>Amis and
+Amile</i>, translated in a day and a quarter; and after this, Keats&#8217;s
+<i>Poems</i>.</p>
+
+<p>In July of the same year the bust of Keats, executed by the American
+sculptor, Miss Anne Whitney, was unveiled in the Parish Church of
+Hampstead, the first memorial to Keats on English ground. The scheme for
+such a memorial had been promoted in America, Lowell being one of the
+earliest to encourage it, and a little notice of the ceremony was printed
+at the Kelmscott Press with the card of invitation. Swinburne&#8217;s <i>Atalanta
+in Calydon</i> followed <i>Keats</i> in a large quarto edition. Next came the
+third volume<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span> of the French romances containing <i>The Tale of the Emperor
+Constans</i> and <i>The History of Oversea</i>. At this point Morris returned
+again to the printing of his own works, and the next book to be issued
+from the Press was <i>The Wood beyond the World</i>, with a lovely frontispiece
+by Burne-Jones representing &#8220;the Maid,&#8221; the heroine of the romance, and
+one of the most charming of the visionary women created by Morris. <i>The
+Book of Wisdom and Lies</i>, a Georgian story-book of the eighteenth century,
+written by Sulkhan-Saba Orbeliani, and translated by Oliver Wardrop, was
+the next stranger to come from the Press, and after it was issued the
+first of a set of Shelley&#8217;s <i>Poems</i>. A rhymed version of <i>The Penitential
+Psalms</i> found in a manuscript of <i>The Hours of Our Lady</i>, written in the
+fifteenth century, followed it, and <i>The Epistola de Contemptu Mundi</i>, a
+letter in Italian by Savonarola, the autograph original of which belonged
+to Mr. Fairfax Murray, completed the list of this prolific year. The year
+1895 produced only five volumes, the first of them the <i>Tale of Beowulf</i>,
+which Morris with characteristic daring had translated into verse by the
+aid of a prose translation made for him by Mr. A. J. Wyatt. Not himself an
+Anglo-Saxon scholar, Morris was unable to give such a rendering of this
+chief epic of the Germanic races as would appeal to the scholarly mind,
+and his zeal for literal translation led him to employ a phraseology
+nothing short of outlandish. At the end of the book he printed a list of
+&#8220;words not commonly used now,&#8221; but his <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span>constructions were even more
+obstructive than his uncommon words. In the following passage, for
+example, which opens the section describing the coming of Beowulf to the
+land of the Danes, only the word &#8220;nithing&#8221; is defined in the index, yet
+certainly the average reader may be expected to pause for the meaning:</p>
+
+<p class="poem">So care that was time-long the kinsman of Healfdene<br />
+Still seethed without ceasing, nor might the wise warrior<br />
+Wend otherwhere woe, for o&#8217;er strong was the strife<br />
+All loathly so longsome late laid on the people,<br />
+Need-wrack and grim nithing, of night-bales the greatest.</p>
+
+<p>Morris himself found his interest wane before the work was completed, but
+he made a handsome quarto volume of it, with fine marginal decorations,
+and an exceptionally well-designed title-page. A reprint of <i>Syr
+Percyvelle of Gales</i> after the edition printed by J. O. Halliwell from the
+MS. in the library of Lincoln Cathedral, a large quarto edition of <i>The
+Life and Death of Jason</i>; two 16mo volumes of a new romance entitled,
+<i>Child Christopher and Goldilands the Fair</i>; and Rossetti&#8217;s <i>Hand and
+Soul</i>, reprinted from the <i>Germ</i>, brought the Press to its great year
+1896. This year was to see the completion of the folio <i>Chaucer</i>, which
+since early in 1892 had been in preparation, and had filled the heart of
+Morris with anxiety, anticipation, and joy. Before it came from the press
+three other books were issued. Herrick&#8217;s <i>Poems</i> came first. Then a
+selection of thirteen poems from Coleridge, &#8220;a muddle-brained
+metaphysician, who by some strange freak of fortune turned out a few real
+poems<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span> amongst the dreary flood of inanity which was his wont!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The poems chosen were, <i>Christabel</i>, <i>Kubla Khan</i>, <i>The Rime of the
+Ancient Mariner</i>, <i>Love</i>, <i>A Fragment of a Sexton&#8217;s Tale</i>, <i>The Ballad of
+the Dark Ladie</i>, <i>Names</i>, <i>Youth and Age</i>, <i>The Improvisatore</i>, <i>Work
+without Hope</i>, <i>The Garden of Boccaccio</i>, <i>The Knight&#8217;s Tomb</i>, and <i>Alice du
+Clos</i>. The first four were the only ones, however, concerning which Morris
+would own to feeling any interest. The Coleridge volume was followed by
+the large quarto edition of Morris&#8217;s latest romance, <i>The Well at the
+World&#8217;s End</i> in two volumes, and then appeared the <i>Chaucer</i>, the mere
+printing of which had occupied a year and nine months. The first two
+copies were brought home from the binders on the second of June, in a
+season of &#8220;lots of sun&#8221; and plentiful apple-blossoms, during which Morris
+was beginning to realise that the end of his delight in seasons and in
+books was fast approaching.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Ellis has declared the Kelmscott <i>Chaucer</i> to be, &#8220;for typography,
+ornament, and illustration combined, the grandest book that has been
+issued from the press since the invention of typography.&#8221; Morris lavished
+upon it the utmost wealth of his invention. The drawing of the title-page
+alone occupied a fortnight, and the splendid initial letters were each an
+elaborate work of art. The ornament indeed was too profuse to be wholly
+satisfactory, especially as much of it was repeated; nevertheless, the
+book was one of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span> great magnificence and the glee with which Morris beheld
+it is not to be wondered at. The Chaucer type had been specially designed
+for it, and Burne-Jones had made for it eighty-seven drawings, while
+Morris himself designed for it the white pigskin binding with silver
+clasps, executed at the Doves Bindery for those purchasers who desired
+their elaborate and costly volume in a more suitable garb than the
+ordinary half holland covers which gave it the appearance of a silken
+garment under a calico apron.</p>
+
+<p>During the remainder of the year 1896 the Press issued the first volumes
+of the Kelmscott edition of <i>The Earthly Paradise</i>, a volume of Latin
+poems (<i>Laudes Beatae Mariae Virginis</i>), the first Kelmscott book to be
+printed in three colours, the quotation heading each stanza being in red,
+the initial letter in pale blue, and the remaining text in black: <i>The
+Floure and the Leafe</i> and <i>The Shepherde&#8217;s Calender</i>. Before <i>The
+Shepherde&#8217;s Calender</i> reached its completion, however, Morris was dead,
+and the subsequent work of the Press was merely the clearing up of a few
+books already advertised. The first of these to appear was the prose
+romance by Morris entitled <i>The Water of the Wondrous Isles</i>: this was
+issued on the first day of April, 1897, with borders and ornaments
+designed entirely by Morris save for a couple of initial words completed
+from his unfinished designs by R. Catterson-Smith. To this year belong
+also the two trial pages made for the intended folio edition of
+<i>Froissart</i>, the heraldic borders<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span> of which far surpass any of the
+<i>Chaucer</i> ornaments, and the two old English romances, <i>Sire Degravaunt</i>
+and <i>Syr Ysambrace</i>. In 1898 came a large quarto volume of German
+woodcuts, and three more works by Morris, a small folio edition of <i>Sigurd
+the Volsung</i>, which was to have been a large folio with twenty-five
+woodcuts by Burne-Jones; <i>The Sundering Flood</i>, the last romance written
+by Morris, and a large quarto edition of <i>Love is Enough</i>. These were
+followed by a &#8220;Note&#8221; written by Morris himself on his aims in starting the
+Kelmscott Press, accompanied with facts concerning the Press, and an
+annotated list of all the books there printed, compiled by Mr. S. C.
+Cockerell, who, since July, 1894, had been secretary to the Press. This
+was the end.<a name='fna_2' id='fna_2' href='#f_2'><small>[2]</small></a></p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img39.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="center"><i>Specimen Page from the Kelmscott &#8220;Froissart&#8221;</i><br />(<i>Projected Edition</i>)</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>Although Morris not only neglected commercial considerations in printing
+his books, lavishing their price many times over in valuable time and
+labour and the actual expenditure of money to secure some inconspicuous
+detail; but defied commercial methods openly in the character of his type,
+the quality of his materials, and the slowness of his processes, the
+Kelmscott Press testified, as most of his enterprises did testify, to the
+practical worth of his ideals. Quite content to make just enough by his
+books to continue printing them in the most conscientious and desirable
+way he knew, he gradually obtained from them a considerable profit. The
+Press had early been<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span> moved to quarters larger than the first occupied
+by it, and three presses were kept busy. By the end of 1892 Morris had
+become his own publisher, and after that time all the Kelmscott books were
+published by him except in cases of special arrangement. A few copies,
+usually less than a dozen, of nearly all the books were printed on vellum
+and sold at a proportionately higher price than the paper copies. The
+volumes were bound either in vellum or half holland, these temporary and
+unsatisfactory covers probably having been chosen on account of the
+strength and slow-drying qualities of the ink used, a note to the
+prospectus of the <i>Chaucer</i> stating that the book would not be fit for
+ordinary full binding with the usual pressure for at least a year after
+its issue. The issue prices charged for the books were not low, but
+certainly not exorbitant when time, labour, and expense of producing them
+are taken into consideration. They were prizes for the collector from the
+beginning, the impossibility of duplicating them and the small editions
+sent out giving them a charm and a value not easily to be resisted, and
+Morris himself and his trustees adopted measures tending to protect the
+collector&#8217;s interests. After the death of Morris all the woodblocks for
+initials, ornaments, and illustrations were sent to the British Museum and
+were accepted, with the condition that they should not be reproduced or
+printed from for the space of one hundred years. The electrotypes were
+destroyed. The matter was talked over with Morris during his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span> lifetime and
+he sanctioned this course on the part of the trustees, its aim being to
+keep the series of the Kelmscott Press &#8220;a thing apart and to prevent the
+designs becoming stale by repetition.&#8221; While there is a fair ground for
+the criticism frequently made that a man urging the necessity of art for
+the people showed inconsistency by withdrawing from their reach art which
+he could control and deemed valuable, it must be remembered that in his
+mind the great result to be obtained was the stirring up the people to
+making art for themselves. Morris rightly counted the joy to be gained
+from making a beautiful thing as far higher than the joy to be gained from
+seeing one. He was never in favour of making a work of art &#8220;common&#8221; by
+reproducing or servilely imitating it. He had shown the printers of books
+his idea of the way they should manage their craft, now let them develop
+it themselves along the lines pointed out for them. And whether he was or
+was not consistent in allowing the works of the Kelmscott Press to be cut
+off from any possibility of a large circulation, his was the temperament
+to feel all the delight to be won from exclusive ownership. He had the
+true collector&#8217;s passion for possession. If he was bargaining for a book,
+says his biographer, he would carry on the negotiation with the book
+tucked tightly under his arm, as if it might run away. His collection of
+old painted books gave him the keenest emotions before and after his
+acquisition of them. Of one, which finally proved unattainable, he wrote,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span>
+&#8220;<i>Such</i> a book! <i>my</i> eyes! and I am beating my brains to see if I can find
+any thread of an intrigue to begin upon, so as to creep and crawl toward
+the possession of it.&#8221; It is no matter for wonder if in imagination he
+beheld the love of bibliophiles for his own works upon which he had so
+ardently spent his energies, and was gratified by the prevision.</p>
+
+<p>Whether the Kelmscott books will increase or decrease in money value as
+time goes on is a question that stirs interest in book-buying circles.
+They have already had their rise and ebb to a certain extent, and the
+prices brought by the copies owned by Mr. Ellis at the sale of his library
+after his death indicate that a steady level of interest has been reached
+among collectors for the time being at least; only five of the copies
+printed on paper exceeding prices previously paid for them. The
+presentation copy on vellum of the great <i>Chaucer</i> brought five hundred
+and ten pounds, certainly a remarkable sum for a modern book, under any
+conditions, and nearly a hundred pounds more than the highest price which
+Morris himself up to the summer of 1894 had ever paid for even a
+fourteenth-century book. The paper copy of the <i>Chaucer</i> sold at the Ellis
+sale for one hundred and twelve pounds and a paper copy in ordinary
+binding sold in America in 1902 for $650, while a paper copy in the
+special pigskin binding brought $950 the same year. The issue price for
+the four hundred and twenty-five paper copies was twenty pounds apiece,
+and for<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span> the eight copies on vellum offered for sale out of the thirteen
+printed, a hundred and twenty guineas apiece. The posthumous edition of
+<i>Sigurd the Volsung</i>, the paper copies of which were issued at six guineas
+apiece, brought at the Ellis sale twenty-six pounds. <i>News from Nowhere</i>,
+issued at two guineas, has never yet brought a higher price than the five
+pounds, fifteen shillings paid for it in 1899, while Keats&#8217;s <i>Poems</i>
+issued at one pound, ten shillings, rose as high as twenty-seven pounds,
+ten shillings, also in 1899. As a general measure of the advance in the
+Kelmscott books since the death of Morris, it may be noted that the series
+owned by Mr. Ellis, excluding duplicates, and including a presentation
+copy of <i>Jason</i> and two fine bindings for the paper and the vellum
+<i>Chaucer</i>, represented a gross issue price of six hundred and twelve
+pounds, ten shillings, and realised two thousand, three hundred and
+sixty-seven pounds, two shillings. For one decade of the life of a modern
+series that is a great record, and it would be a rash prophet who should
+venture to predict future values.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/botban9.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span></p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/banner14.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XI" id="CHAPTER_XI"></a>CHAPTER XI.</h2>
+<p class="title">LATER WRITINGS.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="dropcap"><span class="caps">The</span> writings of Morris&#8217;s later years consist, as we have seen, chiefly of
+prose romances. The little group beginning with <i>The House of the
+Wolfings</i> and ending with <i>The Sundering Flood</i> were written with no
+polemical or proselytising intention, with merely his old delight in
+storytelling and in depicting the beauty of the external world and the
+kindness of men and maids. Curiosity had never played any great part in
+his mental equipment; he cared little to know or speculate further than
+the visible and tangible surface of life. &#8220;The skin of the world&#8221; was
+sufficient for him, and in these later romances all that is beautiful and
+winning has chiefly to do with the skin of the world presented in its
+spring-time freshness. The background of nature is always exquisite. With
+the landscape of the North, which had made its indelible impression upon
+him, he mingled the scenes&mdash;&#8220;the dear scenes&#8221; he would have called
+them&mdash;of his childhood and the fairer portions of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span> Thames shore as he
+had long and intimately known them; and in his books, as in his familiar
+letters, he constantly speaks of the weather and the seasons as matters of
+keen importance in the sum of daily happiness. Thus, whatever we miss from
+his romances, we gain, what is missing from the majority of modern books,
+familiarity with the true aspect of the outdoor world. We have the
+constant sense of ample sky and pleasant air, and green woods and cool
+waters. The mountains are near us, and often the ocean, and the freedom of
+a genuine wildwood that is no enchanted forest or ideal vision.
+Inexpressibly charming are such pictures as those of Elfhild (in <i>The
+Sundering Flood</i>) piping to her sheep and dancing on the bank of the
+river, on the bright mid-April day, whose sun dazzles her eyes with its
+brilliant shining; and of Birdalone (in <i>The Water of the Wondrous Isles</i>)
+embroidering her gown and smock in the wood of Evilshaw. What could be
+more expressive of lovely open-air peace than this description? &#8220;Who was
+glad now but Birdalone; she grew red with new pleasure, and knelt down and
+kissed the witch&#8217;s hand, and then went her way to the wood with her
+precious lading, and wrought there under her oak-tree day after day, and
+all days, either there, or in the house when the weather was foul. That
+was in the middle of March, when all birds were singing, and the young
+leaves showing on the hawthorns, so that there were pale green clouds, as
+it were, betwixt the great grey<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span> boles of oak and sweet-chestnut; and by
+the lake the meadow-saffron new-thrust-up was opening its blossom; and
+March wore and April, and still she was at work happily when now it was
+later May, and the harebells were in full bloom down the bent before her
+... and still she wrought on at her gown and her smock, and it was
+well-nigh done. She had broidered the said gown with roses and lilies, and
+a tall tree springing up from amidmost the hem of the skirt, and a hart on
+either side thereof, face to face of each other. And the smock she had
+sewn daintily at the hems and the bosom with fair knots and buds. It was
+now past the middle of June hot and bright weather.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>And only less delightful than these glimpses of the natural world are the
+recurring portraits of half-grown boys and girls, all different and all
+lovable. The sweetness of adolescent beauty had for Morris an irresistible
+appeal, and while his characters have little of the psychological charm
+inseparable in real life from dawning qualities and undeveloped
+potentialities, they are as lovely as the morning in the brightness of
+hair, the slimness of form, the freedom of gesture with which he endows
+them. The shapely brown hands and feet of Ursula, her ruddy colour, her
+slender sturdiness, and brave young laugh are attractions as potent as the
+more delicate charm of Birdalone&#8217;s serious eyes and thin face, or
+Elfhild&#8217;s flower-like head and tender playfulness; and all these heroines
+are alike in a fine capability<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span> for useful toil and pride in it. When the
+old carle says to Birdalone, &#8220;It will be no such hard life for thee, for I
+have still some work in me, and thou mayst do something in spite of thy
+slender and delicate fashion,&#8221; she replies with merry laughter, &#8220;Forsooth,
+good sire, I might do somewhat more than something; for I am deft in all
+such work as here ye need; so fear not but I should earn my livelihood,
+and that with joy.&#8221; Ursula also knows all the craft of needlework, and all
+the manners of the fields, and finds nothing in work to weary her; and
+even in the Maid of <i>The Wood beyond the World</i>, with her magic power to
+revive flowers by the touch of her fingers, is felt the preferable human
+power to make comfort and pleasantness by the right performance of plain
+tasks.</p>
+
+<p>Nearly if not quite equal to Morris&#8217;s expression of love for the beauty of
+nature and of fair humanity is his expression of the love for beautiful
+handicraft, to which his whole life and all his writings alike testify.
+Whatever is omitted from his stories of love and adventure, he never omits
+to familiarise his readers with the ornament lavished upon buildings and
+garments and countless accessories; hardly a dozen pages of any one of the
+romances may be turned before the description of some piece of artistic
+workmanship is met. Osberne&#8217;s knife in <i>The Sundering Flood</i> is early
+introduced to the reader as &#8220;a goodly weapon, carven with quaintnesses
+about the heft, the blade inlaid with runes done in gold<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span> and the sheath
+of silver,&#8221; and the gifts he sends to Elfhild across the flood are &#8220;an
+ouch or chain or arm-ring&#8221; fashioned &#8220;quaintly and finely,&#8221; or &#8220;fair
+windowed shoon, and broidered hosen and dainty smocks, and silken
+kerchiefs&#8221;; much is made of his holiday raiment of scarlet and gold, of
+his flowered green coat, and of the fine gear of gold and green for which
+Elfhild changes her grey cloak. In <i>The Story of the Glittering Plain</i>,
+filled as it is with the sterner spirit of the sagas, there is still room
+for much detail concerning the carven panelling of the shut-bed, in which
+was pictured &#8220;fair groves and gardens, with flowery grass and fruited
+trees all about,&#8221; and &#8220;fair women abiding therein, and lovely young men
+and warriors, and strange beasts and many marvels, and the ending of wrath
+and beginning of pleasure, and the crowning of love,&#8221; and for the account
+of the painted book, &#8220;covered outside with gold and gems&#8221; and painted
+within with woods and castles, &#8220;and burning mountains, and the wall of the
+world, and kings upon their thrones, and fair women and warriors, all most
+lovely to behold.&#8221; As for the fair Birdalone, her pleasure in fine stuffs
+and rich embroideries is unsurpassed in the annals of womankind. The
+wood-wife with canny knowledge of her tastes brings her the fairy web,
+declaring that if she dare wear it she shall presently be clad as goodly
+as she can wish. Birdalone can be trusted to don any attire that meets her
+fancy (and to doff it as willingly,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span> for she has a startling habit not
+uncommon with Morris&#8217;s heroines of stripping off her garments to let the
+winds of heaven play upon her unimpeded). The wood-wife places the raiment
+she has brought on Birdalone&#8217;s outstretched arms, &#8220;and it was as if the
+sunbeam had thrust through the close leafage of the oak, and made its
+shadow nought a space about Birdalone, so gleamed and glowed in shifty
+brightness the broidery of the gown; and Birdalone let it fall to earth,
+and passed over her hands and arms the fine smock sewed in yellow and
+white silk, so that the web thereof seemed of mingled cream and curd; and
+she looked on the shoon that lay beside the gown, that were done so nicely
+and finely that the work was as the feather-robe of a beauteous bird,
+whereof one scarce can say whether it be bright or grey, thousand-hued or
+all simple of colour. Birdalone quivered for joy of all the fair things,
+and crowed in her speech as she knelt before Habundia to thank her.&#8221; Thus
+Morris carried into his &#8220;pleasure-work of books&#8221; the &#8220;bread-and-butter
+work&#8221; of which he was hardly less fond.</p>
+
+<p>But in the deeper realities of life with which even romantic fiction may
+deal, and must deal if it is to lay hold of the modern imagination, these
+romances are poor. Not one of his characters is developed by circumstance
+into a fully equipped human being thoroughly alive to the intellectual and
+moral as to the physical and emotional world. His men and women are
+eternally young and,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span> with the physical freshness of youth, have also the
+crude, unrounded, unfinished, unmoulded character of youth. They have all
+drunk of the Well at the World&#8217;s End, and the scars of experience have
+disappeared, leaving a blank surface. The range of their emotions and
+passions is as simple and narrow as with children, and life as the great
+story-tellers understand it is not shown by the chronicle of their days.
+In many of the romances, it is true, the introduction of legendary and
+unreal persons and incidents relieves the writer from all obligation to
+make his account more lifelike than a fairy-tale; but Morris is never
+content to make a fairy-tale pure and simple. Marvellous adventures told
+directly as to a child are not within his method. One of his critics has
+described <i>The Water of the Wondrous Isles</i> as a three-volume novel in the
+environment of a fairy-tale, and the phrase perfectly characterises it. A
+sentimental atmosphere surrounds his figures, and suggests languor and
+soft moods not to be tolerated by the writer of true fairy-tales, for
+while love is certainly not alien to even the purest type of the latter,
+with its witch and its princess and its cruel step-mother and rescuing
+prince, it is not love as Morris depicts it any more than it is love as
+Dante or Shakespeare depicts it. In Morris&#8217;s stories the lovers are
+neither frankly symbolic creatures of the imagination whose loves are
+secondary to their heroic or miraculous achievements, and who apparently
+exist only to give<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span> a reason for the machinery of witchcraft, nor are
+they, like the lovers of the great novels, endowed with thoughtful minds
+and spiritual qualities. They are too sophisticated not to be more
+complex. The modern taste is unsympathetic to their endless kissing and
+&#8220;fawning&#8221; and &#8220;clipping,&#8221; nor would ancient taste have welcomed their
+refinements of kindness toward each other or the lack of zest in their
+adventures. Morris seems to have tried somewhat, as in the case of his
+handicrafts, to start with the traditions of the Middle Ages and to infuse
+into them a modern spirit that should make them legitimate successors and
+not mere imitations of the well-beloved medi&aelig;val types. That he did not
+entirely succeed was the fault not so much of his method as of his
+deficient insight into human nature. He could not create what he had never
+closely investigated.</p>
+
+<p>When we read his prose romances, their framework gives many a clue to
+their ancestry, but it is an ancestry so remote from the interest of the
+general reader as to puzzle more than charm in its influence upon the
+modern product. In <i>The House of the Wolfings</i>, <i>The Roots of the
+Mountains</i>, and especially <i>The Glittering Plain</i>, we have more or less
+modernised sagas, obviously derived from the Icelandic literature of which
+he had been drinking deep. The hero of <i>The Glittering Plain</i> is as
+valorous a youth and as given to brave adventures as the great Sigurd, the
+environment is Norse, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span> so are the names of the characters&mdash;Sea-eagle,
+Long-hoary, Grey Goose of the Ravagers, and Puny Fox. Other words and
+phrases also drawn from the &#8220;word-hoard&#8221; of the Icelandic tongue are
+sprinkled over the pages. We find &#8220;nithing-stake&#8221; and byrny, and bight,
+spoke-shave and ness and watchet, sley and ashlar and ghyll, used as
+expressions of familiar parlance. The characters give each other &#8220;the sele
+of the day,&#8221; retire to shut-beds at night, and look &#8220;sorry and sad and
+fell&#8221; when fortune goes against them. They wander in garths and call each
+other faring-fellow and they yea-say and nay-say and wot and wend. It is
+not altogether surprising to find some of Morris&#8217;s most loyal followers
+admitting that they can make nothing of books written in this archaic
+prose.</p>
+
+<p>In the subsequent romances the comparative sturdiness imparted by the
+writings of the North gives place to a mildness and grace suggestive of
+those early French romances the charm of which Morris had always keenly
+felt. We still have much the same vocabulary and more or less use of the
+same magic arts, &#8220;skin-changing&#8221; holding its own as a favourite method of
+overcoming otherwise insuperable difficulties; but we have more of the
+love motive and a clearer endeavour to portray the relations of the
+characters to each other. In all, however, the French and Scandinavian
+influences are so mingled with each other and with the element provided by
+Morris alone, and so fused by<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span> his fluent prolix style, as to produce a
+result somewhat different from anything else in literature, with a
+character and interest personal to itself, and difficult to imitate in
+essence, although wofully lending itself to parody. The subject never
+seems important. There is no sense that the writer was spurred to
+expression by the pressure of an irresistible message or sentiment. We
+feel that anything may have started this copious flow of words, and that
+there is no logical end to them. The title of <i>The Well at the World&#8217;s
+End</i> was taken from an old Scottish ballad called by that name which
+Morris had never read, but the title of which struck his fancy, and the
+book reads as though it had grown without plan from the fanciful,
+meaningless title.</p>
+
+<p>Of these later romances, <i>The Glittering Plain</i> is the most saga-like, and
+<i>The Water of the Wondrous Isles</i> is most permeated by the romantic spirit
+of the Arthurian legends and their kin. Despite all defects, the latter
+has a bright bejewelled aspect that pleases the fancy although it does not
+deeply enlist the imagination. The story is leisurely and wandering. The
+heroine, Birdalone, some of whose characteristics have already been
+mentioned, is stolen in her infancy from her home near a town called
+Utterhay, by a witch-wife who brings her up on the edge of a wood called
+Evilshaw and teaches her to milk and plough and sow and reap and bake and
+shoot deer in the forest. When she is seventeen years of age she meets in
+the forest Habundia, a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span> fairy woman, who gives her a magic ring by which
+she may make herself invisible and a lock of hair by burning a bit of
+which she may summon her in time of need. Birdalone soon after escapes
+from the witch-wife in a magic boat, and passes through fabulous scenes to
+enchanted islands, where she finds friends and enemies. Three maidens,
+Atra, Viridis, and Aurea, save her from the latter, and send her forth to
+find for them their lovers. While on her quest she travels to various
+isles,&mdash;the Isle of the Young and the Old, the Isle of the Queens, the
+Isle of the Kings, and the Isle of Nothing,&mdash;which afford opportunity for
+strange pictures and quaint conceits but have nothing to do with the
+narrative. When Birdalone finds the lovers of her friends, the Golden
+Knight, the Green Knight, and Arthur the Black Squire, called the Three
+Champions, they are charmed by her beauty and friendliness, and she
+immediately falls in love with the Black Squire, betrothed of Atra.<a name='fna_3' id='fna_3' href='#f_3'><small>[3]</small></a> The
+Black Squire returns her prompt affection, but has grace to show himself
+moody and downcast at the thought of breaking faith with his lady.
+Presently the Three Champions go their ways to find the three maidens who
+were kind to Birdalone and who are kept on the Isle of Increase Unsought
+by a witch, sister to Birdalone&#8217;s early guardian, and Birdalone, weary of
+waiting for their return, fares forth to meet adventures and lovers<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span> in
+plenty. To all the brave knights and youths who take their turn at wooing
+her she is pitiful and gentle after her fashion, and thanks them kindly,
+and praises them and suffers them to kiss her for their comfort, and deems
+them &#8220;fair and lovely and sweet,&#8221; but keeps her preference for the Black
+Squire. Now, when the Three Champions come back with their ladies and find
+Birdalone fled there is much distress among them, and the knights set
+forth to find her. Meeting with her, they are set upon by the bad Red
+Knight, into whose custody she has recently been thrown, and Baudoin, the
+Golden Knight, is killed. Returning with this bad news to the three
+ladies, the two remaining knights, who have rescued Birdalone and killed
+the Red Knight, decide to ride back into the latter&#8217;s domain and make war
+upon his followers. In the meantime Atra has learned that the Black Squire
+has transferred his affections from her to Birdalone, and does not attempt
+to dissemble her grief thereat, none of Morris&#8217;s characters being gifted
+in the art of dissimulation, particularly where love is concerned.
+Birdalone, departing from the course which Morris elsewhere is most
+inclined to sanction, decides to renounce in Atra&#8217;s favour, and betakes
+herself to the town of Greenford, where she is received into the
+broiderers&#8217; guild and works with a woman who turns out to be her own
+mother, from whom she was stolen by the witch. With her she lives for five
+years, when sickness slays Audrey, the mother,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span> and Birdalone can no
+longer resist the temptation to seek her love, the Black Squire, again. So
+she makes her way once more through marvellous adventures into the old
+forest of Evilshaw, where she comes again upon her fairy friend Habundia,
+by whose aid she finds the Black Squire. The latter has met with
+misfortunes and is lost in the forest, where he falls ill. Birdalone
+nurses him back to health, and they decide that whether Atra be dead or
+alive they will have no more parting from one another. They are soon to be
+put to the test, as in the wood they come upon Atra and their other
+friends, who have set out to seek them, being anxious for their welfare,
+and who have been overcome by caitiffs and bound and held prisoners.
+Arthur and Birdalone rescue them, and all these friends make up their
+minds to go together and dwell in Utterhay for the rest of their lives.
+Aurea finds another lover in place of the Golden Knight she has lost, but
+Atra is faithful in heart to the Black Squire, though able to bear with
+philosophy his union with Birdalone. Thus they live happily ever after.
+Upon this skeleton of mingled reality and dream Morris built his general
+idea of happy love. The tale might easily be twisted into an allegory,
+since all the creatures of his imagination stand for either the
+satisfactions or dissatisfactions of the visible world, but nothing is
+more certain than that he meant no such interpretations to be put upon it.
+When one of his critics assumed an allegorical intention<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span> in the story
+called <i>The Wood Beyond the World</i>, he was moved to public refutation,
+writing to the <i>Spectator</i>: &#8220;It is meant to be a tale pure and simple,
+with nothing didactic about it. If I have to write or speak on social
+problems, I always try to be as direct as I possibly can.&#8221; The truth of
+this is best known by those who most faithfully have followed his
+writings, and it is entirely vain to try to squeeze from his &#8220;tales&#8221; any
+ethical virtue beyond their frank expression of his singularly simple
+temperament. Nevertheless, like the rest of his work, they reveal in some
+degree his way of regarding the moral world. As we have seen, Birdalone
+has her impulse toward renunciation, and for a brief interval one feels
+that the story possibly may be allowed to run along the conventional lines
+laid down by the civilised human race for the greatest good of the
+greatest number. This, however, would have been wholly alien to the
+writer&#8217;s temper, and there is no shock to those familiar with this temper
+in finding that in the end the hero and heroine eat their cake and have
+it. Renunciation on the side of the unbeloved is effected with grace and
+nobility, but it is made clear that it is a question of accepting the
+inevitable in as lofty a spirit as possible. It is perhaps the most
+obvious moral characteristic of Morris&#8217;s types in general, that they are
+no more prone than children to do what they dislike unless circumstance
+forces them to it. If we were to argue from his romances alone we could
+almost imagine<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span> him contending that what one dislikes in conduct is wrong,
+just as he did contend that what one dislikes in art is bad. But if his
+men and women do not willingly renounce, at least they do not exult. The
+sight of unhappiness pains them. For stern self-denial he substitutes the
+softer virtues of amiability and sweetness of temper. A high level of
+kindliness and tenderness takes the place of more compelling and
+formidable emotions. &#8220;Kind,&#8221; indeed, is one of the adjectives of which one
+soonest wearies when confined to his vocabulary, and &#8220;dear,&#8221; is another.
+We read of &#8220;dear feet and legs,&#8221; of dear and kind kisses, of kind
+wheedling looks, of kind and dear maidens, and dear and kind lads, and
+everyone is kind and dear who is not evil and cruel. What Morris&#8217;s
+romances preach, if they preach anything, is: that we should get from life
+all the enjoyment possible, hurting others as little as may be consistent
+with our own happiness, but claiming the satisfaction of all honest
+desires; that, in thus satisfying ourselves, we should keep toward those
+about us a kind and pleasant countenance and a consideration for their
+pain even when our duty toward ourselves forces us to inflict it. It is a
+narrow and exclusive teaching, and ill adapted to foster freedom of mind
+and spirit. It is a teaching that provides no breastplate for the buffets
+of fortune, and sets before one no ideal of intellectual or spiritual life
+the attainment of which would bring pleasure austere and exquisite. There
+is no stimulus and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span> no sting in the love depicted. Even its ardour is
+checked and wasted by its dallying with the external charms that seem to
+veil rather than to reveal the spirit within the flesh. It is the essence
+of immaturity. But while we gain from the observation of Morris&#8217;s
+childlike characters, playing in a world that knows no conventions and
+consequently no shame, a foreboding of the weariness that would attend
+such a life as he plans for them, we are conscious also that he is trying
+characteristically, to go back to the beginning, and to start humanity
+aright and afresh; to show us fine and healthy sons of Adam and daughters
+of Eve, &#8220;living,&#8221; to use his own words, &#8220;in the enjoyment of animal life
+at least, happy therefore, and beautiful according to the beauty of their
+race.&#8221; He sets them among the surroundings he loves, gives them the
+education he values, and leaves them with us&mdash;the blithe children of a new
+world, whose maturity he is content not to forecast. With such health of
+body, he seems to say, and such innocence of heart, what noble
+commonwealth may not arise, what glory may not enter into civilisation?</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/botban10.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span></p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/banner15.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XII" id="CHAPTER_XII"></a>CHAPTER XII.</h2>
+<p class="title">THE END.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="dropcap"><span class="caps">The</span> end with Morris seemed to come suddenly, although for months and even
+for years there had been warnings of its approach. He had enjoyed&mdash;and
+greatly enjoyed&mdash;unusual strength and vitality up to almost his sixtieth
+year. The seeds of gout were in his constitution, and from attacks of this
+disease he occasionally suffered, but not until the one occurring in the
+spring of 1891, just as the Kelmscott Press was getting under way, did
+they give reason for alarm. At that time other complications were
+discovered and he was told that he must consider himself an invalid. After
+this, as we have seen, he plunged with rapture into new undertakings
+involving the use of all his faculties, and carried them on with no
+apparent lessening of intellectual vigour. But he had too long overtaxed
+his physical frame by his extraordinary labours, and especially by his
+activity in the cause of Socialism, which had led him out in all weathers
+and under the most adverse conditions.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span> By the beginning of 1895 he began
+to show plainly the weakness that had been gaining on him, and to admit
+it, though still keeping busy at his various occupations. His increasing
+illness brought home to him the thought of that final check upon his
+activities which he had always found so difficult to conceive. &#8220;If,&#8221; he
+said, &#8220;it merely means that I am to be laid up for a little while, it
+doesn&#8217;t so much matter, you know; but if I am to be caged up here for
+months, and then it is to be the end of all things, I shouldn&#8217;t like it at
+all. This has been a jolly world to me and I find plenty to do in it.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>As the folio <i>Chaucer</i> advanced through the Press, he grew impatient, no
+doubt fearing that he would not see its completion, and it is pleasant to
+read of his gratification when a completed copy reached him, bound in the
+cover designed by himself. Late in July, 1896, by the recommendation of
+his physician he took a sea voyage, going to Norway for the bracing
+influences of its air and associations. No benefit was gained, however,
+and on his return a congestion of one lung set in that proved unyielding,
+while his general weakness was such that he was unable to cross the
+threshold of his room. We find him responding to an old friend who had
+urged him to try the effect of the pure air of Swainslow, that this was
+the case and he could not come, but was &#8220;absolutely delighted to find
+another beautiful place which is still in its untouched <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span>loveliness.&#8221; Up
+to the last he did a little work, dictating the final passage of <i>The
+Sundering Flood</i> less than a month before his death, which occurred in his
+home at Hammersmith on the morning of the 3rd of October, 1896. He died
+without apparent suffering, and surrounded by his friends. He had lived
+almost sixty-three years in the &#8220;jolly world&#8221; wherein he had found so much
+to do, but he left the impression of having been cut down in the flower of
+his life.</p>
+
+<p>His burial was in keeping with those tastes and preferences that had meant
+so much to him. The strong oak coffin in which he was laid was of an
+ancient, simple shape, with handles of wrought iron, and the pall that
+covered it was a strip of rich Anatolian velvet from his own collection of
+textiles. He was carried from Lechlade station to the little Kelmscott
+church in an open hay-cart, cheerful in colour, with bright red wheels,
+and festooned with vines, alder, and bulrushes. The bearers and the
+drivers of the country waggons in which his friends followed him to his
+grave were farmers of the neighbourhood clad in their moleskins, people
+who had lost, said one of them, &#8220;a dear good friend in Master Morris.&#8221; The
+hearse, with its bright decorations and the little group of mourners wound
+their way along pleasant country roads, beaten upon by a storm of unusual
+fury. &#8220;The north-west wind bent trees and bushes,&#8221; writes one of those who
+were present, &#8220;turning the leaves of the bird maples<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span> back upon their
+footstalks, making them look like poplars, and the rain beat on the
+straggling hedges, the lurid fruit, such as only grows in rural
+England,&mdash;the fruit of privet with ripe hips and haws; the foliage of the
+Guelder roses hung on the bushes; along the road a line of slabs of stone
+extended, reminding one of Portugal; ragweed and loosestrife, with rank
+hemp agrimony, were standing dry and dead, like reeds beside a lake, and
+in the rain and wind the yokels stood at the cross-roads, or at the
+openings of the bridle-paths.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>In <i>News from Nowhere</i> Morris describes Kelmscott Church, with its little
+aisle divided from the nave by three round arches, its windows, &#8220;mostly of
+the graceful Oxfordshire fourteenth-century type,&#8221; and the interior
+trimmed with flowers for a village merrymaking. On the day of his burial,
+by a curious coincidence it was trimmed with fruits of the harvest in
+preparation for the autumn festival. The service was read by an old
+schoolfellow and friend, and Morris was left to his rest &#8220;from patience
+and from pain&#8221; in the place he had best loved and to which in his final
+weakness he had longed to return.</p>
+
+<p>In regarding Morris through the medium of his work it is difficult to gain
+a coherent impression. He turned one side and another to the world with
+such rapidity of succession as to give a sense of kaleidoscopic change.
+What new combination of colour and form his activities would take was
+always impossible to forecast. And the thing that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span> he was doing seemed to
+him at the time the one thing in the world that was worth doing, the one
+thing that &#8220;a reasonable and healthy man&#8221; would make it his pleasure to
+do. Yet, as we have seen, all these pursuits taken up by him with so much
+zest and laid down by him with such suddenness, fitted harmoniously and
+accurately into the plan of his life, which, with the decade of militant
+Socialism deducted, presented a smooth and even surface, unbroken by any
+violent change of circumstance or method or motive. He has been described
+by nearly all who have written of him as &#8220;a rebel,&#8221; and a rebel he was in
+the true Quixotic sense, his lance in rest to charge at any moment against
+any windmill of convention that might offend him. A friend who was once
+talking with him about a forthcoming election to the London School Board,
+expressing a hope that the progressive party would win,&mdash;&#8220;Well,&#8221; said
+Morris, striding up and down, &#8220;I am not sure that a clerical victory would
+not be a good thing. I was educated at Marlborough under clerical masters,
+and I naturally rebelled against them. Had they been advanced men, my
+spirit of rebellion would probably have led me to conservatism merely as a
+protest. One naturally defies authority, and it may be well that the
+London School Board should be controlled by Anglican parsons, in order
+that the young rebels in the schools may grow up to defy and hate church
+authority.&#8221; His own &#8220;natural&#8221; defiance of authority entailed what seems to
+the ordinary toiler in harness a waste of his extraordinary gifts.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span> His
+work was most of it in the experimental stage when he left it. He was too
+content to point the road without following to the end his own direction.
+&#8220;He did not learn a trade in the natural way, from those who knew, and
+seek then to better the teaching of his masters,&#8221; says one of his
+fellow-workers in arts and crafts, &#8220;but, acknowledging no master, except
+perhaps the ancients, he would worry it out always for himself. He had a
+wonderful knack of learning that way.&#8221;<a name='fna_4' id='fna_4' href='#f_4'><small>[4]</small></a> He had a wonderful knack also of
+persuading himself that there was no other to learn, and Goldsmith&#8217;s
+criticism of Burke&mdash;that he spent much of his time &#8220;cutting blocks with a
+razor&#8221;&mdash;has been happily applied to him. But it is doubtful whether he
+would have made as strong an impression on his generation as he did if he
+had devoted his time to one branch of art and worked along conventional
+lines. His greatest gift was not so much the ability to produce art,
+artistic though he was in faculty and feeling, as it was the ability to
+make people see the difference between the kind of beauty to which his
+eyes were open and the ugliness commonly preferred to it. Nothing is so
+convincing as to see a man accomplish with his own hands what he has
+declared possible for anyone to accomplish. Morris&#8217;s continual
+illustration of his theories was perhaps more useful in awakening interest
+in just the matters which he had at heart than any more patient pursuit of
+an ideal less readily achieved. He had the habit when listening to
+questions and criticisms after<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span> his lectures of tracing charming rapid
+designs on paper. On a large scale that is what he did throughout his
+life: lecture people about the way to make things, and by way of proving
+his point, turn off delightful examples of the things he describes. &#8220;It is
+very easy&#8221; he seems to say; &#8220;watch me for a moment, and we will then pass
+on.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Considered superficially, he appeared the very prince of paradox. Art was
+a word continually on his lips, the future and fortunes of art were
+constantly in his mind, yet for the greatest art of the world he had few
+words, and the most passing interest. The names of Raphael and Leonardo,
+Giotto, D&uuml;rer, Rembrandt, Velasquez, were seldom if ever on his lips. Art
+had for him an almost single meaning, namely, the beauty produced by
+humble workers as an every-day occurrence and for every day&#8217;s enjoyment,
+art by the people and for the people. So individual that he will never be
+forgotten by those who have once seen him and heard his voice raised in
+its inevitable protest, he nevertheless preached a kind of communism in
+which any high degree of individuality must have been submerged.</p>
+
+<p>His preferences among books, as might be assumed, were clearly marked, and
+a list of his favourite authors contains many contrasts. Once asked to
+contribute to the <i>Pall Mall Gazette</i> his opinions on &#8220;the best hundred
+books,&#8221; he complied by naming those which, he said, had most profoundly
+impressed him, excluding all which he considered merely as tools<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span> and not
+as works of art. True to himself, he starts the list with books &#8220;of the
+kind Mazzini calls Bibles,&#8221; books which are &#8220;in no sense the work of
+individuals, but have grown up from the very hearts of the people.&#8221; Among
+these are &#8220;the Hebrew Bible (excluding some twice-done parts and some
+pieces of mere Jewish ecclesiasticism), <i>Homer</i>, <i>Hesiod</i>, <i>The Edda</i>
+(including some of the other early old Norse romantic genealogical poems),
+<i>Beowulf</i>, <i>Kalevale</i>, <i>Shahnameh</i>, <i>Mahabharata</i>, collections of folk
+tales headed by Grimm and the Norse ones, Irish and Welsh traditional
+poems.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>After these &#8220;Bibles&#8221; follow the &#8220;<i>real</i> ancient imaginative works:
+<i>Herodotus</i>, <i>Plato</i>, <i>&AElig;schylus</i>, <i>Sophocles</i>, <i>Aristophanes</i>,
+<i>Theocritus</i>, <i>Lucretius</i>, <i>Catullus</i>.&#8221; The greater part of the Latins
+were esteemed &#8220;<i>sham</i> classics.&#8221; &#8220;I suppose,&#8221; says Morris in his character
+of reasonable man, &#8220;that they have some good literary qualities; but I
+cannot help thinking that it is difficult to find out how much. I suspect
+superstition and authority have influenced our estimate of them till it
+has become a mere matter of convention. Of course I admit the
+arch&aelig;ological value of some of them, especially <i>Virgil</i> and <i>Ovid</i>.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Next in importance to the Latin masterpieces he puts medi&aelig;val poetry,
+Anglo-Saxon lyrical pieces (like the <i>Ruin</i> and the <i>Exile</i>), Dante,
+Chaucer, <i>Piers Plowman</i>, <i>Nibelungenlied</i>, the Danish and Scotch-English
+Border Ballads, <i>Omar Khayyam</i>, &#8220;though I don&#8217;t know how much of the charm
+of this lovely<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span> poem,&#8221; he says, &#8220;is due to Fitzgerald, the translator&#8221;;
+other Arab and Persian poetry, <i>Reynard the Fox</i>, and a few of the best
+rhymed romances. Medi&aelig;val story books follow, the <i>Morte d&#8217;Arthur</i>, <i>The
+Thousand and One Nights</i>, Boccaccio&#8217;s <i>Decameron</i>, and the <i>Mabinogion</i>.
+After these, &#8220;modern poets&#8221; up to his own generation, &#8220;Shakespeare, Blake
+(the part of him which a mortal can understand), Coleridge, Shelley,
+Keats, Byron.&#8221; German he could not read, so he left out German
+masterpieces. Milton he left out on account of his union of &#8220;cold
+classicalism with Puritanism&#8221; (&#8220;the two things which I hate most in the
+world,&#8221; he said).</p>
+
+<p><i>Pilgrim&#8217;s Progress</i> heads the department of modern fiction, in which is
+also included <i>Robinson Crusoe</i>, <i>M&ouml;ll Flanders</i>, <i>Colonel Jack</i>, <i>Captain
+Singleton</i>, <i>Voyage Round the World</i>, Scott&#8217;s novels, &#8220;except the one or
+two which he wrote when he was hardly alive,&#8221; the novels of the elder
+Dumas (the &#8220;good&#8221; ones), Victor Hugo, Dickens, and George Borrow. The list
+concludes with certain unclassified works, Ruskin, Carlyle, the <i>Utopia</i>,
+and Grimm&#8217;s <i>Teutonic Mythology</i>. It may safely be assumed that no other
+list sent in by the &#8220;best judges&#8221; who responded to Mr. Stead&#8217;s request in
+the least resembled this one, which was compiled with high sincerity and
+represented Morris quite fairly on the bookish side of his mind. Mr.
+Mackail mentions also among the volumes oftenest in his hands and &#8220;imposed
+upon his friends unflinchingly&#8221; Surtees&#8217;s famous <i>Mr. Jorrocks</i>,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span> and
+records that he considered <i>Huckleberry Finn</i> America&#8217;s masterpiece. For
+the Uncle Remus stories he had also a peculiar fondness, and for one of
+his cotton prints he designed what he called a &#8220;Brer Rabbit pattern.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The perversity that one marks in Morris beneath&mdash;or, perhaps, on the
+surface of&mdash;his essential seriousness, the tendency to whim and paradox so
+freely noted by his critics, may be attributed to his extraordinarily
+childlike spirit. His lack of restraint, his dislike of subtlety, his love
+of spontaneity, his inability to conform to conventions, his hatred of
+gloom, austerity, and introspection, his readiness to throw himself into
+enjoyment of the smallest subject that happened to come within the range
+of his interest, his unflagging vigour, his unjaded humour, all qualities
+copiously commented upon by his friends, testify to the youthfulness of
+his temperament, which was like that of a child, also in a certain
+apparently unpremeditated reticence, an inability to reveal itself fully
+or satisfactorily to even his closest intimates. What is most attractive
+and appealing in him is doubtless due to his freedom from artificialities
+and from the sophistries that ordinarily come with age, but what is
+noblest in him, and most impressive in the effect produced by his
+accomplishment, is due to a quality of which a child is and should be
+ignorant, a sense of personal responsibility. Without this he would have
+been a pitiful figure, disoriented, and inharmonious with the world into
+which he was born.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span> It was his persistent unwearying effort to set the
+crooked straight by example as well as by precept, and in defiance of a
+certain paradoxical mental languor that flowed by the side of his energy
+and impulse, which made him an influence to be counted with among the many
+conflicting influences of his generation. While he counselled he produced,
+while he preached he laboured. Declaring that work could and should be
+lovely, he demonstrated in his own life how intensely one man loved it. He
+fought for the principle of art with the ardour other men have shown in
+fighting for the principle of political liberty. He held himself bound to
+justify his theories in his own action, and while it would be absurd to
+claim for him complete consistency and freedom from error in even this, it
+certainly guided him safely past the quicksands of empty and inflated
+rhetoric by which the expressed philosophy of his own great masters is
+marred. It will be remembered by those who share his admiration for
+Dickens that when the proprietor of Dotheboys Hall wished to teach his
+pupils to spell &#8220;window&#8221; he had them clean one. The effectiveness of such
+a method is deeper than the satire, and Morris was its most convincing
+exponent. What he learned out of books he tried at once to put into
+practice. He had the highest ideal of service:</p>
+
+<p class="poem">How crown ye excellence of worth?<br />
+With leave to serve all men on earth,</p>
+
+<p>and nothing deflected him from his efforts thus to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span> serve in his own
+person the most crying needs of humanity as he conceived them.</p>
+
+<p>Pretentiousness was his least defect. No priggish sense of virtue
+interfered with his consecration to what he believed were the highest
+interests of his fellow-men. The cant of the moralist was absolutely
+unused by him, and he was innocent of any intention to improve the morals
+of his companions. Get them happy, he thought, with a faith little less
+than magnificent, get them happy and they will be good. Nor was he guilty
+of &aelig;sthetic priggishness. Art was the concern of his mind and the desire
+of his heart, but it was by no means his meat and drink. He liked good
+food, and was proud of his connoisseurship in matters of cookery, and
+wines. Few things pleased him better than himself to take the cook&#8217;s place
+and prove his practical skill. When asked for his opinions on the subject
+of temperance, he replied that so far as his own experience went he found
+his victuals dull without something to drink, and that tea and coffee were
+not fit liquors to be taken with food. He smoked his briarwood pipe with
+much satisfaction. In his daily habits he was thoroughly, aggressively
+human, and in nothing more so than in his candid admiration of the work of
+his own hands, a feeling in which there was no fatuity.</p>
+
+<p>His biographer comments on the singular element of impersonality in his
+nature, speaking of him as moving among men and women &#8220;isolated,
+self-centred, almost empty of love or hatred,&#8221; and quotes<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span> his most
+intimate friend&#8217;s extreme statement that he lived &#8220;absolutely without the
+need of man or woman.&#8221; In this idea of him those who knew him best seemed
+to agree, but from his own letters as represented in the biography, a
+stranger to him gains a different impression. His letters to his invalid
+daughter are in themselves sufficient to evoke in the mind of the reader
+an image of unlimited and poignant tenderness impossible to associate with
+the aloofness and lack of keen personal sympathy said to be characteristic
+of him. He did not give himself readily or rashly to intense feelings; but
+he seemed to feel within himself capacity for emotions of force so violent
+as to be destructive. When his friend Faulkner was stricken with paralysis
+and other trouble came upon the family, we find him writing: &#8220;It is such a
+grievous business altogether that, rightly or wrongly, I try not to think
+of it too much lest I should give way altogether, and make an end of what
+small use there may be in my life.&#8221; Leaving out the case of Rossetti,
+there is no record of his having relinquished any friendship of
+importance, nor did he weary of constant intercourse with his friends. His
+habit of breakfasting with Burne-Jones on Sunday mornings and dining with
+him on Wednesdays was unbroken for many years. &#8220;The last three Sundays of
+his life,&#8221; says this oldest and closest friend, &#8220;I went to him.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Loyalty, sincerity, simplicity, and earnestness, these are the qualities
+conspicuous in the fabric of his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span> life. His influence upon his generation,
+so far as it may now be observed, has been definite but diffused. It may
+be doubted whether he would not have been best pleased to have it so, to
+know that his name will live chiefly as that of one who stimulated others
+toward art production of and interest in beautiful handiwork. But the last
+word to be said about him is that he was greater than his work.</p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/botban7.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</a></span></p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/banner16.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<h2>BIBLIOGRAPHY<a name='fna_5' id='fna_5' href='#f_5'><small>[5]</small></a></h2>
+
+
+<p>1. <i>The Story of the Glittering Plain. Which has been also called The Land
+of Living Men or The Acre of the Undying.</i> Written by <span class="smcap">William Morris</span>.
+Small 4to. Golden type. Border 1. 200 paper copies at two guineas, and 6
+on vellum. Dated April 4, issued May 8, 1891. Sold by Reeves &amp; Turner.
+Bound in stiff vellum with wash leather ties.<a name='fna_6' id='fna_6' href='#f_6'><small>[6]</small></a></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>This book was set up from Nos. 81-84 of <i>The English Illustrated
+Magazine</i>, in which it first appeared; some of the chapter headings
+were rearranged, and a few small corrections were made in the text. A
+trial page, the first printed at the Kelmscott Press, was struck off
+on January 31, 1891, but the first sheet was not printed until about a
+month later.<a name='fna_7' id='fna_7' href='#f_7'><small>[7]</small></a> The border was designed in January of the same year,
+and engraved by W. H. Hooper. Mr. Morris had four of the vellum copies
+bound in green vellum, three of which he gave to friends. Only two
+copies on vellum were sold, at twelve and fifteen guineas. This was
+the only book with wash leather ties. All the other vellum bound books
+have silk ties, except <i>Shelley&#8217;s Poems</i> and <i>Hand and Soul</i>, which
+have no ties.</p></div>
+
+<p>2. <i>Poems by the Way.</i> Written by <span class="smcap">William Morris</span>. Small 4to. Golden type.
+In black and red. Border 1. 300 paper copies at two guineas, thirteen on
+vellum at about twelve guineas. Dated September 24, issued October 20,
+1891. Sold by Reeves &amp; Turner. Bound in stiff vellum.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>This was the first book printed at the Kelmscott Press in two colours,
+and the first book in which the smaller printer&#8217;s mark appeared. After
+<i>The Glittering Plain</i> was finished, at the beginning of April, no
+printing was done until May 11th. In the meanwhile the compositors
+were busy setting up the early sheets of <i>The Golden<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</a></span> Legend</i>. The
+printing of <i>Poems by the Way</i>, which its author first thought of
+calling <i>Flores Atramenti</i>, was not begun until July. The poems in it
+were written at various times. In the manuscript, <i>Hafburg and Signy</i>
+is dated February 4, 1870; <i>Hildebrand and Hillilel</i>, March 1, 1871;
+and <i>Love&#8217;s Reward</i>, Kelmscott, April 21, 1871. <i>Meeting in Winter</i> is
+a song from <i>The Story of Orpheus</i> an unpublished poem intended for
+the <i>Earthly Paradise</i>. The last poem in the book, <i>Goldilocks and
+Goldilooks</i>, was written on May 20, 1891, for the purpose of adding to
+the bulk of the volume, which was then being prepared. A few of the
+vellum covers were stained at Merton red, yellow, indigo, and dark
+green, but the experiment was not successful.<a name='fna_8' id='fna_8' href='#f_8'><small>[8]</small></a></p></div>
+
+<p>3. <i>The Love-Lyrics and Songs of Proteus, by Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, with
+the Love Sonnets of Proteus, by the same author, now reprinted in their
+full text with many sonnets omitted from the earlier editions.</i> London,
+MDCCCXCII. Small 4to. Golden type. In black and red. Border 1. 300 paper
+copies at two guineas, none on vellum. Dated January 26, issued February
+27, 1892. Sold by Reeves &amp; Turner. Bound in stiff vellum.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>This is the only book in which the initials are printed in red. This
+was done by the author&#8217;s wish.</p></div>
+
+<p>4. <i>The Nature of Gothic, a Chapter of the Stones of Venice.</i> By <span class="smcap">John
+Ruskin</span>. With a preface by William Morris. Small 4to. Golden type. Border
+1. Diagrams in text. 500 paper copies at thirty shillings, none on vellum.
+Dated in preface, February 15, issued March 22, 1892. Published by George
+Allen. Bound in stiff vellum.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>This chapter of the Stones of Venice, which Ruskin always considered
+the most important in the book, was first printed separately, in 1854,
+as a sixpenny pamphlet. Mr. Morris paid more than one tribute to it in
+<i>Hopes and Fears for Art</i>. Of him Ruskin said, in 1887, &#8220;Morris is
+beaten gold.&#8221;</p></div>
+
+<p>5. <i>The Defence of Guenevere, and Other Poems.</i> By <span class="smcap">William Morris</span>. Small
+4to. Golden type. In black and red. Borders 2 and 1. 300 paper copies at
+two guineas, 10 on vellum at about twelve guineas. Dated April 2, issued
+May 19, 1892. Sold by Reeves &amp; Turner. Bound in limp vellum.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>This book was set up from a copy of the edition published by Reeves &amp;
+Turner in 1880, the only alteration, except a few corrections, being
+in the eleventh line of <i>Summer Dawn</i>.<a name='fna_9' id='fna_9' href='#f_9'><small>[9]</small></a> It is divided into three
+parts, the poems suggested by Malory&#8217;s <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</a></span><i>Morte d&#8217;Arthur</i>, the poems
+inspired by Froissart&#8217;s <i>Chronicles</i>, and poems on various subjects.
+The two first sections have borders, and the last has a half border.
+The first sheet was printed on February 17, 1892. It was the first
+book bound in limp vellum, and the only one of which the title was
+inscribed by hand on the back.</p></div>
+
+<p>6. <i>A Dream of John Ball and a King&#8217;s Lesson.</i> By <span class="smcap">William Morris</span>. Small
+4to. Golden type. In black and red. Borders 3a, 4, and 2. With a woodcut
+designed by Sir E. Burne-Jones. 300 paper copies at thirty shillings, 11
+on vellum at ten guineas. Dated May 13, issued September 24, 1892. Sold by
+Reeves &amp; Turner. Bound in limp vellum.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>This was set up with a few alterations from a copy of Reeves &amp;
+Turner&#8217;s third edition, and the printing was begun on April 4, 1892.
+The frontispiece was redrawn from that to the first edition, and
+engraved on wood by W. H. Hooper, who engraved all Sir E.
+Burne-Jones&#8217;s designs for the Kelmscott Press, except those for <i>The
+Wood Beyond the World</i> and <i>The Life and Death of Jason</i>. The
+inscription below the figures,<a name='fna_10' id='fna_10' href='#f_10'><small>[10]</small></a> and the narrow border, were
+designed by Mr. Morris and engraved with the picture on one block,
+which was afterwards used on a leaflet printed for the Ancoats
+Brotherhood in February, 1894.</p></div>
+
+<p>7. <i>The Golden Legend.</i> By <span class="smcap">Jacobus De Voragine</span>. Translated by William
+Caxton. Edited by F. S. Ellis. 3 vols. Large 4to. Golden type. Borders 5a,
+5, 6a and 7. Woodcut title and two woodcuts designed by Sir E.
+Burne-Jones. 500 copies at five guineas, none on vellum. Dated September
+12, issued November 3, 1892. Published by Bernard Quaritch. Bound in half
+Holland, with paper labels printed in the Troy type.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>In July, 1890, when only a few letters of the Golden type had been
+cut, Mr. Morris bought a copy of this book, printed by Wynkyn de Worde
+in 1527. He soon afterwards determined to print it, and on September
+11th entered into a formal agreement with Mr. Quaritch for its
+publication. It was only an unforeseen difficulty about the size of
+the first stock of paper that led to <i>The Golden Legend</i> not being the
+first book put in hand. It was set up from a transcript of Caxton&#8217;s
+first edition, lent by the Syndics of the Cambridge University Library
+for the purpose. A trial page was got out in March, 1891, and fifty
+pages were in type by May 11th, the day on which the first sheet was
+printed. The first volume was finished, with the exception of the
+illustrations and the preliminary matter, in October, 1891. The two
+illustrations and the title (which was the first woodcut title
+designed by Mr. Morris) were not engraved until June and August, 1892,
+when the third volume was approaching completion. About half a dozen
+impressions of the illustrations were pulled on vellum. A slip asking
+owners of the book not to have it bound with pressure, nor to have the
+edges cut instead of merely trimmed, was inserted in each copy.</p></div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</a></span>8. <i>The Recuyell of the
+Historyes of Troye.</i> By <span class="smcap">Raoul Lefevre</span>. Translated
+by William Caxton. Edited by H. Halliday Sparling. 2 vols. Large 4to. Troy
+type, with table of chapters and glossary in Chaucer type. In black and
+red. Borders 5a, 5, and 8. Woodcut title. 300 paper copies at nine
+guineas, 5 on vellum at eighty pounds. Dated October 14, issued November
+24, 1892. Published by Bernard Quaritch. Bound in limp vellum.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>This book, begun in February, 1892, is the first book printed in Troy
+type, and the first in which Chaucer type appears. It is a reprint of
+the first book printed in English. It had long been a favourite with
+William Morris, who designed a great quantity of initials and
+ornaments for it, and wrote the following note for Mr. Quaritch&#8217;s
+catalogue: &#8220;As to the matter of the book, it makes a thoroughly
+amusing story, instinct with medi&aelig;val thought and manners. For though
+written at the end of the Middle Ages and dealing with classical
+mythology, it has in it no token of the coming Renaissance, but is
+purely medi&aelig;val. It is the last issue of that story of Troy which
+through the whole of the Middle Ages had such a hold on men&#8217;s
+imaginations; the story built up from a rumour of the Cyclic Poets, of
+the heroic City of Troy, defended by Priam and his gallant sons, led
+by Hector the Preux Chevalier, and beset by the violent and brutal
+Greeks, who were looked on as the necessary machinery for bringing
+about the undeniable tragedy of the fall of the City. Surely this is
+well worth reading, if only as a piece of undiluted medi&aelig;valism.&#8221; 2000
+copies of a 4to announcement, with specimen pages, were printed at the
+Kelmscott Press in December, 1892, for distribution by the
+publisher.<a name='fna_11' id='fna_11' href='#f_11'><small>[11]</small></a></p></div>
+
+<p>9. <i>Biblia Innocentium: Being the Story of God&#8217;s Chosen People before the
+Coming of Our Lord Jesus Christ upon Earth.</i> Written anew for children, by
+<span class="smcap">J. W. Mackail</span>, Sometime Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford. 8vo. Border 2.
+200 on paper at a guinea, none on vellum. Dated October 22, issued
+December 9, 1892. Sold by Reeves &amp; Turner. Bound in stiff vellum.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>This was the last book issued in stiff vellum except <i>Hand and Soul</i>,
+and the last with untrimmed edges. It was the first book printed in
+8vo.</p></div>
+
+<p>10. <i>The History of Reynard the Foxe.</i> By <span class="smcap">William Caxton</span>. Reprinted from
+his edition of 1481. Edited by H. Halliday Sparling. Large 4to. Troy type,
+with Glossary in Chaucer type. In black and red. Borders 5a and 7. Woodcut
+title. 300 on paper at three guineas, 10 on vellum at fifteen guineas.
+Dated December 15, 1892, issued January 25, 1893. Published by Bernard
+Quaritch. Bound in limp vellum.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</a></span>About this book, which was first announced as in the press in the list
+dated July, 1892, William Morris wrote the following note for Mr.
+Quaritch&#8217;s catalogue: &#8220;This translation of Caxton&#8217;s is one of the very
+best of his works as to style; and being translated from a kindred
+tongue is delightful as mere language. In its rude joviality, and
+simple and direct delineation of character, it is a thoroughly good
+representative of the famous ancient Beast Epic.&#8221; The edges of this
+book, and of all subsequent books, were trimmed in accordance with the
+invariable practice of the early printers. Mr. Morris much preferred
+the trimmed edges.</p></div>
+
+<p>11. <i>The Poems of William Shakespeare</i>, printed after the original copies
+of <i>Venus and Adonis</i>, 1593. <i>The Rape of Lucrece</i>, 1594. <i>Sonnets</i>, 1609.
+<i>The Lover&#8217;s Complaint.</i> Edited by F. S. Ellis. 8vo. Golden type. In black
+and red. Borders 1 and 2. 500 paper copies at twenty-five shillings, 10 on
+vellum at ten guineas. Dated January 17, issued February 13, 1893. Sold by
+Reeves &amp; Turner. Bound in limp vellum.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>A trial page of this book was set up on November 1, 1892. Though the
+number was large, this has become one of the rarest books issued from
+the Press.<a name='fna_12' id='fna_12' href='#f_12'><small>[12]</small></a></p></div>
+
+<p>12. <i>News from Nowhere: or, An Epoch of Rest, Being Some Chapters from a
+Utopian Romance.</i> By <span class="smcap">William Morris</span>. 8vo. Golden type. In black and red.
+Borders 9a and 4, and a woodcut engraved by W. H. Hooper from a design by
+C. M. Gere. 300 on paper at two guineas, 10 on vellum at ten guineas.
+Dated November 22, 1892, issued March 24, 1893. Sold by Reeves &amp; Turner.
+Bound in limp vellum.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>The text of this book was printed before Shakespeare&#8217;s <i>Poems and
+Sonnets</i>, but it was kept back for the frontispiece, which is a
+picture of the old manor-house in the village of Kelmscott by the
+upper Thames, from which the Press took its name. It was set up from a
+copy of one of Reeves &amp; Turner&#8217;s editions, and in reading it for the
+press the author made a few slight corrections. It was the last book
+except the <i>Savonarola</i> (No. 31) in which he used the old paragraph
+mark <img src="images/symbol.jpg" alt="" />, which was discarded in favour of the leaves, which had
+already been used in the two large 4to books printed in the Troy type.</p></div>
+
+<p>13. <i>The Order of Chivalry.</i> Translated from the French by William Caxton
+and reprinted from his edition of 1484. Edited by F. S. Ellis. And
+<i>L&#8217;Ordene de Chevalerie</i>, with translation by William Morris. Small 4to.
+Chaucer type, in black and red. Borders 9a and 4, and a woodcut designed
+by Sir Edward Burne-Jones. 225 on paper at thirty shillings, 10 on vellum
+at ten guineas. <i>The Order of Chivalry</i> dated November<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</a></span> 10, 1892,
+<i>L&#8217;Ordene de Chevalerie</i> dated February 24, 1893, issued April 12, 1893.
+Sold by Reeves &amp; Turner. Bound in limp vellum.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>This was the last book printed in small 4to. The last section is in
+8vo. It was the first book printed in the Chaucer type. The reprint
+from Caxton was finished while <i>News from Nowhere</i> was in the press,
+and before Shakespeare&#8217;s <i>Poems and Sonnets</i> was begun. The French
+poem and its translation were added as an afterthought, and have a
+separate colophon. Some of the three-line initials which were designed
+for <i>The Well at the World&#8217;s End</i> are used in the French poem, and
+this is their first appearance. The translation was begun on December
+3, 1892, and the border round the frontispiece was designed on
+February 13, 1893.</p></div>
+
+<p>14. <i>The Life of Thomas Woolsey, Cardinal Archbishop of York.</i> Written by
+<span class="smcap">George Cavendish</span>. Edited by F. S. Ellis from the author&#8217;s autograph MS.
+8vo. Golden type. Border 1. 250 on paper at two guineas, 6 on vellum at
+ten guineas. Dated March 30, issued May 3, 1893. Sold by Reeves &amp; Turner.
+Bound in limp vellum.</p>
+
+<p>15. <i>The History of Godefrey of Boloyne and of the Conquest of
+Iherusalem.</i> Reprinted from Caxton&#8217;s edition of 1841. Edited by H.
+Halliday Sparling. Large 4to. Troy type, with list of chapter headings and
+glossary in Chaucer type. In black and red. Borders 5a and 5, and woodcut
+title. 300 on paper at six guineas, 6 on vellum at twenty guineas. Dated
+April 27, issued May 24, 1893. Published by William Morris at the
+Kelmscott Press. Bound in limp vellum.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>This was the fifth and last of the Caxton reprints, with many new
+ornaments and initials, and a new printer&#8217;s mark. It was first
+announced as in the press in the list dated December, 1892. It was the
+first book published and sold at the Kelmscott Press. An announcement
+and order form, with two different specimen pages, was printed at the
+Press, besides a special invoice. A few copies were bound in half
+holland, not for sale.</p></div>
+
+<p>16. <i>Utopia.</i> Written by <span class="smcap">Sir Thomas More</span>. A reprint of the second edition
+of Ralph Robinson&#8217;s translation, with a foreword by William Morris.<a name='fna_13' id='fna_13' href='#f_13'><small>[13]</small></a>
+Edited by F. S. Ellis. 8vo. Chaucer type, with the reprinted title in Troy
+type. In black and red. Borders 4 and 2. 300 on paper at thirty shillings,
+8 on vellum at ten guineas. Dated August 4, issued September 8, 1893. Sold
+by Reeves &amp; Turner. Bound in limp vellum.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>This book was first announced as in the press in the list dated May
+20, 1893.</p></div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</a></span>17. <i>Maud, A Monodrama.</i> By
+<span class="smcap">Alfred, Lord Tennyson</span>. 8vo. Golden type. In
+black and red. Borders 10a and 10, and woodcut title. 500 on paper at two
+guineas, 5 on vellum, not for sale. Dated August 11, issued September 30,
+1893. Published by Macmillan &amp; Co. Bound in limp vellum.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>The borders were specially designed for this book. They were both used
+again in the Keats, and one of them appears in <i>The Saundering Flood</i>.
+It is the first of the 8vo books with a woodcut title.</p></div>
+
+<p>18. <i>Gothic Architecture: A Lecture for the Arts and Crafts Exhibition
+Society.</i> By <span class="smcap">William Morris</span>. 16mo. Golden type. In black and red. 1500 on
+paper at two shillings and sixpence, 45 on vellum at ten and fifteen
+shillings. Bound in half holland.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>This lecture was set up at Hammersmith and printed at the New Gallery
+during the Arts and Crafts Exhibition in October and November, 1893.
+The first copies were ready on October 21st and the book was twice
+reprinted before the Exhibition closed. It was the first book printed
+in 16mo. The four-line initials used in it appear here for the first
+time. The vellum copies were sold during the Exhibition at ten
+shillings, and the price was subsequently raised to fifteen
+shillings.<a name='fna_14' id='fna_14' href='#f_14'><small>[14]</small></a></p></div>
+
+<p>19. <i>Sidonia the Sorceress.</i> By <span class="smcap">William Meinhold</span>. Translated by Francesca
+Speranza, Lady Wilde. Large 4to. Golden type. In black and red. Border 8.
+300 paper copies at four guineas, 10 on vellum at twenty guineas. Dated
+September 15, issued November 1, 1893. Published by William Morris. Bound
+in limp vellum.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Before the publication of this book a large 4to announcement and order
+form was issued, with a specimen page and an interesting description
+of the book and its author, written and signed by William Morris. Some
+copies were bound in half holland not for sale.</p></div>
+
+<p>20. <i>Ballads and Narrative Poems by Dante Gabriel Rossetti.</i> 8vo. Golden
+type. In black and red. Borders 4a and 4, and woodcut title. 310 on paper
+at two guineas, 6 on vellum at ten guineas. Dated October 14, issued in
+November, 1893. Published by Ellis &amp; Elvey. Bound in limp vellum.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>This book was announced as in preparation in the list of August 1,
+1893.</p></div>
+
+<p>21. <i>The Tale of King Florus and the Fair Jehane.</i> Translated by William
+Morris from the French of the 13th century. 16mo. Chaucer type. In black
+and red. Borders 11a and 11,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</a></span> and woodcut title. 350 on paper at seven
+shillings and sixpence, 15 on vellum at thirty shillings. Dated December
+16, issued December 28, 1893. Published by William Morris. Bound in half
+holland.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>This story, like the three other translations with which it is
+uniform, was taken from a little volume called <i>Nouvelles Fran&ccedil;oises
+en prose du XIIIe si&egrave;cle</i>, Paris, Jannet, 1856. They were first
+announced as in preparation under the heading <i>French Tales</i> in the
+list dated May 20, 1893. Eighty-five copies of <i>King Florus</i> were
+bought by J. &amp; M. L. Tregaskis, who had them bound in all parts of the
+world. These are now in the Rylands Library at Manchester.</p></div>
+
+<p>22. <i>The Story of the Glittering Plain. Which has been also called The
+Land of Living Men or The Acre of the Undying.</i> Written by <span class="smcap">William Morris</span>.
+Large 4to. Troy type, with list of chapters in Chaucer type. In black and
+red. Borders 12a and 12, 23 designs by Walter Crane, engraved by A.
+Leverett, and a woodcut title. 250 on paper at five guineas, 7 on vellum
+at twenty pounds. Dated January 13, issued February 17, 1894. Published by
+William Morris. Bound in limp vellum. Neither the borders in this book nor
+six out of the seven frames round the illustrations appear in any other
+book. The seventh is used round the second picture in <i>Love is Enough</i>. A
+few copies were bound in half holland.</p>
+
+<p>23. <i>Of the Friendship of Amis and Amile.</i> <i>Done out of the ancient French
+by</i> <span class="smcap">William Morris</span>. 16mo. Chaucer type. In black and red. Borders 11a and
+11, and woodcut title. 500 on paper at seven shillings and sixpence, 15 on
+vellum at thirty shillings. Dated March 13th, issued April 4, 1894.
+Published by William Morris. Bound in half holland.<a name='fna_15' id='fna_15' href='#f_15'><small>[15]</small></a></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>A poem entitled <i>Amys and Amillion</i>, founded on this story, was
+originally to have appeared in the second volume of the <i>Earthly
+Paradise</i>, but, like some other poems announced at the same time, it
+was not included in the book.</p></div>
+
+<p>20a. <i>Sonnets and Lyrical Poems by Dante Gabriel Rossetti.</i> 8vo. Golden
+type. In black and red. Borders 1a and 1, and woodcut title. 310 on paper
+at two guineas, 6 on vellum at ten guineas. Dated February 20, issued
+April 21, 1894. Published by Ellis &amp; Elvey. Bound in limp vellum.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>This book is uniform with No. 20, to which it forms a sequel. Both
+volumes were read for the press by Mr. W. M. Rossetti.</p></div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</a></span>24. <i>The Poems of John Keats.</i> Edited by F. S. Ellis. 8vo. Golden type. In
+black and red. Borders 10a and 10, and woodcut title. 300 on paper at
+thirty shillings, 7 on vellum at nine guineas. Dated March 7, issued May
+8, 1894. Published by William Morris. Bound in limp vellum.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>This is now (January, 1898) the most sought after of all the smaller
+Kelmscott Press books. It was announced as in preparation in the lists
+of May 27 and August 1, 1893, and as in the press in that of March 31,
+1894, when the woodcut title still remained to be printed.<a name='fna_16' id='fna_16' href='#f_16'><small>[16]</small></a></p></div>
+
+<p>25. <i>Atalanta in Calydon: A Tragedy.</i> By <span class="smcap">Algernon Charles Swinburne</span>. Large
+4to. Troy type, with argument and <i>dramatis person&aelig;</i> in Chaucer type; the
+dedication and quotation from Euripides in Greek type designed by Selwyn
+Image. In black and red. Borders 5a and 5, and woodcut title. 250 on paper
+at two guineas, 8 on vellum at twelve guineas. Dated May 4, issued July
+24, 1894. Published by William Morris. Bound in limp vellum.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>In the vellum copies of this book the colophon is not on the
+eighty-second page as in the paper copies, but on the following page.</p></div>
+
+<p>26. <i>The Tale of the Emperor Coustans and of Over Sea.</i> Done out of
+ancient French by <span class="smcap">William Morris</span>. 16mo. Chaucer type. In black and red.
+Borders 11a and 11, both twice, and two woodcut titles. 525 on paper at
+seven shillings and sixpence, 20 on vellum at two guineas. Dated August
+30, issued September 26, 1894. Published by William Morris. Bound in half
+holland.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>The first of these stories, which was the source of <i>The Man Born to
+be King</i> in <i>The Earthly Paradise</i>, was announced as in preparation in
+the list of March 31, 1894.</p></div>
+
+<p>27. <i>The Wood Beyond the World.</i> By <span class="smcap">William Morris</span>. 8vo. Chaucer type. In
+black and red. Borders 13a and 13, and a frontispiece designed by Sir E.
+Burne-Jones, and engraved on wood by W. Spielmeyer. 350 on paper at two
+guineas, 8 on vellum at ten guineas. Dated May 30, issued October 16,
+1894. Published by William Morris. Bound in limp vellum.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>The borders in this book, as well as the ten half borders, are here
+used for the first time. It was first announced as in the press in the
+list of March 31, 1894. Another edition was published by Lawrence &amp;
+Bullen in 1895.</p></div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</a></span>28. <i>The Book of Wisdom and Lies. A Book of Traditional Stories from
+Georgia and Asia.</i> Translated by Oliver Wardrop from the original of
+Sulkhan-Saba Orbeliani. 8vo. Golden type. In black and red. Borders 4a and
+4, and woodcut title. 250 on paper at two guineas, none on vellum.
+Finished September 20, issued October 29, 1894. Published by Bernard
+Quaritch. Bound in limp vellum.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>The arms of Georgia, consisting of the Holy Coat, appear in the
+woodcut title of this book.<a name='fna_17' id='fna_17' href='#f_17'><small>[17]</small></a></p></div>
+
+<p>29. <i>The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley.</i> Volume 1. Edited by F.
+S. Ellis. 8vo. Golden type. Borders 1a and 1, and woodcut title. 250 on
+paper at twenty-five shillings, 6 on vellum at eight guineas. Not dated,
+issued November 29, 1894. Published by William Morris. Bound in limp
+vellum without ties.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Red ink is not used in this volume, though it is used in the second
+volume, and more sparingly in the third. Some of the half borders
+designed for <i>The Wood Beyond the World</i> reappear before the longer
+poems. The Shelley was first announced as in the press in the list of
+March 31, 1894.<a name='fna_18' id='fna_18' href='#f_18'><small>[18]</small></a></p></div>
+
+<p>30. <i>Psalmi Penitentiales. An English rhymed version of the Seven
+Penitential Psalms.</i> Edited by F. S. Ellis. 8vo. Chaucer type. In black
+and red. 300 on paper at seven shillings and sixpence, 12 on vellum at
+three guineas. Dated November 15, issued December 10, 1894. Published by
+William Morris. Bound in half holland.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>These verses were taken from a manuscript Book of Hours, written at
+Gloucester in the first half of the fifteenth century, but the Rev.
+Professor Skeat has pointed out that the scribe must have copied them
+from an older manuscript, as they are in the Kentish dialect of about
+a century earlier. The half border on p. 34 appears for the first time
+in this book.</p></div>
+
+<p>31. <i>Epistolade Contemptumundi di Frate Hieronymo da Ferrara Dellordinede
+Frati Predicatori la Quale Manda ad Elena Buonaccorsi Sua Madre.</i> Per
+<span class="smcap">Consolarla Della Morte del Fratello</span>, <i>Suo Zio</i>. Edited by Charles Fairfax
+Murray from the original autograph letter. 8vo. Chaucer type. In black
+and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</a></span> red. Border 1. Woodcut on title designed by C. F. Murray and engraved
+by W. H. Hooper. 150 on paper and 6 on vellum. Dated November 30, ready
+December 12, 1894. Bound in half holland.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>This little book was printed for Mr. C. Fairfax Murray, the owner of
+the manuscript, and was not for sale in the ordinary way. The colophon
+is in Italian, and the printer&#8217;s mark is in red.</p></div>
+
+<p>32. <i>The Tale of Beowulf.</i> Done out of the old English tongue by <span class="smcap">William
+Morris</span> and <span class="smcap">A. J. Wyatt</span>. Large 4to. Troy type, with argument, side-notes,
+list of persons and places, and glossary in Chaucer type. In black and
+red. Borders 14a and 14, and woodcut title. 300 on paper at two guineas, 8
+on vellum at ten pounds. Dated January 10, issued February 2, 1895.
+Published by William Morris. Bound in limp vellum.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>The borders in this book were only used once again, in the Jason. A
+note to the reader printed on a slip in the Golden type was inserted
+in each copy. <i>Beowulf</i> was first announced as in preparation in the
+list of May 20, 1893. The verse translation was begun by Mr. Morris,
+with the aid of Mr. Wyatt&#8217;s careful paraphrase of the text, on
+February 21, 1893, and finished on April 10, 1894, but the argument
+was not written by Mr. Morris until December 10, 1894.</p></div>
+
+<p>33. <i>Syr Perecyvelle of Gales.</i> Overseen by F. S. Ellis, after the edition
+edited by J. O. Halliwell from the Thornton MS. in the Library of Lincoln
+Cathedral. 8vo. Chaucer type. In black and red. Borders 13a and 13, and a
+woodcut designed by Sir E. Burne-Jones. 350 on paper at fifteen shillings,
+8 on vellum four guineas. Dated February 16, issued May 2, 1895. Published
+by William Morris. Bound in limp vellum.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>This is the first of the series to which <i>Sire Degrevaunt and Syr
+Isumbrace</i> belong. They were all reprinted from the Camden Society&#8217;s
+volume of 1844, which was a favourite with Mr. Morris from his Oxford
+days. <i>Syr Perecyvelle</i> was first announced in the list of December 1,
+1894. The shoulder-notes were added by Mr. Morris.</p></div>
+
+<p>34. <i>The Life and Death of Jason</i>, A Poem by <span class="smcap">William Morris</span>. Large 4to.
+Troy type, with a few words in Chaucer type. In black and red. Borders 14a
+and 14, and two woodcuts designed by Sir E. Burne-Jones and engraved on
+wood by W. Spielmeyer. 200 on paper at five guineas, 6 on vellum at twenty
+guineas. Dated May 25, issued July 5, 1895. Published by William Morris.
+Bound in limp vellum.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</a></span>This book, announced as in the press in the list of April 21, 1894,
+proceeded slowly, as several other books, notably the Chaucer, were
+being printed at the same time. The text, which had been corrected for
+the second edition of 1868, and for the edition of 1882, was again
+revised by the author. The line fillings on the last page were cut on
+metal for the book, and cast like type.</p></div>
+
+<p>29a. <i>The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley.</i> Volume 11. Edited by F.
+S. Ellis. 8vo. Golden type. In black and red. 250 on paper at twenty-five
+shillings, 6 on vellum at eight guineas. Not dated, issued March 25, 1895.
+Published by William Morris, Bound in limp vellum without ties.</p>
+
+<p>35. <i>Child Christopher and Goldilind the Fair.</i> By <span class="smcap">William Morris</span>. 2 vols.
+16mo. Chaucer type. In black and red. Borders 15a and 15, and woodcut
+title. 600 on paper at fifteen shillings, 12 on vellum at four guineas.
+Dated July 25, issued September 25, 1895. Published by William Morris.
+Bound in half holland, with labels printed in the Golden type.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>The borders designed for this book were only used once again, in <i>Hand
+and Soul</i>. The plot of the story was suggested by that of Havelok the
+Dane, printed by the Early English Text Society.</p></div>
+
+<p>29b. <i>The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley.</i> Volume III. Edited by
+F. S. Ellis. 8vo. Golden type. In black and red. 250 on paper at
+twenty-five shillings, 6 on vellum at eight guineas. Dated August 21,
+issued October 28, 1895. Published by William Morris. Bound in limp vellum
+without ties.</p>
+
+<p>36. <i>Hand and Soul.</i> By <span class="smcap">Dante Gabriel Rossetti</span>. Reprinted from <i>The Germ</i>,
+for Messrs. Way &amp; Williams, of Chicago. 16mo. Golden type. In black and
+red. Borders 15a and 15, and woodcut title. 300 paper copies and 11 vellum
+copies for America. 225 paper copies for sale in England at ten shillings,
+and 10 on vellum at thirty shillings. Dated October 24, issued December
+12, 1895. Bound in stiff vellum, without ties.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>This was the only 16mo book bound in vellum. The English and American
+copies have a slightly different colophon. The shoulder-notes were
+added by Mr. Morris.</p></div>
+
+<p>37. <i>Poems Chosen out of the Works of Robert Herrick.</i> Edited by F. S.
+Ellis. 8vo. Golden type. In black and red. Borders 4a and 4, and woodcut
+title. 250 on paper at thirty shillings, 8 on vellum at eight guineas.
+Dated November 21, 1895, issued February 6, 1896. Published by William
+Morris. Bound in limp vellum.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</a></span>This book was first announced as in preparation in the list of
+December 1, 1894, and as in the press in that of July 1, 1895.</p></div>
+
+<p>38. <i>Poems Chosen out of the Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge.</i> Edited by
+F. S. Ellis. 8vo. Golden type. In black and red. Borders 13a and 13. 300
+on paper at a guinea, 8 on vellum at five guineas. Dated February 5,
+issued April 12, 1896. Published by William Morris. Bound in limp
+vellum.<a name='fna_19' id='fna_19' href='#f_19'><small>[19]</small></a></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>This book contains thirteen poems. It was first announced as in
+preparation in the list of December 1, 1894, and as in the press in
+that of November 26, 1895. It is the last of the series to which
+Tennyson&#8217;s <i>Maud</i>, and the poems of Rossetti, Keats, Shelley, and
+Herrick belong.</p></div>
+
+<p>39. <i>The Well at the World&#8217;s End.</i> By <span class="smcap">William Morris</span>. Large 4to. Double
+columns. Chaucer type. In black and red. Borders 16a, 16, 17a, 17, 18a,
+18, 19a, 19, and four woodcuts designed by Sir E. Burne-Jones. 350 on
+paper at five guineas, 8 on vellum at twenty guineas. Dated March 2,
+issued June 4, 1896. Sold by William Morris. Bound in limp vellum.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>This book, delayed for various reasons, was longer on hand than any
+other. It appears in no less than twelve lists, from that of December,
+1892, to that of November 26, 1895, as &#8220;in the press.&#8221; Trial pages,
+including one in a single column, were ready as early as September,
+1892, and the printing began on December 16th, of that year. The
+edition of <i>The Well at the World&#8217;s End</i>, published by Longmans, was
+then being printed from the author&#8217;s manuscript at the Chiswick Press,
+and the Kelmscott Press edition was set up from the sheets of that
+edition, which, though not issued until October, 1896, was finished in
+1894. The eight borders and the six different ornaments between the
+columns appear here for the first time, but are used again in <i>The
+Water of the Wondrous Isles</i>, with the exception of two borders.</p></div>
+
+<p>40. <i>The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer.</i> Edited by F. S. Ellis. Folio. Chaucer
+type, with headings to the longer poems in Troy type. In black and red.
+Borders 20a to 26, woodcut title, and eighty-seven woodcut illustrations
+designed by Sir E. Burne-Jones. 425 on paper at twenty pounds, 13 on
+vellum at 120 guineas. Dated May 8, issued June 26, 1896. Published by
+William Morris. Bound in half holland.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>The history of this book, which is by far the most important
+achievement of the Kelmscott Press, is as follows:</p>
+
+<p>As far back as June 11, 1891, Mr. Morris spoke of printing a Chaucer
+with a black-letter fount, which he hoped to design. Four months
+later, when most of the Troy type was designed and cut, he expressed
+his intention to use it first on<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</a></span> John Ball, and then on a Chaucer,
+and perhaps a <i>Gesta Romanorum</i>. By January 1, 1892, the Troy type was
+delivered, and early in that month two trial pages, one from <i>The
+Cook&#8217;s Tale</i> and one from <i>Sir Thopas</i>, the latter in double columns,
+were got out. It then became evident that the type was too large for a
+Chaucer, and Mr. Morris decided to have it re-cut in the size known as
+pica. By the end of June he was thus in possession of the type which,
+in the list issued in December, 1892, he named the Chaucer type. In
+July, 1892, another trial page, a passage from <i>The Knight&#8217;s Tale</i>, in
+double columns of fifty-eight lines, was got out, and found to be
+satisfactory. The idea of the Chaucer as it now exists, with
+illustrations by Sir Edward Burne-Jones, then took definite shape.</p>
+
+<p>In a proof of the first list, dated April, 1892, there is an
+announcement of the book as in preparation, in black-letter, large
+quarto, but this was struck out, and does not appear in the list as
+printed in May, nor yet in the July list. In that for December, 1892,
+it is announced for the first time as to be in Chaucer type &#8220;with
+about sixty designs by E. Burne-Jones.&#8221; The next list, dated March 9,
+1893, states that it will be a folio, and that it is in the press, by
+which was meant that a few pages were in type. In the list dated
+August 1, 1893, the probable price is given as twenty pounds. The next
+four lists contain no fresh information, but on August 17, 1894, nine
+days after the first sheet was printed, a notice was sent to the trade
+that there would be 325 copies at twenty pounds, and about sixty
+woodcut designs by Sir Edward Burne-Jones. Three months later it was
+decided to increase the number of illustrations to upwards of seventy,
+and to print another 100 copies of the book. A circular letter was
+sent to the subscribers on November 14th, stating this, and giving
+them an opportunity of cancelling their orders. Orders were not
+withdrawn, the extra copies were immediately taken up, and the list
+for December 1, 1894, which is the first containing full particulars,
+announces that all paper copies are sold.<a name='fna_20' id='fna_20' href='#f_20'><small>[20]</small></a></p>
+
+<p>Mr. Morris began designing his first folio border on February 1, 1893,
+but was dissatisfied with the design and did not finish it. Three days
+later he began the vine border for the first page, and finished it in
+about a week, together with the initial word &#8220;Whan,&#8221; the two lines of
+heading, and the frame for the first picture, and Mr. Hooper engraved
+the whole of these on one block. The first picture was engraved at
+about the same time. A specimen of the first page (differing slightly
+from the same page as it appears in the book) was shown at the Arts
+and Crafts Exhibition in October and November, 1893, and was issued to
+a few leading booksellers, but it was not until August 8, 1894, that
+the first sheet was printed at 14, Upper Mall. On January 8, 1895,
+another press was started at 21, Upper Mall, and from that time two
+presses were almost exclusively at work on the Chaucer. By September
+10th, the last page of <i>The Romaunt of the Rose</i> was printed. In the
+middle of February, 1896, Mr. Morris began designing the title. It was
+finished on the 27th of the same month and engraved by Mr. Hooper in
+March. On May 8th, a year and nine months after the printing of the
+first sheet, the book was completed. On June 2nd, the first two copies
+were delivered to Sir Edward Burne-Jones and Mr. Morris. Mr. Morris&#8217;s
+copy is now at Exeter College, Oxford, with other books printed at the
+Kelmscott Press.</p>
+
+<p>Besides the eighty-seven illustrations designed by Sir Edward
+Burne-Jones, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</a></span> engraved by W. H. Hooper, the Chaucer contains a
+woodcut title, fourteen large borders, eighteen different frames
+around the illustrations, and twenty-six large initial words designed
+for the book by William Morris. Many of these were engraved by C. E.
+Keats, and others by W. H. Hooper and W. Spielmeyer.</p>
+
+<p>In February, 1896, a notice was issued respecting special bindings, of
+which Mr. Morris intended to design four.</p>
+
+<p>Two of these were to have been executed under Mr. Cobden-Sanderson&#8217;s
+direction at the Doves Bindery, and two by Messrs. J. &amp; J. Leighton.
+But the only design that he was able to complete was for a full white
+pigskin binding, which has now been carried out at the Doves Bindery
+on forty-eight copies, including two on vellum.<a name='fna_21' id='fna_21' href='#f_21'><small>[21]</small></a></p></div>
+
+<p>41. <i>The Earthly Paradise.</i> By <span class="smcap">William Morris</span>. Volume I. <i>Prologue: The
+Wanderers.</i> March: <i>Atalanta&#8217;s Race. The Man Born to be King.</i> Medium
+4to. Golden type. In black and red. Borders 27a, 27, 28a, and 28, and
+woodcut title. 225 on paper at thirty shillings, 6 on vellum at seven
+guineas. Dated May 7, issued July 24, 1896. Published by William Morris.
+Bound in limp vellum.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>This was the first book printed on the paper with the apple
+water-mark. The seven other volumes followed it at intervals of a few
+months. None of the ten borders used in the <i>Earthly Paradise</i> appear
+in any other book. The four different half-borders round the poems to
+the months are also not used elsewhere. The first border was designed
+in June, 1895.</p></div>
+
+<p>42. <i>Laudes Beat&aelig; Mari&aelig; Virginis.</i> Latin poems taken from a Psalter
+written in England about <span class="smcaplc">A.D.</span> 1220. Edited by S. C. Cockerell. Large 4to.
+Troy type. In black, red, and blue. 250 on paper at ten shillings, 10 on
+vellum at two guineas. Dated July 7, issued August 7, 1896. Published by
+William Morris. Bound in half holland.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>This was the first book printed at the Kelmscott Press in three
+colours.<a name='fna_22' id='fna_22' href='#f_22'><small>[22]</small></a> The manuscript from which the poems were taken was one of
+the most beautiful of the English books in Mr. Morris&#8217;s possession,
+both as regards writing and ornament. No author&#8217;s name is given to the
+poems, but after this book was issued the Rev. E. S. Dewick pointed
+out that they had already been printed at Tegernsee in 1579, in a 16mo
+volume in which they are ascribed to Stephen Langton. A note to this
+effect was printed in the Chaucer type in December 28, 1896, and
+distributed to the subscribers.</p></div>
+
+<p>41a. <i>The Earthly Paradise.</i> By <span class="smcap">William Morris</span>. Volume II. April: <i>The
+Doom of King Acrisius. The Proud King.</i><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</a></span> Medium 4to. Golden type. In black
+and red. Borders 29a, 29, 28a, and 28. 225 on paper at thirty shillings, 6
+on vellum at seven guineas. Dated June 24, issued September 17, 1896.
+Published by William Morris. Bound in limp vellum.</p>
+
+<p>43. <i>The Floure and the Leafe, and The Boke of Cupide, God of Love, or The
+Cuckow and the Nightingale.</i> Edited by F. S. Ellis. Medium 4to. Troy type,
+with note and colophon in Chaucer type. In black and red. 300 on paper at
+ten shillings, 10 on vellum at two guineas. Dated August 21, issued
+November 2, 1896. Published at the Kelmscott Press. Bound in half holland.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Two of the initial words from the Chaucer are used in this book, one
+at the beginning of each poem. These poems were formerly attributed to
+Chaucer, but recent scholarship has proved that <i>The Floure and the
+Leafe</i> is much later than Chaucer, and that <i>The Cuckow and the
+Nightingale</i> was written by Sir Thomas Clanvowe about <span class="smcaplc">A.D.</span> 1405-10.</p></div>
+
+<p>44. <i>The Shepheardes Calender: Conteyning Twelve Aeglogues, Proportionable
+to the Twelve Monethes.</i> By <span class="smcap">Edmund Spencer</span>. Edited by F. S. Ellis. Medium
+4to. Golden type. In black and red. With twelve full page illustrations by
+A. J. Gaskin. 225 on paper at a guinea, 6 on vellum at three guineas.
+Dated October 14, issued November 26, 1896. Published at the Kelmscott
+Press. Bound in half holland.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>The illustrations in this book were printed from process blocks by
+Walker &amp; Boutall. By an oversight, the names of author, editor, and
+artist were omitted from the colophon.</p></div>
+
+<p>41b. <i>The Earthly Paradise.</i> By <span class="smcap">William Morris</span>. Volume III. May: <i>The
+Story of Cupid and Psyche. The Writing on the Image.</i> June: <i>The Love of
+Alcestis. The Lady of the Land.</i> Medium 4to. Golden type. In black and
+red. Borders 30a, 30, 27a, 27, 28a, 28, 29a, and 29. 225 on paper at
+thirty shillings, 6 on vellum at seven guineas. Dated August 24, issued
+December 5, 1896. Published at the Kelmscott Press. Bound in limp vellum.</p>
+
+<p>41c. <i>The Earthly Paradise.</i> By <span class="smcap">William Morris</span>. Volume IV. July: <i>The Son
+of Cr&oelig;sus. The Watching of the Falcon.</i> August: <i>Pygmalion and the
+Image. Ogier the Dane.</i> Medium 4to. Golden type. In black and red. Borders
+31a, 31, 29a, 29, 28a, 28, 30a, and 30. Dated November 25, 1896, issued
+January<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</a></span> 22, 1897. Published at the Kelmscott Press. Bound in limp vellum.</p>
+
+<p>41d. <i>The Earthly Paradise.</i> By <span class="smcap">William Morris</span>. Volume V. September. <i>The
+Death of Paris. The Land East of the Sun and West of the Moon.</i> October:
+<i>The Story of Acontius and Cydippe. The Man Who Never Laughed Again.</i>
+Medium 4to. Golden type. In black and red. Borders 29a, 29, 27a, 27, 28a,
+28, 31a, and 31. Finished December 24, 1896, issued March 9, 1897.
+Published at the Kelmscott Press. Bound in limp vellum.</p>
+
+<p>41e. <i>The Earthly Paradise.</i> By <span class="smcap">William Morris</span>. Volume VI. November: <i>The
+Story of Rhodope. The Lovers of Gudrun.</i> Medium 4to. Golden type. In black
+and red. Borders 27a, 27, 30a, and 30. Finished February 18, issued May
+11, 1897. Published at the Kelmscott Press. Bound in limp vellum.</p>
+
+<p>41f. <i>The Earthly Paradise.</i> By <span class="smcap">William Morris</span>. Volume VII. December: <i>The
+Golden Apples. The Fostering of Aslaug.</i> January: <i>Bellerophon at Argos.
+The Ring Given to Venus.</i> Medium 4to. Golden type. In black and red.
+Borders 29a, 29, 31a, 31, 30a, 30, 27a, and 27. Finished March 17, issued
+July 29, 1897. Published at the Kelmscott Press. Bound in limp vellum.</p>
+
+<p>45. <i>The Water of the Wondrous Isles.</i> By <span class="smcap">William Morris</span>. Large 4to.
+Chaucer type, in double columns, with a few lines in Troy type at the end
+of each of the seven parts. In black and red. Borders 16a, 17a, 18a, 19,
+and 19a. 250 on paper at three guineas, 6 on vellum at twelve guineas.
+Dated April 1, issued July 29, 1897. Published at the Kelmscott Press.
+Bound in limp vellum.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Unlike <i>The Well at the World&#8217;s End</i>, with which it is mainly uniform,
+this book has red shoulder-notes and no illustrations. Mr. Morris
+began the story in verse on February 4, 1895. A few days later he
+began it afresh in alternate prose and verse; but he was again
+dissatisfied, and finally began it a third time in prose alone, as it
+now stands. It was first announced as in the press in the list of June
+1, 1896, at which date the early chapters were in type, although they
+were not printed until about a month later. The designs for the
+initial words &#8220;Whilom&#8221; and &#8220;Empty&#8221; were begun by William Morris
+shortly before his death, and were finished by R. Catterson-Smith.
+Another edition was published by Longmans on October 1, 1897.</p></div>
+
+<p>41g. <i>The Earthly Paradise.</i> By <span class="smcap">William Morris</span>. Volume VIII. February:
+<i>Bellerophon in Lycia. The Hill of Venus. Epilogue. L&#8217;Envoi.</i> Medium 4to.
+Golden type. In black and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</a></span> red. Borders 28a, 28, 29a, and 29. Finished
+June 10, issued September 27, 1897. Published at the Kelmscott Press.
+Bound in limp vellum.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>The colophon of this final volume of <i>The Earthly Paradise</i> contains
+the following note: &#8220;The borders in this edition of <i>The Earthly
+Paradise</i> were designed by William Morris, except those on page 4 of
+Volumes ii., iii., and iv., afterwards repeated, which were designed
+to match the opposite borders, under William Morris&#8217;s direction, by R.
+Catterson-Smith, who also finished the initial words &#8216;Whilom&#8217; and
+&#8216;Empty&#8217; for <i>The Water of the Wondrous Isles</i>. All the other letters,
+borders, title-pages, and ornaments used at the Kelmscott Press,
+except the Greek type in <i>Atalanta in Calydon</i>, were designed by
+William Morris.&#8221;</p></div>
+
+<p>46. Two trial pages of the projected edition of Lord Berners&#8217;s Translation
+of Froissart&#8217;s Chronicles. Folio. Chaucer type, with heading in Troy type.
+In black and red. Border 32, containing the shields of France, the Empire,
+and England, and a half-border containing those of Reginald, Lord Cobham,
+Sir John Chandos, and Sir Walter Manny. 160 on vellum at a guinea, none on
+paper. Dated September, issued October 7, 1897. Published at the Kelmscott
+Press. Not bound.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>It was the intention of Mr. Morris to make this edition of what was
+since his college days almost his favourite book a worthy companion to
+the Chaucer. It was to have been in two volumes folio, with new cusped
+initials and heraldic ornament throughout. Each volume was to have had
+a large frontispiece designed by Sir Edward Burne-Jones; the subject
+of the first was to have been St. George, that of the second Fame. A
+trial page was set up in the Troy type soon after it came from the
+foundry, in January, 1892. Early in 1893 trial pages were set up in
+the Chaucer type, and in the list for March 9th of that year the book
+is erroneously stated to be in the press. In the three following lists
+it is announced as in preparation. In the list dated December 1, 1893,
+and in the three next lists, it is again announced as in the press,
+and the number to be printed is given as 150. Meanwhile the printing
+of the Chaucer had been begun, and as it was not feasible to carry on
+two folios at the same time, the Froissart again comes under the
+heading &#8220;in preparation&#8221; in the lists from December 1, 1894, to June
+1, 1896. In the prospectus of <i>The Shepheardes Calender</i>, dated
+November 12, 1896, it is announced as abandoned. At that time about
+thirty-four pages were in type, but no sheet had been printed. Before
+the type was broken up, on December 24, 1896, thirty-two copies of
+sixteen of these pages were printed and given as a memento to personal
+friends of the poet and printer whose death now made the completion of
+the book impossible. This suggested the idea of printing two pages for
+wider distribution. The half-border had been engraved in April, 1894,
+by W. Spielmeyer, but the large border only existed as a drawing. It
+was engraved with great skill and spirit by C. E. Keates, and the two
+pages were printed by Stephen Mowlem, with the help of an apprentice,
+in a manner worthy of the designs.</p></div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</a></span>47. <i>Sire Degrevaunt.</i> Edited by F. S. Ellis after the edition printed by
+J. O. Halliwell. 8vo. Chaucer type. In black and red. Borders 1a and 1,
+and a woodcut designed by Sir Edward Burne-Jones. 350 on paper at fifteen
+shillings, 8 on vellum at four guineas. Dated March 14, 1896, issued
+November 12, 1897. Published at the Kelmscott Press. Bound in half
+holland.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>This book, subjects from which were painted by Sir Edward Burne-Jones
+on the walls of the Red House, Upton, Bexley Heath, many years ago,
+was always a favourite with Mr. Morris. The frontispiece was not
+printed until October, 1897, eighteen months after the text was
+finished.</p></div>
+
+<p>48. <i>Syr Ysambrace.</i> Edited by F. S. Ellis after the edition printed by J.
+O. Halliwell from the MS, in the Library of Lincoln Cathedral, with some
+corrections. 8vo. Chaucer type. In black and red. Borders 4a and 4, and a
+woodcut designed by Sir Edward Burne-Jones. 350 on paper at twelve
+shillings, 8 on vellum at four guineas. Dated July 14, issued November 11,
+1897. Published at the Kelmscott Press. Bound in half holland.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>This is the third and last of the reprints from the Camden Society&#8217;s
+volume of Thornton Romances. The text was all set up and partly
+printed by June, 1896, at which time it was intended to include <i>Sir
+Eglamour</i> in the same volume.</p></div>
+
+<p>49. <i>Some German Woodcuts of the Fifteenth Century. Being thirty-five
+reproductions from books that were in the library of the late William
+Morris.</i> Edited, with a list of the principal woodcut books in that
+library, by S. C. Cockerell. Large 4to. Golden type. In red and black. 225
+on paper at thirty shillings, 8 on vellum at five guineas. Dated December
+15, 1897, issued January 6, 1898. Published at the Kelmscott Press. Bound
+in half holland.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Of these thirty-five reproductions twenty-nine were all that were done
+of a series chosen by Mr. Morris to illustrate a catalogue of his
+library, and the other six were prepared by him for an article in the
+fourth number of <i>Bibliographical</i> part of which is reprinted as an
+introduction to the book. The process blocks (with one exception) were
+made by Walker &amp; Boutall, and are of the same size as the original
+cuts.</p></div>
+
+<p>50. <i>The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs.</i> By
+<span class="smcap">William Morris</span>. Small folio. Chaucer type, with title and headings to the
+four books in Troy type. In black and red. Borders 33a and 33, and two
+illustrations designed by Sir Edward Burne-Jones and engraved by W. H.
+Hooper. 160<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</a></span> on paper at six guineas, 6 on vellum at twenty guineas. Dated
+January 19, issued February 25, 1898. Published at the Kelmscott Press.
+Bound in limp vellum, with blue silk ties.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>The two borders used in this book were almost the last that Mr. Morris
+designed. They were intended for an edition of <i>The Hill of Venus</i>,
+which was to have been written in prose by him and illustrated by Sir
+Edward Burne-Jones. The foliage was suggested by the ornament in two
+Psalters of the last half of the thirteenth century in the library at
+Kelmscott House. The initial A at the beginning of the third book was
+designed in March, 1893, for the Froissart, and does not appear
+elsewhere.</p>
+
+<p>An edition of <i>Sigurd the Volsung</i>, which Mr. Morris justly considered
+his masterpiece, was contemplated early in the history of the
+Kelmscott Press. An announcement appears in a proof of the first list,
+dated April, 1892, but it was excluded from the list as issued in May.
+It did not reappear until the list of November 26, 1895, in which, the
+Chaucer being near its completion, <i>Sigurd</i> comes under the heading
+&#8220;in preparation,&#8221; as a folio in Troy type, &#8220;with about twenty-five
+illustrations by Sir Edward Burne-Jones.&#8221; In the list of June 1, 1896,
+it is finally announced as &#8220;In the press,&#8221; the number of illustrations
+is increased to forty, and other particulars are given. Four borders
+had then been designed for it, two of which were used on pages 470 and
+471 of the Chaucer. The other two have not been used, though one of
+them has been engraved. Two pages only were in type, thirty-two copies
+of which were struck off on January 11, 1897, and given to friends,
+with the sixteen pages of Froissart mentioned above.</p></div>
+
+<p>51. <i>The Sundering Flood.</i> Written by <span class="smcap">William Morris</span>. Overseen for the
+press by May Morris. 8vo. Chaucer type. In black and red. Border 10, and a
+map. 300 on paper at two guineas. Dated November 15, 1897, issued February
+25, 1898. Published at the Kelmscott Press. Bound in half holland.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>This was the last romance by William Morris. He began to write it on
+December 21, 1895, and dictated the final words on September 8, 1896.
+The map pasted into the cover was drawn by H. Cribb for Walker &amp;
+Boutall, who prepared the block. In the edition that Longmans are
+about to issue the bands of robbers called in the Kelmscott edition
+Red and Black Skinners appear correctly as Red and Black Skimmers. The
+name was probably suggested by that of the pirates called &#8220;escumours
+of the sea&#8221; on page 154 of <i>Godfrey of Boloyne</i>.</p></div>
+
+<p>52. <i>Love is Enough, or the Freeing of Pharamond; A Morality.</i> Written by
+William Morris. Large 4to. Troy type, with stage directions in Chaucer
+type. In black, red, and blue. Borders 6a and 7, and two illustrations
+designed by Sir Edward Burne-Jones. 300 on paper at two guineas, 8 on
+vellum at ten guineas. Dated December 11, 1897, issued March 24, 1898.
+Published at the Kelmscott Press. Bound in limp vellum.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</a></span>This was the second book printed in three colours at the Kelmscott
+Press. As explained in the colophon, the final picture was not
+designed for this particular edition.</p></div>
+
+<p>53. <i>A Note by William Morris on his Aims in Founding the Kelmscott Press.
+Together with a Short Description of the Press</i>, by <span class="smcap">S. C. Cockerell</span>. And
+an Annotated List of the Books Printed Thereat. Octavo. Golden type, with
+five pages in the Troy and Chaucer types. In black and red. Borders 4a and
+4, and a woodcut designed by Sir E. Burne-Jones. 525 on paper at ten
+shillings, 12 on vellum at two guineas. Dated March 4, issued March 24,
+1898. Published at the Kelmscott Press. Bound in half holland.</p>
+
+<p>Various Lists, Leaflets, and Announcements Printed at the Kelmscott Press:</p>
+
+<p>Eighteen lists of the books printed or in preparation at the Kelmscott
+Press were issued to booksellers and subscribers. The dates of these are
+May, July, and December, 1892; March 9, May 20, May 27, August 1, and
+December 1, 1893; March 31, April 21, July 2, October 1 (a leaflet), and
+December 1, 1894; July 1 and November 26, 1895; June 1, 1896; February 16
+and July 28, 1897. The three lists for 1892, and some copies of that for
+March 9, 1893, were printed on Whatman paper, the last of the stock bought
+for the first edition of <i>The Roots of the Mountains</i>. Besides these,
+twenty-nine announcements, relating mainly to individual books, were
+issued; and eight leaflets, containing extracts from the lists, were
+printed for distribution by Messrs. Morris &amp; Co. The following items, as
+having a more permanent interest than most of these announcements, merit a
+full description:</p>
+
+<p>1. Two forms of invitation to the annual gatherings of the Hammersmith
+Socialist Society on January 30, 1892, and February 11, 1893. Golden type.</p>
+
+<p>2. A four-page leaflet for the Ancoats Brotherhood, with the frontispiece
+from the Kelmscott Press edition of <i>A Dream of John Ball</i> on the first
+page. March, 189 Golden type. 2500 copies.</p>
+
+<p>3. An address to Sir Lowthian Bell, Bart., from his employees, dated 30th
+June, 1894. Eight pages. Golden type. 250 on paper and 2 on vellum.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</a></span>4. A leaflet, with fly-leaf, headed <i>An American Memorial to Keats</i>,
+together with a form of invitation to the unveiling of his bust in
+Hampstead Parish Church on July 16, 1894. Golden type. 750 copies.</p>
+
+<p>5. A slip giving the text of a memorial tablet to Dr. Thomas Sadler, for
+distribution at the unveiling of it in Rosslyn Hill Chapel, Hampstead.
+November, 1894. Golden type. 450 copies.</p>
+
+<p>6. Scholarship certificates for the technical Education Board of the
+London County Council, printed in the oblong borders designed for the
+pictures in Chaucer&#8217;s Works. One of these borders was not used in the
+book, and this is its only appearance. The first certificate was printed
+in November, 1894, and was followed in January, 1896, by eleven
+certificates; in January, 1897, by six certificates; and in February,
+1898, by eleven certificates, all differently worded. Golden type. The
+numbers varied from 12 to 2500 copies.</p>
+
+<p>7. Programmes of the Kelmscott Press annual <i>Wayzgoose</i> for the years
+1892-95. These were printed without supervision from Mr. Morris.</p>
+
+<p>8. Specimen showing the three types used at the Press for insertion in the
+first edition of Strange&#8217;s <i>Alphabets</i> March, 1895. 2000 ordinary copies
+and 60 on large paper.</p>
+
+<p>9. Cards for Associates of the Deaconess Institution for the Diocese of
+Rochester. One side of this card is printed in Chaucer type; on the other
+there is a prayer in the Troy type enclosed in a small border which was
+not used elsewhere. It was designed for the illustrations of a projected
+edition of <i>The House of the Wolfings</i>, April, 1897. 250 copies.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/botban12.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[Pg 291]</a></span></p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/banner17.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="title">INDEX.</p>
+
+
+<p class="index">
+<span class="huge">A</span><br />
+<br />
+<i>&AElig;neid, The</i>, <a href="#Page_122">122-124</a>, <a href="#Page_144">144</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>&AElig;schylus</i>, <a href="#Page_262">262</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Agamemnon</i>, Browning&#8217;s, <a href="#Page_124">124</a><br />
+<br />
+Allingham, William, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <a href="#Page_70">70</a><br />
+<br />
+Amiens Cathedral, article on, by Morris, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>, <a href="#Page_36">36-39</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Amis and Amile</i>, translation by Morris, <a href="#Page_229">229</a><br />
+<br />
+Archbishop of Canterbury, <a href="#Page_177">177</a><br />
+<br />
+Aristophanes, <a href="#Page_262">262</a><br />
+<br />
+Arnold, Matthew, <a href="#Page_149">149</a><br />
+<br />
+Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society, The, <a href="#Page_191">191</a><br />
+<br />
+Art Worker&#8217;s Guild, The, <a href="#Page_192">192</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Atalanta in Calydon</i>, Swinburne&#8217;s, <a href="#Page_229">229</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Athen&aelig;um, The</i>, <a href="#Page_152">152</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<span class="huge">B</span><br />
+<br />
+Bagehot, Walter, quoted, <a href="#Page_36">36</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Ballads and Narrative Poems</i>, Rossetti&#8217;s, <a href="#Page_229">229</a><br />
+<br />
+Batchelor, Mr., <a href="#Page_221">221</a><br />
+<br />
+Bax, E. Belfort, <a href="#Page_218">218</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Beata Beatrix</i>, picture by Rossetti, <a href="#Page_55">55</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Beauty of Life, The</i>, Morris&#8217;s lecture on, <a href="#Page_65">65</a><br />
+<br />
+Belgium, <a href="#Page_110">110</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Beowulf, The Tale of</i>, <a href="#Page_230">230</a>, <a href="#Page_231">231</a>, <a href="#Page_262">262</a><br />
+<br />
+Besant, Mrs., <a href="#Page_180">180</a><br />
+<br />
+Bethel, Alfred, article on, by Morris, <a href="#Page_34">34</a><br />
+<br />
+Bible, the, <a href="#Page_262">262</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Biblia Innocentium</i>, Mackail&#8217;s, <a href="#Page_228">228</a><br />
+<br />
+Bibliographical Society, The, <a href="#Page_192">192</a><br />
+<br />
+Birkbeck Hill, Dr., <a href="#Page_47">47</a>, <a href="#Page_73">73</a><br />
+<br />
+Birmingham Society of Artists, lecture to, <a href="#Page_62">62</a><br />
+<br />
+Blackburn, <a href="#Page_168">168</a><br />
+<br />
+Blake, William, <a href="#Page_263">263</a><br />
+<br />
+&#8220;Bloody Sunday,&#8221; <a href="#Page_179">179</a><br />
+<br />
+Boccaccio, <a href="#Page_263">263</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Book of Wisdom and Lies, The</i>, <a href="#Page_230">230</a><br />
+<br />
+Borrow, George, <a href="#Page_263">263</a><br />
+<br />
+British Museum, the woodblocks of Kelmscott Press in possession of, <a href="#Page_235">235</a><br />
+<br />
+Brown, Madox, <a href="#Page_113">113</a><br />
+<br />
+Browning, Robert, his poems, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>, <a href="#Page_57">57-59</a><br />
+<br />
+Bryant, William Cullen, his translation of <i>The Odyssey</i> compared with Morris&#8217;s translation, <a href="#Page_142">142</a><br />
+<br />
+Bulgaria, <a href="#Page_146">146</a><br />
+<br />
+Burne-Jones, Edward, <a href="#Page_1">1</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his first meeting with Morris, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">the beginning of his art, <a href="#Page_26">26</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his trip with Morris and Fulford through Northern France, <a href="#Page_26">26</a>, <a href="#Page_27">27</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his decision to leave college and study art, <a href="#Page_27">27</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his admiration for Rossetti, <a href="#Page_26">26</a>, <a href="#Page_27">27</a> <i>et seq.</i></span><br />
+<br />
+Bury Wood, <a href="#Page_15">15</a>, <a href="#Page_16">16</a><br />
+<br />
+Byron, <a href="#Page_236">236</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<span class="huge">C</span><br />
+<br />
+Cambridge University Library, <a href="#Page_221">221</a><br />
+<br />
+Canterbury Cathedral, Morris&#8217;s early visit to, <a href="#Page_6">6</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Canterbury Tales, The</i>, <a href="#Page_115">115</a><br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[Pg 292]</a></span><br />
+<i>Captain Singleton</i>, <a href="#Page_263">263</a><br />
+<br />
+Carlyle, Thomas, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a href="#Page_150">150</a>, <a href="#Page_263">263</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Carmagnole, The</i>, song, <a href="#Page_178">178</a><br />
+<br />
+Carpets, <a href="#Page_89">89</a><br />
+<br />
+Catterson-Smith, R., <a href="#Page_233">233</a><br />
+<br />
+Catullus, <a href="#Page_262">262</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Chants for Socialists</i>, <a href="#Page_218">218</a><br />
+<br />
+Chartres, <a href="#Page_27">27</a><br />
+<br />
+Chaucer, <a href="#Page_115">115</a>, <a href="#Page_116">116</a>, <a href="#Page_119">119</a>, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>, <a href="#Page_231">231-234</a>, <a href="#Page_237">237</a>, <a href="#Page_238">238</a>, <a href="#Page_256">256</a>, <a href="#Page_262">262</a><br />
+<br />
+Chaucer type, the, <a href="#Page_224">224</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Child Christopher and Goldilands the Fair</i>, <a href="#Page_231">231</a><br />
+<br />
+Chingford Hotel, <a href="#Page_15">15</a><br />
+<br />
+Chiswick Press, the, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>, <a href="#Page_205">205</a>, <a href="#Page_206">206</a><br />
+<br />
+Clarke, William, <a href="#Page_166">166</a><br />
+<br />
+Clay Road, <a href="#Page_15">15</a><br />
+<br />
+Cockerell, S. C., <a href="#Page_234">234</a><br />
+<br />
+Coleridge&#8217;s <i>Poems</i>, selection from, by Morris, <a href="#Page_232">232</a>, <a href="#Page_263">263</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Colonel Jack</i>, <a href="#Page_263">263</a><br />
+<br />
+Colour, Morris&#8217;s opinions on, <a href="#Page_83">83</a>, <a href="#Page_84">84</a>, <a href="#Page_92">92</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Commonweal, The</i>, organ of the Socialist League, <a href="#Page_175">175</a>, <a href="#Page_183">183</a>, <a href="#Page_185">185</a>, <a href="#Page_195">195</a>, <a href="#Page_201">201</a>, <a href="#Page_203">203</a>, <a href="#Page_209">209</a>, <a href="#Page_210">210</a>, <a href="#Page_218">218</a><br />
+<br />
+Crane, Walter, <a href="#Page_175">175</a>, <a href="#Page_192">192</a>, <a href="#Page_229">229</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<span class="huge">D</span><br />
+<br />
+<i>Daily Chronicle, The</i>, Morris&#8217;s letters to, concerning Epping Forest, <a href="#Page_12">12-18</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">letter by Morris on Socialism, <a href="#Page_186">186-189</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<i>Daily News, The</i>, quotation from, <a href="#Page_146">146-148</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Daisy Chain, The</i>, its influence on Morris, <a href="#Page_24">24</a><br />
+<br />
+Dante, <a href="#Page_262">262</a><br />
+<br />
+Day, Lewis, <a href="#Page_31">31</a>, <a href="#Page_78">78</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Defence of Guenevere, The</i>, <a href="#Page_54">54</a>, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a href="#Page_228">228</a><br />
+<br />
+Democratic Federation, the, <a href="#Page_157">157</a>, <a href="#Page_168">168</a>, <a href="#Page_170">170</a>, <a href="#Page_174">174</a>, <a href="#Page_180">180</a><br />
+<br />
+De Vinne, Th., on the Kelmscott Press, <a href="#Page_224">224</a><br />
+<br />
+Dickens, Charles, <a href="#Page_263">263</a><br />
+<br />
+Dixon, Canon, <a href="#Page_34">34</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Dream of John Ball, A</i>, <a href="#Page_195">195</a>, <a href="#Page_201">201-203</a>, <a href="#Page_228">228</a><br />
+<br />
+Dumas, Alexandre, <a href="#Page_263">263</a><br />
+<br />
+D&uuml;rer, <a href="#Page_261">261</a><br />
+<br />
+Dyes, Morris&#8217;s preferences in, <a href="#Page_91">91</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<span class="huge">E</span><br />
+<br />
+<i>Earthly Paradise, The</i>, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a href="#Page_115">115</a>, <a href="#Page_116">116-120</a>, <a href="#Page_144">144</a>, <a href="#Page_219">219</a>, <a href="#Page_233">233</a><br />
+<br />
+Eastern Question Association, The, <a href="#Page_148">148</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Edda, The</i>, <a href="#Page_262">262</a><br />
+<br />
+Ellis, F. S., <a href="#Page_221">221-232</a>, <a href="#Page_237">237</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>English Illustrated Magazine, The</i>, <a href="#Page_218">218</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Epistola de Contemptu Mundi</i>, <a href="#Page_230">230</a><br />
+<br />
+Epping Forest, Morris&#8217;s early familiarity with, <a href="#Page_7">7</a>, <a href="#Page_11">11</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his letters concerning its destruction, <a href="#Page_11">11-18</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<i>Erewhon</i>, Kingsley&#8217;s, <a href="#Page_163">163</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Eve of Crecy</i>, poem by Morris, <a href="#Page_55">55</a><br />
+<br />
+Exeter College, <a href="#Page_193">193</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Exile, The</i>, <a href="#Page_262">262</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Eyrbyggja Saga, The</i>, <a href="#Page_144">144</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<span class="huge">F</span><br />
+<br />
+Fair Mead Bottom, <a href="#Page_15">15</a><br />
+<br />
+Farringdon Road, <a href="#Page_101">101</a>, <a href="#Page_177">177</a><br />
+<br />
+Faulkner, Charles, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>, <a href="#Page_73">73</a>, <a href="#Page_108">108</a>, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>, <a href="#Page_263">263</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Floure and the Leafe, The</i>, <a href="#Page_233">233</a><br />
+<br />
+Forman, Buxton, <a href="#Page_205">205</a>, <a href="#Page_206">206</a><br />
+<br />
+Freeman, E. A., <a href="#Page_149">149</a><br />
+<br />
+Froissart, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>, <a href="#Page_233">233</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<span class="huge">G</span><br />
+<br />
+<i>Germ, The</i>, <a href="#Page_33">33</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Gertha&#8217;s Lovers</i>, <a href="#Page_36">36</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Ghirlandata, The</i>, picture by Rossetti, <a href="#Page_55">55</a><br />
+<br />
+Giotto, <a href="#Page_261">261</a><br />
+<br />
+Gisli, <a href="#Page_109">109</a><br />
+<br />
+Glasgow, <a href="#Page_168">168</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Glittering Plain, The</i>, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>, <a href="#Page_229">229</a>, <a href="#Page_246">246</a>, <a href="#Page_248">248</a><br />
+<br />
+Godefrey of Boloyne, Caxton&#8217;s history of, <a href="#Page_228">228</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Golden Legend</i>, Caxton&#8217;s, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>, <a href="#Page_223">223</a>, <a href="#Page_227">227</a>, <a href="#Page_228">228</a><br />
+<br />
+Golden type, the, <a href="#Page_221">221</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Goldilocks and Goldilocks</i>, <a href="#Page_7">7</a>, <a href="#Page_228">228</a><br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[Pg 293]</a></span><br />
+<i>Good King Wenceslas</i>, ballad printed at the Kelmscott Press, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>, <a href="#Page_5">5</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Gothic Architecture</i>, lecture by Morris, <a href="#Page_228">228</a><br />
+<br />
+Green, J. R., <a href="#Page_149">149</a><br />
+<br />
+Grettir, <a href="#Page_109">109</a><br />
+<br />
+Grimm, <a href="#Page_263">263</a><br />
+<br />
+Gudrun, <a href="#Page_109">109</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<span class="huge">H</span><br />
+<br />
+Hammersmith, <a href="#Page_97">97</a>, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>, <a href="#Page_108">108</a>, <a href="#Page_176">176</a>, <a href="#Page_181">181</a>, <a href="#Page_257">257</a><br />
+<br />
+Hammersmith Socialist Society, The, <a href="#Page_185">185</a>, <a href="#Page_189">189</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Hand and Soul</i>, Rossetti&#8217;s, <a href="#Page_231">231</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Hardy Norseman&#8217;s Home of Yore</i>, <a href="#Page_149">149</a><br />
+<br />
+Havre, <a href="#Page_27">27</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Heir of Redclyffe, The</i>, <a href="#Page_24">24</a><br />
+<br />
+Herodotus, <a href="#Page_262">262</a><br />
+<br />
+Herrick&#8217;s <i>Poems</i>, <a href="#Page_231">231</a><br />
+<br />
+Hesiod, <a href="#Page_262">262</a><br />
+<br />
+High Beach, <a href="#Page_17">17</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>History of Florence</i>, Arezzo&#8217;s, <a href="#Page_220">220</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>History of Oversea</i>, translated by Morris, <a href="#Page_230">230</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Historyes of Troye</i>, Caxton&#8217;s, <a href="#Page_223">223</a>, <a href="#Page_228">228</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Hollow Land, The</i>, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>, <a href="#Page_40">40</a><br />
+<br />
+Homer, <a href="#Page_262">262</a><br />
+<br />
+Hornbeams, Morris&#8217;s liking for, <a href="#Page_13">13</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>House of the Wolfings, The</i>, <a href="#Page_195">195</a>, <a href="#Page_203">203-205</a>, <a href="#Page_207">207</a>, <a href="#Page_239">239</a>, <a href="#Page_246">246</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Huckleberry Finn</i>, <a href="#Page_263">263</a><br />
+<br />
+Hughes, Arthur, <a href="#Page_49">49</a><br />
+<br />
+Hugo, Victor, <a href="#Page_263">263</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<span class="huge">I</span><br />
+<br />
+Iceland, Morris&#8217;s first voyage to, <a href="#Page_108">108-110</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">second voyage, <a href="#Page_110">110</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<i>Idylls of the King</i>, Tennyson&#8217;s, <a href="#Page_126">126</a>, <a href="#Page_136">136</a><br />
+<br />
+Irish National League, The, <a href="#Page_180">180</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<span class="huge">J</span><br />
+<br />
+<i>Jorrocks, Mr.</i>, <a href="#Page_263">263</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Justice</i>, organ of the Democratic Federation, <a href="#Page_168">168</a>, <a href="#Page_169">169</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<span class="huge">K</span><br />
+<br />
+Kalevala, <a href="#Page_262">262</a><br />
+<br />
+Keats, John, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a href="#Page_27">27</a>, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>, <a href="#Page_229">229</a>, <a href="#Page_238">238</a>, <a href="#Page_263">263</a><br />
+<br />
+Kelmscott Church, <a href="#Page_258">258</a><br />
+<br />
+Kelmscott House, <a href="#Page_108">108</a>, <a href="#Page_221">221</a><br />
+<br />
+Kelmscott Books, prices of, <a href="#Page_238">238</a><br />
+<br />
+Kelmscott Manor House, <a href="#Page_101">101-108</a><br />
+<br />
+Kelmscott Press, The, <a href="#Page_177">177</a>, <a href="#Page_219">219-239</a>, <a href="#Page_255">255</a><br />
+<br /><a name="lesson" id="lesson"></a>
+<i>King&#8217;s Lesson, A</i>, <a href="#Page_203">203</a><br />
+<br />
+Kingsley, Charles, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a href="#Page_25">25</a><br />
+<br />
+Koburger, Anthony, <a href="#Page_223">223</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<span class="huge">L</span><br />
+<br />
+Lang, Andrew, <a href="#Page_122">122-124</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Laudes Beat&aelig; Mari&aelig; Virginis</i>, <a href="#Page_233">233</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Laxd&aelig;la Saga, The</i>, <a href="#Page_116">116</a><br />
+<br />
+Lechlade, <a href="#Page_101">101</a><br />
+<br />
+Leeds, <a href="#Page_168">168</a><br />
+<br />
+Leicester, <a href="#Page_168">168</a><br />
+<br />
+Leonardo, <a href="#Page_261">261</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Lesser Arts, The</i>, lecture by Morris on, <a href="#Page_94">94</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Life and Death of Jason, The</i>, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>, <a href="#Page_231">231</a>, <a href="#Page_238">238</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Life of Cardinal Wolsey</i>, Cavendish&#8217;s, <a href="#Page_228">228</a><br />
+<br />
+Linnell, Alfred, <a href="#Page_180">180</a>, <a href="#Page_181">181</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Looking Backward</i>, Bellamy&#8217;s, <a href="#Page_209">209</a><br />
+<br />
+Loughton, <a href="#Page_15">15</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Love is Enough</i>, <a href="#Page_120">120-122</a>, <a href="#Page_219">219</a>, <a href="#Page_234">234</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Lovers of Gudrun, The</i>, <a href="#Page_116">116</a><br />
+<br />
+Lowell, J. R., quoted, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>, <a href="#Page_229">229</a><br />
+<br />
+Lucretius, <a href="#Page_262">262</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<span class="huge">M</span><br />
+<br />
+<i>Mabinogion</i>, <a href="#Page_263">263</a><br />
+<br />
+Mackail, Mr., <a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>, <a href="#Page_97">97</a>, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>, <a href="#Page_150">150</a>, <a href="#Page_191">191</a>, <a href="#Page_193">193</a>, <a href="#Page_229">229</a>, <a href="#Page_263">263</a><br />
+<br />
+Maeterlinck, Morris compared to, <a href="#Page_57">57</a><br />
+<br />
+Madox-Brown, Ford, <a href="#Page_70">70</a><br />
+<br />
+Magnusson, Mr., <a href="#Page_108">108</a>, <a href="#Page_125">125</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Mahabbarata</i>, <a href="#Page_262">262</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Making the Best of It</i>, lecture by Morris on house-decoration, <a href="#Page_83">83</a><br />
+<br />
+Manchester, <a href="#Page_168">168</a><br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[Pg 294]</a></span><br />
+Marlborough College, Morris a student in, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>, <a href="#Page_9">9</a><br />
+<br />
+Marshall, Peter Paul, <a href="#Page_70">70</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Maud</i>, Tennyson&#8217;s, <a href="#Page_228">228</a><br />
+<br />
+Meinhold, William, <a href="#Page_229">229</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Men and Women</i>, Browning&#8217;s, reviewed by Morris, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>, <a href="#Page_39">39</a><br />
+<br />
+Merton Abbey, <a href="#Page_175">175</a>, <a href="#Page_190">190</a><br />
+<br />
+Milton, <a href="#Page_263">263</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Moll Flanders</i>, <a href="#Page_263">263</a><br />
+<br />
+Monk Wood, <a href="#Page_15">15</a><br />
+<br />
+Morris, May (Mrs. Sparling), daughter of Wm. Morris, <a href="#Page_177">177</a><br />
+<br />
+Morris, Mrs., wife of William Morris, <a href="#Page_51">51</a>, <a href="#Page_53">53</a>, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a href="#Page_66">66</a><br />
+<br />
+Morris and Co., <a href="#Page_69">69</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">formation of the firm, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">prospectus of, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">dissolution of, <a href="#Page_111">111-113</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<i>Morte d&#8217;Arthur</i>, painting from, at Oxford Union, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_263">263</a><br />
+<br />
+Murray, Fairfax, <a href="#Page_230">230</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<span class="huge">N</span><br />
+<br />
+<i>Nature of the Gothic, The</i>, <a href="#Page_160">160</a>, <a href="#Page_228">228</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Newcomes, The</i>, quotation from, <a href="#Page_30">30</a><br />
+<br />
+Newman, Jno., <a href="#Page_25">25</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>News from Nowhere</i>, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">quotation from, <a href="#Page_103">103-107</a>, <a href="#Page_163">163-165</a>, <a href="#Page_195">195</a>, <a href="#Page_200">200</a>, <a href="#Page_209">209-212</a>, <a href="#Page_213">213</a>, <a href="#Page_238">238</a>, <a href="#Page_258">258</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<i>Nibelungen Lied</i>, <a href="#Page_262">262</a><br />
+<br />
+Njal, <a href="#Page_109">109</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<span class="huge">O</span><br />
+<br />
+<i>Odyssey, The</i>, <a href="#Page_142">142-144</a>, <a href="#Page_210">210</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Old Story Retold, An</i>, see <a href="#lesson"><i>A King&#8217;s Lesson</i></a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Omar Khayyam</i>, <a href="#Page_262">262</a><br />
+<br />
+Orbeliani, Sulkhan-Saba, <a href="#Page_230">230</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Order of Chivalry, The</i>, Caxton&#8217;s translation of, <a href="#Page_228">228</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Ordination of Knighthood</i>, Morris&#8217;s translation of, <a href="#Page_228">228</a><br />
+<br />
+Ovid, <a href="#Page_262">262</a><br />
+<br />
+Oxford, <a href="#Page_191">191</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Morris&#8217;s life at, <a href="#Page_1">1-29</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">abuses at, <a href="#Page_22">22-23</a>, <a href="#Page_31">31</a>, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>, <a href="#Page_168">168</a>, <a href="#Page_193">193</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<i>Oxford and Cambridge Magazine, The</i>, <a href="#Page_33">33</a><br />
+<br />
+Oxford Union, paintings for, <a href="#Page_49">49-52</a>, <a href="#Page_54">54</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<span class="huge">P</span><br />
+<br />
+<i>Pall-Mall Gazette, The</i>, <a href="#Page_189">189</a>, <a href="#Page_261">261</a><br />
+<br />
+Paper used at Kelmscott Press, <a href="#Page_222">222</a><br />
+<br />
+Patmore, Coventry, on Oxford Union paintings, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>, <a href="#Page_120">120</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Penitential Psalms, The</i>, <a href="#Page_230">230</a><br />
+<br />
+Pennell, Joseph, <a href="#Page_181">181</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Percyvelle of Gales, Syr</i>, <a href="#Page_231">231</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Piers Plowman</i>, <a href="#Page_262">262</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Pilgrims of Hope, The</i>, poem by Morris, <a href="#Page_195">195-201</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Pilgrim&#8217;s Progress</i>, <a href="#Page_263">263</a><br />
+<br />
+Plato, <a href="#Page_262">262</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Pliny</i>, Jensen&#8217;s <a href="#Page_220">220</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Poems</i>, Keats&#8217;s, <a href="#Page_229">229</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Poems</i>, Shakespeare&#8217;s, <a href="#Page_228">228</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Poems by the Way</i>, <a href="#Page_7">7</a>, <a href="#Page_227">227</a><br />
+<br />
+Pollen, J. Hungerford, <a href="#Page_49">49</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Praise of My Lady</i>, poem by Morris, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>, <a href="#Page_53">53</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Prinsep</i>, Valentine, <a href="#Page_49">49</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Prioress&#8217;s Tale, The</i>, Burne-Jones&#8217;s paintings from, <a href="#Page_47">47</a><br />
+<br />
+Professorship of Poetry at Oxford, Morris declines, <a href="#Page_149">149</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Proserpine</i>, picture by Rossetti, <a href="#Page_54">54</a><br />
+<br />
+Pugin, <a href="#Page_31">31</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<span class="huge">Q</span><br />
+<br />
+Queen Square, Morris&#8217;s residence in, <a href="#Page_97">97</a>, <a href="#Page_101">101</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Quest, The</i>, article by Morris in, <a href="#Page_102">102</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<span class="huge">R</span><br />
+<br />
+Raphael, <a href="#Page_261">261</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Rapunzel</i>, poem by Morris, <a href="#Page_57">57</a><br />
+<br />
+Red Lion Square, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>, <a href="#Page_81">81</a><br />
+<br />
+Red House, The, <a href="#Page_61">61-68</a>, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>, <a href="#Page_97">97</a>, <a href="#Page_101">101</a>, <a href="#Page_114">114</a><br />
+<br />
+Rembrandt, <a href="#Page_261">261</a><br />
+<br />
+Restoration of ancient buildings, <a href="#Page_32">32</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Reynard the Fox</i>, <a href="#Page_263">263</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Robinson Crusoe</i>, <a href="#Page_263">263</a><br />
+<br />
+Robinson, Ralph, <a href="#Page_213">213</a>, <a href="#Page_228">228</a><br />
+<br />
+Rome, <a href="#Page_61">61</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Roots of the Mountains, The</i>, <a href="#Page_195">195</a>, <a href="#Page_207">207-209</a>, <a href="#Page_246">246</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Rosamond</i>, Swinburne&#8217;s, <a href="#Page_54">54</a><br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[Pg 295]</a></span><br />
+Rossetti, Dante Gabriel, <a href="#Page_1">1</a>, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_27">27</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Morris&#8217;s first meeting with, <a href="#Page_40">40-42</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his service to Morris, <a href="#Page_43">43-46</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">at Oxford, <a href="#Page_49">49-51</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">and Jane Burden, <a href="#Page_51">51</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><i>The Defence of Guenevere</i> dedicated to, <a href="#Page_54">54</a>, <a href="#Page_55">55</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his part in the formation of the firm &#8220;Morris, Marshall, Faulkner, &amp; Co.,&#8221; <a href="#Page_69">69-74</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">at Kelmscott, <a href="#Page_101">101-103</a>, <a href="#Page_108">108</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his attitude respecting the dissolution of the firm, <a href="#Page_111">111-113</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his <i>Hand and Soul</i>, <a href="#Page_231">231</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Rossetti, William, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>, <a href="#Page_113">113</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, The</i>, <a href="#Page_144">144</a><br />
+<br />
+Rubens, Jacobus, <a href="#Page_220">220</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Ruin, The</i>, <a href="#Page_262">262</a><br />
+<br />
+Ruskin, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a href="#Page_27">27</a>, <a href="#Page_151">151</a>, <a href="#Page_160">160</a>, <a href="#Page_263">263</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<span class="huge">S</span><br />
+<br />
+St. Mark&#8217;s Cathedral, <a href="#Page_154">154</a><br />
+<br />
+Savernake Forest, Morris&#8217;s early familiarity with, <a href="#Page_7">7</a><br />
+<br />
+Savonarola, <a href="#Page_230">230</a><br />
+<br />
+Schoeffer, Peter, <a href="#Page_223">223</a><br />
+<br />
+Scott, Gilbert, <a href="#Page_31">31</a>, <a href="#Page_152">152</a><br />
+<br />
+Scott, Walter, <a href="#Page_5">5</a>, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_263">263</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Shahnameh</i>, <a href="#Page_262">262</a><br />
+<br />
+Shakespeare, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a href="#Page_137">137</a><br />
+<br />
+Shaw, Bernard, on <i>Nupkins Awakened</i>, <a href="#Page_31">31</a>, <a href="#Page_179">179</a><br />
+<br />
+Shelley, Percy Bysshe, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a href="#Page_101">101</a>, <a href="#Page_230">230</a>, <a href="#Page_263">263</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Shepherde&#8217;s Calender, The</i>, <a href="#Page_233">233</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Sidonia the Sorceress</i>, Lady Wilde&#8217;s, <a href="#Page_228">228</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Signs of Change</i>, lectures by Morris, <a href="#Page_218">218</a><br />
+<br />
+Sigurd, <a href="#Page_109">109</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Sir Galahad</i>, <a href="#Page_54">54</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Sire Degravaunt</i>, <a href="#Page_66">66</a>, <a href="#Page_234">234</a><br />
+<br />
+Socialism, <a href="#Page_162">162-218</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Socialism from the Root Up</i>, book by Morris and Bax, <a href="#Page_218">218</a><br />
+<br />
+Socialist League, The, <a href="#Page_175">175-177</a>, <a href="#Page_180">180</a>, <a href="#Page_182">182</a>, <a href="#Page_185">185</a><br />
+<br />
+Society for Protection of Ancient Buildings, The, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>, <a href="#Page_157">157</a><br />
+<br />
+Society of Antiquaries, <a href="#Page_192">192</a><br />
+<br />
+Sophocles, <a href="#Page_262">262</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Spectator, The</i>, letter from Morris in, <a href="#Page_252">252</a><br />
+<br />
+Stanhope, Spencer, <a href="#Page_49">49</a><br />
+<br />
+Stanmore Tapestry, The, <a href="#Page_99">99</a><br />
+<br />
+Stead, William, <a href="#Page_263">263</a><br />
+<br />
+Stevenson, Robert Louis, his letter to his father, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_124">124</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Stones of Venice, The</i>, <a href="#Page_27">27</a>, <a href="#Page_160">160</a>, <a href="#Page_228">228</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Story of the Glittering Plain, The</i>, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>, <a href="#Page_218">218</a>, <a href="#Page_227">227</a>, <a href="#Page_243">243</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Story of Sigur the Volsung, The</i>, <a href="#Page_125">125-142</a>, <a href="#Page_144">144</a>, <a href="#Page_146">146</a>, <a href="#Page_227">227</a>, <a href="#Page_234">234</a>, <a href="#Page_238">238</a><br />
+<br />
+Street, George Edmund, <a href="#Page_31">31</a>, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>, <a href="#Page_63">63</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Sundering Flood, The</i>, <a href="#Page_234">234</a>, <a href="#Page_239">239</a>, <a href="#Page_240">240</a>, <a href="#Page_242">242</a>, <a href="#Page_257">257</a><br />
+<br />
+Surts-hellir, cave at, <a href="#Page_109">109</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Svend and his Brethren</i>, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>, <a href="#Page_37">37</a><br />
+<br />
+Swainslow, <a href="#Page_256">256</a><br />
+<br />
+Swinburne, A. C., <a href="#Page_229">229</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Syr Ysambrace</i>, <a href="#Page_234">234</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<span class="huge">T</span><br />
+<br />
+<i>Tables Turned, The; or, Nupkins Awakened</i>, farce by Morris, <a href="#Page_177">177</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Tale of the Emperor Constans, The</i>, translated by Morris, <a href="#Page_230">230</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Tale of King Florus and Fair Tehane</i>, translated by Morris, <a href="#Page_227">227</a><br />
+<br />
+Taylor, George Warrington, Morris&#8217;s business manager, <a href="#Page_97">97</a><br />
+<br />
+Tennyson, Alfred, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a href="#Page_177">177</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Teutonic Mythology</i>, <a href="#Page_263">263</a><br />
+<br />
+Tewkesbury, restoration of the Abbey Church at, <a href="#Page_152">152</a><br />
+<br />
+Thackeray, William M., <a href="#Page_24">24</a><br />
+<br />
+Theocritus, <a href="#Page_262">262</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Thousand and One Nights, The</i>, <a href="#Page_263">263</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Three Northern Love-Stories and Other Tales</i>, translations by Morris, <a href="#Page_125">125</a><br />
+<br />
+Trafalgar Square, <a href="#Page_161">161</a>, <a href="#Page_179">179-181</a><br />
+<br />
+Troy Type, The, <a href="#Page_223">223</a>, <a href="#Page_225">225</a><br />
+<br />
+Tyndall, Prof., <a href="#Page_177">177</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<span class="huge">U</span><br />
+<br />
+<i>Uncle Remus</i>, <a href="#Page_263">263</a><br />
+<br />
+Upton, Morris&#8217;s residence at, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>, <a href="#Page_96">96</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Useful Work versus Useless Toil</i>, lecture by Morris, <a href="#Page_165">165</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Utopia</i>, More&#8217;s, <a href="#Page_213">213-217</a>, <a href="#Page_228">228</a>, <a href="#Page_263">263</a><br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[Pg 296]</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span class="huge">V</span><br />
+<br />
+Van Eyck, his motto chosen by Morris, <a href="#Page_68">68</a><br />
+<br />
+Velasquez, <a href="#Page_261">261</a><br />
+<br />
+Verona, <a href="#Page_61">61</a><br />
+<br />
+Viollet-le-Duc, <a href="#Page_31">31</a><br />
+<br />
+Virgil, <a href="#Page_122">122-124</a>, <a href="#Page_262">262</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Volsunga Saga, The</i>, <a href="#Page_125">125</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Voyage Round the World</i>, <a href="#Page_263">263</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<span class="huge">W</span><br />
+<br />
+Wagner, Richard, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>, <a href="#Page_141">141</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Wake, London Lads!</i> ballad by Morris, <a href="#Page_148">148</a><br />
+<br />
+Walker, Emery, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>, <a href="#Page_205">205</a>, <a href="#Page_209">209</a><br />
+<br />
+Wall-papers, <a href="#Page_81">81-83</a><br />
+<br />
+Wallace, Alfred, his suggestion that Epping Forest be planted with North American trees, <a href="#Page_11">11</a><br />
+<br />
+Walthamstow, <a href="#Page_3">3</a>, <a href="#Page_10">10</a><br />
+<br />
+Wardrop, Oliver, <a href="#Page_230">230</a><br />
+<br />
+Warren, Sir Charles, <a href="#Page_179">179</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Water of the Wondrous Isles, The</i>, <a href="#Page_233">233</a>, <a href="#Page_240">240</a>, <a href="#Page_245">245</a>, <a href="#Page_248">248-251</a><br />
+<br />
+Watts-Dunton, Theodore, <a href="#Page_69">69</a><br />
+<br />
+Waverley Novels, the, Morris&#8217;s early fondness for, <a href="#Page_3">3</a><br />
+<br />
+Weaving, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>, <a href="#Page_86">86</a><br />
+<br />
+Webb, Philip, architect of the Red House, <a href="#Page_61">61</a>, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>, <a href="#Page_75">75</a>, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>, <a href="#Page_111">111</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Well at the World&#8217;s End, The</i>, <a href="#Page_232">232</a>, <a href="#Page_245">245</a>, <a href="#Page_248">248</a><br />
+<br />
+Westminster Abbey, <a href="#Page_154">154</a>, <a href="#Page_181">181</a><br />
+<br />
+White Horse, The, <a href="#Page_30">30</a><br />
+<br />
+Whitney, Miss Anne, <a href="#Page_229">229</a><br />
+<br />
+Whittingham, Charles, <a href="#Page_33">33</a><br />
+<br />
+Wilde, Lady, <a href="#Page_228">228</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Women and Roses</i>, Browning&#8217;s, <a href="#Page_39">39</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Wood beyond the World, The</i>, Morris&#8217;s, <a href="#Page_7">7</a>, <a href="#Page_230">230</a>, <a href="#Page_242">242</a>, <a href="#Page_252">252</a><br />
+<br />
+Woodford Hall, home of the Morrises, <a href="#Page_3">3</a><br />
+<br />
+Working Men&#8217;s College, Burne-Jones&#8217;s visit to, <a href="#Page_40">40</a><br />
+<br />
+Wyatt, A. J., <a href="#Page_230">230</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<span class="huge">Y</span><br />
+<br />
+Yonge, Miss, <a href="#Page_24">24</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<span class="huge">Z</span><br />
+<br />
+Zainer, Gunther, <a href="#Page_223">223</a><br />
+</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/botban13.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="note">Messrs. <span class="smcap">Morris &amp; Company</span> have appointed as their general agent Mr. A. E.
+Bulkley of 42 East 14th St., New York City, and he will be pleased to give
+all information respecting the various fabrics, etc., designed by the late
+Mr. Morris and sold by <span class="smcap">Morris &amp; Company</span>. These may also be obtained of Mr.
+A. H. Davenport, 96-98 Washington St., Boston.</p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><strong>Footnotes:</strong></p>
+
+<p><a name='f_1' id='f_1' href='#fna_1'>[1]</a> When the <i>Utopia</i> appeared with this introduction an Eton master who
+had ordered forty copies in advance, intending the books to be used as
+prizes for the boys in his school, withdrew his order, Young England not
+being allowed at that time to keep such Socialistic company.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_2' id='f_2' href='#fna_2'>[2]</a> The trustees are now publishing the remainder of Morris&#8217;s own works in
+the type of the Kelmscott Press, though without the ornaments, that a
+uniform edition may be had.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_3' id='f_3' href='#fna_3'>[3]</a> The reader here is expected to note the correspondence between the
+names of the ladies and the titles of their lovers, and the same
+correspondence is carried out in the colour of the ladies&#8217; garments and
+the armour of the knights.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_4' id='f_4' href='#fna_4'>[4]</a> Lewis F. Day.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_5' id='f_5' href='#fna_5'>[5]</a> This bibliography is reprinted, with certain slight additions, from
+the bibliography prepared by S. C. Cockerell for the monograph entitled,
+&#8220;A Note by William Morris on his Aims in Founding the Kelmscott Press.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_6' id='f_6' href='#fna_6'>[6]</a> At the Ellis Sale (1901) a presentation vellum copy brought &pound;114.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_7' id='f_7' href='#fna_7'>[7]</a> The first sheet was printed on the 2d of March, the last on the 4th of
+April.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_8' id='f_8' href='#fna_8'>[8]</a> At the Ellis Sale a presentation vellum copy brought &pound;60.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_9' id='f_9' href='#fna_9'>[9]</a> In this line as it originally stood, &#8220;dawn&#8221; was the rhyme provided for
+&#8220;corn.&#8221; In the new line the rhyme for corn is &#8220;daylight new-born;&#8221; but Mr.
+Buxton Forman writes that Morris was wont to declare that &#8220;No South
+Englishman makes any difference in ordinary talk between dawn and morn for
+instance.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_10' id='f_10' href='#fna_10'>[10]</a> &#8220;When Adam dalf and Eve span, who was thanne the gentleman.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_11' id='f_11' href='#fna_11'>[11]</a> This book realised at the Ellis Sale &pound;8.5s. for the paper copy, and
+&pound;61 in vellum. Since its publication it has sold as low as &pound;2.15s. for
+paper copies, and &pound;29 for vellum.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_12' id='f_12' href='#fna_12'>[12]</a> Mr. Ellis&#8217;s presentation copy sold for &pound;91.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_13' id='f_13' href='#fna_13'>[13]</a> This &#8220;foreword&#8221; is a socialist document occupying pp. III to VIII.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_14' id='f_14' href='#fna_14'>[14]</a> At the Ellis Sale a copy on vellum (not presentation) brought &pound;9.10s.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_15' id='f_15' href='#fna_15'>[15]</a> This story Morris said he translated in a day and a quarter.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_16' id='f_16' href='#fna_16'>[16]</a> At the Ellis Sale a paper copy brought &pound;25.10s., while in 1900 one
+brought &pound;27.5s.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_17' id='f_17' href='#fna_17'>[17]</a> Mr. Vallance says, &#8220;This is noteworthy as being the sole instance of
+a heraldic device among the <i>published</i> designs of William Morris.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_18' id='f_18' href='#fna_18'>[18]</a> In the list of Dec. 1st, 1894, the 2d and 3d volumes are announced to
+follow &#8220;early in the New Year.&#8221; The third volume did not, however, appear
+until the autumn of 1895.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_19' id='f_19' href='#fna_19'>[19]</a> Dull red silk ties. Gold lettering on back.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_20' id='f_20' href='#fna_20'>[20]</a> Also that 7 of the 8 vellum copies have been subscribed for.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_21' id='f_21' href='#fna_21'>[21]</a> In the prospectus the price for full white tooled pigskin binding
+executed under Mr. Cobden-Sanderson&#8217;s direction is given at &pound;13.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_22' id='f_22' href='#fna_22'>[22]</a> The quotations heading each stanza are in red, the initial letters
+pale blue, the remaining text in black.</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of William Morris, by Elizabeth Luther Cary
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WILLIAM MORRIS ***
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+</body>
+</html>
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@@ -0,0 +1,8621 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of William Morris, by Elizabeth Luther Cary
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: William Morris
+       Poet, Craftsman, Socialist
+
+Author: Elizabeth Luther Cary
+
+Release Date: May 18, 2012 [EBook #39725]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WILLIAM MORRIS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Chris Curnow and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images generously made available by The
+Internet Archive.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: _William Morris_]
+
+
+
+
+  WILLIAM MORRIS
+
+  POET
+  CRAFTSMAN
+  SOCIALIST
+
+
+  BY
+  ELISABETH
+  LVTHER
+  CARY
+
+
+  ILLVSTRATED
+
+
+  G. P. PVTNAM'S SONS
+  THE KNICKERBOCKER PRESS
+  NEW YORK & LONDON
+
+
+
+
+  COPYRIGHT, 1902
+  BY
+  G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
+
+  Published, October, 1902
+  Reprinted, June, 1903; December, 1905
+
+
+  The Knickerbocker Press, New York
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+The personal life of William Morris is already known to us through Mr.
+Mackail's admirable biography as fully, probably, as we shall ever know
+it. My own endeavour has been to present a picture of Morris's busy career
+perhaps not less vivid for the absence of much detail, and showing only
+the man and his work as they appeared to the outer public.
+
+I have used as a basis for my narrative, the volumes by Mr. Mackail;
+_William Morris, his Art, his Writings, and his Public Life_, by Aymer
+Vallance; _The Books of William Morris_, by H. Buxton Forman; numerous
+articles in periodicals, and Morris's own varied works.
+
+I wish to express my indebtedness to Mr. Bulkley of 42 East 14th Street,
+New York City, for permission to reproduce a number of Morris patterns in
+his possession, notably a fragment of the St. James's wall-paper.
+
+Much material for the letter-press and for the illustrations I have
+obtained through the Boston Public Library. The _Froissart_ pages were
+found there and most of the Kelmscott publications from which I have
+quoted.
+
+The bibliography is that prepared by Mr. S. C. Cockerell for the last
+volume of Mr. Morris issued by the Kelmscott Press, under the title of _A
+Note by William Morris on His Aims in Founding the Kelmscott Press_. To
+the Cockerell bibliography have been added a few notes of my own.
+
+E. L. C.
+
+BROOKLYN, Sept. 10, 1902.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+  CHAPTER                                               PAGE
+
+     I.--BOYHOOD                                           1
+
+    II.--OXFORD LIFE                                      21
+
+   III.--FROM ROSSETTI TO THE RED HOUSE                   46
+
+    IV.--MORRIS AND COMPANY                               69
+
+     V.--FROM THE RED HOUSE TO KELMSCOTT                  96
+
+    VI.--POETRY                                          114
+
+   VII.--PUBLIC LIFE AND SOCIALISM                       146
+
+  VIII.--PUBLIC LIFE AND SOCIALISM (_Continued_)         174
+
+    IX.--LITERATURE OF THE SOCIALIST PERIOD              194
+
+     X.--THE KELMSCOTT PRESS                             219
+
+    XI.--LATER WRITINGS                                  239
+
+   XII.--THE END                                         255
+
+         BIBLIOGRAPHY                                    269
+
+         INDEX                                           291
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS.
+
+
+                                                                  _Page_
+
+  _William Morris_                                        _Frontispiece_
+      _From Life._
+
+  _Title-page of "The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine"_               _32_
+
+  _Portrait of Rossetti_                                            _36_
+      _By Watts._
+
+  _Illustration by Rossetti to "The Lady of Shalott" in the
+  Moxon "Tennyson." The Head of Launcelot is a Portrait of
+  Morris_                                                           _42_
+
+  _Portrait of Jane Burden (Mrs. Morris)_                           _58_
+      _By Rossetti_
+
+  _Wall-Paper and Cotton-Print Designs_                             _60_
+
+    _"Acanthus" Wall-Paper_
+
+    _"Pimpernel" Wall-Paper_
+
+    _"African Marigold" Cotton-Print_
+
+      _"These designs must not be taken as exact as to colour
+      afterwards used, Mr. Morris using the colours to his
+      hand and afterwards superintending the actual colouring
+      in the course of manufacture, in most cases many
+      experimental trials being made before the desired
+      colouring was actually decided upon."_
+
+      _Reproduced from examples obtained by courtesy of Mr.
+      A. E. Bulkley._
+
+  _The Morris designs in this book were reproduced by permission
+  of Messrs. Morris & Company._
+
+  _"The Strawberry Thief" Design for Cotton-Print_                  _66_
+
+  _Tulip Design for Axminster Carpet_                               _70_
+
+  _Peacock Design for Coarse Wool Hangings_                         _72_
+
+  _Painted Wall Decoration Designed by Morris_                      _76_
+
+  _Painted Wall Decoration Designed by Morris_                      _80_
+
+  _Design for St. James's Palace Wall-Paper_                        _82_
+      _Reproduced from sample obtained through courtesy of Mr.
+      Bulkley._
+
+  _Early Design for Morris Wall-Paper "Daisy and Columbine"_        _84_
+
+  _Chrysanthemum Design for Wall-Paper_                             _84_
+
+  _Anemone Pattern for Silk and Wool Curtain Material_              _88_
+
+  _Portion of Hammersmith Carpet_                                   _90_
+
+  _Secretary Designed by the Morris Co._                            _94_
+      _In possession of Mr. Bulkley._
+
+  _Sofa Designed by the Morris Co._                                 _94_
+      _In possession of Mr. Bulkley._
+
+  _Illustration by Burne-Jones for Projected Edition of "The
+  Earthly Paradise," Cut on Wood by Morris Himself_                 _98_
+
+  _Kelmscott Manor House. Two views_                               _100_
+
+  _Design by Rossetti for Window Executed by Morris & Co.
+  ("The Parable of the Vineyard")_                                 _110_
+
+  _Design by Rossetti for Stained-Glass Window Executed by
+  the Morris Co. ("The Parable of the Vineyard")_                  _110_
+
+  _Morris's Bed, with Hangings Designed by Himself and
+  Embroidered by his Daughter_                                     _114_
+
+  _Kelmscott Manor House from the Orchard_                         _118_
+
+  _Portrait of Edward Burne-Jones_                                 _120_
+      _By Watts._
+
+  _William Morris_                                                 _130_
+
+  _Picture by Rossetti in which the Children's Faces are
+  Portraits of May Morris_                                         _148_
+
+  _Honeysuckle Design for Linen_                                   _162_
+
+  _Washing Cloth at the Merton Abbey Works_                        _174_
+
+  _Merton Abbey Works_                                             _174_
+
+  _Portrait of Mrs. Morris_                                        _200_
+      _By Rossetti._
+
+  _Study of Mrs. Morris_                                           _216_
+      _Made by Rossetti for picture called "The Day Dream."_
+
+  _Kelmscott Types_                                                _220_
+
+  _Page from Kelmscott "Chaucer." Illustration by
+  Burne-Jones. Border and Initial Letter by Morris_                _222_
+
+  _Title-page of the Kelmscott "Chaucer"_                          _224_
+
+  _The Smaller Kelmscott Press-Mark_                               _228_
+
+  _The Larger Kelmscott Press-Mark_                                _228_
+
+  _Drawing by Morris of the Letter "h" for Kelmscott Type,
+  with Notes and Corrections_                                      _228_
+
+  _Specimen Page from the Kelmscott "Froissart"_                   _234_
+      _Projected Edition_
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+BOYHOOD.
+
+
+There is, perhaps, no single work by William Morris that stands out as a
+masterpiece in evidence of his individual genius. He was not impelled to
+give peculiar expression to his own personality. His writing was seldom
+emotionally autobiographic as Rossetti's always was, his painting and
+designing were not the expression of a personal mood as was the case with
+Burne-Jones. But no one of his special time and group gave himself more
+fully or more freely for others. No one contributed more generously to the
+public pleasure and enlightenment. No one tried with more persistent
+effort first to create and then to satisfy a taste for the possible best
+in the lives and homes of the people. He worked toward this end in so many
+directions that a lesser energy than his must have been dissipated and a
+weaker purpose rendered impotent. His tremendous vitality saved him from
+the most humiliating of failures, the failure to make good extravagant
+promise. He never lost sight of the result in the endeavour, and his
+discontent with existing mediocrity was neither formless nor empty. It was
+the motive power of all his labour; he was always trying to make
+everything "something different from what it was," and this instinct was,
+alike for strength and weakness, says his chief biographer, "of the very
+essence of his nature." To tell the story of his life is to write down the
+record of dreams made real, of nebulous theories brought swiftly to the
+test of experiment, of the spirit of the distant past reincarnated in the
+present. But, as with most natures of similar mould, the man was greater
+than any part of his work, and even greater than the sum of it all. He
+remains one of the not-to-be-forgotten figures of the nineteenth century,
+so interesting was he, so impressive, so simple-hearted, so nearly
+adequate to the great tasks he set himself, so well beloved by his
+companions, so useful, despite his blunders, to society at large.
+
+The unity that held together his manifold forms of expression was
+maintained through the different periods of his life, making him a "whole
+man" to a more than usual degree. From the earliest recorded incidents of
+his childhood we gain an impression not unlike that made by his latest
+years, and by all the interval between. The very opposite of Rossetti,
+with whose "school" he has been so long and so mistakenly identified, his
+nature was as single as his accomplishment was complex, and the only means
+by which it is possible to get a just idea of both the former and the
+latter is to regard him as a man of one preoccupation amounting to an
+obsession, the reconstruction of social and industrial life according to
+an ideal based upon the more poetic aspects of the Middle Ages. From first
+to last the early English world, the English world of the thirteenth and
+fourteenth centuries, was the world to which he belonged. "Born out of his
+due time," in truth, he began almost from his birth to accumulate
+associations with the time to which he should have been native and whose
+far off splendour lured him constantly back toward it.
+
+The third of nine children, he was born at Walthamstow, in Essex, England,
+on the 24th of March, 1834. On the Morris side he came of Welsh ancestry,
+a fact accounting perhaps for the mingled gloom and romance of his
+temperament. His father was a discount broker in opulent circumstances,
+and his mother was descended from a family of prosperous merchants and
+landed proprietors. On the maternal side a strong talent for music
+existed, but in the Morris family no more artistic quality can be traced
+than a devotion to general excellence, to which William Morris certainly
+fell heir. For a time he was a sickly child, and used the opportunity to
+advance his reading, being "already deep in the Waverley novels" when four
+years old, and having gone through these and many others before he was
+seven.
+
+In 1840 the family removed to Woodford Hall, a house belonging to the
+Georgian period, standing in about fifty acres of park, on the road from
+London to Epping, and here Morris led an outdoor life with the result of
+rapidly establishing his health, steeping mind and sense in the sights and
+sounds of nature dear to him forever after, and gaining intimate
+acquaintance with the romantic and mediaeval surroundings by which his
+whole career was to be influenced. The county of Essex was well adapted to
+feed his prodigious appetite for antiquities. Its churches, in numbers of
+which Norman masonry is to be found, its ancient brasses (that of the
+schoolboy Thomas Heron being among many others within easy reach of
+Woodford), and its tapestry-hung houses, all stimulated his inborn love of
+the Middle Ages and started him fairly on that path through the thirteenth
+century which he followed deviously as long as he lived. Even in his own
+home, we are told, certain of the habits of mediaeval England persisted,
+such as the brewing of beer, the meal of cakes and ale at "high prime,"
+the keeping of Twelfth Night, and other such festivals. The places he
+lived in counted for much with him always, and the impressions of this
+childish period remained, like all his later impressions, keen and
+permanent. Toward the end of his life he printed at the Kelmscott Press
+the carol _Good King Wenceslas_, which begins with a lusty freshness:
+
+  Good King Wenceslas look'd out,
+    On the feast of Stephen,
+  When the snow lay round about,
+    Deep and crisp and even.
+  Brightly shone the moon that night,
+    Though the frost was cruel,
+  When a poor man came in sight
+    Gath'ring winter fuel.
+
+"The legend itself," he comments, "is a pleasing and genuine one, and the
+Christmas-like quality of it, recalling the times of my boyhood, appeals
+to me at least as a memory of past days."
+
+Beside angling, shooting, and riding, he very early occupied much of his
+time with visits to the old churches, a pursuit of which he was never to
+weary, studying their monuments and accumulating an amount of genuine
+erudition concerning them quite out of proportion to his rather moderate
+accomplishment along the ordinary lines of study. At an age when Scott was
+scouring his native heath in search of Border ballads and antiquities,
+this almost equally precocious boy was collecting rubbings from ancient
+inscriptions, and picturing to himself, as he wandered about the region of
+his home on foot or on horseback, the lovely face of England as it looked
+in the thirteenth or fourteenth century. In one of the earliest of the
+boyish romances that appeared in the _Oxford and Cambridge Magazine_, he
+imagines himself the master-mason of a church built more than six
+centuries before, and which has vanished from the face of the earth with
+nothing to indicate its existence save earth-covered ruins "heaving the
+yellow corn into glorious waves." His description of the carving on the
+bas-reliefs of the west front and on the tombs shows with what loving
+intensity he has studied the most minute details of the work of the
+ancient builders in whose footsteps he would have rejoiced much to tread.
+How far his family sympathised with his tastes it is impossible to say,
+but probably not deeply. We have few hints of the personal side of his
+home-life; we know that a visit to Canterbury Cathedral with his father
+was among the indelible experiences of his first decade, and that he
+possessed among his toys a little suit of armour in which he rode about
+the park after the manner of a Froissart knight, and that is about all we
+do know until we hear of the strong disapproval of his mother and one of
+his sisters for the career that finally diverted his interest from the
+Church for which they had designed him.
+
+His formal education began when he was sent at the age of nine to a
+preparatory school kept by a couple of maiden ladies. There he remained
+until the death of his father in 1847. In February, 1848, he went to
+Marlborough College, a nomination to which his father had purchased for
+him. The best that can be said for this school seems to be that it was
+situated in a part of England ideally suited to a boy of archaeological
+tastes, and was provided with an excellent archaeological and architectural
+library. Here his eager mind browsed on the literature of English Gothic,
+and his restless feet carried him far afield among pre-Celtic barrows,
+stone circles, and Roman villas. Savernake Forest was close at hand and
+he spent many of his holidays within it. It was doubtless the familiarity
+with all aspects of the woods, due to his pilgrimages through Savernake
+and Epping Forests and the long roving days idled away among their
+shadows, that gave rise to the allusions in his books--early and late--to
+woodland life. The passage through the thick wood and the coming at last
+to the place where the trees thin out and the light begins to shimmer
+through them is a constantly recurring figure of his verse and of his
+prose. Frequently the important scene of a romance or of a long poem is
+laid in a wildwood, as in the story entitled _The Wood beyond the World_,
+or in _Goldilocks and Goldilocks_, the concluding poem of the volume of
+_Poems by the Way_, in which the great grey boles of the trees, the
+bramble bush, the "woodlawn clear," and the cherished oaks are as vivid as
+the human actors in the drama. His heroes seldom fail of being deft
+woodsmen, able to thread the tangle of underbrush by blind paths, and
+observant of all the common sights and sounds of the woodland, rabbits
+scuttling out of the grass, adders sunning themselves on stones in the
+cleared spaces, wild swine running grunting toward close covert, hart and
+hind bounding across the way. They know the musty savour of water dipped
+from a forest brook, they know how to go straight to the yew sticks that
+quarter best for bow-staves, they know the feeling of the boggy moss under
+their feet, and the sound of the "iron wind" through the branches in the
+depth of winter; there is no detail of wild wood life of which they are
+ignorant. This intimacy with Nature in her most secluded moments, in her
+shyest and most mysterious aspect, forms an element of inexpressible charm
+in the lovely backgrounds against which Morris delighted to place his
+visionary figures. He never tired of combining the impressions stored away
+in his mind on his boyish rambles into pictures the delicate beauty of
+which can hardly be overestimated.
+
+While he was at school, his already highly developed imagination found an
+outlet in constant fable-making, his tales of knights and fairies and
+miraculous adventures having a considerable popularity among his comrades,
+with whom, however, he himself was not especially popular, making friends
+with them only in a superficial fashion. Judging from the autobiographic
+fragments occasionally found in his work, he was a boy of many moods, most
+of them tinged with the self-conscious melancholy of his early poetry.
+Sentiment was strong with him, and a peculiar reticence or detachment of
+temperament kept him independent of others during his school years, and
+apparently uninfluenced by the tastes or opinions of those about him, if
+we except the case of his Anglo-Catholic proclivities, which obviously
+were fed by the tendencies of the school, but which, so far from diverting
+him from the general scheme of his individual interests, fitted into them
+and served him as another link between the present and the much preferred
+past.
+
+Outwardly he can hardly have seemed the typical dreamer he has described
+himself as being. Beautiful of feature, of sturdy build, with a shouting
+voice, extraordinary muscular strength, and a gusty temper, he impressed
+himself upon his comrades chiefly by his impetuosity in the energetic game
+of singlestick, by the surplus vigour that led him at times to punch his
+own head with all his might to "take it out of himself," and by the
+vehemence and enthusiasm of his argumentative talk.
+
+He was little of a student along the orthodox lines, and Marlborough
+College was not calculated to increase his respect--never undue--for
+pedagogic methods. A letter written when he was sixteen to his eldest and
+favourite sister reflects quite fully his pre-occupations. It has none of
+the genuine wit and literary tone of the juvenile letter written by
+Stevenson to his father, presenting his claims for reimbursements. It
+shows no such zest for bookish pursuits as Rossetti's letters, written at
+the same age, reveal. But it is entirely free from the shallow flippancy
+that frequently characterises the correspondence of a young man's second
+decade--that characterised Lowell's, for example, to an almost painful
+degree; nor has it a shade of the self-magnification to which any amount
+of flippancy is preferable. It is straightforward and boyish, and
+remarkable only as showing the thorough and intelligent method with which
+its writer followed up whatever commanded his interest. Commencing with
+the description of an anthem sung at Easter by the trained choir of
+Blore's Chapel connected with his school, he passes on to an account of
+his archaeological investigations, giving after his characteristic fashion
+all the small details necessary to enable his correspondent to form a
+definite picture of the places he had visited. After he had made one
+pilgrimage to the Druidical circle and Roman entrenchment at Avebury, he
+had learned of the peculiar method of placing the stones which, from the
+dislocated condition of the ruins, had not been obvious to him. Therefore
+he had returned on the following day to study it out and fix the original
+arrangement firmly in his imagination, and, at the time of writing the
+letter, was able to explain it quite clearly, a result, derived from the
+expenditure of two holidays, that was completely satisfactory to him. He
+winds up with a purely boyish plea for a "good large cake" and some
+biscuit in addition to a cheese that had been promised him, and for paper
+and postage stamps and his silkworm eggs and a pen box to be sent him from
+home.
+
+At school he was "always thinking about home," and when the family moved
+again to Walthamstow, within a short distance of his first home, and to a
+house boasting a moat and a wooded island, he was eagerly responsive to
+the poetic suggestions conveyed by these romantic accessories. When at
+the end of 1851 he left school to prepare under a private tutor for
+Oxford, he renewed his early familiarity with Epping Forest and spent most
+of his holidays among the trees that had not apparently changed since the
+time of Edward the Confessor. The great age of the wood and its peculiarly
+English character made a profound impression upon him, and it is easy to
+imagine the fury with which he must have received the suggestion, made
+forty years later by Mr. Alfred Wallace, that in place of "a hideous
+assemblage of stunted mop-like pollards rising from a thicket of scrubby
+bushes," North American trees should be planted and a part of the forest
+made into an "almost exact copy" of North American woodland. Indeed, a
+suppressed but unmistakable fury breathes from the letters written to the
+_Daily Chronicle_, as late as 1895, regarding the tree-felling that was
+going on ruthlessly in the forest, destroying its native character and
+individual charm. These letters, curiously recalling those written half a
+century before concerning boyish excursions through the same region, are
+well worth quoting here, where properly they belong, as they are inspired
+by the earliest of the associations and ideals cherished by Morris to the
+end of his life. They are fine examples of his own native character in
+argument, his humbly didactic tone early caught from Ruskin and never
+relinquished, his militant irony, his willingness to fortify his position
+by painstaking investigation, his moral attitude toward matters artistic,
+his superb rightness of taste in the special problem under discussion.
+They show also how closely his memory had held through his manifold
+interests the details that had appealed to him in his boyhood. The first
+letter is dated April 23rd, and addressed to the editor of the _Daily
+Chronicle_.
+
+    "SIR: I venture to ask you to allow me a few words on the subject of
+    the present treatment of Epping Forest. I was born and bred in its
+    neighbourhood (Walthamstow and Woodford), and when I was a boy and
+    young man I knew it yard by yard from Wanstead to the Theydons, and
+    from Hale End to the Fairlop Oak. In those days it had no worse foes
+    than the gravel stealer and the rolling-fence maker, and was always
+    interesting and often very beautiful. From what I can hear it is years
+    since the greater part of it has been destroyed, and I fear, Sir, that
+    in spite of your late optimistic note on the subject, what is left of
+    it now runs the danger of further ruin.
+
+    "The special character of it was derived from the fact that by far the
+    greater part was a wood of hornbeams, a tree not common save in Essex
+    and Herts. It was certainly the biggest hornbeam wood in these
+    islands, and I suppose in the world. The said hornbeams were all
+    pollards, being shrouded every four or six years, and were
+    interspersed in many places with holly thickets, and the result was a
+    very curious and characteristic wood, such as can be seen nowhere
+    else. And I submit that no treatment of it can be tolerable which does
+    not maintain this hornbeam wood intact.
+
+    "But the hornbeam, though an interesting tree to an artist and
+    reasonable person, is no favourite with the landscape gardener, and I
+    very much fear that the intention of the authorities is to clear the
+    forest of native trees, and to plant vile weeds like deodars and
+    outlandish conifers instead. We are told that a committee of 'experts'
+    has been formed to sit in judgment on Epping Forest; but, Sir, I
+    decline to be gagged by the word 'expert,' and I call on the public
+    generally to take the same position. An 'expert' may be a very
+    dangerous person, because he is likely to narrow his views to the
+    particular business (usually a commercial one) which he represents. In
+    this case, for instance, we do not want to be under the thumb of
+    either a wood bailiff whose business is to grow timber for the market,
+    or of a botanist whose business is to collect specimens for a
+    botanical garden; or of a landscape gardener whose business is to
+    vulgarise a garden or landscape to the utmost extent that his patron's
+    purse will allow of. What we want is reasonable men of real artistic
+    taste to take into consideration what the essential needs of the case
+    are, and to advise accordingly. Now it seems to me that the
+    authorities who have Epping Forest in hand may have two intentions as
+    to it. First, they may intend to landscape-garden it, or turn it into
+    golf grounds (and I very much fear that even the latter nuisance may
+    be in their minds); or second, they may really think it necessary (as
+    you suggest) to thin the hornbeams, so as to give them a better chance
+    of growing. The first alternative we Londoners should protest against
+    to the utmost, for if it be carried out then Epping Forest is turned
+    into a mere place of vulgarity, is destroyed in fact.
+
+    "As to the second, to put our minds at rest, we ought to be assured
+    that the cleared spaces would be planted again, and that almost wholly
+    with hornbeam. And, further, the greatest possible care should be
+    taken that not a single tree should be felled unless it is necessary
+    for the growth of its fellows. Because, mind you, with comparatively
+    small trees, the really beautiful effect of them can only be got by
+    their standing as close together as the emergencies of growth will
+    allow. We want a thicket, not a park, from Epping Forest.
+
+    "In short, a great and practically irreparable mistake will be made
+    if, under the shelter of the opinion of 'experts,' from mere
+    carelessness and thoughtlessness, we let the matter slip out of the
+    hands of the thoughtful part of the public; the essential character of
+    one of the greatest ornaments of London will disappear, and no one
+    will have even a sample left to show what the great north-eastern
+    forest was like. I am, Sir, yours obediently,
+
+    "WILLIAM MORRIS
+
+    "Kelmscott House, Hammersmith."
+
+The second letter is written two or three weeks later, and shows Morris as
+characteristically prompt and thorough in action as he is positive in
+speech.
+
+    "Yesterday," he says, "I carried out my intention of visiting Epping
+    Forest. I went to Loughton first, and saw the work that had been done
+    about Clay Road, thence to Monk Wood, thence to Theydon Woods, and
+    thence to the part about the Chingford Hotel, passing by Fair Mead
+    Bottom and lastly to Bury Wood and the wood on the other side of the
+    road thereby.
+
+    "I can verify closely your representative's account of the doings on
+    the Clay Road, which is an ugly scar originally made by the lord of
+    the manor when he contemplated handing over to the builder a part of
+    what he thought was his property. The fellings here seem to me all
+    pure damage to the forest, and in fact were quite unaccountable to me,
+    and would surely be so to any unprejudiced person. I cannot see what
+    could be pleaded for them either on the side of utility or taste.
+
+    "About Monk Wood there had been much, and I should say excessive,
+    felling of trees apparently quite sound. This is a very beautiful
+    spot, and I was informed that the trees there had not been polled for
+    a period long before the acquisition of the forest for the public; and
+    nothing could be more interesting and romantic than the effect of the
+    long poles of the hornbeams rising from the trunks and seen against
+    the mass of the wood behind. This wood should be guarded most
+    jealously as a treasure of beauty so near to 'the Wen.' In the Theydon
+    Woods, which are mainly of beech, a great deal of felling has gone on,
+    to my mind quite unnecessary, and therefore harmful. On the road
+    between the Wake Arms and the King's Oak Hotel there has been again
+    much felling, obviously destructive.
+
+    "In Bury Wood (by Sewardstone Green) we saw the trunks of a great
+    number of oak trees (not pollards), all of them sound, and a great
+    number were yet standing in the wood marked for felling, which,
+    however, we heard had been saved by a majority of the committee of
+    experts. I can only say that it would have been a very great
+    misfortune if they had been lost; in almost every case where the
+    stumps of the felled trees showed there seemed to have been no reason
+    for their destruction. The wood on the other side of the road to Bury
+    Wood, called in the map Woodman's Glade, has not suffered from
+    felling, and stands as an object lesson to show how unnecessary such
+    felling is. It is one of the thickest parts of the forest, and looks
+    in all respects like such woods were forty years ago, the growth of
+    the heads of the hornbeams being but slow; but there is no difficulty
+    in getting through it in all directions, and it has a peculiar charm
+    of its own not to be found in any other forest; in short, it is
+    thoroughly _characteristic_. I should mention that the whole of these
+    woods are composed of pollard hornbeams and 'spear'--_i.e._,
+    unpolled--oaks.
+
+    "I am compelled to say from what I saw in a long day's inspection,
+    that, though no doubt acting with the best intentions, the management
+    of the forest is going on the wrong tack; it is making war on the
+    natural aspect of the forest, which the Act of Parliament that
+    conferred it on the nation expressly stipulated was to be retained.
+    The tendency of all these fellings is on the one hand to turn over
+    London forest into a park, which would be more or less like other
+    parks, and on the other hand to grow sizable trees, as if for the
+    timber market. I must beg to be allowed a short quotation here from an
+    excellent little guidebook to the forest by Mr. Edward North Buxton,
+    verderer of the forest (Sanford, 1885). He says, p. 38: 'In the drier
+    parts of the forest beeches to a great extent take the place of oaks.
+    These "spear" trees will make fine timber for future generations,
+    provided they receive timely attention by being _relieved of the
+    competing growth of the unpicturesque hornbeam pollards_. Throughout
+    the wood between Chingford and High Beech, _this has been recently
+    done_, to the great advantage of the finer trees.'
+
+    "The italics are mine, and I ask, Sir, if we want any further evidence
+    than this of one of the verderers as to the tendency of the fellings.
+    Mr. Buxton declares in so many words that he wants to change the
+    special character of the forest; to take away this strange,
+    unexampled, and most romantic wood, and leave us nothing but a
+    commonplace instead. I entirely deny his right to do so in the teeth
+    of the Act of Parliament. I assert, as I did in my former letter, that
+    the hornbeams are the most important trees in the forest, since they
+    give it its special character. At the same time I would not encourage
+    the hornbeams at the expense of the beeches, any more than I would the
+    beeches at the expense of the hornbeams. I would leave them all to
+    nature, which is not so niggard after all, even on Epping Forest
+    gravel, as _e. g._, one can see in places where forest fires have
+    denuded spaces, and where in a short time birches spring up self-sown.
+
+    "The committee of the Common Council has now had Epping Forest in hand
+    for seventeen years, and has, I am told, in that time felled 100,000
+    trees. I think the public may now fairly ask for a rest on behalf of
+    the woods, which, if the present system of felling goes on, will be
+    ruined as a natural forest; and it is good and useful to make the
+    claim at once, when, in spite of all disfigurements, the northern part
+    of the forest, from Sewardstone Green to beyond Epping, is still left
+    to us, not to be surpassed in interest by any other wood near a great
+    capital. I am, Sir, yours obediently,
+
+    "WILLIAM MORRIS."
+
+These letters emphasise in a single instance what the close student of
+Morris will find emphasised at every turn in his career,--the persistent
+and strong influence over him of the tastes and occupations of his
+boyhood. Unless this is kept constantly in mind, it is easy to fall into
+the common error of regarding the various activities into which he threw
+himself as separate and dissociated instead of seeing them as they were,
+component parts of a perfectly simple purpose and unalterable ideal. With
+most men who are on the whole true to the analogy of the chambered
+nautilus and cast off the outworn shell of their successive phases of
+individuality as the seasons roll, the effect of early environment and
+tendency may easily be exaggerated, but Morris grew in the fashion of his
+beloved oaks, keeping the rings by which his advance in experience was
+marked; at the end all were visible. His education began and continued
+largely outside the domain of books and away from masters. His wanderings
+in the depths of the quaint and beautiful forest, his intimate
+acquaintance with the nature of Gothic architecture, his familiarity with
+Scott, his prompt adoption of Ruskin, all these formed the foundation on
+which he was to build his own theory of life, and all were his before he
+went up to Oxford. They prepared him for the many-sided profession, if
+profession it can be called, which was to absorb and at last to exhaust
+his mighty energy. It was the tangible surface of the world that most
+inspired him in boyhood and in maturity. Loving so much even as a child
+its aspects, its lights and shadows, the forms of trees and birds and
+beasts, the changes of season, the lives of men living close to "the kind
+soil" and in touch with it through hearty manual labour, it was but a step
+to the occupations that finally engrossed him. He never got so far away
+from the visions of his youth as to forget them. In one form or another he
+was constantly trying to embody them that others might see them with his
+eyes and worship them with his devotion. "The spirit of the new days, of
+our days," says the old man in _News from Nowhere_, "was to be delight in
+the life of the world, intense and almost overweening love of the very
+skin and surface of the earth on which man dwells."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+OXFORD LIFE.
+
+
+Like the majority of the students who went up to Oxford in the fifties,
+Morris matriculated with the definite intention of taking holy orders.
+Unlike the majority, he was impelled not only by the sensuous beauty of
+ritualistic worship, to which, however, no one could have been more keenly
+alive than he, but by a genuine enthusiasm for a life devoted to high
+purposes. A fine buoyant desire to better existing conditions and sweep as
+much evil as possible off the face of the earth early inspired him. His
+mind turned toward the conventual life as that which combined the mediaeval
+suggestions always alluring to him with the moral beauty of holiness. He
+planned a "Crusade and Holy Warfare against the Age," sang plain song at
+daily morning service, read masses of mediaeval chronicles and
+ecclesiastical Latin poetry, and hovered just this side of the Roman
+Communion. Had the ecclesiology of the University been supported at that
+time by an inward and spiritual grace sufficient to hold the heart of
+youth to a sustained allegiance, there is little doubt that Morris would
+have thrown himself ardently into the religious path. But Oxford had
+become an indolent and indifferent mother to her children. The storm of
+feeling aroused by the Tractarian movement had died down and the reaction
+from it was evident. At Balliol Jowett's energy had made its mark, but at
+Exeter, where Morris was, the educational system deserved (and received)
+the contempt of an ambitious boy with an unusually large supply of
+stored-up intellectual force seeking outlet and guidance. Nor was the
+social life more stimulating to moral activity. The abuses recorded in
+1852 by the University Commission were in essence so shameful that in the
+light of that famous report "the sweet city with her dreaming spires"
+seems to have only the beauty of the daughter of Helios, under whose
+enchantments men were turned to swine for loving her. The clean mind and
+honest nature of Morris revolted from the excesses that went on about him.
+He wrote to his mother two years after his matriculation, defending the
+proposition that his Oxford education had not been thrown away: "If by
+living here and seeing evil and sin in its foulest and coarsest forms, as
+one does day by day, I have learned to hate any form of sin and to wish to
+fight against it, is not this well too?" It is proof of his purity of
+taste and strength of will that, despite his ample means, the wanton
+extravagance of the typical undergraduate had for him no allurement. It is
+certain that he was never seen at those dinners which were pronounced by
+an official censor "a curse and a disgrace to a place of Christian
+education," and as certainly he played no part in the mad carnivals at
+which novices were initiated into a curriculum of vice. Yet he could not
+indeed say with any truth what Gibbon had said a hundred years before,
+that the time he spent at Oxford was the most idle and unprofitable of his
+whole life. If he felt, as Gibbon did, that his formal studies were
+"equally devoid of profit and pleasure," and if he found nothing
+ridiculous in Ruskin's bitter complaint that Oxford taught him all the
+Latin and Greek that he would learn, but did not teach him that
+fritillaries grew in Iffley meadow, he did find a little band of helpful
+associates. With these he realised the priceless advantages which Mr.
+Bagehot says cannot be got outside a college and which he sums up as found
+"in the books that all read because all like; in what all talk of because
+all are interested; in the argumentative walk or disputatious lounge; in
+the impact of fresh thought on fresh thought, of hot thought on hot
+thought; in mirth and refutation, in ridicule and laughter." The first of
+the few strong personal attachments in the life of Morris dates from his
+first day at Oxford. At the end of January, 1853, he went up for his
+matriculation, and beside him at the examination in the Hall sat
+Burne-Jones, who within a week of their formal entrance to the college
+became his intimate. The friendship thus spontaneously formed on the verge
+of manhood lasted until Morris died. In their studies, in their truant
+reading, in their later aims and work, the two, diametrically as they
+differed in aspect and in temperament and in quality of mind, were
+sympathetic and dear companions. Together they joined a group of other
+happily gifted men--Fulford, Faulkner, Dixon, Cormell Price, and
+Macdonald--who met in one another's rooms for the disputatious lounge over
+the exuberant ideals by which they were in common inspired. Tennyson,
+Keats, and Shelley, Shakespeare, Ruskin, Carlyle, Kingsley, Thackeray,
+Dickens, and Miss Yonge were the gods and half gods of their young and
+passionate enthusiasm. The last, curiously enough, was an influence as
+potent as any. The hero of her novel of 1853, _The Heir of Redclyffe_, was
+the pattern chosen by Morris, according to Mr. Mackail's account, to build
+himself upon. Singular as it seems to-day that any marked impression
+should have been made upon an even fairly well-trained mind by a writer of
+such slight literary quality, it is true that the author of _The Daisy
+Chain_ counted among her devoted readers men of brilliant and dominant
+intellectual power. She had the lucky touch to kindle in young minds that
+fire of sympathy with which they greet whatever shows them their own
+world, their age, themselves as they best like to see them. To Morris in
+particular the young heir of Redclyffe made the appeal of a congenial
+temperament in a position similar to his own. Like Morris, he was
+headstrong and passionate, given to excessive bursts of rage and to
+repentances not less excessive; like Morris, he united to his natural
+pride an unnatural and slightly obtrusive humility; like Morris, he was
+rich and beautiful, generous and lovable. It was no great wonder that
+Morris, poring with his characteristic absorption over the pleasant pages
+on which Guy Morville's chivalrous life is portrayed, said as Dromio to
+Dromio, "Methinks you are my glass and not my brother; I see by you I am a
+sweet-faced youth."
+
+Mr. Mackail notes with an accent of surprise that Kingsley was much more
+widely read than Newman, thinking the choice a curious one in the case of
+passionate Anglo-Catholics. So far as Morris was concerned, however, there
+was little enough to relish in Newman's subtle theology and relentless
+logic. The man to whom religion as a mere sentiment was "a dream and a
+mockery" could hardly appeal to one to whom all life was a sentiment.
+Kingsley, on the other hand, although he was anti-Catholic in temper, and
+disposed to overthrow the illusions by which such romanticists as Scott,
+such dreamers as Fouque, had surrounded the Middle Ages, picturing their
+coarse and barbarous side with harsh realism, was happy in rendering the
+charms of outdoor life and bold adventure, and the songs of the Crusaders
+in his _Saint's Tragedy_ must have gone farther toward winning Morris than
+pages of Newman's reasoning devotion.
+
+Gradually the monastic ideal faded before the brightness of art and
+literature and the life of the world as these became more and more
+impressed upon Morris's consciousness. To live in the spirit and in the
+region of purely intellectual interests could not have been his choice
+after the passing of the first fanatic impulse of youth to dedicate itself
+to what is difficult, ignorant of the joy of choosing. Many influences
+united to determine the precise form into which he should shape the future
+that for all practical purposes was under his control. His interest in
+pictorial art was stimulated by Burne-Jones, who was already making
+fantastic little drawings, and studies of flowers and foliage. Of great
+art he knew nothing until he spent the Long Vacation of 1854 in travelling
+through Belgium and Northern France, where he saw Van Eyck and Memling,
+who at once became to him, as they were to Rossetti, masters of
+incontestable supremacy. On this trip he saw also the beautiful churches
+of Amiens, Beauvais, and Chartres, which in his unbridled expansiveness of
+phrase he called "the grandest, the most beautiful, the kindest, and most
+loving of all the buildings that the earth has ever borne." The following
+year he repeated the experience, with Burne-Jones and Fulford for
+companions. This time the journey was to have been made on foot from
+motives of economy, as Burne-Jones was poor and Morris embraced the habits
+of poverty when in his company with unaffected delicacy of feeling. At
+Amiens, however, Morris went lame, and, "after filling the streets with
+imprecations on all boot-makers," bought a pair of gay carpet slippers in
+which to continue the trip. These proved not to serve the purpose, and the
+travellers were obliged to reach Chartres by the usual methods of
+conveyance, Morris arguing with fury and futility in favour of skirting
+Paris, "even by two days' journey, so as not to see the streets of it."
+They had with them one book, _Keats_, and their minds were filled with the
+poetic ideas of art as the expression of man's pleasure in his toil, and
+of beauty as the natural and necessary accompaniment of productive labour,
+which Ruskin had been preaching in _The Stones of Venice_ and in the
+Edinburgh lectures. By this time they had become acquainted with the work
+of the Pre-Raphaelites, and Burne-Jones had announced that of all men who
+lived on earth the one he wanted to see was Rossetti. Morris had used his
+spare time, of which we may imagine he had a considerable amount, in the
+study of mediaeval design as the splendid manuscripts in the Bodleian
+Library illustrate it. An architectural newspaper also formed part of his
+regular reading outside of his studies. Thus primed for definite action,
+on this holiday filled with stimulating interests and the delicious
+freedom of roaming quite at will with the best of companions through the
+sweet fertile country of Northern France, Morris put quite aside all aims
+that had not directly to do with art. He and Burne-Jones, walking late one
+night on the quays of Havre, discussed their plans. Both gave up once and
+for all the idea of taking orders; both decided to leave Oxford as
+quickly as they could; both were to be artists, Burne-Jones a painter and
+Morris an architect.
+
+Although Morris was never to become a practising architect, this choice of
+a profession at the beginning of his career is both characteristic and
+significant. Buildings, as we have seen, had interested him from his
+childhood. His favourite excursions, long and short, had been to the
+region of churches. In the art of building he saw the means of elevating
+all the tastes of man. Architecture meant to him "the art of creating a
+building with all the appliances fit for carrying on a dignified and happy
+life." It seemed to him even at the outset, before the word "socialism"
+had come into his vocabulary, incredible that people living in pleasant
+homes and engaged in making and using these appliances of which he speaks,
+should lead lives other than dignified and happy. It was much more in
+accordance with his ideal of a vocation, a ministry to man, that he should
+contribute to the daily material comfort and pleasure of the world, that
+he should make places good for the body to live in and fair for the eye to
+rest upon, and therefore soothing to the soul, than that he should
+construct abstract spiritual mansions of which he could at best form but a
+vague conception. It was, then, with a certain sense of dedication, an
+exchange of method without a change of spirit, that he gave up the thought
+of holy orders and turned to the thought of furthering the good of
+mankind by working toward the beauty and order of the visible world.
+
+From the point of view of his later interests as a decorator of houses, he
+was showing the utmost wisdom in beginning with the framework, which must
+exist before any decoration can be applied. "I have spoken of the popular
+arts," he says himself, in one of his lectures, "but they might all be
+summed up in that one word Architecture; they are all parts of that great
+whole, and the art of house-building begins it all. If we did not know how
+to dye or to weave; if we had neither gold nor silver nor silk, and no
+pigments to paint with but half a dozen ochres and umbers, we might yet
+frame a worthy art that would lead to everything, if we had but timber,
+stone and lime, and a few cutting tools to make these common things not
+only shelter us from wind and weather but also express the thoughts and
+aspirations that stir in us. Architecture would lead us to all the arts,
+as it did with the earlier men; but if we despise it and take no note of
+how we are housed, the other arts will have a hard time of it indeed."
+
+And again: "A true architectural work," he says, "is a building duly
+provided with all the necessary furniture, decorated with all due
+ornament, according to the use, quality, and dignity of the building, from
+mere mouldings or abstract lines to the great epical works of sculpture
+and painting, which except as decorations of the nobler form of such
+buildings cannot be produced at all. So looked upon, a work of
+architecture is a harmonious, co-operative work of art, inclusive of all
+the serious arts--those which are not engaged in the production of mere
+toys or ephemeral prettinesses."
+
+Morris communicated his momentous decision to his family as soon as it was
+made, and they received it with amazement and distress. While their origin
+was not especially aristocratic, their tastes ran toward the symbols of
+aristocracy. When Morris was nine years old, his father obtained a grant
+of arms from the Heralds' College, and the son had no small liking for the
+bearings assigned--bearings which included a horse's head erased argent
+between three horseshoes. The horse's head he introduced on the tiles and
+glass of the house he built for himself in later years, and he was in the
+habit of making a yearly pilgrimage to the famous White Horse of the
+Berkshire Downs, connecting it in some obscure way with his ancestry. In
+England, during the fifties, nothing was less calculated to appeal to an
+aristocratic tendency than any form of art considered as a profession. In
+_The Newcomes_ Mr. Honeyman remarks with bland dignity to his aspiring
+young relative; "My dear Clive, there are degrees in society which we must
+respect. You surely cannot think of being a professional artist." In much
+this spirit, apparently, Mrs. Morris received her son's announcement,
+conveyed in a long and affectionate letter stating in detail the motives
+that had led him to his resolution. After defending his chosen profession
+at some length, calling it with characteristic avoidance of pompous
+phraseology, "a useful trade," he dwells upon the moderation of his hopes
+and expectations. He does not hope "to be great at all in anything," but
+thinks he may look forward to reasonable happiness in his work. It will be
+grievous to his pride and self-will, he says, to have to do just as he is
+told for three long years, but "good for it, too," and he looks forward
+with little delight to the drudgery of learning a new trade, but is pretty
+confident of success, and is happy in being able to pay "the premium and
+all that" without laying any fresh burden of expense upon his mother.
+Finally he proposes taking as his master George Edmund Street, who was
+living in Oxford as architect of the diocese, and whose enthusiasm for the
+thirteenth century could hardly have failed to claim the sympathy of
+Morris. Certainly it seemed precisely the fitting opportunity that
+offered. There could have been no better moment for him to follow the
+advice he so frequently gave to others--to turn his back upon an ugly age,
+choose the epoch that suited him best, and identify himself with that.
+Gothic to the core, he had come to Oxford, not, as Mr. Day has suggested,
+to catch the infection of mediaevalism abroad there, but to assimilate and
+thrive upon all the influences to which his independently mediaeval spirit
+was acutely susceptible. Scott, Pugin, Shaw, Viollet-le-Duc, had broken
+the way through popular prejudice, and Street was engaged at the time
+Morris went to him in the work of restoring ancient churches and designing
+Gothic buildings. "Restoration" had not then so evil a sound to Morris as
+it later came to have. Some thirty years after, he was to say: "No man or
+no body of men, however learned they may be in ancient art, whatever skill
+in design or love of beauty they may have, can persuade, or bribe, or
+force our workmen of to-day to do their work in the same way as the
+workmen of King Edward I. did theirs. Wake up Theodoric the Goth from his
+sleep of centuries and place him on the throne of Italy, turn our modern
+House of Commons into the Witenagemote (or Meeting of the Wise Men) of
+King Alfred the Great!--no less a feat is the restoration of an ancient
+building." In 1855, however, he had not fully arrived at this conviction.
+It was then the period of "fresh hope and partial insight" which,
+regarding it retrospectively, he says, "produced many interesting
+buildings and other works of art, and afforded a pleasant time indeed to
+the hopeful but very small minority engaged in it, in spite of all
+vexations and disappointments." There seemed no reason to suppose that,
+helped as he was by his predilections and by his environment, he could not
+become the master-builder of the house beautiful that constantly haunted
+his imagination.
+
+He was not to begin at once, however. In deference to his mother's wish he
+went through his final term, passed in the Final Schools without
+difficulty, and, together with his companions--The Brotherhood as they
+now called themselves,--gave distinction to his last year at the
+University, where despite all drawbacks he had been aboundingly happy, by
+founding the since famous little _Oxford and Cambridge Magazine_.
+
+[Illustration: TITLE-PAGE OF "THE OXFORD AND CAMBRIDGE MAGAZINE"]
+
+Like the Pre-Raphaelite _Germ_, this periodical aimed at an unusually high
+standard. It was printed at the Chiswick Press with some pretensions to
+typographical beauty. Each number had upon its title-page an ornamental
+heading designed by one of Charles Whittingham's daughters and engraved by
+Mary Byfield. On the green wrappers the name of the magazine was printed
+in the old-fashioned type which the Chiswick Press was the first to
+revive, and although, unlike _The Germ_, it was not illustrated,
+photographs of Woolner's medallions of Carlyle and Tennyson were mounted
+to bind with it and sold at a shilling apiece to subscribers. The price of
+each number was also a shilling, and twelve monthly numbers appeared,
+making it thrice as long lived as its prototype, _The Germ_. The financial
+responsibility, says Mr. Mackail, was undertaken wholly by Morris, and he
+at first attempted the general control. This he was soon glad to
+relinquish, paying a salary of a hundred pounds a year to his editor. The
+title, which in full read _The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine, Conducted by
+Members of the Two Universities_, indicates rather more co-operation than
+existed, the magazine being conducted entirely by Oxford men and fully
+two-thirds written by them. The tone of the contributions was to be
+impeccable. "It is unanimously agreed," wrote Price, "that there is to be
+no shewing off, no quips, no sneers, no lampooning in our Magazine."
+Politics were to be almost eschewed, "Tales, Poetry, friendly Critiques,
+and social articles" making up the body of the text.
+
+First among the contributors in quantity and regularity of supply was
+Morris. During his second year at the University he had discovered that he
+could write poetry, and had communicated the fact to his companions
+without loss of time. Canon Dixon, recalling the very thrilling occasion
+of his reading his first poem to the group gathered in the old Exeter
+rooms occupied by Burne-Jones, affirms that he reached his perfection at
+once, that nothing could have been altered for the better, and also quotes
+him as saying, "Well, if this is poetry, it is very easy to write." He was
+not one to let a capability fust in him unused. Poetry and prose, equally
+easy to him, poured after this from his pen, giving expression with some
+confusion and incoherence to his boyish raptures over the things he best
+loved and most thought about. During the twelve months of the magazine's
+life he contributed to it five poems, eight prose tales, a review of
+Browning's _Men and Women_, and two special articles, one on a couple of
+engravings by Alfred Bethel and one on the Cathedral at Amiens. In all
+this early work, filled with superabundant imagery, self-conscious,
+sensuous, unsubstantial, pictorial, we have Morris the writer as he was
+at the beginning and much as he was again at the end. His first strange
+little romances pass before the eyes as his late ones do, like strips of
+beautiful fabric, deeply dyed with colours both dim and rich, and printed
+with faintly outlined figures in postures illustrating the dreamy events
+of dreamy lives. Many of the pages echo with the sound of trumpets and the
+clash of arms, but the echo is from so far away that the heart of the
+reader declines to leap. Passionate emotions are portrayed in passionate
+language. Men and women love and die with wild adventure. Splendid
+sacrifices are made, and dark revenges taken. But the effect is of
+marionettes, admirably costumed and ingeniously managed yet inevitably
+suggesting artifice and failing to suggest life. Nevertheless Morris wrote
+in the fashion commonly supposed to impart vitality if nothing else to
+composition. He sat up late of nights, after the manner of young writers,
+and let his words stand as they fell hot and unpremeditated on the page.
+The labour of learning the art, as his favourite, Keats, learned it, by
+indefatigable practice in finding the perfect word, the one exquisite
+phrase, was quite outside his method. As long as he lived, he preferred
+rewriting to revising a manuscript. The austerity of mind that leads to
+impatience of superfluous colour or tone, and that dreads as the plague
+superfluous sentiment, was foreign to him, nor did he ever acquire it as
+even the Epicurean temperament may do by ardent self-restraint. In most
+of the romances and poems the scene is laid somewhat vaguely but
+unmistakably in the Middle Ages. We rarely surprise the young writer in a
+date, but the atmosphere is that of the thirteenth century though with
+many thirteenth-century characteristics left out. The incidents appeal to
+what Bagehot calls "that kind of boyish fancy which idolises mediaeval
+society as the 'fighting time.'" The distinction lies in the fertility and
+beauty of the descriptions. On nearly every page is some passage that has
+the quality of a picture. In _The Hollow Land_, in _Gertha's Lovers_, in
+_Svend and his Brethren_, and especially in the article on the Amiens
+Cathedral, are exquisite landscapes and backgrounds against which the
+personages group themselves with perfect fittingness. "I must paint Gertha
+before I die," said Burne-Jones, after Morris himself was dead, recalling
+the charm of this story which was written in his company, under the
+willows by the riverside. "The opening and the closing sentences always
+invited me in an indescribable way, but the motive _par excellence_ was
+that of Gertha after death, in the chapter entitled 'What Edith the
+Handmaiden Saw from the War Saddle,' where the beautiful queen lies on the
+battle-field with the blue speedwell about her pale face, while a soft
+wind rustles the sunset-lit aspens overhead."
+
+[Illustration: _Portrait of Rossetti_
+
+_By Watts_]
+
+To his genius for evoking a scene from memory or imagination with a grace
+and delicacy missing in the designs he was later to make with tools more
+rebellious than words, Morris added a singular ability to convey to
+his readers the most significant quality of what he admired, to impress
+them with the feature that had most impressed him. The fancy for gold,
+inspired perhaps by study of mediaeval illumination, runs like a glittering
+thread through the story of _Svend and his Brethren_. Cissela's gold hair,
+her crown of gold, the golden ring she breaks with her lover, the gold
+cloth over which she walks across the trampled battle-field, the samite of
+purple wrought with gold stars, the golden letters on the
+sword-blade,--all these recur like so many bright accents from which the
+attention cannot escape. Again, in the description of Amiens Cathedral, we
+get from simple verbal repetition the effect of massive modelling, the
+sense of weight in the design as Morris felt it in one of the sculptured
+figures of the niches: "A stately figure with a king's crown on his head,
+and hair falling in three waves over his shoulders; a very kingly face
+looking straight onward; a great jewelled collar falling heavily to his
+elbows: his right hand holding a heavy sceptre formed of many budding
+flowers, and his left just touching in front the folds of his raiment that
+falls heavily, very heavily to the ground over his feet. Saul, King of
+Israel." In another passage describing with minute detail the figures of
+the Virgin and Child, a similar emphasis is laid on the quality of
+restfulness. "The two figures are very full of rest; everything about them
+expresses it from the broad forehead of the Virgin, to the resting of the
+feet of the Child (who is almost self-balanced) in the fold of the robe
+that she holds gently, to the falling of the quiet lines of her robe over
+her feet, to the resting of its folds between them." And if the effect to
+be rendered is one of colour, a touch of finer eloquence is added to this
+somewhat crude method. The final passage of the account of the great
+Cathedral is a genuine triumph of poetic observation, carrying the fancy
+of the reader lightly over the silvery loveliness of the picture as it lay
+before the boy enraptured by it: "And now, farewell to the church that I
+love, to the carved temple-mountain that rises so high above the
+water-meadows of the Somme, above the grey roofs of the good town.
+Farewell to the sweep of the arches, up from the bronze bishops lying at
+the west end, up to the belt of solemn windows, where, through the painted
+glass, the light comes solemnly. Farewell to the cavernous porches of the
+west front, so grey under the fading August sun, grey with the
+wind-storms, grey with the rain-storms, grey with the beat of many days'
+sun, from sunrise to sunset; showing white sometimes, too, when the sun
+strikes it strongly; snowy-white, sometimes, when the moon is on it, and
+the shadows growing blacker; but grey now, fretted into deeper grey,
+fretted into black by the mitres of the bishops, by the solemn covered
+heads of the prophets, by the company of the risen, and the long robes of
+the judgment-angels by hell-mouth and its flames gaping there, and the
+devils that feed it; by the saved souls and the crowning angels; by the
+presence of the Judge, and by the roses growing above them all forever."
+
+The review of Browning's _Men and Women_, then recently published, is more
+valuable as testifying to the impression produced by Browning upon his
+young contemporary, than for any especial illumination it throws upon the
+poems themselves. Browning was popular with the students of Oxford long
+before he gained his wider audience, and although Morris did not follow
+him far in his investigation of the human soul and came heartily to
+dislike "his constant dwelling on sin and probing of the secrets of the
+heart," he placed him at the time of writing his criticism "high among the
+poets of all time" and he "hardly knew whether first or second in our
+own," and his defence of him, bristling with ejaculations, and couched in
+boyish phrases, shows in part a more than boyish divination. "It does not
+help poems much to _solve_ them," he says, after what, in truth, is a
+somewhat disastrous attempt to interpret the meaning of _Women and Roses_,
+"because there are in poems so many exquisitely small and delicate turns
+of thought running through their music, and along with it, that cannot be
+done into prose, any more than the infinite variety of form, and shadow,
+and colour in a great picture can be rendered by a coloured woodcut." It
+was "a bitter thing" to him to see the way in which the poet had been
+received by "almost everybody," and he assured his little world that what
+the critics called obscurity in Browning's poems resulted from depth of
+thought and greatness of subject on the poet's part, and on his readers'
+part, "from their shallower brains and more bounded knowledge," if not
+indeed from "mere wanton ignorance and idleness," and to this kind of
+obscurity one had little right to object. It was the first tilt in the
+lists, the beginning of the long combat against the Philistines upon which
+Morris entered with high resolve and firm conviction, which he lustily
+enjoyed, and in which despite many a broken lance he bore himself as a
+bold and skilful knight.
+
+In the little tale called _The Hollow Land_, written for the magazine just
+before it "went to smash," to use Burne-Jones's expressive phrase, an
+amusingly significant sentence occurs: "Then I tried to learn painting,"
+says the hero, "till I thought I should die, but at last learned through
+very much pain and grief." Here it is not difficult to recognise an
+autobiographic touch. Painting was already beginning to beckon Morris away
+from the profession he had so recently chosen. At the end of 1855, during
+the Christmas vacation, and just before Morris entered Street's office,
+Burne-Jones had made a visit to London, where at a monthly meeting at the
+Working Men's College he for the first time saw Rossetti, and later heard
+him rend in pieces the opinions of those who differed with him, and
+stoutly support his infrangible theory that all men should be painters.
+How ready Burne-Jones was to yield himself to this potent influence, how
+promptly Rossetti's vivid and original temperament acted upon his admirer,
+is clear from the latter's description, written many years after, of the
+first encounter--the young undergraduate sitting half-frightened,
+embarrassed and worshipping, among strangers, eating thick bread and
+butter, and listening to speeches about the progress of the college, until
+the entrance of his idol, whose sensitive, gentle, indolent face, with its
+flickering of humour and the fire of genius, entirely satisfied his poetic
+imagination. The great qualities of Rossetti in those days revealed
+themselves in his face, and his imperious will and keen intellect were no
+less obvious in his talk. Burne-Jones returned to Oxford with the idea of
+dedicating himself to art more than ever firmly fixed in his mind.
+Rossetti had approved the drawings which he had brought to him for
+consideration, and had pronounced the seven months still to elapse before
+he could take his degree time too valuable to waste outside of art,
+counselling him to fling the University and all its works behind him and
+begin painting at once. With mingled delight and terror Burne-Jones, in
+spite of small means and weak health, followed his leader, who, however
+rash to advise, was not one to neglect his charge, and who worked loyally
+to bring him through with triumph, criticising, teaching, approving,
+encouraging without stint, and presently, after his own inimitable
+fashion, bringing patrons to him, bidding them buy, which obediently they
+did.
+
+It was inevitable that Morris should be stirred to emulation by this step
+on the part of his friend. After Burne-Jones went to London to begin
+painting under Rossetti's direction, Morris spent nearly all his Sundays
+with him at his lodgings in Chelsea. These holidays were full of
+excitement. It was a glorious little world that opened out under
+Rossetti's enthusiastic, dogmatic, and continuous talk and argument.
+Morris was deeply impressed by his notion that everyone should be a
+painter, and after Street moved his office to London and Morris and
+Burne-Jones took lodgings together, the former tried the characteristic
+experiment of combining painting with architecture, attempting to get six
+hours a day at his drawing in addition to his office work. It is
+interesting to find him writing at this juncture that he cannot enter into
+politico-social subjects with any interest, that things are in a muddle
+and that he has no power to set them right in the smallest degree, that
+_his_ work is the embodiment of dreams in one form or another. What
+Rossetti thought of his two disciples is seen in a letter written by him
+to William Allingham in December, 1856, when Morris had been nearly a year
+with Street. He found both "wonders after their kind." "Jones is doing
+designs which quite put one to shame," he wrote, "so full are they of
+everything--Aurora Leighs of art. He will take the lead in no time."
+Morris he deemed "one of the finest little fellows alive--with a touch of
+the incoherent, but a real man," and "in all illumination and work of
+that kind" he considered him quite unrivalled by anything modern that he
+knew. With a guide thus confident and inspiring, it is not strange that
+Morris presently yielded to the spell, and renounced architecture to
+pursue painting as an end and aim in itself, although, like the hero of
+his romance, he learned with much pain and grief.
+
+[Illustration: ILLUSTRATION BY ROSSETTI TO "THE LADY OF SHALOTT" IN THE
+MOXON "TENNYSON." THE HEAD OF LAUNCELOT IS A PORTRAIT OF MORRIS]
+
+Rossetti's service to Morris is difficult to estimate. For a brief period
+his influence over him was supreme. Perhaps in the work and temper of this
+Italian, Morris saw more deeply into the heart of the mediaeval world than
+all his churches and illuminated manuscripts could help him to see. At all
+events, he was for the time close to genius and dominated by it. His
+devotion to his master partook of the violence inseparable from his
+temperament. He was soon ready to say, when Burne-Jones complained that he
+worked better in Rossetti's manner than in his own: "I have got beyond
+that; I want to imitate Gabriel as much as I can." But he was never to be
+for very long under any personal influence. Nor could he be persuaded by
+the most brilliant eloquence in the world that good could be got out of
+doing what he did not enjoy; and he never enjoyed any labour that required
+long patience and persistent concentration of effort. Without being
+fickle, his mind was so restless as to produce the effect of fickleness
+and to preclude the possibility of his doing really great work. While he
+was trying, under Rossetti's stimulating but peremptory rule, to master a
+painter's methods he became gloomy and despondent. "How long Rossetti's
+daily influence might have kept him labouring at what he could not do,"
+writes Mr. Mackail with a tinge of bitterness, "when there was work all
+round that he could do, on the whole, better than any man living, it is
+needless to inquire." But that Rossetti did manage to keep him for a
+couple of years at the study of painting cannot be counted a misfortune.
+Probably that experience, together with his brief term under Street, did
+as much as anything to save his design from mediocrity and imitativeness.
+He did not make himself an architect, and he never learned to draw
+anything that remotely resembled the actual structure of the human form,
+but he must have gained through his study some knowledge of the inviolable
+laws of art that he could not have gained by passive observation however
+keen, or by sympathy however ardent. Rossetti can hardly have been the
+best master for him. His own nature was too undisciplined, and he had as
+few of the academic virtues as any man on record of the same technical
+ability. But his was the supreme faculty of rousing enthusiasm. It may be
+doubted whether any other painter in England could have kept Morris at the
+appointed and impossible task for so long a time. It is easy to imagine
+how the impatient spirit of the latter rebelled against the slow process
+of learning to draw the human figure in its complicated and subtle beauty
+of construction and surface. The fact that he stopped so far short of
+satisfactory accomplishment seems to account for many of the defects to be
+found in his later designs, which at their best were never to be entirely
+beautiful, though full of zest and freedom. His tendency to drop any
+branch of his work as soon as it became tedious to him, to turn to
+something else, kept his creative impulse continually fresh and effective;
+but kept him also from achieving the penetrating distinction of artistic
+self-possession. Whatever helped him in any degree toward this
+self-possession, whatever he got in the way of discipline of mind and
+hand, should be acknowledged by his admirers with gratitude, and it is but
+just to recognise in Rossetti the one man who seems to have kept the
+prodigious impetuosity of Morris down without promptly losing hold upon
+his interest. Add to this the clear vision of a romantic ideal which all
+who worked with Rossetti were privileged to share, and the constant
+inspiration of the drama of sentiment and emotion rendered in his colour
+and line and in his exotic treatment of form, and we must own that nowhere
+else could Morris have found such food for an imagination already
+quickened by influences reaching it from a remote time and an alien world.
+Nowhere else could he have come so close to the concealed mysteries of the
+human soul, despite the disillusionment he was bound to feel in daily
+contact with a character as contradictory as it was compelling.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+FROM ROSSETTI TO THE RED HOUSE.
+
+
+Although a blight of discouragement seems to have fallen upon Morris under
+Rossetti's tuition, there were some blithe compensations. Not the least of
+these was the fitting up of the rooms at 17 Red Lion Square where he and
+Burne-Jones took quarters. "Topsy and I live together," wrote Burne-Jones,
+"in the quaintest room in all London, hung with brasses of old knights and
+drawings of Albert Duerer." For the furniture, Morris, who, Rossetti said,
+was "bent on doing the magnificent," made designs to be carried out in
+deal by a carpenter of the neighbourhood. Everything was very large and
+heavy, intensely mediaeval, and doubtless rather ugly in an honest fashion,
+but in the end it was furniture to be coveted, for it offered great spaces
+for decoration, and Rossetti as well as Morris and Burne-Jones painted on
+it subjects from Chaucer and Dante and the Arthurian stories. The panels
+of a cupboard glowed with Rossetti's beautiful pictures representing Dante
+and Beatrice meeting in Florence and meeting in Paradise, and on the wide
+backs of the chairs he painted scenes from some of the poems Morris had
+written. The wardrobe was decorated by Burne-Jones with paintings from
+_The Prioress's Tale_. On the walls of the room were hung, no doubt, the
+several water-colours bought from Rossetti, to the lovely names of which
+Morris promptly wrote ballads. An owl was co-tenant with the young
+artists, and they were served and also criticised by a housemaid of
+literary ambitions. In this highly individual apartment, where, curiously
+enough, Rossetti and his friend Deverell had had their studio together
+five or six years before, life was not all labour and striving. There
+were, moreover, holidays spent at the Zooelogical Gardens, evenings at the
+theatre, night-long sessions in Rossetti's rooms, and excursions on the
+Thames. One of the latter is vividly described in Dr. Birkbeck Hill's
+_Letters of Gabriel Rossetti to William Allingham_, giving a joyous
+picture of Morris at the mercy of his ungovernable temper. The party,
+consisting of Hill, Morris, and Faulkner, had started out to row down the
+Thames from Oxford to a London suburb. By the time they had reached Henley
+they had spent all their money except enough for Faulkner's return ticket
+to Oxford, where he was to attend a college meeting. For this he departed,
+promising to bring back a supply of money in the evening. "The weather was
+unusually hot," writes Dr. Hill, "Morris and I sauntered along the
+river-side. I have not forgotten the longing glances he cast on a large
+basket of strawberries. He had always been so plentifully supplied with
+money that he bore with far greater impatience than I did this privation.
+At last the shadows had grown long and the heat was more bearable. We went
+with light hearts to the railway station to meet our comrade. 'Well,
+Faulkner,' cried out Morris, cheerfully, 'how much money have you
+brought?' Our friend gave a start. 'Good heavens,' he replied, 'I forgot
+all about it.' Morris thrust both his hands into his long dark curly hair,
+tugged at it wildly, ground his teeth, swore like a trooper, and stamped
+up and down the platform--in fact, behaved just like Sinbad's captain when
+he found that his ship was driving upon the rocks. His outbursts of rage,
+I hasten to say, were always harmless. They left no sullenness behind, and
+as each rapidly passed away he was ready to join in a hearty laugh at it.
+Faulkner, who was not the most patient of men, noticed that passengers,
+station-master, porters, engine-driver, and stoker were all gazing in
+astonishment. He, too, lost his temper, and, though in a far lower key,
+stormed back. Morris soon quieted down, and a council of war was held. He
+fortunately had a gold watch-chain on which he raised enough to pay all
+needful expenses. I remember well how the rest of our journey we rowed by
+many a tavern on the bank as effectually constrained as ever was Ulysses
+not to listen to its siren call. It was through no earthly paradise that
+the young poet and artist passed on the afternoon of our last day." When
+they landed they had just a penny among them, and were still some six or
+seven miles from their destination, so they were obliged to hire a cab and
+trust to good fortune for not coming to a turnpike gate before arriving at
+Red Lion Square.
+
+About this time also Rossetti and Morris made an excursion to Oxford for
+the purpose of visiting Benjamin Woodward, the architect and Rossetti's
+friend. Mr. Woodward had recently erected a building for the Oxford Union,
+a society composed of past and present members of the University. In
+exhibiting the building to Rossetti it was suggested that the blank
+stretch of wall which ran around the top of the Debating Room afforded an
+admirable opportunity for decoration, and Rossetti with prompt enthusiasm
+evolved a plan for a cooeperative enterprise. He and Morris, with several
+other willing spirits,--Burne-Jones, of course, Arthur Hughes, Valentine
+Prinsep, Spencer Stanhope, and J. Hungerford Pollen,--were to go up to
+Oxford in a body. Each was to choose a subject from the _Morte d'Arthur_,
+and execute it to the best of his ability on the walls of the Debating
+Room. The whole affair was to be a matter of a few weeks. The artists
+offered their services for nothing; their expenses (which turned out to be
+as free as their offer) were to be paid by the Union. It is easy to
+imagine the ensuing bustle and ardour. Rossetti eagerly managing, Morris
+delighted with the charmingly mediaeval situation,--a few humble painters
+working together piously, without hope of glory or thought of gain,--the
+others following their leader with lamb-like docility. Had their knowledge
+of methods been equal to their zeal, the walls of the Debating Room must
+have become the loveliest of realised visions and the delight of many
+generations. The young workmen sat for each other, Morris, Burne-Jones,
+and Rossetti all possessing fine paintable heads. They clambered up and
+down endless ladders to gain a satisfactory view of their performance, and
+attacked the most stupendous difficulties with patience and ingenuity. The
+faces in the subject undertaken by Burne-Jones were painted, for example,
+in three planes at right angles to one another, owing to the projection of
+a string-course of bricks straight across the space to be filled by the
+heads of the figures. Some studies by Rossetti have been preserved, and
+show that his part at least of the decoration was conceived in a fresh
+poetic spirit, with fulness and quaintness of expression and suggestion.
+But the congenial band had entered upon their labours with a carelessness
+that can only be described as wanton. Not one of them knew how to paint in
+tempera, and the new damp walls were smeared over with a thin coat of
+white lime wash laid upon the bare bricks as sole preparation for a sort
+of water-colour painting that blossomed like a flower under the gifted
+hands of the artists, and faded almost as soon away. The effect at the
+time was so brilliant as to make the walls, according to Mr. Coventry
+Patmore's contemporaneous testimony, "look like the margin of an
+illuminated manuscript," but in the course of a few months the colours had
+sunk into the sponge-like surface to such an extent that the designs were
+already dim and indistinguishable.
+
+Morris, with characteristic promptness, was the first on the field, and
+his picture was finished in advance of any of the others. He was, however,
+no better instructed than his companions in the special requirements of
+his material, and presently all that was left of his painting was the head
+of his brave knight peering over the tops of multitudinous sunflowers. The
+decoration of the ceiling was also assigned to him, and he made his design
+for it in a single day. Later, in 1875, he repainted it, but most of the
+art of this merry period has receded into complete oblivion. The stay in
+Oxford lengthened into months as complications increased, and finally the
+enterprise was abandoned with the work unfinished. It had led, however, to
+an event of paramount importance to Morris, and of considerable importance
+to Rossetti--the meeting with Miss Burden, who was to figure in so many of
+Rossetti's symbolic pictures, and who became the wife of Morris. Her
+remarkable beauty had attracted the attention of the young men one night
+at the little Oxford theatre. "My brother was the first to observe her,"
+writes William Rossetti; "her face was at once tragic, mystic, passionate,
+calm, beautiful, and gracious--a face for a sculptor and a face for a
+painter--a face solitary in England, and not at all like that of an
+English woman, but rather of an Ionian Greek." In Rossetti's portrait of
+her at eighteen, painted shortly after this meeting, we see the grave,
+unusual features almost precisely as they are drawn with words in a poem
+by Morris, entitled _Praise of My Lady_, which Mr. Mackail says was
+written during a visit to the Manchester Exhibition of 1857, but which
+assuredly is no earlier than the date of his acquaintance with Jane
+Burden. The description, Pre-Raphaelite in its detail, runs through the
+first half of the poem:
+
+  My Lady seems of ivory
+  Forehead, straight nose, and cheeks that be
+  Hollow'd a little mournfully.
+                Beata mea Domina!
+
+  Her forehead, overshadow'd much
+  By bows of hair, has a wave such
+  As God was good to make for me.
+                Beata mea Domina!
+
+  Not greatly long my lady's hair,
+  Nor yet with yellow color fair,
+  But thick and crisped wonderfully;
+                Beata mea Domina!
+
+  Heavy to make the pale face sad,
+  And dark, but dead as though it had
+  Been forged by God most wonderfully;
+                Beata mea Domina!
+
+  Of some strange metal, thread by thread,
+  To stand out from my lady's head,
+  Not moving much to tangle me.
+                Beata mea Domina!
+
+  Beneath her brows the lids fall slow,
+  The lashes a clear shadow throw
+  Where I would wish my lips to be.
+                Beata mea Domina!
+
+  Her great eyes, standing far apart,
+  Draw up some memory from her heart,
+  And gaze out very mournfully;
+                Beata mea Domina!
+
+  So beautiful and kind they are,
+  But most times looking out afar,
+  Waiting for something, not for me.
+                Beata mea Domina!
+
+  I wonder if the lashes long
+  Are those that do her bright eyes wrong,
+  For always half tears seem to be.
+                Beata mea Domina!
+
+  Lurking below the underlid,
+  Darkening the place where they lie hid--
+  If they should rise and flow for me!
+                Beata mea Domina!
+
+  Her full lips being made to kiss,
+  Curl'd up and pensive each one is;
+  This makes me faint to stand and see.
+                Beata mea Domina!
+
+It was the force of this attraction that kept Morris long at Oxford after
+Rossetti and Burne-Jones had returned to London, leaving the walls of the
+Oxford Union to their sad fate. But it was no love in idleness for him,
+rather a time of many beginnings. He was carving in stone, modelling in
+clay, making designs for stained glass windows, even "doing worsted
+work," in Rossetti's contemptuous phrase for his efforts at reviving the
+lost art of embroidery, with a frame made from an old model and wools dyed
+especially for him. Most of all he was writing poetry, the proper
+occupation of a lover so aesthetically endowed. Early in 1858 he had _The
+Defence of Guenevere_, a collection of thirty poems, ready to bring out.
+Save for a slim little pamphlet entitled _Sir Galahad: A Christmas
+Mystery_, the contents of which were included in it, it was his first
+volume and, like Swinburne's _Rosamond_ published two years later, it was
+dedicated to Rossetti.
+
+In this youthful, fantastic, emotional poetry we get the very essence of
+the writer's early spirit without the strange shadow of foreboding, the
+constant sense of swiftly passing time, that comes into the poetry of his
+maturity. Technically, the poems could hardly be more picturesquely
+defective than they are. The one giving the volume its name is nearly
+unintelligible in parts, even when the reader is aware of the incidents of
+Guenevere's story, and prepared to interpret the hysterical ravings of a
+woman overcome by sorrow, shame, and love.
+
+But no poems, except Rossetti's own, have so suggested romantic art in
+strange shapes and unbridled colour. They, too, like the wall-paintings of
+that early and unrivalled time, resemble the margins of an illuminated
+manuscript, reminding one of nothing in nature, but flashing the richness
+of mediaeval symbolism upon the imagination in more or less awkward forms.
+If Morris could not "imitate Gabriel" in his pictures, he could at least
+imitate Gabriel's pictures in his poems. From the _Beata Beatrix_, from
+the _Ghirlandata_, from the _Proserpine_, from almost any of Rossetti's
+paintings of women, these curious and affected lines, for example, might
+have been gleaned:
+
+  See through my long throat how the words go up
+    In ripples to my mouth; how in my hand
+  The shadow lies like wine within a cup
+    Of marvellously colour'd gold.
+
+In _The Eve of Crecy_ we have the glitter of gold and the splendour of
+material things, rendered with a childish abandon, as in the prose
+romances:
+
+  Gold on her head and gold on her feet,
+  And gold where the hems of her kirtle meet,
+  And a golden girdle round my sweet;--
+        Ah! qu'elle est belle, La Marguerite.
+
+  Yet even now it is good to think
+
+         *       *       *       *       *
+
+  Of Margaret sitting glorious there,
+  In glory of gold and glory of hair,
+  And glory of glorious face most fair;
+        Ah! qu'elle est belle, La Marguerite.
+
+The full hues that had for the decorators of mediaeval missals a religious
+significance recur again and again in lines that have much more to do with
+earth than with heaven, and show less concern with the human soul than
+with the human heart. Damozels hold scarlet lilies such as Maiden
+Margaret bears "on the great church walls;" ladies walk in their gardens
+clad in white and scarlet; the vision of Christ appears to Galahad "with
+raiment half blood-red, half white as snow"; angels appear clad in white
+with scarlet wings; scarlet is the predominating colour throughout, if we
+except gold, which serves as background and ornament to everything. Next
+to scarlet comes green, which Morris was later to call "the workaday
+colour," and we find occasional patches of blue and of grey in painted
+boats and in hangings. The following stanza shows a favourite method of
+emphasising the prevailing colour of a poem:
+
+            The water slips,
+  The red-bill'd heron dips,
+  Sweet kisses on red lips,
+  Alas! the red rust grips,
+  And the blood-red dagger rips,
+  Yet, O knight, come to me!
+
+For pure incoherence, the quality that Rossetti discerned in Morris at
+their first meeting, the song from which this stanza is taken is
+unsurpassed. Yet an emotional effect is gained in it. What we chiefly miss
+in the little craft sailing under such vivid colours, is that
+"deep-grasping keel of reason" which, Lowell says, "alone can steady and
+give direction" to verse. Excitable and impatient, in pursuit of a vague
+ideal, gifted with the power to bring out the pictorial quality of
+detached scenes, but without a fine metrical sense, and averse to lucid
+statement, the young poet introduced himself to the world as a symbolist
+in the modern acceptation of the word. One of his poems, _Rapunzel_, has
+been said to forecast Maeterlinck's manner and spirit, and the general
+characteristics of the poem--a fairy tale somewhat too "grown-up" in
+treatment--certainly suggest the comparison. In all this work physical
+characteristics play an important part. Long hands with "tenderly shadowed
+fingers," "long lips" that "cleave" to the fingers they kiss, lips "damp
+with tears," that "shudder with a kiss," lips "like a curved sword," warm
+arms, long, fair arms, lithe arms, twining arms, broad fair eyelids, long
+necks, and unlimited hair, form an equipment somewhat dangerous for a poet
+with anything short of genius to sustain him. For themes Morris had gone
+chiefly to the Arthurian stories and to the chronicles of Froissart. His
+style, he himself thought, was more like Browning's than anyone else's,
+though the difference that lay between him and Browning even at the
+beginning forbade any essential likeness. Browning's effort was always to
+render an idea which was perfectly clear in his own mind. His volubility
+and obscurity and roughness frequently arose from his over-eagerness to
+express his idea in a variety of ways, leading him to break off with half
+statements and begin afresh, to throw out imperfect suggestions and follow
+them with others equally imperfect. But all his stutterings and broken
+sentences failed to disguise the fact that an intellectual conception
+underlay the turbulent method, giving substance and life to the poem
+however much it might lack grace and form. With Morris the intellectual
+conception was as weak as with Browning it was strong, and apparently
+existed chiefly to give an excuse for the pictures following one another
+in rapid succession through every poem, short or long, dramatic or lyric,
+of both his youth and maturity. In this early volume there was, to be
+sure, an obvious effort toward rendering psychological effects. Most of
+the longer poems are miniature dramas with a march toward some great event
+in the lives of the actors. The author observes the dramatic requirement
+of sinking himself in the identity of his characters. Knights are slain
+and ladies die of love and witch-bound maidens are rescued by their
+princes without the sounding of a personal note on the part of their
+creator. And in two instances, _Sir Peter Harpdon's End_ and _The Haystack
+in the Floods_, there is ruddy human blood in the tortured beings whose
+extremity moves the reader with a genuine emotion. In these two poems the
+voice might indeed be the voice of Browning, though the hand is still
+unmistakably the hand of Morris. In the main, however, the appeal that is
+made is to the imagination concerned with the visible aspect of
+brilliantly coloured objects and with the delirious expression of
+overwrought feelings.
+
+[Illustration: _Portrait of Jane Burden (Mrs. Morris)_
+
+_By Rossetti_]
+
+One defect, calculated to interfere with a warm reception of the volume on
+the part of the general public, Morris shared with Browning, possessing
+even more than Browning the merit attending it. Familiarity with the
+art and literature of the Middle Ages made it natural for him to preserve
+the thin new wine of his youthful poetry in the old bottles of the defunct
+past, using motives and scenes and accessories alien to our modern life,
+and only dimly understood by the modern reader. The true spirit of that
+past it is hardly necessary to say he did not revive,--no writer has ever
+revived the true spirit of any age antecedent to his own,--and Morris,
+with his remarkable faculty for eliminating from his mental conceptions
+whatever did not please his taste, was wholly unfitted by temperament,
+however well fitted by his acquirements, to carry through successfully a
+task so tremendous.
+
+_The Defence of Guenevere_ was received by the public without enthusiasm.
+About half an edition of five hundred copies was sold and given away, and
+the remainder lingered for a dozen years or more until the publication of
+_The Earthly Paradise_ stimulated the interest of readers in the previous
+work of its author.
+
+Whatever disappointment Morris may have felt must soon have given way to
+the excitement of the plunge he now made into a new life and the most
+intense personal interests. On the twenty-sixth of April, 1859, he was
+married to Jane Burden, and after a brief interval of travel he began to
+build the beautiful house which he then supposed would be his home for the
+rest of his days.
+
+His personal attractiveness at this time was keenly felt by his
+companions. He had been "making himself," as the phrase is, since his
+childhood, and if Stevenson's dictum--to know what you like is the
+beginning of wisdom and of old age--be applied to him he can never have
+been wholly ignorant or a child. Knowledge of what he liked, and even more
+definitely of what he did not like, was his earliest as well as his most
+notable acquirement. But he was a boy, too, in his excessive restless
+vitality, and hitherto with all his enthusiasms he had been a somewhat
+cold boy. Just now he was beginning to "take a fancy for the human," as
+one of his friends put it. He was connecting his vague schemes and
+ambitions with a personal and practical enterprise. His ideals dropped
+from a region always too rare for them to an atmosphere of activities and
+interests in which the vast general public could breathe as easily as he.
+In building his new home to his fancy he was unconsciously laying the
+corner-stones of the many homes throughout England into which his
+influence was afterward to enter. He was just twenty-five, filled with
+energy, generous impulse, honesty, and kindness. The bourgeois touch which
+his biographer declares was inherent in his nature was far from obvious as
+yet. Society for its own sake he liked little, and was not above getting
+out of unwelcome invitations by subterfuge, if fair means would not avail.
+He affected a Bohemian carelessness in dress, and his hair was uniformly
+wild. His language was generally forcible, often violent, always
+expressive. He lived in the company of his intimates and cared for nothing
+beyond the range of his fixed interests. The remark made long after--"Do
+you suppose that I should see anything in Rome that I can't see in
+Whitechapel?"--was perfectly indicative of his mood toward everything that
+failed to arouse his intellectual curiosity. But the places and things
+that did arouse it were never tawdry or valueless, and his reasons for
+caring for them, of which he was always remarkably prolific, were such as
+appeal strongly to the mind in which homely associations hold a constant
+place. It must be an out and out classicist who fails to detect in himself
+a pulsation of sympathy in response to the wail which Morris once sent
+home from Verona: "Yes, and even in these magnificent and wonderful towns
+I long rather for the heap of grey stones with a grey roof that we call a
+house north-away."
+
+[Illustration: "ACANTHUS" WALL-PAPER, "PIMPERNEL" WALL-PAPER, "AFRICAN
+MARIGOLD" COTTON-PRINT
+
+WALL-PAPER AND COTTON-PRINT DESIGNS
+
+(_Reproduced from examples obtained by courtesy of Mr. A. E. Bulkley_)]
+
+His first house, in which he took unlimited delight, was not, however, a
+heap of grey stones, but a structure of brick, its name, the Red House,
+indicating its striking and then unusual colour. Its architect was Philip
+Webb, who had been an associate of Morris during the brief period passed
+in Mr. Street's office. Situated not far from London, on the outskirts of
+the village of Upton and in the midst of a pleasant orchard, whose trees
+dropped their fruit into its windows, the Red House wore an emphatically
+Gothic aspect. It was L-shaped, with numerous irregularities of plan, and
+entirely without frippery of applied ornament. Its great sloping roof, the
+pointed arches of its doorways, the deep simple porches, the large hall,
+with its long table in place of an entrance alley the open-timbered roof
+over the staircase, the panelled screen dividing the great hall from a
+lesser one,--all these were characteristic of the old English house before
+the day of Italian invasion, while the mobile Gothic style, adapting
+itself readily to individual needs, prevailed. It stood among the old and
+gnarled trees, only two stories in height, but with an effect of rambling
+spaciousness and hospitality, and the garden that lay close to it was as
+individual and old-fashioned as itself. Morris prided himself, Mr. Mackail
+tells us, on his knowledge of gardening, and his advice to the Birmingham
+Society of Artists in one of the lectures of his later years shows how
+thoughtfully he considered the subject. As he always acted so far as he
+could upon his theories, we may be fairly sure that the Red House garden
+was planned in conformity with the ideal place sketched in this lecture,
+and may assume in it a profusion of single flowers mixed to avoid great
+masses of colour, among them the old columbine, where the clustering doves
+are unmistakable and distinct, the old china aster, the single snowdrop,
+and the sunflower, these planted in little squares, divided from each
+other by grassy walks, and hedged in by wild rose or sweet-briar
+trellises. We may be sure the place contained no curiosities from the
+jungle or tropical waste, that everything was excluded which was not
+native to the English soil, and that ferns and brakes from the woodland
+were not enticed from the place of their origin to take away the
+characteristic domestic look of a spot that ought to seem "like a part of
+the house." "It will be a key to right thinking about gardens," says
+Morris, "if you consider in what kind of places a garden is most desired.
+In a very beautiful country, especially if it be mountainous, we can do
+without it well enough, whereas in a flat and dull country we crave after
+it, and there it is often the very making of the homestead; while in great
+towns, gardens both private and public are positive necessities if the
+citizens are to live reasonable and healthy lives in body and mind."
+
+Passing from this first necessity of reasonable and healthy living through
+the rose-masked doorway into the Red House itself, we find it equally
+suggestive of its master's personal tastes and beliefs. For everything
+Morris had his persuasive reason. His windows had small leaded panes of
+glass, because the large windows found "in most decent houses or what are
+so called," let in a flood of light "in a haphazard and ill-considered
+way," which the indwellers are "forced to obscure again by shutters,
+blinds, curtains, screens, heavy upholsteries, and such other nuisances."
+By all means, therefore, fill the window with moderate-sized panes of
+glass set in solid sash bars--"we shall then at all events feel as if we
+were indoors on a cold day"--as if we had a roof over our heads. The fact
+that small windows were used in mediaeval times and must therefore of
+necessity be superior is not brought forward in this argument, and the
+charm of the reasoning is not marred by any reminder of the actual
+conditions of which small heavily leaded windows are a survival--such as
+the fortress style of building belonging to a warlike time, and the great
+costliness of glass, and the inability to support large panes by leads.
+
+Morris could always be trusted to support his fundamental liking for a
+thing by a host of assurances as to its sensible merits and practical
+advantages, but the mere fact that he liked it was quite sufficient for
+his own satisfaction of mind. When one of his comrades once suggested to
+him that personal feeling ought not to count for too much, and that not
+liking a thing did not make it bad, he replied: "Oh, don't it though! What
+we don't like _is_ bad." And he had a fashion which must have produced an
+irritating effect upon some of his hearers, of declaring that the people
+who did not hold his ideas must be unhealthy either in body or mind or
+both. Certainly the aspect of the Red House suggested health within its
+walls. With a slight stretch of imagination one could argue from its
+furnishings that its master was a northerner, a middle-class man, the
+admirer of a rough age, a sturdy art, a plain habit of life; that he was a
+worker whose dreams tormented him to speedy and vigorous action, a
+creature whose vitality was too great even for his strong frame and
+physical power. He liked a massive chair, and well he might, for one of
+his amusements was to twist his legs about it in such a way that a lightly
+built affair must instantly succumb. He liked a floor that he could stamp
+on with impunity; he liked a table on which he could pound with his fists
+without danger to its equilibrium. In the Red House these requirements
+were fully met. In the lecture called _The Beauty of Life_ is an account
+of the fittings "necessary to the sitting-room of a healthy person."
+Beside the table that will "keep steady when you work upon it," and the
+chairs "that you can move about," the good floor, and the small carpet
+"which can be bundled out of the room in two minutes," there must be "a
+bookcase with a great many books in it," a bench "that you can sit or lie
+upon," a cupboard with drawers, and, "unless either the bookcase or the
+cupboard be very beautiful with painting or carving," pictures or
+engravings on the wall, "or else the wall itself must be ornamented with
+some beautiful and restful pattern," then a vase or two, and fireplaces as
+unlike as possible to "the modern mean, miserable, and showy affairs,
+plastered about with wretched sham ornament, trumpery of cast iron, and
+brass and polished steel, and what not--offensive to look at and a
+nuisance to clean." To these necessaries, "unless we are musical and need
+a piano, in which case as far as beauty is concerned we are in a bad way,"
+we can add very little without "troubling ourselves, and hindering our
+work, our thought, and our rest."
+
+In accordance with these opinions, but with a fulness and richness of
+ornament not suggested by the simplicity of their expression, the pleasant
+building at Upton gradually took on great beauty and individuality. The
+walls were hung with embroidered fabrics worked by Mrs. Morris and her
+friends, or painted by Burne-Jones, who, undeterred by the Oxford episode,
+started an elaborate series of mural decorations in illustration of the
+wonderful adventures of Sire Degravant, the hero of an ancient romance.
+Another series of scenes from the War of Troy was started for the walls of
+the staircase, and although both schemes were abandoned, enough was done
+to give an effect of splendour to the rooms. Up to the large drawing-room
+came the ponderous and mighty settle which had cost so many expletives in
+the course of its adjustment to the old room in Red Lion Square, and which
+was now embellished by a balcony at the top to which a stairway led up.
+All minor accessories were thoughtfully considered and for the most part
+designed by Morris or by friends pressed into service at his eager demand.
+He found little to content him in the articles of commerce on sale at the
+orthodox shops in the early sixties. "In looking at an old house," he says
+in one of his books, "we please ourselves by thinking of all the
+generations of men that have passed through it, remembering how it has
+received their joy and borne their sorrow and not even their folly has
+left sourness on it; and in looking at a new house if built as it
+should be, we feel a pleasure in thinking how he who built it has left a
+piece of his soul behind him to greet the newcomers one after another,
+long after he is gone." Such an impress he left upon the Red House, so
+that no one passing it or even hearing of it can fail to think of it as
+belonging to William Morris, whoever may have the fortune to live in it
+hereafter, and fall heir to the associations with which he invested it.
+
+[Illustration: "THE STRAWBERRY THIEF" DESIGN FOR COTTON PRINT]
+
+During the time of building and furnishing he was exuberantly happy and
+wholly in his element. Turning constantly from one thing to another, yet
+keeping along the line of his united interests, giving his magnificent
+energy free scope in doing and accomplishing, seeing grow into visible
+form the theories and tastes so dear to his heart, letting out his
+enthusiasms and carrying others along on their current, setting a
+practical example in what he believed to be of the deepest importance by
+requiring for himself artistic handicraft, acting out a vigorous protest
+against the mechanical arts and the shams of the commercial world,--all
+this was meat and drink to him, and out of it grew an enterprise
+representing what to the public has been probably the most valuable side
+of his many-sided career, the establishment of a firm engaged in various
+forms of decorative art. At about this time he adopted, after the fashion
+of the master-workman of the Middle Ages, a device or legend expressive in
+one way or another of his aim. He chose the one used by Van Eyck, "Als
+ich kanne,"--if I can,--and distributed it in French translation and in
+English over his house, on windows and tiles and in tapestry hangings. The
+modesty of the words was no doubt as sincere in his case as in the case of
+the old Flemish painter who excelled all his contemporaries, but the
+extent to which he could and did in the new business on which he was about
+to enter has been the wonder of his followers.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+MORRIS AND COMPANY.
+
+
+The formation of the firm of "Morris, Marshall, Faulkner, & Company," as
+it was first called, appears to have been highly incidental in character,
+despite the assertion of Morris himself in a letter to his old tutor, that
+he had long meant to be a decorator, and to that end mainly had built his
+fine house. "One evening a lot of us were together," says Rossetti, in the
+account given by Mr. Watts-Dunton, "and we got to talking about the way in
+which artists did all kinds of things in olden times, designed every kind
+of decoration and most kinds of furniture, and someone suggested--as a
+joke more than anything else--that we should each put down five pounds and
+form a company. Fivers were blossoms of a rare growth among us in those
+days, and I won't swear that the table bristled with fivers. Anyhow the
+firm was formed, but of course there was no deed or anything of that kind.
+In fact it was a mere playing at business, and Morris was elected manager,
+not because we ever dreamed he would turn out a man of business, but
+because he was the only one among us who had both time and money to spare.
+We had no idea whatever of commercial success, but it succeeded almost in
+our own despite."
+
+In the mind of Morris it doubtless promised to be the sort of association
+about which he was constantly dreaming; a group of intelligent craftsmen
+interested in making the details of daily life as full as possible of
+beauty, each man fitted to his task and loving it, each in his way a
+master-workman of the guild, counting his craft honourable and spending
+his best thought and labour on it. There was ground enough for faith in
+the artistic if not in the commercial outcome of the enterprise. The
+associates, beside Morris, Rossetti, and Burne-Jones, were Madox-Brown,
+then an artist of established reputation, Webb, the architect of the Red
+House, who was also a designer of furniture and ornament; Peter Paul
+Marshall, to whom Mr. William Rossetti ascribes the first suggestion of
+the formation of the firm, a "capable artist" although an amateur; and
+Charles Faulkner of the Oxford group, who had followed his mates to London
+unable to endure the loneliness of Oxford without them. They proposed to
+open what Rossetti called "an actual shop," and sell whatever their united
+talent produced. "We are not intending to compete with ----'s costly
+rubbish or anything of that sort," Rossetti wrote to his friend Allingham,
+"but to give real good taste at the price as far as possible of ordinary
+furniture."
+
+[Illustration: TULIP DESIGN FOR AXMINSTER CARPET]
+
+In the Spring of 1861, premises were taken over a jeweller's shop at 8 Red
+Lion Square. Two floors and a part of the basement were used by the firm,
+and about a dozen men and boys were presently employed. There were regular
+weekly meetings carried on with the boisterousness of youth and high
+spirits, but with thorough efficiency, nevertheless, where plans that were
+to modify and influence the household decoration of all England were gaily
+formed and put into practice.
+
+The prospectus, in which Mr. Mackail discerns Rossetti's "slashing hand
+and imperious accent," was not entirely calculated to mollify rival
+decorators, calling attention to the fact that attempts at decorative art
+up to that time had been crude and fragmentary, and emphasising the want
+of some one place where work of "a genuine and beautiful character could
+be obtained." The new firm pledged itself to execute in a business-like
+manner:
+
+"I. Mural Decoration, either in Pictures or in Pattern Work, or merely in
+the arrangement of Colours, as applied to dwelling-houses, churches, or
+public buildings.
+
+"II. Carving generally, as applied to Architecture.
+
+"III. Stained Glass, especially with reference to its harmony with Mural
+Decoration.
+
+"IV. Metal Work in all its branches, including jewellery.
+
+"V. Furniture, either depending for its beauty on its own design, on the
+application of materials hitherto overlooked, or on its conjunction with
+Figure and Pattern Painting. Under this head is included Embroidery of all
+kinds, Stamped Leather, and ornamental work in other such materials,
+besides every article necessary for domestic use."
+
+Clearly this was not the usual thing, nor was the business conducted in
+the usual way. According to Mr. William Rossetti, the young reformers
+adopted a tone of "something very like dictatorial irony" toward their
+customers, permitting no compromise, and laying down the law without
+concession to individual taste or want of taste. You could have things
+such as the firm chose them to be or you could go without them.
+
+The finance of the company began, Mr. Mackail says, with a call of one
+pound per share and a loan of a hundred pounds from Mrs. Morris of Leyton.
+In 1862 a further call of nineteen pounds a share was made on the
+partners, raising the paid-up capital to one hundred and forty pounds,
+which "was never increased until the dissolution of the firm in 1874." A
+few hundred pounds additional were loaned by Morris and his mother. Each
+piece of work contributed by any member of the firm was paid for at the
+time, and Morris as general manager received a salary of a hundred and
+fifty pounds a year.
+
+[Illustration: PEACOCK DESIGN FOR COARSE WOOL HANGINGS]
+
+It is obvious that with this slender financial basis the business required
+the utmost energy, industry, skill, and talent to keep it from being
+promptly wrecked on the very uncertain coast of public opinion. During
+the first year all the members of the firm were active, although even at
+the first Morris led the rest. A stimulus was provided by the
+International Exhibition of 1862, whither they sent examples of their
+work, at the cost, wrote Faulkner, of "more tribulation and swearing to
+Topsy than three exhibitions will be worth." The exhibits attracted
+attention, and were awarded medals, in the case of the stained glass, "for
+artistic qualities of colour and design," and in the case of the
+furniture, hangings, and so forth, for the "closeness with which the style
+of the Middle Ages was rendered." It happened that the chief work in
+stained glass in the exhibit of the firm consisted of a set of windows
+designed by Rossetti, and giving, according to a Belgian critic, "an
+impression of colour, dazzling and magnificent, velvety and harmonious,
+resembling the Flemish stained glass windows decorating the Gothic
+cathedrals." Thus, fortunately, the first appearance of the firm was
+distinguished by the splendour which Rossetti alone among the group of
+workers could achieve, but his interest and activity shortly flagged and
+were absorbed in his individual work outside the company.
+
+At first, despite the lordly prospectus, there were occasional blunders.
+Dr. Birkbeck Hill tells of a study table and an arm-chair, neither one of
+which was so thorough a piece of workmanship as the firm would have turned
+out later on, and Mr. Hughes remembers a sofa with a long bar beneath
+projecting six inches at each end so that it tripped up anyone who
+hastily went round it. These, however, were blunders of a kind soon
+remedied by experience. So long as the associates kept up their enthusiasm
+there were among them ample skill to grapple with technicalities, and
+ample artistic faculty to defy all ordinary competition. Whoever dropped
+behind from time to time in this most essential quality of enthusiasm it
+was never Morris, and all accounts agree in attributing to his energy and
+industry and unutterable zest the success of the novel and interesting
+experiment. "He is the only man I have known," said Rossetti once, "who
+beats every other man at his own game." The men he had to beat at this
+game of decoration were for the most part unworthy foes. Decorative art
+was at a low ebb in the early Victorian age, the age of antimacassars,
+stucco, and veneer. From this cheap vulgarity and pretentiousness Morris
+turned back--as he was wont to do on every occasion that offered
+excuse--to the thirteenth century as the purest fount of English
+tradition, where, if anywhere, could be found models showing logical
+principles of construction and genuine workmanship. His companions either
+caught from him the infection of the mediaeval attitude or were already in
+sympathy with it, and the work of the firm took on an emphatically Gothic
+aspect from the beginning. How great or how important a part each member
+played in the sum of the production is very difficult to estimate owing to
+the cooeperative plan by which several artists frequently united in
+executing one and the same piece of work. Sometimes Burne-Jones would
+draw the figures, Webb the birds, and Morris the foliage for a piece of
+drapery or wall-paper. Again portions of separate designs would be used
+over and over in different combinations for different places. This free
+cooeperation, this moving about within the limits of a general plan, suited
+the restless spirit of Morris, and chimed also with his profound
+admiration for the way in which the mediaeval works of art were brought
+about, no one man standing high above the others or trying to preserve his
+name and the fame of his performance. Working for the pleasure of the work
+was of the very essence of his philosophy, and nothing could be more
+unjust than the sneers from time to time launched at him because his
+venture proved a commercial triumph. Perhaps it would be going too far to
+say that money-getting was never in his mind, but there is no question
+that it was never first in his mind, and never in the slightest degree
+crowded his desire to put forth sincere, fine work, worth its price to the
+last detail, and worthy of praise and liking without regard to its price.
+There was not the slightest suggestion of pose or sham of any kind in his
+thought when he wrote, as he often did, against the greed of gain and in
+praise of the kind of labour that may be delighted in without regard to
+pounds and pence. He could say quite faithfully that he shared the
+humility of the early craftsmen, of whom he speaks with reverence.
+
+"In most sober earnest," he says in one of his lectures, "when we hear it
+said, as it often is said, that extra money payment is necessary under all
+circumstances to produce great works of art, and that men of special
+talent will not use those talents without being bribed by mere gross
+material advantages, we, I say, shall know what to reply. We can appeal to
+the witness of those lovely works still left to us, whose unknown, unnamed
+creators were content to give them to the world, with little more extra
+wages than what their pleasure in their work and their sense of usefulness
+in it might bestow on them." There is no room for doubt that he approached
+his work in precisely the spirit here described by him. He was willing to
+exercise his faculties on the humblest undertakings, with no other aim
+than to make a common thing pleasant to look upon and agreeable to use.
+Half a century ago "craft" was not the fashionable word for the kind of
+work with which the firm chiefly concerned itself, and in doing the
+greater part of what he did Morris was merely writing himself down, in the
+language of the general public, an artisan. Conforming to the truest of
+principles he raised his work by getting under it. Nothing was too
+laborious or too lowly for him. Pride of position was unknown to him in
+any sense that would prevent him from indulging in manual labour. His real
+pride lay in making something which he considered beautiful take the place
+of something ugly in the world. If it were a fabric to be made lovely with
+long disused or unfamiliar dyes, his hands were in the vat. If tapestry
+were to be woven, he was at the loom by dawn. In his workman's blouse,
+steeped in indigo, and with his hair outstanding wildly, he was in the
+habit of presenting himself cheerfully at the houses of his friends,
+relying upon his native dignity to save appearances, or, to speak more
+truly, not thinking of appearances at all, but entirely happy in his role
+of workman, though frankly desirous that the business should prosper
+beyond all danger of the "smash" that would, he owned, "be a terrible
+nuisance." "I have not time on my hands," he said, "to be ruined and get
+really poor." It was to the peculiar union of the ideal and the practical
+in his nature that his success in the fields on which he ventured is due.
+
+[Illustration: PAINTED WALL DECORATION DESIGNED BY MORRIS]
+
+It must be admitted, however, that while his soul and vigour found vent in
+his designing and in the journeyman work--"delightful work, hard for the
+body and easy for the mind"--at which he was so ready to lend a hand, his
+artistic product lacked somewhat in the qualities that come from the
+exercise of the higher intellectual gifts. It was more than an attempt to
+revive old Gothic forms; it was an adoption of old forms with an infusion
+of modern spirit; but it missed the native and personal character of work
+growing out of contemporaneous conditions and tastes. Imaginative
+craftsman as he was, Morris was never quite an artist in the strict sense
+of the word. He had a fine sense of colour and, within certain limits, a
+right feeling for pattern; but his invention was too exuberant for
+repose, and he displayed in the greater part of his work an ornamental
+luxuriance that destroyed dignity and simplicity of effect. He did not
+like the restraints of art, and he seems to have been incapable of
+entering the sphere of abstract thought in which the principles governing
+great art are found. "No schools of art," he says with his superbly
+inaccurate generalisation, "have ever been contented to use abstract lines
+and forms and colours--that is, lines and so forth without any meaning."
+Such ornament he deemed "outlandish." He wanted his patterns, especially
+his wall-paper patterns, to remind people of pleasant scenes: "of the
+close vine trellis that keeps out the sun by the Nile side; or of the wild
+woods and their streams with the dogs panting beside them; or of the
+swallows sweeping above the garden boughs toward the house eaves where
+their nestlings are, while the sun breaks the clouds on them; or of the
+many-flowered summer meadows of Picardy,"--all very charming things to
+think about, but as really pertinent to wall-paper designing as the
+pleasant memory of a hard road with a fast horse speeding over it would be
+to the designing of a carpet. He preached the closest observation of
+nature and the most delicate understanding of it before attempting
+conventionalisation, but he did not hesitate to break all the laws of
+nature in his designs when he happened to want to do so. He did not
+hesitate, as Mr. Day has said, to make an acorn grow from two stalks or to
+give a lily five petals. Fitness in ornament was one of his fundamental
+principles, and he made his designs for the place in which they were to be
+seen and with direct reference to the limitations of opportunities of that
+place. It was never his way to turn a wall-paper loose on the market for
+any chance purchaser. He must know, if possible, something of the walls to
+which the design was to be applied and of the room in which it was to
+live, and he then adapted his design to his idea of what was required.
+This idea, however, was commonly much influenced by certain pre-conceived
+theories. He believed, for example, that there should be a sense of
+mystery in every pattern designed. This mystery he tried to get, not by
+masking the geometrical structure upon which a recurring pattern must be
+based, but by covering the ground equably and richly, so that the observer
+may not "be able to read the whole thing at once." Thus many of his
+designs are so over-elaborated as to give the effect of restlessness,
+whereas "rest" was the word oftenest on his lips in connection with
+domestic art. In common with most designers who derive their ideals from
+mediaeval sources, he was less impressed by the tranquillity gained from
+calm clean spaces, the measure, order, and stateliness brought about by
+the simple relation of abstract lines, the repose of the rhythmical play
+of mass in perfect proportion, undisturbed by decorative detail, than by
+the charm of highly vitalised imagery. But though he erred on the side of
+luxuriance--while preaching simplicity--he never allowed his design to
+sink into vulgarity or petty picturesqueness. He might be intricate but he
+was not vague. "Run any risk of failure rather than involve yourself in a
+tangle of poor weak lines that people can't make out," he says. "Definite
+form bounded by firm outline is a necessity for all ornament. You ought
+always to go for positive patterns when they may be had." They might
+always be had from him. And it is due to his positive quality, his
+uncompromising certainty of the rightness of the thing that he is doing,
+that even when he is most imitative he gives an impression of originality,
+and is in fact original in the sense that he has thought out for himself
+the methods and motives of the ancient art by which he is consciously and
+intentionally influenced.
+
+[Illustration: PAINTED WALL DECORATION DESIGNED BY MORRIS]
+
+Finish, it need hardly be said, was not prized by him. It was one of his
+assumptions that "the better is the enemy of the good," and he preferred
+the roughness of incompleteness to the suavity of perfect workmanship. He
+dreaded the suggestion of the machine that lurks in the polished surface
+and the perfect curve. Nor did he at any time believe in the subdivision
+of labour by which a workman learns to do one thing with the utmost
+efficiency, holding that no workman could enjoy such specialised work, and
+therefore, of course, could not through it give pleasure to others. The
+following is the creed which, according to his "compact with himself,"
+he made it a duty to repeat when he and his fellow-men came together to
+discuss art:
+
+"We ought to get to understand the value of intelligent work, the work of
+men's hands guided by their brains, and to take that, though it be rough,
+rather than the unintelligent work of machines or slaves though it be
+delicate; to refuse altogether to use machine-made work unless where the
+nature of the thing compels it, or where the machine does what mere human
+suffering would otherwise have to do; to have a high standard of
+excellence in wares and not to accept make-shifts for the real thing, but
+rather to go without--to have no ornament merely for fashion's sake, but
+only because we really think it beautiful, otherwise to go without it; not
+to live in an ugly and squalid place (such as London) for the sake of mere
+excitement or the like, but only because our duties bind us to it--to
+treat the natural beauty of the earth as a holy thing not to be rashly
+dealt with for any consideration; to treat with the utmost care whatever
+of architecture and the like is left us of the times of art."
+
+[Illustration: DESIGN FOR ST. JAMES'S PALACE WALL-PAPER
+
+(_Reproduced by courtesy of Mr. Bulkley_)]
+
+Wall-papers were among the earliest staple products of the firm in Red
+Lion Square, although Morris always regarded them in the light of a
+compromise; an altogether unsatisfactory substitute for the hand-painting,
+or tapestry or silk or printed cotton hangings, which he considered the
+proper covering for the bare walls which, of course, no one not in "an
+unhealthy state of mind and probably of body also" could endure to leave
+bare. The first to be designed, the _Trellis_ paper, was the combined work
+of Morris and Webb, the former being responsible for the rose-trellis
+intended, we may suppose, to bring with it pleasant recollections of
+gardens in June and inspired by his own sweet garden at Upton, the latter
+for the birds that cling to the lattice or dart upward among the heavily
+thorned stems. In the early papers the designs were very simple and
+direct, often more quaint than beautiful, as in the case of the well-known
+_Daisy_ paper, and depending greatly on the colouring for the
+attractiveness they possessed. Later came such intricate patterns as the
+_Pimpernel_, the _Acanthus_, so elaborate as to require a double set of
+blocks and no less than thirty-two printings, and the paper designed for
+St. James's Palace, as large and magnificent as the environment in which
+it was to be placed demanded. It is quite obvious from these designs that
+Morris did not regard his wall-hangings as backgrounds but as decorations
+in themselves. As a matter of fact he did not fancy pictures for his
+walls. After his early burst of enthusiasm over Rossetti's paintings he
+bought few pictures if any, and they do not seem ever to have entered into
+his schemes of decoration. The wall of a room was always important to him,
+and despite his discontent with paper coverings for it, he was anxious to
+have such coverings as ornamental as possible, admitting them to be useful
+"as things go," and treating them in considerable detail in his lectures
+on the decorative arts. He advised making up for the poverty of the
+material by great thoughtfulness in the design: "The more and the more
+mysteriously you interweave your sprays and stems, the better for your
+purpose, as the whole thing has to be pasted flat upon a wall and the cost
+of all this intricacy will but come out of your own brain and hand."
+Concerning colour he was equally specific. In his lecture
+characteristically called _Making the Best of It_, in which with an accent
+of discouragement he endeavours to show his audience how at the time of
+his speaking to make a middle-class home "endurable," he lays down certain
+rules which indicate at one and the same time his mastery of his subject
+and the incommunicability of right taste in this direction, although many
+of his ideas may be pondered to great advantage by even the mind untrained
+in colour schemes. He begins with his usual preliminary statement as to
+the health of those who disagree with him. "Though we may each have our
+special preferences," he says, "among the main colours, which we shall do
+quite right to indulge, it is a sign of disease in an artist to have a
+prejudice against any particular colour, though such prejudices are common
+and violent enough among people imperfectly educated in art, or with
+naturally dull perceptions of it. Still colours have their ways in
+decoration, so to say, both positively in themselves, and relatively to
+each man's way of using them. So I may be excused for setting down some
+things I seem to have noticed about these ways." After thus establishing
+friendly relations with his audience, he instructs them that yellow is a
+colour to be used sparingly and in connection with "gleaming materials"
+such as silk; that red to be at its finest must be deep and full and
+between crimson and scarlet; that purple no one in his senses would think
+of using bright and in masses, and that the best shade of it tends toward
+russet; green, he continues, must seldom be used both bright and strong.
+"On the other hand," he adds, "do not fall into the trap of a dingy,
+bilious-looking yellow-green, a colour to which I have a special and
+personal hatred, because (if you will excuse my mentioning personal
+matters) I have been supposed to have somewhat brought it into vogue."
+Dingy colours were abhorred by him in all cases, and his patience with
+those customers who demanded them was extremely limited. Blue was his
+"holiday colour," and "if you duly guard against getting it cold if it
+tend toward red, or rank if it tends toward green," you "need not be much
+afraid of its brightness."
+
+[Illustration: EARLY DESIGN FOR MORRIS WALL-PAPER "DAISY AND COLUMBINE"]
+
+[Illustration: CHRYSANTHEMUM DESIGN FOR WALL-PAPER]
+
+From his hatred of mechanical methods grew his preferences among the
+lesser arts. He once complained that he never could see any scene "with a
+frame as it were around it," and the less necessity there was for bounding
+and limiting his design the happier he was in making it. Embroidery he
+loved, for here the worker had an almost absolutely free hand. There was
+no "excuse" in embroidery for anything short of striking beauty. "It is
+not worth doing," he said, "unless it is either very copious and rich,
+or very delicate--or both. For such an art nothing patchy or scrappy, or
+half-starved should be done." Tapestry-weaving stood next in freedom of
+method, and this was not only a favourite art with him, but one which he
+carried to an extraordinary degree of perfection, he and Burne-Jones
+combining their designs to produce results coming nearer to the old Arras
+effects than to the work of modern weavers. In tapestry-weaving Morris
+used the _haute lisse_ or "high loom," the weaver holding apart with his
+left hand the threads of the warp which stands upright before him as with
+his right hand he works his bobbins in and out, seeing the picture he is
+making in a mirror placed on the other side of the loom. The interest of
+Morris in the weaving craft is said to have been first awakened by the
+sight of a man in the street selling toy models of weaving machines, one
+of which he promptly bought for experimental purposes. It was many years
+before he could find a full-sized loom of the kind he wanted, which had
+become obsolete or nearly so, and which was the only style of loom he
+would consider using as it was most like the looms on which the splendid
+fabrics of mediaeval times had been woven. By such difficulties he was
+rarely baffled. In the case of his tapestries the method he proposed to
+revive had died out in Cromwell's time and there was no working model
+which could be used as a guide. But there was an old French official
+handbook that came in his way, from which he was able to pick up the
+details of the craft and this sufficed. His personal familiarity with his
+process is apparent in his various discussions of it. He speaks with the
+authority of a workman whose hand has held the tool. This practical and
+positive knowledge saved him from the sentimentalism into which his
+theories might otherwise have led him. He designed his patterns fully
+aware of the way in which they were going to behave in the process of
+application. When in 1882 he was called upon to give evidence before the
+Royal Commission appointed to inquire into the subject of technical
+instruction, he urged the necessity of this working-knowledge on the part
+of every designer. "I think it essential," he said, "that a designer
+should learn the practical way of carrying out the work for which he
+designs; he ought to be able to weave himself." In all his talk about art
+he tried to tell people how to do only the things he himself had done, in
+which he differed widely and wholesomely from his master Ruskin whose
+teachings were so often on his lips. The activity of his hand was a needed
+and to a great extent an effective check upon the activity of his
+sentiment. But--like Ruskin here--he found it hard to stay long away from
+the moral or emotional significance of the art he was discussing. The art
+that speaks to the mind he did not completely understand. The art that
+speaks to the senses he abundantly explained. The amazingly ingenious
+point of view from which he defends his preoccupation with what he has
+named "the lesser arts" is displayed in the following passage, beginning
+with the almost inevitable formula:
+
+"A healthy and sane person being asked with what kind of art he would
+clothe his walls, might well answer, 'with the best art,' and so end the
+question. Yet out on it! So complex is human life, that even this
+seemingly most reasonable answer may turn out to be little better than an
+evasion. For I suppose the best art to be the pictured representation of
+men's imaginings: what they have thought has happened to the world before
+their time, or what they deem they have seen with the eyes of the body or
+the soul; and the imaginings thus represented are always beautiful indeed,
+but oftenest stirring to men's passions and aspirations and not seldom
+sorrowful or even terrible.
+
+"Stories that tell of men's aspirations for more than material life can
+give them, their struggle for the future welfare of the race, their
+unselfish love, their unrequited service; things like this are the
+subjects for the best art; in such subjects there is hope surely, yet the
+aspect of them is likely to be sorrowful enough: defeat, the seed of
+victory, and death, the seed of life, will be shown on the face of most of
+them.
+
+"Take note, too, that in the best art all these solemn and awful things
+are expressed clearly and without any vagueness, with such life and power
+that they impress the beholder so deeply that he is brought face to face
+with the very scenes, and lives among them for a time: so raising his life
+above the daily tangle of small things that wearies him to the level of
+the heroism which they represent. This is the best art, and who can deny
+that it is good for us all that it should be at hand to stir the emotions;
+yet its very greatness makes it a thing to be handled carefully, for we
+cannot always be having our emotions deeply stirred: that wearies us body
+and soul; and man, an animal that longs for rest like other animals,
+defends himself against that weariness by hardening his heart and refusing
+to be moved every hour of the day by tragic emotions,--nay, even by beauty
+that claims his attention overmuch. Such callousness is bad, both for the
+arts and our own selves, and therefore it is not so good to have the best
+art forever under our eyes, though it is abundantly good that we should be
+able to get at it from time to time.
+
+"Meantime, I cannot allow that it is good for any hour of the day to be
+wholly stripped of life and beauty, therefore we must provide ourselves
+with lesser (I will not say worse) art with which to surround our common
+work-a-day or restful times; and for those times I think it will be enough
+for us to clothe our daily and domestic walls with ornament that reminds
+us of the outward face of the earth, of the innocent love of animals, or
+man passing his days between work and rest as he does. I say with ornament
+that reminds us of these things and sets our minds and memories at work
+easily creating them; because scientific representation of them would
+again involve us in the problems of hard fact and the troubles of life,
+and so once more destroy our rest for us."
+
+[Illustration: ANEMONE PATTERN FOR SILK AND WOOL CURTAIN MATERIAL]
+
+Was ever a craftsman of the ancient guilds so at pains to make clear the
+propriety and usefulness of his wood-carving or enamelling or niello! Like
+the early workman, however, he moved with marvellous facility from one
+branch of his art to another. From wall-papers it was but a step to cotton
+prints which in a way were the playthings of a mind at leisure. They might
+be as gay as one chose to make them, and "could not well go wrong so long
+as they avoided commonplace and kept somewhat on the daylight side of
+nightmare." From the weaving of hangings to the weaving of carpets was a
+step as easily taken, and when the impulse seized him to carry on the
+great but dying art of Persia in this direction, Morris so effectively
+applied himself to mastering the conditions under which the beautiful
+Eastern carpets were brought to their perfection as to produce at least
+one example--that called _The Buller's Wood Carpet_--that fairly competes
+with the splendour of its prototypes. Stained glass for a time baffled
+him. "His was not the temperament," says one of his critics, "patiently to
+study the chemistry of glass colour; or to prove by long experiment the
+dependence to be placed upon a flux." Although many windows were made by
+the firm, the larger number of them designed by Burne-Jones, Morris being
+responsible for the colour, he never seemed to forget that he had come
+near to being worsted in his fight with the technical difficulties of this
+most difficult art, and economised his enthusiasm for it accordingly.
+Hand-painted tiles, however, which he was the first to introduce into
+England, were favourites with him, and in them he perpetuated some of his
+attempts at drawing the human figure. Furniture, though an important
+feature of the work undertaken by the firm, did not appeal to him, and he
+left it to his associates. His experiments in vegetable dyes produced
+interesting results, although here also his technical knowledge was not
+entirely adequate to his task. In connection with his textile work he
+early felt the imperative necessity of having finer colours than the
+market offered. To get them as he wanted them he was obliged to go back as
+far as Pliny, but this was a small matter to one whose mind was always
+ready to provide him with an Aladdin's carpet. Back to Pliny he went to
+learn old methods, and in addition he called to his aid ancient herbals
+and French books of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, finally
+setting up his own vats and becks and very literally plunging in. At first
+he complained of "looking such a beast," but his enthusiasm soon overcame
+this rather remarkable display of concern for his personal appearance, and
+he wrote most joyously of working in sabots and blouse in the dye-house
+"pretty much all day long." Out of his vats came the blue of his
+indigo, the red of his madder, the yellow of weld or Persian berry, the
+rich brown of walnut juice, making beautiful combinations, which, when
+they faded, changed into paler tints of the same colour and were not
+unpleasant to look upon. The aniline dyes, which in 1860 were the latest
+wonder of science, and in a very crude stage of their development, called
+out his most picturesque invective. Each colour was hideous in itself,
+crude, livid, cheap, and loathed by every person of taste, the "foul blot
+of the capitalist dyer." In brief, the invention supposed to be for the
+benefit of an art "the very existence of which depends upon its producing
+beauty" was "on the road; and very far advanced on it, towards destroying
+all beauty in the art." The only thing to do was to turn one's back on the
+chemical dyes, relegate them to a museum of scientific curiosities, and go
+back "if not to the days of the Pharaohs yet at least to those of
+Tintoret." It was highly characteristic of him that he chose the remedy of
+"going back" in place of progressing with the new material as far as
+possible.
+
+[Illustration: PORTION OF HAMMERSMITH CARPET]
+
+His work with silks and with wools was naturally greatly enriched by his
+use of his own full, soft and brilliant colours, and his personal
+attention to the art of dyeing counted for so much that one of his most
+accomplished pupils in embroidery is quoted by Mr. Mackail as saying that
+she promptly felt the difference when Morris ceased to dye with his own
+hands, that the colours became more monotonous and prosy and the very
+lustre of the silk was less beautiful. It is, however, difficult to
+impress yourself upon the public precisely as you are, whatever vigour
+your personality may have. Morris, with his intense love of bright full
+hues, has come down as the promoter of the so-called "aesthetic" dulness of
+colour, and his name has been especially associated with the peacock blue
+and the "sage-green" to which he had an especial aversion. It was one of
+his doctrines that a room should be kept cheerful in tone, and how happily
+he could carry out this doctrine is seen in more than one of the rooms
+decorated by the firm. A visitor to Stanmore Hall, for example, has noted
+the delicate tones of the painted ceilings as looking like embroidery on
+old white silk, giving a bright yet light and aerial effect, and forming
+with the woodwork of untouched oak an impression of delightful gayety.
+
+That Morris made himself a master of so many crafts and grappled even so
+successfully as he did with the technical difficulties involved would be
+somewhat remarkable had he attempted none of the other undertakings in
+which he gained for himself a name to be remembered. His eagerness to
+express his ideals in a practical form led him on indefinitely. To the
+very last a new world to conquer roused his spirit and made him tingle to
+be off. For a man with the trace of the plodder in him such a career would
+have been an impossible one, but Morris went blithely from craft to craft
+by a series of leaps and bounds. He stayed with each just long enough to
+understand its working principles and to make himself efficient to teach
+others its peculiar virtues and demands, and he then passed on. "Each
+separate enterprise on which he entered," says one of his biographers,
+"seems for a time to have moved him to extraordinary energy. He thought it
+out, installed it, set it going, designed for it, trained men and women in
+the work to be done, and then by degrees, as the work began to run
+smoothly and could be trusted to go on without him, his interest became
+less active: a new idea generated in his mind, or an old one burst into
+bud, and his energies burst out afresh in some new doing." As time went on
+he had less and less practically to do with the firm of which he was the
+head and of which he continued to the end to be the consulting adviser. He
+gathered about him cooeperators who not only were sympathetic with his
+methods but absorbed his style. His distinction as a designer was neither
+so great nor so personal that it could not to a considerable degree be
+communicated, and this accounts for the enduring quality of his influence
+which has been handed down to us through others without too much
+subtracted from it, with many of the characteristics most to be cherished
+still present. Greater decorators have existed, indeed, but it may be
+questioned if anyone has been quite so inspiriting; has had the matter
+quite so much at heart. He persuaded the multitude from the intensity of
+his own conviction, and he persuaded them on the whole toward good things
+and toward beauty. He made other men's ideas his own but he adopted them
+body and soul. He followed his own fashion, inveighing with vigour and
+frequently with logic against nearly all the fashions of his time. It is
+not surprising that he himself became the great fashion of the nineteenth
+century in matters of decoration. And this certainly was what he wanted,
+in the sense of wanting everyone in England to see as he did the
+possibilities of household art and to share in furthering them by turning
+their backs upon the sham art with which the commercial world was largely
+occupied. But he made no effort toward gaining the patronage of those
+unwilling to admit that what he disliked was intolerable. His was never a
+conciliatory policy. The following passage from his lecture on _The Lesser
+Arts_ reveals his attitude in his own phrasing:
+
+"People say to me often enough: If you want to make your art succeed and
+flourish, you must make it the fashion: a phrase which I confess annoys
+me: for they mean by it that I should spend one day over my work to two
+days in trying to convince rich, and supposed influential people, that
+they care very much for what they really do not care in the least, so that
+it may happen according to the proverb: _Bell-wether took the leap and we
+all went over_; well, such advisers are right if they are content with the
+thing lasting but a little while: say till you can make a little money, if
+you don't get pinched by the door shutting too quickly: otherwise they are
+wrong: the people they are thinking of have too many strings to their
+bow, and can turn their backs too easily on a thing that fails, for it to
+be safe work trusting to their whims: it is not their fault, they cannot
+help it, but they have no chance of spending time enough over the arts to
+know anything practical of them, and they must of necessity be in the
+hands of those who spend their time in pushing fashion this way and that
+for their own advantage.
+
+[Illustration: SOFA DESIGNED BY THE MORRIS CO.
+
+(_Reproduced by courtesy of Mr. Bulkley_)]
+
+[Illustration: SECRETARY DESIGNED BY THE MORRIS CO.
+
+(_Reproduced by courtesy of Mr. Bulkley_)]
+
+"Sirs, there is no help to be got out of these latter, or those who let
+themselves be led by them: the only real help for the decorative arts must
+come from those who work in them: nor must they be led, they must lead.
+
+"You whose hands make those things that should be works of art, you must
+all be artists, and good artists too, before the public at large can take
+real interest in such things; and when you have become so, I promise you
+that you shall lead the fashion; fashion shall follow your hands
+obediently enough."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+FROM THE RED HOUSE TO KELMSCOTT.
+
+
+While Morris was developing the industries of the firm with essential
+steadiness, despite the rapid transitions from one pursuit to another, he
+was going through a variety of personal experiences, some of which
+involved his disappointment in deeply cherished plans. For one thing, and
+this perhaps the most grievous, he was obliged to give up the Red House
+upon which so much joyous labour had been spent. Several causes
+contributed to the unhappy necessity, chief among them an attack of
+rheumatic fever that made him sensitive to the bleak winds which the
+exposed situation of the building invited. The distance between London and
+Upton became also a serious matter after his illness, as he found it
+almost impossible to make the daily journeys required by his attention to
+the business. Several compromises were thought of, the most enticing being
+the removal of the works from Red Lion Square to Upton, and the addition
+of a wing to the Red House for Burne-Jones and his family; but in the end
+the beautiful house was sold, Morris, after leaving it, never again
+setting eyes upon it.
+
+[Illustration: ILLUSTRATION BY BURNE-JONES FOR PROJECTED EDITION OF "THE
+EARTHLY PARADISE," CUT ON WOOD BY MORRIS HIMSELF]
+
+The first move was to Queen Square, London, where Morris and the business
+became house-mates in the autumn of 1865, remaining together there, with
+more or less interruption, for seven years. Queen Square is in Bloomsbury,
+not far from the British Museum, and a part of the ugly London
+middle-class region for which Morris had so little liking, but as a place
+to carry on the rapidly increasing work of the firm it possessed great
+advantages. The number of the house was 26, and adjacent buildings and
+grounds were used for the workshops. At this time Mr. George Warrington
+Taylor was made business manager for the company, and Morris gained by his
+accession much valuable time, not only for designing and experimenting,
+but for the literary work that again began to claim his attention. He was
+still, however, a familiar figure in "the shop," acting as salesman,
+showman, designer, or manual labourer. His aspect as he strode along the
+streets of the dull neighbourhood must have been refreshing. Those who
+knew him have repeatedly described him as the image of a sea-captain in
+general appearance. He wore habitually a suit of navy-blue serge cut in
+nautical fashion, and his manner was bluff and hearty as that of the
+proverbial seaman. Mr. Mackail gives a breezy picture of him in his
+workman's blouse, hatless, with his ruddy complexion and rocking walk,
+bound for the Faulkners' house where once upon a time a new maid took him
+for the butcher. To have seen him in these days was to have seen one of
+his own ideal workmen out of _News from Nowhere_. As a master of men he
+seems to have been singularly successful, despite the temper which led him
+at times to commit acts of positive violence. His splendid zest for work
+must have been stimulating and to a degree contagious. Merely to be in the
+company of one who thought hearty manual labour so interesting and so
+pleasant and so heartily to be desired by everyone, must have had its
+vivifying effect. He was stating the simple truth when he said that he
+should die of despair and weariness if his daily work were taken from him
+unless he could at once make something else his daily work, and he is
+constantly drawing persuasive pictures of the charm of the various
+handicrafts--that of weaving for example, his description of which would
+invite the most discontented mind. He does not call the weaver's craft a
+dull one: "If he be set to doing things which are worth doing--to watch
+the web growing day by day almost magically, in anticipation of the time
+when it is to be taken out and one can see it on the right side in all its
+well-schemed beauty--to make something beautiful that will last out of a
+few threads of silk and wool, seems to me not an unpleasant way of earning
+one's livelihood, so long only as one lives and works in a pleasant place,
+with work-day not too long, and a book or two to be got at." His own
+weavers were some of them boys trained in the shop from a condition of
+absolute ignorance of drawing and of the craft to such an efficiency as
+enabled them to weave the Stanmore tapestry, one panel of which took two
+years to the making, and which was of the utmost elaboration and
+magnificence of design. The exigencies of the business presently made it
+necessary to devote the whole of the premises in Queen Square to the work
+going on there, and the Morris family removed in 1872 to a small house
+between Hammersmith and Turnham Green, near Chiswick Lane, Morris
+retaining a couple of rooms in the Queen Square house for his use when
+busy there. Even the extended quarters soon proved insufficient, however,
+and in 1877 rooms were taken in Oxford Street for showing and selling the
+work of the firm, the manufacturing departments being still ensconced in
+Queen Square. In 1881 these also were transferred to more suitable
+premises. The dyeing and cotton-printing demanded workshops by the side of
+some stream of clear water "fit to dye with," and after much search Morris
+found an ideal situation on the banks of the little Wandle River, near
+Wimbledon. There were the ruins of Merton Abbey where the Barons once gave
+their famous answer "Nolumus leges Angliae mutari," and there manufactures
+had been carried on for centuries. In the long low-roofed worksheds on the
+river's bank his workmen could move about in ample space, practising
+ancient methods of dyeing, printing, and weaving, seven miles from Charing
+Cross. It is anything but a typical manufactory that has been depicted by
+visitors to the Merton Abbey works. We read of an old walled garden gay
+with old-fashioned flowers and shrubs, of the swift little Wandle River
+rushing along between the buildings, its trout leaping under the windows,
+a water-wheel revolving at ease, hanks of yarn, fresh from the vats,
+drying in the pure air, calico lying "clearing" on the meadow grass in an
+enclosure made by young poplar trees, a sunlit picture of peaceful work
+carried on by unharried workers among surroundings of fresh and wholesome
+charm. Women and men were both employed, some of them old and not all of
+them competent, but none of them overworked or underpaid. Though Morris
+had somewhat scant courtesy of manner toward those who worked for and with
+him, he had at least the undeviating desire to promote their welfare. If
+he expected work of his work-people, as certainly he did, he expected it
+only under the most healthful and agreeable conditions. Judging others by
+himself, he could not conceive anyone as happy in idleness, but neither
+did he expect anyone to be happy without leisure. In his own business he
+proved what the nineteenth century found hard to believe, that honest,
+thorough, and artistic workmanship, accomplished under reasonable
+exactions by people enjoying their occupation, could be combined with
+commercial prosperity. That the products of such labour could not be
+bought by the poorer classes was due, he argued, to a social order wrong
+at the root. The time when art could be made "by the people and for the
+people, as a happiness to the maker and the user," was a far-off dream.
+
+[Illustration: _Kelmscott Manor House_]
+
+Shortly before Morris abandoned Queen Square as a place of residence, he
+discovered for himself a "heaven on earth," in which he could spend his
+vacations from town, and free himself from the contamination of London
+streets. This was Kelmscott Manor House, which he rented--at first jointly
+with Rossetti--in 1871, and in which he took infinite satisfaction for the
+remainder of his life. The beautiful old place was in its way as
+characteristic of him and of his tastes as the Red House had been, and has
+become intimately associated with him in the minds of all who knew him
+during his later years, his passion for places investing those for which
+he cared with a sentiment not to be ignored or slighted in making up the
+sum of his interests. For a couple of years Rossetti was an inmate of
+Kelmscott Manor, and through his letters many vivid glimpses of it are
+obtained. The village of Kelmscott was at the time no more than a hamlet
+containing a hundred and seventeen people, and situated two and a half
+miles from the nearest town, Lechlade, to whose churchyard Shelley lent
+distinction by writing a poem there. The nearest station-town was
+Farringdon, so far off that the carrier who brought railway parcels to the
+occupants of the Manor charged six shillings and sixpence for each trip.
+"Thus," writes Rossetti, who was chronically short of money, "a good deal
+of inconvenience tempers the attractions of the place." Nothing, however,
+unless the presence of Rossetti, who was "unromantically discontented"
+there, tempered them for Morris. In an article for _The Quest_ for
+November, 1895, he describes the house in the most minute detail,
+accentuating its charms with a touch of comment for each that falls like a
+caress. The roofs are covered with the beautiful stone slates of the
+district, "the most lovely covering which a roof can have." The
+"battering" or leaning back of the walls is by no means a defect but a
+beauty, "taking from the building a rigidity which otherwise would mar
+it," and the stout studded partitions of the entrance passage are "very
+agreeable to anyone who does not want cabinet work to supplant carpentry."
+To the building of it all must have gone, he thinks, "some thin thread of
+tradition, a half-anxious sense of the delight of meadow and acre and wood
+and river, a certain amount (not too much, let us hope) of common-sense, a
+liking for making materials serve one's turn, and perhaps at bottom some
+little grain of sentiment." And from Rossetti we hear of the primitive
+Kelmscott church "looking just as one fancies chapels in the _Mort
+d'Arthur_," of clouds of starlings sinking in the copses "clamourous like
+mill-waters at wild play," of "mustering rooks innumerable," of a
+"delicious" garden and meadows leading to the river brink, of apple
+blossoms and marigolds and arrow-heads and white lilies "divinely
+lovely," of an island by the boat-house rich in wild periwinkles, and of
+many another exquisite aspect of a place whose unvexed quietness was
+nevertheless powerless to soothe the turmoil of that tormented soul.
+
+[Illustration: _Kelmscott Manor House_]
+
+To realise fully how Morris himself felt toward it, one must turn to his
+description in _News from Nowhere_. There he is supposed to see it through
+the kindly mist of time, returning to it from a regenerate and beautified
+world, and his problem is to write of it with the penetrating eloquence
+and melancholy associated with remembered happiness. It is supremely
+characteristic of him that he could perfectly strike this note while still
+living in hale activity upon the spot he is to praise with the tenderness
+of reminiscence. The great virtue of his temperament lay in this peculiar
+intensity of realisation. He needed neither loss nor change to spur his
+sensibility and awaken his recognition of the worth or special quality of
+what he loved. Vital as few men are, he seems, nevertheless, always to
+have dwelt in sight of death and to have grasped life as though the next
+moment he was to be torn from it. The burden of the song which Ogier the
+Dane hears on a fair May morning:
+
+  Kiss me love! for who knoweth
+  What thing cometh after death?
+
+so often quoted in evidence of his fainting and dejected spirit, embodies
+indeed the sentiment of his attitude toward the pleasures and
+satisfactions to be drawn from the visible and perishable world, but does
+not hint at the energy with which he seized those pleasures, the
+sturdiness with which he filled himself with those satisfactions. When
+_News from Nowhere_ was written, Morris had lived the better part of
+twenty years in close relation with the Kelmscott house, but custom had
+not staled for him its infinite variety. This is what he writes of it and
+of its surroundings in his romance of _An Epoch of Rest_: He and his
+companions have approached it by way of the river.
+
+"Presently we saw before us a bank of elm trees, which told us of a house
+amidst them. In a few minutes we had passed through a deep eddying pool
+into the sharp stream that ran from the ford, and beached our craft on a
+tiny strand of limestone gravel, and stepped ashore.
+
+"Mounting on the cart-road that ran along the river some feet above the
+water, I looked round about me. The river came down through a wide meadow
+on my left, which was grey now with the ripened seeding grasses; the
+gleaming water was lost presently by a turn of the bank, but over the
+meadow I could see the gables of a building where I knew the lock must be.
+A low wooded ridge bounded the river-plain to the south and south-east,
+whence we had come, and a few low houses lay about its feet and up its
+slope. I turned a little to my right and through the hawthorn sprays and
+long shoots of the wild roses could see the flat country spreading out
+far away under the sun of the calm evening, till something that might be
+called hills with a look of sheep pastures about them bounded it with a
+soft blue line. Before one, the elm boughs still hid most of what houses
+there might be in this river-side dwelling of men; but to the right of the
+cart-road a few grey buildings of the simplest kind showed here and there.
+
+"I had a mind to say that I did not know the way thither, and that the
+river-side dwellers should lead: but almost without my will my feet moved
+on along the road they knew. The raised way led us into a little field
+bounded by a backwater of the river on one side: on the right hand we
+could see a cluster of small houses and barns and a wall partly overgrown
+with ivy, over which a few grey gables showed. The village road ended in
+the shallow of the aforesaid backwater. We crossed the road, and again
+almost without my will my hand raised the latch of a door in the wall, and
+we stood presently on a stone path which led up to the old house to which
+fate in the shape of Dick had so strangely brought me in this world of
+men. My companion gave a sigh of pleased surprise and enjoyment, nor did I
+wonder, for the garden between the wall and the house was redolent of the
+June flowers, and the roses were rolling over one another with that
+delicious superabundance of small well-tended gardens which at first sight
+takes away all thought from the beholder save that of beauty. The
+blackbirds were singing their loudest, the doves were cooing on the
+roof-ridge, the rooks in the high elm trees beyond were garrulous among
+the young leaves, and the swifts wheeled, whining, about the gables. And
+the house itself was a fit guardian for all the beauty of this heart of
+summer.
+
+"Once again Ellen echoed my thoughts as she said: 'Yes, friend, this is
+what I came out to see; this many-gabled old house built by the simple
+country-folk of the long-past times, regardless of all the turmoil that
+was going on in cities and courts, is lovely still amidst all the beauty
+which these latter days have created; and I do not wonder at our friends
+'tending it so carefully and making much of it. It seems to me as if it
+had waited for these happy days, and held in it the gathered crumbs of
+happiness of the confused and turbulent past.'
+
+"She led me up close to the house and laid her shapely sun-browned hand
+and arm upon the lichened wall as if to embrace it, and cried out: 'O me!
+O me! How I love the earth and the seasons and weather, and all the things
+that deal with it and all that grows out of it,--as this has done!'
+
+"We went in and found no soul in any room as we wandered from room to
+room--from the rose-covered porch to the strange and quaint garrets
+amongst the great timbers of the roof, where of old time the tillers and
+herdsmen of the manor slept, but which a-nights seemed now, by the small
+size of the beds, and the litter of useless and disregarded
+matters--bunches of dying flowers, feathers of birds, shells of
+starling's eggs, caddis worms in mugs and the like,--seemed to be
+inhabited for the time by children.
+
+"Everywhere there was but little furniture, and that only the most
+necessary, and of the simplest forms. The extravagant love of ornament
+which I had noted in this people elsewhere, seemed here to have given
+place to the feeling that the house itself and its associations was the
+ornament of the country life amidst which it had been left stranded from
+old times, and that to reornament it would but take away its use as a
+piece of natural beauty.
+
+"We sat down at last in a room over the wall which Ellen had caressed, and
+which was still hung with old tapestry, originally of no artistic value,
+but now faded into pleasant grey tones which harmonised thoroughly well
+with the quiet of the place, and which would have been ill supplanted by
+brighter and more striking decoration.
+
+"I asked a few questions of Ellen as we sat there, but scarcely listened
+to her answers, and presently became silent, and then scarce conscious of
+anything but that I was there in that old room, the doves crooning from
+the roofs of the barn and dovecot beyond the window opposite."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In 1878 Morris took a London house on the Upper Mall, Hammersmith, which
+he occupied alternately with Kelmscott Manor. This place, which Mr.
+Mackail describes as "ugly without being mean," was also on the banks of
+the river, and Morris gained much satisfaction from the thought that the
+water flowing by it had come in its due course past the beloved Kelmscott
+garden. A somewhat inconvenient touch of sentiment caused him to give his
+Hammersmith home the name of "Kelmscott House" in compliment to the home
+actually situated at Kelmscott, the latter being distinguished by the
+title of "Manor," a title that seems to belong to it by courtesy alone.
+
+From the great fondness felt by Morris for these places on which he
+lavished his art until they spoke more eloquently than his words of the
+aims and theories so dear to him, the domesticity of his life would
+naturally be inferred. Nor was he an eager traveller judged by modern
+standards. Nevertheless, he managed to find time for some extended trips
+just as he found time for everything that came in his way with an appeal
+to his liking. The most important of these was a voyage to Iceland, made
+in company with Faulkner and two other friends during the summer of 1871,
+just after the acquisition of Kelmscott Manor, in which he left Rossetti.
+His mind was ripe for the experience. He had already published
+translations from the Icelandic sagas made in collaboration with Mr.
+Magnusson, and his interest in the bracing Northern literature was
+reaching its height. Long years after, Rossetti said of him, "There goes
+the last of the Vikings!" and his mood in visiting Iceland was not unlike
+that of a modernised Viking returning to his home. Thoughts of the
+country's great past were constantly with him. The boiling geysers, the
+conventional attraction for tourists who "never heard the names of Sigurd
+and Brunhild, of Njal, or Gunnar, or Grettir, or Gisli, or Gudrun," were a
+source of irritation to him. His pilgrimages to the homes of the ancient
+traditions were the episodes of his journey worth thinking about, and
+about them he thought much and vigorously, seeing in imagination the
+figures of the old heroes going about summer and winter, attending to
+their haymaking and fishing and live stock, eating almost the same food
+and living on the same ground as the less imposing Norsemen of the
+present. "Lord!" he writes, "what littleness and helplessness has taken
+the place of the old passion and violence that had place here once--and
+all is unforgotten; so that one has no power to pass it by unnoticed." His
+two months spent among the scenes of the greater sagas left him with an
+intense impression of a land stern and terrible, of toothed rocks and
+black slopes and desolate green, a land that intensified his melancholy by
+its suggestion of short-lived glory and early death, and intensified also
+his enjoyment of life by the sense of adventure, the rugged riding, and
+the fresh keen air. One of the important events of the trip was the
+exploration of the great cave at Surts-hellir, and twenty years after,
+many of its incidents were embodied in the book called _The Story of the
+Glittering Plain_, wherein Hallblithe and the three Seekers make their
+way through the stony tangle of the wilderness seeing "nought save the wan
+rocks under the sun."
+
+Two years later he made a still more adventurous journey across the arid
+tableland occupying the central portion of Iceland and across the northern
+mountains to the sea. It was highly characteristic of him that for the
+time he yielded himself utterly to the influence of the strange and awful
+land upon his imagination, and that for years afterward his writing was
+flooded by the impressions that continually swept back upon his mind as he
+reverted to these experiences. Mr. Mackail gives an amusing instance of
+the way in which the interest uppermost with him became an obsession
+leading to the most childlike extravagances. During a holiday tour in
+Belgium he came to a place where neither French nor English was spoken. He
+therefore "made a desperate effort at making himself understood by
+haranguing the amazed inn-keeper in Icelandic." His first visit to Italy,
+made between the first and second visits to Iceland, took faint hold upon
+him, nor was the second Italian journey, made some years later, and marked
+by a troublesome attack of gout, notably successful. He was a man of the
+North as surely as Rossetti was a man of the South, and it would have been
+a renaissance indeed that could have turned him into a Florentine or a
+Venetian.
+
+[Illustration: DESIGN BY ROSSETTI FOR WINDOW EXECUTED BY MORRIS & CO.
+(_THE PARABLE OF THE VINEYARD_)]
+
+[Illustration: DESIGN BY ROSSETTI FOR STAINED-GLASS WINDOW EXECUTED BY THE
+MORRIS CO. (_THE PARABLE OF THE VINEYARD_)]
+
+During this middle period of his life, at the height of his great
+activity, an event occurred involving the element of tragedy, if the
+breaking of friendships be accounted tragic. In 1875 the firm was
+dissolved. Following Mr. Mackail's account of the circumstances that led
+to the dissolution, we find that the business had become one in which
+Morris supplied practically all the capital, invention, and control. It
+was also the chief source of his income. On the other hand, his partners
+might find themselves at any time seriously involved in the liabilities of
+a business which was rapidly extending. Hence the desirability of the
+dissolution and reconstitution of the firm. But in connection with this
+step an embarrassing situation arose. Under the original instrument, each
+partner had equal rights in the assets of the firm. After the first year
+or two the profits had never been divided, and the six partners of Morris,
+for the hundred and twenty pounds by which they were represented in the
+contributed capital at the beginning, had now claims on the business for
+some seven or eight thousand pounds. If these claims were insisted upon,
+Morris would be placed in a position of considerable financial difficulty.
+Burne-Jones, Webb, and Faulkner refused to accept any consideration. "The
+other three," says Mr. Mackail, "stood on the strict letter of their legal
+rights." Naturally the relations between Morris and the latter became
+grievously strained, and with Rossetti the break was absolute and
+irremediable. In passing out of Morris's life, as he then did, he
+certainly left it more serene, but with him went also the vivifying
+influence of his genius. In considering the very unfortunate part played
+by him in the conflict among the members of the firm, it is fair to give a
+certain weight to details emphasised in Mr. William Rossetti's account as
+modifying--to a slight degree, it is true, but still modifying--the sordid
+aspect of Rossetti's action. Madox Brown, who was one of the partners
+wishing not to forego their legal rights, was getting on in years and was
+a comparatively poor man. He had always counted on the firm "as an
+important eventual accession to his professional earnings." No one
+familiar with Rossetti's character can doubt that a desire to stand by his
+old friend and teacher in such a matter would have a strong influence with
+him. To his brother's mind, his attitude was throughout "one of
+conciliation," with the wish "to adjust contending claims had that but
+been possible." "He himself," says Mr. William Rossetti, "retired from the
+firm without desiring any compensation for his own benefit. A sum was,
+however, assigned to him. He laid it apart for the eventual advantage of a
+member of the Morris family, but, ere his death, circumstances had induced
+him to trench upon it not a little." It is easy to imagine circumstances
+trenching upon any sum of money under Rossetti's direct control, and in
+the absence of any testimony the reader acquainted with his prodigal
+disposition may very well be pardoned for doubting whether any member of
+the Morris family became appreciably the richer for his impulse.
+Nevertheless, it is a reasonable conclusion that he was not actuated by a
+sordid motive in opposing the essentially just claim made by Morris, but
+was to his own mind acting in accordance with the demands of a friendship
+older and closer than that between him and Morris. It must be noted,
+however, that a reconciliation was effected in the course of time between
+Morris and Madox Brown, while in Rossetti's case the wound never healed.
+The outcome of the negotiations was that Madox Brown was bought out,
+"receiving a handsome sum," says Mr. William Rossetti, and the business
+went on under the sole management and proprietorship of Morris.
+
+In addition to the annoyance and real trouble of mind caused Morris by
+these transactions, he had the further anxiety at about this time of a
+breakdown of a serious and permanent nature in the health of his eldest
+daughter. This he took deeply to heart, losing spirits to a marked degree,
+but nothing human had power to stay his fertile brain and busy hand.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+POETRY.
+
+
+Intent as he was upon the artistic success of his work in decoration, and
+ardent in giving time and thought to achieving this success, Morris was
+far from excluding poetry from the sum of his occupations. The five years
+following his marriage (1859-1864), indeed, were barren of any important
+literary work. He had planned, somewhat anticipating the large scale of
+his later verse, a cycle of twelve poems on the Trojan War, but he
+completed only six of the twelve, and the project was presently abandoned.
+After the Red House was sold, however, and he was back in London with the
+time on his hands saved from the daily journey, he began at once to make
+poetry of a form entirely different from anything he had previously
+written. The little sheaf of poems contained in his early volume had been
+put together by the hand of a boy. The poem published in June, 1867, under
+the title _The Life and Death of Jason_, was the work of a man in full
+possession of his faculty. It was simple, certain, musical, and
+predestined to speedy popularity, even Tennyson, with whom Morris was
+not a favourite, liking the Jason. It flowed with sustained if monotonous
+sweetness through seventeen books in rhymed pentameter, occasionally
+broken by octosyllabic songs. Although published as a separate poem, on
+account of the length to which it ran, apparently almost in despite of its
+author's will, it had been intended to form part of the series called _The
+Earthly Paradise_, the first division of which followed it in 1868. This
+ambitious work was suggested by Chaucer's _Canterbury Tales_, and consists
+of no fewer than twenty-four long narrative poems, set in a framework of
+delicate descriptive verse containing passages that are the very flower of
+Morris's poetic charm. The scheme of the arrangement is interesting. A
+little band of Greeks, "the seed of the Ionian race," are found living
+upon a nameless island in a distant sea. Hither at the end of the
+fourteenth century--the time of Chaucer--come certain wanderers of
+Germanic, Norse, and Celtic blood who have set out on a voyage in search
+of a land that is free from death, driven from their homes by the
+pestilence sweeping over them. Hospitably received, the wanderers spend
+their time upon the island entertaining their hosts with the legends
+current in their day throughout Western Europe, and in turn are
+entertained with the Hellenic legends which have followed the line of
+living Greek tradition and are told by the fourteenth-century islanders in
+the mediaeval form and manner proper to them at that time. Among the
+wanderers are a Breton and a Suabian, and the sources from which the
+stories are drawn have a wide range. They were at first, indeed, intended
+to represent the whole stock of the world's legends, but this field was
+too vast for even the great facility of Morris, and much was set aside. At
+the end we find _The Lovers of Gudrun_, taken from the Laxdaela Saga of
+Iceland, and bearing witness in the grimness of its tragedy and the
+fierceness of its Northern spirit to the powerful influence of the
+Icelandic literature upon the mind of Morris. It is the only story in the
+collection which has dominated his dreamy mediaevalism and struck fire from
+his pen.
+
+[Illustration: _Morris's Bed, with Hangings designed by himself and
+embroidered by his Daughter_]
+
+In _The Earthly Paradise_ we have all the qualities that make its author
+dear to most of his readers. The mind is steeped in the beauty of imagery,
+and content to have emotion and thought lulled by the long, melancholy
+swing of lines that seem like the echo of great poetry without its living
+voice. Such poetry is what Morris wished his decorations to be--the
+"lesser art" that brings repose from the quickening of soul with which a
+masterpiece is greeted. The spirit revealed through the fluent murmur of
+the melodious words is very true to him and lies at the root of all his
+efforts toward making life fair to the eyes and soothing to the heart. The
+"unimpassioned grief," the plaintive longing with which he regarded the
+fleeting and unsatisfying aspects of a world so beautiful and so
+sorrowful, never found more exquisite expression than in passage after
+passage of this pellucid and lovely verse. The flight from death and the
+seeking after eternal life on this material globe constitute a theme that
+had for him a singular fitness. No one could have rendered with more
+sensitive appreciation the mood of men who set their life at an unmeasured
+price. No one could have expressed the dread of dying with more poetic
+sympathy. The preludes to the stories told on the island are poems
+addressed to the months of the changing year, and not one is free from the
+grievous suggestion of loss or the weary burden of fear and dejection.
+Read without the intervening narratives, they wrap the mind in an
+atmosphere of foreboding. There is no welcome unaccompanied by the shadow
+of farewell. There is no leaping of the heart to meet sunshine and fair
+weather without its corresponding faintness of shrinking from the clouds
+and darkness certain to follow. With a brave determination to seize
+exultation on the wing, he cries to March:
+
+  Yea, welcome March! and though I die ere June,
+  Yet for the hope of life I give thee praise,
+  Striving to swell the burden of the tune
+  That even now I hear thy brown birds raise,
+  Unmindful of the past or coming days;
+  Who sing: "O joy! a new year is begun:
+  What happiness to look upon the sun!"
+
+But what follows? The sure reminder of the silence that shall come after
+the singing:
+
+    Ah, what begetteth all this storm of bliss
+  But Death himself, who crying solemnly,
+  E'en from the heart of sweet Forgetfulness,
+  Bids us "Rejoice, lest pleasureless ye die.
+  Within a little time must ye go by.
+  Stretch forth your open hands, and while ye live
+  Take all the gifts that Death and Life may give."
+
+And in the stanzas for October, written, Mr. Mackail tells us, in memory
+of a happy autumn holiday, we have the most poignant note of which he was
+capable:
+
+  Come down, O Love; may not our hands still meet,
+  Since still we live to-day, forgetting June,
+  Forgetting May, deeming October sweet--
+  --O hearken, hearken! through the afternoon,
+  The grey tower sings a strange old tinkling tune!
+  Sweet, sweet, and sad, the toiling year's last breath,
+  Too satiate of life to strive with death.
+
+  And we too--will it not be soft and kind,
+  That rest from life, from patience and from pain;
+  That rest from bliss we know not when we find;
+  That rest from Love which ne'er the end can gain?--
+  Hark, how the tune swells, that erewhile did wane?
+  Look up, Love!--ah, cling close and never move!
+  How can I have enough of life and love?
+
+June, the high tide of the year, he selects as the fitting month in which
+to tell of something sad:
+
+  Sad, because though a glorious end it tells,
+  Yet on the end of glorious life it dwells.
+
+In February he asks:
+
+  Shalt thou not hope for joy new born again,
+  Since no grief ever born can ever die
+  Through changeless change of seasons passing by?
+
+[Illustration: _Kelmscott Manor House from the Orchard_]
+
+Thus across the charming images of French romance, Hellenic legend, and
+Norse drama, falls the suggestion of his own personality, and it is due to
+this pervading personal mood or sentiment that _The Earthly Paradise_ has
+a power to stir the imagination almost wholly lacking to his later work.
+It cannot be said that even here he is able to awaken a strong emotion.
+But the human element is felt. A warm intelligence of sympathy creeps in
+among dreams and shadows, the reader is aware of a living presence near
+him and responds to the appeal of human weakness and depression. It is
+because Morris in the languid cadences of _The Earthly Paradise_ spoke
+with his own voice and took his readers into the confidence of his
+hopeless thoughts, that the book will remain for the multitude the chief
+among his works, the only one that portrays for us in its most
+characteristic form the inmost quality of his temperament. Nor does he
+seem to have had for any other book of his making quite the intimate
+affection he so frankly bestowed upon this. The final stanzas in which the
+well-known message is sent to "my Master, Geoffrey Chaucer," confide the
+autobiographic vein in which it was written. Says the Book of its maker:
+
+  I have beheld him tremble oft enough
+  At things he could not choose but trust to me,
+  Although he knew the world was wise and rough:
+  And never did he fail to let me see
+  His love,--his folly and faithlessness, maybe;
+  And still in turn I gave him voice to pray
+  Such prayers as cling about an empty day.
+
+  Thou, keen-eyed, reading me, mayst read him through,
+  For surely little is there left behind;
+  No power great deeds unnameable to do;
+  No knowledge for which words he may not find;
+  No love of things as vague as autumn wind--
+  Earth of the earth lies hidden by my clay,
+  The idle singer of an empty day.
+
+Written at great speed, one day being marked by a product of seven hundred
+lines, the last of _The Earthly Paradise_ was in the hands of the printers
+by the end of 1870, and Morris was free for his Icelandic journey and new
+interests.
+
+[Illustration: _Portrait of Edward Burne-Jones_
+
+_By Watts_]
+
+He was no sooner home from Iceland than he set to work upon a curious
+literary experiment--a dramatic poem of very complicated construction,
+called _Love is Enough, or the Freeing of Pharamond: A Morality_, the
+intricate metrical design of which is interestingly explained by Mr.
+Mackail. Rossetti and Coventry Patmore both spoke in terms of enthusiasm
+of its unusual beauty. The story is that of a king, Pharamond, who has
+been gallant on the field and wise on the throne, but is haunted by
+visions of an ideal love sapping his energy and driving peace from his
+heart. He deserts his people, and with his henchman, Oliver, wanders
+through the world until he encounters Azalais, a low-born maiden, who
+satisfies his dream. He returns to find that his people have become
+estranged from him and he abdicates at once, to retire into obscurity with
+his love. There has been an obvious struggle on the part of the poet
+to obtain a strong emotional effect, and certain passages have indeed the
+"passionate lyric quality" ascribed to them by Rossetti; but as a drama it
+hardly carries conviction. The songs written to be sung between the scenes
+have nevertheless much of the haunting beauty soon to be lost from his
+work, and of these the following is a felicitous example:
+
+  Love is enough: it grew up without heeding
+      In the days when ye knew not its name nor its measure,
+      And its leaflets untrodden by the light feet of pleasure
+  Had no boast of the blossom, no sign of the seeding,
+      As the morning and evening passed over its treasure.
+
+  And what do ye say then?--that Spring long departed
+      Has brought forth no child to the softness and showers;
+      That we slept and we dreamed through the Summer of flowers;
+  We dreamed of the Winter, and waking dead-hearted
+      Found Winter upon us and waste of dull hours.
+
+  Nay, Spring was o'er happy and knew not the reason,
+      And Summer dreamed sadly, for she thought all was ended
+      In her fulness of wealth that might not be amended,
+  But this is the harvest and the garnering season,
+      And the leaf and the blossom in the ripe fruit are blended.
+
+  It sprang without sowing, it grew without heeding,
+      Ye knew not its name and ye knew not its measure,
+      Ye noted it not 'mid your hope and your pleasure;
+  There was pain in its blossom, despair in its seeding,
+      But daylong your bosom now nurseth its treasure.
+
+Although Morris planned a beautifully decorated edition of the poem which
+was highly valued by him, its failure to impress itself upon the public
+was no great grief to him, and he put it cheerfully out of mind to devote
+himself to translation and to Icelandic literature.
+
+The surprising task to which he first turned was a verse translation of
+Virgil's _AEneid_, in which he attempted to give the closest possible
+rendering of the Latin and to emphasise the romantic side of Virgil's
+genius. He followed with an almost word-for-word accuracy the lines and
+periods of the original using, and he threw over the poem a glamour of
+romance, but Mr. Mackail says truly that he had taken his life in his
+hands in essaying a classic subject with his inadequate training and
+unclassic taste. The same authority, who on this subject, certainly, is
+not to be disputed by the lay reader, considers the result a success from
+Morris's own point of view, declaring that he "vindicated the claim of the
+romantic school to a joint ownership with the classicists in the poem
+which is not only the crowning achievement of classical Latin, but the
+fountain-head of romanticism in European literature." The opposing critics
+are fairly represented by Mr. Andrew Lang, who, in this case as in many
+another, is an ideal intermediary between scholar and general reader.
+
+"There is no more literal verse-translation of any classic poem in
+English," he says, "but Mr. Morris's manner and method appear to me to be
+mistaken. Virgil's great charm is his perfection of style and the
+exquisite harmony of his numbers. These are not represented by the
+singularly rude measures and archaistic language of Mr. Morris. Like Mr.
+Morris, Virgil was a learned antiquarian, and perhaps very accomplished
+scholars may detect traces of voluntary archaism in his language and
+style. But these, if they exist, certainly do not thrust themselves on the
+notice of most readers of the _AEneid_. Mr. Morris's phrases would almost
+seem uncouth in a rendering of Ennius. For example, take
+
+                    'manet alta mente repostum
+  Judicium Paridis, spretaeque injuria formae.'
+
+This is rendered in a prose version by a fine and versatile scholar, 'deep
+in her soul lies stored the judgment of Paris, the insult of her slighted
+beauty.' Mr. Morris translates:
+
+                    'her inmost heart still sorely did enfold
+  That grief of body set at naught by Paris' doomful deed.'
+
+Can anything be much less Virgilian? Is it even intelligible without the
+Latin? What modern poet would naturally speak of 'grief of body set at
+naught,' or call the judgment of Paris 'Paris' doomful deed'? Then 'manet
+alta mente repostum' is strangely rendered by 'her inmost heart still
+sorely did enfold.' This is an example of the translation at its worst,
+but defects of the sort illustrated are so common as to leave an
+impression of wilful ruggedness, and even obscurity, than which what can
+be less like Virgil? Where Virgil describes the death of Troilus, 'et
+versa pulvis inscribitus hasta' ('and his reversed spear scores the
+dust'), Mr. Morris has 'his wrested spear a-writing in the dust,' and
+Troilus has just been 'a-fleeing weaponless.' Our doomful deed, is that to
+be a-translating thus is to write with wrested pen, and to give a
+rendering of Virgil as unsatisfactory as it is technically literal. In
+short, Mr. Morris's _AEneid_ seems on a par with Mr. Browning's
+_Agamemnon_. But this," Mr. Lang is careful to add, "is a purely personal
+verdict: better scholars and better critics have expressed a far higher
+opinion of Mr. Morris's translation of Virgil."
+
+Mr. Lang's whimsical despair over the affectations of language which
+abound in the translation of the _AEneid_ with less pertinence than in many
+other writings of Morris where also they abound, recalls the remonstrance
+that Stevenson could not resist writing out in the form of a letter
+although it was never sent on its mission. Acknowledging his debt to
+Morris for many "unforgettable poems," the younger writer and more
+accomplished student of language protests against the indiscriminate use
+of the word _whereas_ in the translations from the sagas. "For surely,
+Master," he says, "that tongue that we write, and that you have
+illustrated so nobly, is yet alive. She has her rights and laws, and is
+our mother, our queen, and our instrument. Now in that living tongue,
+_where_ has one sense, _whereas_ another."
+
+The translation of the _AEneid_ was published under the title of _The
+AEneids_, in the autumn of 1875. Morris had written a good part of it in
+the course of his trips back and forth on the Underground Railway, using
+for these first drafts a stiff-covered copybook, which was his constant
+companion. In the summer of the same year he had brought out a volume of
+the translations from the Icelandic which he was making in collaboration
+with Mr. Magnusson, calling it _Three Northern Love-Stories and Other
+Tales_. He had still, he declared "but few converts to Saga-ism," and he
+regarded his translating from the Icelandic as a pure luxury, adopting it
+for a Sunday amusement. During the winter of 1875-76, however, he was
+embarked on a cognate enterprise of the utmost importance to him, although
+he thought, and with truth, that his public would be indifferent to it.
+This was the epic poem which he called _The Story of Sigurd the Volsung_,
+based on the Volsunga Saga, the story of the great Northern heroes told
+and re-told from generation to generation, polished and perfected until
+the final form, in which it preserves the traditions of the people who
+cherish it, is the noblest attained in the Icelandic legends. Morris had
+published a prose translation of the saga in 1870, and the following
+passage from his preface shows how deeply his emotions were stirred by his
+subject:
+
+"As to the literary quality of this work we might say much," he writes,
+"but we think we may well trust the reader of poetic insight to break
+through whatever entanglement of strange manners or unused element may at
+first trouble him, and to meet the nature and beauty with which it is
+filled: we cannot doubt that such a reader will be intensely touched by
+finding amidst all its wildness and remoteness such startling realism,
+such subtlety, such close sympathy with all the passions that may move
+himself to-day. In conclusion, we must again say how strange it seems to
+us, that this Volsung Tale, which is in fact an unversified poem, should
+never before have been translated into English. For this is the Great
+Story of the North, which should be to all our race what the tale of Troy
+was to the Greeks--to all our race first, and afterwards, when the change
+of the world has made our race nothing more than a name of what has
+been--a story too--then should it be to those that come after us no less
+than the Tale of Troy has been to us."
+
+In the course of the following six years, during which he was constantly
+increasing his intimacy with the literature of the North, an impulse not
+unlike that which tempted Tennyson toward the _Idylls of the King_ led him
+to try the winning of a wider audience for the tale of great deeds and
+elemental passions by which he himself had been so much inspired. In the
+prose translation he had given the Volsunga Saga to the public as it had
+been created for an earlier public of more savage tastes and fiercer
+tendencies. Now he proposed to divest it of some of the childish and ugly
+details that formed a stumbling block to the modern reader (though
+plausible and interesting enough to those for whom they were invented),
+and to add to the "unversified poem" rhyme and metre, emphasising the
+essential points and such characteristics of the actors as most appealed
+to him. A comparison of the saga with the poem will show that in his
+effort to preserve the heroic character of the antique conception by
+accentuating everything pleasing, leaving out much of the rudeness and
+cruelty, and adorning it with copious descriptive passages, he robs the
+story of a great part of the wild life stirring in its ancient forms, and
+more or less confuses and involves it. The modern poem really requires for
+its right understanding a mind more instructed in its subject than the
+prose translation of the old saga, and readers to whom the latter is
+unfamiliar may find a plain outline of the story not superfluous.
+
+In the translation, the origin of the noble Volsung race, of which Sigurd
+is the flower and crown, is traced to Sigi, called the son of Odin, and
+sent out from his father's land for killing a thrall. He is fortunate in
+war, marries a noble wife, and rules over the land of the Huns. His son is
+named Rerir. Volsung is the son of Rerir, and thus the great-grandson of
+Odin himself. He marries the daughter of a giant, and the ten sons and one
+daughter of this union are strong in sinew and huge in size, the Volsung
+race having the fame of being "great men and high-minded and far above the
+most of men both in cunning and in prowess and all things high and
+mighty." Volsung becomes in his turn king over Hunland, and builds for
+himself a noble Hall in the centre of which grows an oak-tree whose limbs
+"blossom fair out over the roof of the hall," and the trunk of which is
+called Branstock.
+
+The poem opens with the description of a wedding-feast held in this Hall
+for Signy, King Volsung's daughter, who has been sought in marriage by
+Siggeir, King of the Goths, a smaller and meaner race than the Volsungs.
+Signy is not content with her fate, but her father has deemed the match to
+be a wise one, and, eminent in filial obedience as in all things else, she
+yields. From this point for some distance saga and poem march together
+save for certain minor changes intended to increase Signy's charm. During
+the feasting a one-eyed stranger enters the Hall and thrusts his sword up
+to its hilt into the tree-trunk, saying that who should draw the sword
+from the trunk should have it for his own and find it the best he had ever
+borne in his hand. This, of course, is Odin. Siggeir tries to draw the
+sword, and after him his nobles, and then the sons of King Volsung, but
+none succeeds until Sigmund, the twin of Signy, draws it lightly forth as
+an easy task. Siggeir is wroth and offers to buy the sword for thrice its
+weight in gold, but Sigmund will not part with it, and Siggeir sets sail
+for home in dudgeon, though concealing his feelings from the Volsungs and
+inviting them cordially to visit him in Gothland. Signy reads the future,
+and implores her father to undo the marriage and let Siggeir depart
+without her. (In the poem Morris has her offer herself as a sacrifice if
+her father will but remain in his kingdom and decline Siggeir's
+invitation.) King Volsung, however, insists on keeping his troth, and
+Signy and Siggeir depart, followed in due time by King Volsung and his
+sons and nobles in response to Siggeir's request. What Signy prophesied
+comes to pass and King Volsung falls at the hands of the Goths while his
+ten sons are taken captive. Now Signy prays her husband that her brothers
+be put for a time in the stocks, since home to her mind comes "the saw
+that says _Sweet to eye while seen_." Siggeir is delighted to consent
+though he deems her "mad and witless" to wish longer suffering for her
+brothers. Here the poem departs from the original in that Morris puts the
+idea of the stocks into the mind of Siggeir in answer to Signy's
+suggestion that her brothers be spared for a little time. Sigmund and the
+rest of the brothers are taken to the wildwood, and a beam is placed on
+their feet, and night by night for nine nights a she-wolf comes to devour
+one of them. (In the poem Morris hastens matters somewhat by having two
+wolves appear each night to despatch the brothers two at a time.) Each
+morning Signy sends a messenger to the wildwood who brings back the woeful
+news. Finally she thinks of a ruse, and on the tenth night the messenger
+is sent to smear the face of Sigmund, now the sole remaining brother, with
+honey, putting some also into his mouth. When the wolf comes she licks his
+face, and then puts her tongue into his mouth to get the last delicious
+drop. Sigmund promptly closes his teeth upon her tongue and in the
+struggle that ensues Sigmund's bonds are burst and the wolf escapes,
+leaving her tongue between his teeth. This incident was probably not
+sufficiently heroic to please Morris, and in the poem no mention is made
+of Signy's clever device, Sigmund gaining his freedom in a more dignified
+fashion and the details being slurred over lightly, with a vague and
+general allusion to snapping "with greedy teeth." Sigmund dwells in the
+wildwood in hiding, and Signy sends to him in turn her two sons by King
+Siggeir, that he may test their fitness to help avenge the fate of her
+family. Here again Morris mitigates the stern temper of Signy for a more
+womanly type. In the saga when Signy finds that the boys are not stout
+enough of heart to accomplish her purpose she bids Sigmund kill them at
+once: "Why should such as they live longer?" In the poem, however, when
+Signy sends her son to Sigmund he is delivered with the diplomatic message
+that if his heart avail not he may "wend the ways of his fate," and when
+it is found that his heart does not avail, he is returned in safety to his
+mother, Sigmund awaiting the slow coming of the competent one.
+
+[Illustration: _William Morris_
+
+_From painting by Watts_]
+
+The story of the birth of Sinfjotli, in whose veins runs unmixed the blood
+of the Volsungs, is given a certain dignity not accorded it in Wagner's
+familiar version of the legend as Mr. Buxton Forman, Morris's most devoted
+critic, has pointed out, but true to the account in the original saga. The
+saga is followed, also, in the burning of Siggeir's Hall by Sigmund
+and Sinfjotli, but the Signy who kisses her brother in "soft and sweet"
+farewell certainly fails to recall to the mind the vengeful creature of
+the original. Sigmund returns to the Hall of the Volsungs with Sinfjotli,
+and marries Borghild. Presently Sinfjotli sails abroad with the brother of
+Queen Borghild, Gudrod by name, and kills him for reason--as given in the
+translation--of their rivalry in loving "an exceeding fair woman." In the
+poem, however, Morris records a shabby trick played upon Sinfjotli by
+Gudrod in the dividing of their spoils of battle, making this the cause of
+the duel in which Gudrod was killed. Sinfjotli returns to his home with
+the news of Gudrod's death, and Borghild in revenge poisons him. Sigmund
+then sends her away and takes for his wife fair Hiordis, meeting his death
+at the hand of Odin himself, who appears to him in battle and shatters the
+sword he had drawn in his youth from the Volsung Branstock. As he lies
+dying he tells Hiordis that she must take good care of their child, who is
+to carry on the Volsung tradition, and must guard well the shards of
+Odin's sword for him. Then comes the carrying away of Hiordis by a
+sea-king to his kingdom in Denmark, and here ends, rightly speaking, the
+epic of Sigmund's career, which, as Mr. Mackail has said, is a separate
+story neither subordinate to nor coherent with the later epic of Sigurd,
+but which Morris could not forbear uniting to it. Sigurd the Volsung, the
+golden-haired, the shining one, the symbol of the sun, is born of Hiordis
+in the home of King Elf, and fostered by Regin, an aged man and "deft in
+every cunning save the dealings of the sword." When Sigurd has grown to be
+a boy of high mind and stout heart, Regin urges him to ask of King Elf a
+horse. This he does, and is sent to choose one for himself. He chooses the
+best horse in the world and names him, Greyfell in the poem, Grani in the
+prose. Regin now presses him to attack Fafnir the "ling-worm," or dragon,
+who guards a vast hoard of treasure in the desert. According to the saga,
+Sigurd is not ashamed to own to a slight hesitation in attacking a
+creature of whose size and malignity he has heard much, but in the poem he
+is ready for the deed, merely hinting that "the wary foot is the surest
+and the hasty oft turns back." Thereupon follows the tale of the treasure
+told by Regin with great directness in the prose, and with much
+circumlocution in the poem.
+
+When Sigurd learns that Fafnir is the brother of Regin, and is keeping him
+out of his share of treasure belonging to them both, on which, however, a
+curse is laid, he pities Regin, and promises that if he will make him a
+sword worthy of the deed he will kill Fafnir for him. This Regin attempts
+to do and fails until Sigurd brings him the shards of Odin's mighty sword,
+his inheritance from his father Sigmund. With a sword forged from the
+shards and named by him "the Wrath," Sigurd sets out on Greyfell,
+accompanied by Regin, to attack the dragon. The description in the poem of
+the ride across the desert is rich in the fruits of Morris's own
+experience, and reflects very closely his impressions of the mournful
+place of "short-lived eagerness and glory." Sigurd and Regin ride to the
+westward.
+
+                      ... and huge were the mountains grown
+  And the floor of heaven was mingled with that tossing world of stone;
+  And they rode till the moon was forgotten and the sun was waxen low,
+  And they tarried not though he perished, and the world grew dark below.
+  Then they rode a mighty desert, a glimmering place and wide,
+  And into a narrow pass high-walled on either side
+  By the blackness of the mountains, and barred aback and in face
+  By the empty night of the shadow; a windless silent place:
+  But the white moon shone o'erhead mid the small sharp stars and pale,
+  And each as a man alone they rode on the highway of bale.
+
+  So ever they wended upward, and the midnight hour was o'er,
+  And the stars grew pale and paler, and failed from the heaven's floor,
+  And the moon was a long while dead, but where was the promise of day?
+  No change came over the darkness, no streak of the dawning grey;
+  No sound of the wind's uprising adown the night there ran:
+  It was blind as the Gaping Gulf ere the first of the worlds began.
+
+The fight with the dragon, the roasting of the dragon's heart, the tasting
+of the blood by Sigurd, and his instant knowledge of the hearts of men and
+beasts and of the speech of birds, follow with close adherence of poem to
+saga, the most marked divergence being the substitution of eagles for the
+woodpeckers who sing to Sigurd of his future. Through his new
+accomplishment Sigurd is able to read Regin's heart, and sees therein a
+traitorous intent, therefore he kills Regin, loads Greyfell with the
+treasure, and rides to the mountain where Brynhild, the warrior maiden
+struck with slumber by Odin in punishment for disobedience to him, is
+lying in her armour guarded by flames. Sigurd wins through the fire, and
+awakens her, and they hold loving converse together on the mountain,
+Brynhild teaching him wisdom in runes and in the saga, bringing him beer
+in a beaker, "the drink of love," although in the poem this hospitable
+ceremony is omitted. After a time they part, plighting troth, and later,
+when they meet at the home of Brynhild in Lymdale, they again exchange
+vows of faith.
+
+Then Sigurd rides to a realm south of the Rhine, where dwell the Niblung
+brothers with their sister Gudrun and their fierce-hearted mother,
+Grimhild, who brews for Sigurd a philter that makes him forget the vows he
+exchanged with Brynhild and become enamoured of Gudrun. Completely under
+the power of the charm, he weds the latter and undertakes to woo and win
+Brynhild for her brother Gunnar. This he does by assuming Gunnar's
+semblance, and riding once more through the fire that guards Brynhild,
+reminding her of her oath to marry whomever should perform this feat, and
+returning to his own form after gaining her promise for Gunnar. This ruse
+is made known to Brynhild (after she has wedded Gunnar) by Gudrun, who is
+not averse to marring the peace of the greatest of women, and Brynhild
+makes the air ring with her wailing over the woeful fact that Gudrun has
+the braver man for her husband. In the saga she is a very outspoken lady
+and in a wild temper, and even in the poem her grief fails in noble and
+dignified expression. At her instigation Sigurd is killed by Gunnar and
+his brethren. The vengeance brings no happiness, however, and Brynhild
+pierces her breast with a sword that she and Sigurd may lie on one funeral
+pyre! Lovers of Wagner opera will remember that the story as there told
+ends with this climax, but Morris carries it on to Gudrun's marriage with
+King Atli, Brynhild's brother, and to the struggle between him and the
+Niblungs for the fatal treasure, which results in the murder of the
+Niblungs (Gudrun's brothers) and the irrevocable loss of the treasure.
+Although Gudrun has approved Atli's deed, she finds she can no longer
+abide with him after it has been accomplished, and accordingly sets fire
+to his house and throws herself into the sea. Morris omits the grewsome
+incident of the supper prepared for Atli by Gudrun from the roasted hearts
+of their children whom she had killed, and also leaves out the subsequent
+account of the bringing ashore of Gudrun and the wedding and slaying of
+Swanhild, her daughter by Sigurd.
+
+To the poetic and symbolic elements of this strange old saga, Morris has
+been abundantly sensitive. The curse attending the desire for gold, which
+is the pointed moral of the saga, is brought out, not dramatically, but
+by allusions and suggestions, not always apparent at a casual reading. The
+conception of Sigurd as the sun-god destroying the powers of darkness and
+illuminating a shadowy world is constantly hinted at, as when he threatens
+Regin with the light he sheds on good and ill, and when Regin, looking
+toward him as he sits on Greyfell, sees that the light of his presence
+blazes as the glory of the sun. The heroism of Sigurd, his role as the
+ideal lover and warrior and spiritual saviour of his race, is perhaps
+over-emphasised. As King Arthur certainly lost in interest by Tennyson's
+re-creation of him, so Sigurd is more lovely and fair and golden and
+glorious in the poem than in the saga, and considerably less human and
+attractive withal. In fact, none of the characters in the poem--all so
+intensely alive to Morris himself--lives in quite a like degree for his
+readers. His power to probe beneath externals and rouse emotions of
+spiritual force was curiously limited. There are indications in his
+biography that his business with crafts and "word-spinning," as he called
+it, served him as a kind of armour, protecting him from the wounds of
+feelings too poignant to handle freely, too deadly to invite. We read of
+his agony of apprehension, for example, when in Iceland he did not hear
+from his home for a considerable period. "Why does not one drop down or
+faint or do something of that sort when it comes to the uttermost in such
+matters!" he exclaims. But in his writing it is mainly the surface of the
+earth and the surface of the mind with which he deals. It is in the nature
+of his genius, says one of his most accomplished critics, to dispense with
+those deeper thoughts of life which for Chaucer and for Shakespeare were
+"the very air breathed by the persons living in their verse."
+Nevertheless, his service to English literature, in translating the
+Northern sagas as none but a poet could have translated them, was very
+great, and his _Story of Sigurd_ is in many respects a splendid
+performance. In writing it he endeavoured to infuse into his style the
+energy and passion of the literature from which he drew his material, and
+to brace it with the sturdy fibre of the Icelandic tongue. His efforts to
+de-Latinise his sentences had already lent his translations a vigour
+lacking in his earlier work. He had captured something of the Northern
+freshness corresponding very truly to his external aspect if not to the
+workings of his brain. The chief defect from which his story of Sigurd
+suffers lies in the extreme garrulity of the narrative. A single passage,
+set by the side of the translation, will suffice to show the manner in
+which a direct statement is smothered and amplified until the reader's
+brain is dull with repetition, and the episode or description is extended
+to three or four times its original length. Thus in the saga we are told
+that after Sigurd had eaten of the dragon's heart "he leapt on his horse
+and rode along the trail of the worm Fafnir, and so right unto his
+abiding-place; and he found it open, and beheld all the doors and the
+gear of them that they were wrought of iron; yea, and all the beams of the
+house; and it was dug down deep into the earth: there found Sigurd gold
+exceeding plenteous, and the sword Rotti; and thence he took the Helm of
+Awe, and the Gold Byrny, and many things fair and good. So much gold he
+found there, that he thought verily that scarce might two horses, or three
+belike, bear it thence. So he took all the gold and laid it in two great
+chests, and set them on the horse Grani, and took the reins of him, but
+nowise will he stir, neither will he abide smiting. Then Sigurd knows the
+mind of the horse, and leaps on the back of him, and smites spurs into
+him, and off the horse goes even as if he were unladen."
+
+From this comparatively unvarnished tale Morris evolves the following:
+
+  Now Sigurd eats of the heart that once in the Dwarf-king lay,
+  The hoard of the wisdom begrudged, the might of the earlier day.
+  Then wise of heart was he waxen, but longing in him grew
+  To sow the seed he had gotten, and till the field he knew.
+  So he leapeth aback of Greyfell, and rideth the desert bare,
+  And the hollow slot of Fafnir that led to the Serpent's lair.
+  Then long he rode adown it, and the ernes flew overhead,
+  And tidings great and glorious of that Treasure of old they said,
+  So far o'er the waste he wended, and when the night was come
+  He saw the earth-old dwelling, the dread Gold-wallowers home.
+  On the skirts of the Heath it was builded by a tumbled stony bent;
+  High went that house to the heavens, down 'neath the earth it went,
+  Of unwrought iron fashioned for the heart of a greedy king:
+  'Twas a mountain, blind without, and within was its plenishing
+  But the Hoard of Andvari the ancient, and the sleeping Curse unseen,
+  The Gold of the Gods that spared not and the greedy that have been.
+  Through the door strode Sigurd the Volsung, and the grey moon and the
+      sword
+  Fell in on the tawny gold-heaps of the ancient hapless Hoard:
+  Gold gear of hosts unburied, and the coin of cities dead,
+  Great spoil of the ages of battle, lay there on the Serpent's bed:
+  Huge blocks from mid-earth quarried, where none but the Dwarfs have
+      mined,
+  Wide sands of the golden rivers no foot of man may find,
+  Lay 'neath the spoils of the mighty and the ruddy rings of yore:
+  But amidst was the Helm of Aweing that the Fear of earth-folk bore,
+  And there gleamed a wonder beside it, the Hauberk all of gold,
+  Whose like is not in the heavens nor has earth of its fellow told:
+  There Sigurd seeth moreover Andvari's Ring of Gain,
+  The hope of Loki's finger, the Ransom's utmost grain;
+  For it shone on the midmost gold-heap like the first star set in the
+      sky,
+  In the yellow space of even when the moon-rise draweth anigh.
+  Then laughed the Son of Sigmund, and stooped to the golden land,
+  And gathered that first of the harvest and set it on his hand;
+  And he did on the Helm of Aweing, and the Hauberk all of gold,--
+  Whose like is not in the heavens nor has earth of its fellow told:
+  Then he praised the day of the Volsungs amid the yellow light,
+  And he set his hand to the labour and put forth his kingly might;
+  He dragged forth gold to the moon, on the desert's face he laid
+  The innermost earth's adornment, and rings for the nameless made;
+  He toiled and loaded Greyfell, and the cloudy war-steed shone,
+  And the gear of Sigurd rattled in the flood of moonlight wan;
+  There he toiled and loaded Greyfell, and the Volsung's armour rang
+  'Mid the yellow bed of the Serpent--but without the eagles sang:
+
+  "Bind the red rings, O Sigurd! let the gold shine free and clear!
+  For what hath the Son of the Volsungs the ancient Curse to fear?
+
+  "Bind the red rings, O Sigurd! for thy tale is well begun,
+  And the world shall be good and gladdened by the Gold lit up by the sun.
+
+  "Bind the red rings, O Sigurd! and gladden all thine heart!
+  For the world shall make thee merry ere thou and she depart.
+
+  "Bind the red rings, O Sigurd! for the ways go green below,
+  Go green to the dwelling of Kings, and the halls that the Queen-folk
+      know.
+
+  "Bind the red rings, O Sigurd! for what is there bides by the way,
+  Save the joy of folk to awaken, and the dawn of the merry day?
+
+  "Bind the red rings, O Sigurd! for the strife awaits thine hand
+  And a plenteous war-field's reaping, and the praise of many a land.
+
+  "Bind the red rings, O Sigurd! but how shall storehouse hold
+  That glory of thy winning and the tidings to be told?"
+
+  Now the moon was dead and the star-worlds were great on the heavenly
+      plain,
+  When the steed was fully laden; then Sigurd taketh the rein
+  And turns to the ruined rock-wall that the lair was built beneath,
+  For there he deemed was the gate and the door of the Glittering Heath,
+  But not a whit moved Greyfell for aught that the King might do;
+  Then Sigurd pondered awhile, till the heart of the beast he knew,
+  And clad in all his war-gear he leaped to the saddle-stead,
+  And with pride and mirth neighed Greyfell and tossed aloft his head,
+  And sprang unspurred o'er the waste, and light and swift he went,
+  And breasted the broken rampart, the stony tumbled bent;
+  And over the brow he clomb, and there beyond was the world,
+  A place of many mountains and great crags together hurled.
+  So down to the west he wendeth, and goeth swift and light,
+  And the stars are beginning to wane, and the day is mingled with night;
+  For full fain was the sun to arise and look on the Gold set free,
+  And the Dwarf-wrought rings of the Treasure and the gifts from the floor
+      of the sea.
+
+Beautiful and full of poetic spirit and suggestion as this phraseology is,
+a reader may be forgiven if it recalls the reply of Hamlet when asked by
+Polonius what it is he reads. Compared with the swift dramatic method
+employed by Wagner to make the heroes and heroines of this same saga live
+for our time, it must be admitted that the latter drives home with the
+greater energy and conviction. Morris himself, however, was "not much
+interested" in anything Wagner did, looking upon it "as nothing short of
+desecration to bring such a tremendous and world-wide subject under the
+gaslights of an opera, the most rococo and degraded of all forms of art."
+
+To the group of translations and adaptations already described must be
+added one other ambitious effort which belongs to it, properly speaking,
+although separated from it in time by more than ten years. In 1887 Morris
+published a translation of the _Odyssey_, written in anapaestic couplets,
+and rendered as literally as by the prose crib of which he made frank use.
+Mr. Watts-Dunton finds in this translation the Homeric eagerness, although
+the Homeric dignity is lacking. The majority of competent critics were
+against it, however, nor is a high degree of classical training necessary
+to perceive in it an incoherence and clumsiness of diction impossible to
+associate with the lucid images of the Greeks. Compare, for example,
+Morris's account of the recognition of Ulysses by Argus with Bryant's
+limpid rendering of the same episode, and the tortured style of the former
+is obvious at once. Bryant's translation reads:
+
+                            There lay
+  Argus, devoured with vermin. As he saw
+  Ulysses drawing near, he wagged his tail
+  And dropped his ears, but found that he could come
+  No nearer to his master. Seeing this
+  Ulysses wiped away a tear unmark'd
+  By the good swineherd whom he questioned thus:
+    "Eumaeus, this I marvel at,--this dog
+  That lies upon the dunghill, beautiful
+  In form, but whether in the chase as fleet
+  As he is fairly shaped I cannot tell.
+  Worthless, perchance, as house-dogs often are
+  Whose masters keep them for the sake of show."
+
+  And thus, Eumaeus, thou didst make reply:
+
+    "The dog belongs to one who died afar.
+  Had he the power of limb which once he had
+  For feats of hunting when Ulysses sailed
+  For Troy and left him, thou wouldst be amazed
+  Both at his swiftness and his strength. No beast
+  In the thick forest depths which once he saw,
+  Or even tracked by footprints, could escape.
+  And now he is a sufferer, since his lord
+  Has perished far from his own land. No more
+  The careless women heed the creature's wants;
+  For, when the master is no longer near,
+  The servants cease from their appointed tasks,
+  And on the day that one becomes a slave
+  The Thunderer, Jove takes half his worth away."
+
+    He spake, and, entering that fair dwelling-place,
+  Passed through to where the illustrious suitors sat,
+  While over Argus the black night of death
+  Came suddenly as soon as he had seen
+  Ulysses, absent now for twenty years.
+
+And here is the description by Morris of the infinitely touching scene:
+
+  There then did the woodhound Argus all full of ticks abide;
+  But now so soon as he noted Odysseus drawing anear
+  He wagged his tail, and fawning he laid down either ear,
+  But had no might to drag him nigher from where he lay
+  To his master, who beheld him and wiped a tear away
+  That he lightly hid from Eumaeus, unto whom he spake and said:
+
+  "Eumaeus, much I marvel at the dog on the dung-heap laid;
+  Fair-shapen is his body, but nought I know indeed
+  If unto this his fairness he hath good running speed,
+  Or is but like unto some--men's table-dogs I mean,
+  Which but because of their fairness lords cherish to be seen."
+
+  Then thou, O swineherd Eumaeus, didst speak and answer thus:
+
+  "Yea, this is the hound of the man that hath died aloof from us;
+  And if yet to do and to look on he were even such an one
+  As Odysseus left behind him when to Troy he gat him gone
+  Then wouldest thou wonder beholding his speed and hardihood,
+  For no monster that he followed through the depths of the tangled wood
+  Would he blench from, and well he wotted of their trail and where it
+      led.
+  But now ill he hath, since his master in an alien land is dead,
+  And no care of him have the women, that are heedless here and light;
+  Since thralls whenso they are missing their masters' rule and might.
+  No longer are they willing to do the thing that should be;
+  For Zeus, the loud-voiced, taketh half a man's valiancy
+  Whenso the day of thralldom hath hold of him at last."
+
+  So saying into the homestead of the happy place he passed
+  And straight to the hall he wended 'mid the Wooers overbold.
+  But the murky doom of the death-day of Argus now took hold
+  When he had looked on Odysseus in this the twentieth year.
+
+The decade between the publication of _The Earthly Paradise_ and _Sigurd
+the Volsung_ had been one of sustained literary effort varied, as we have
+seen, but hardly interrupted by the work in decoration. The latter Morris
+called his "bread-and-cheese work," the former his "pleasure work of
+books." The time had not yet come for a complete union between the two,
+although it was foreshadowed by the illuminated manuscripts made for
+friends during these years. A selection from his own poems, a translation
+of the _Eyrbyggja Saga_, a copy of Fitzgerald's _Rubaiyat of Omar
+Khayyam_, and the _AEneid_ of Virgil were among the works that Morris
+undertook to transcribe with his own hand on vellum, with decorative
+margins with results of great beauty. He had now long been happy in work
+calling out all this enthusiasm, but the world was going on without, to
+use his own words, "beautiful and strange and dreadful and worshipful."
+He was approaching the time when his conscience would no longer let him
+rest in the thought that he was "not born to set the crooked straight."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+PUBLIC LIFE AND SOCIALISM.
+
+
+In the autumn of 1876, just after the publication of _Sigurd the Volsung_,
+Morris took his first dip in the ocean of public affairs, the waves of
+which were presently almost to submerge him. He was forty-two years of
+age, and had thus far managed to keep well within the range of his
+individual interests and away from the political and social questions that
+none the less stirred in his mind from time to time, and pricked him to
+random assertions that he would have nothing to do with them, that his
+business was with dreams, and that he would remain "the idle singer of an
+empty day." He was roused to action, however, by the barbarous massacre on
+the part of the Mussulman soldiery of men, women, and children in
+Bulgaria, the news of which moved the heart of England to a frenzy of
+indignation. When Russia intervened, the possibility that England might
+take up arms on the side of Turkey in order to erect a barrier against
+Russian aggression was intolerable to him, and he wrote to the _Daily
+News_ in eloquent protestation. "I who am writing this," he said, with a
+just appreciation of his ordinary attitude toward political matters, "am
+one of a large class of men--quiet men, who usually go about their own
+business, heeding public matters less than they ought, and afraid to speak
+in such a huge concourse as the English nation, however much they may
+feel, but who are now stung into bitterness by thinking how helpless they
+are in a public matter that touches them so closely." "I appeal," he
+continued, "to the workingmen, and pray them to look to it that if this
+shame falls upon them they will certainly remember it and be burdened by
+it when their day clears for them and they attain all and more than all
+they are now striving for." Again in the spring of 1877, when war seemed
+imminent, Morris appealed "to the workingmen of England," issuing a
+manifesto which was practically his first Socialist document and heralded
+the long series of lectures and addresses, poems, articles, and treatises,
+presently to take the place of romances and epics in his literary life.
+After declaring that the people who were bringing on the war were "greedy
+gamblers on the Stock Exchange, idle officers of the army and navy (poor
+fellows!), worn-out mockers of the clubs, desperate purveyors of exciting
+war-news for the comfortable breakfast-tables of those who have nothing to
+lose by war, and lastly, in the place of honour, the Tory Rump, that we
+fools, weary of peace, reason, and justice, chose at the last election to
+represent us," he added a passage that reads like the outcome of many a
+heated discussion with brethren of his own social class.
+
+"Workingmen of England, one word of warning yet," he said: "I doubt if you
+know the bitterness of hatred against freedom and progress that lies at
+the hearts of a certain part of the richer classes in this country; their
+newspapers veil it in a kind of decent language, but do but hear them
+talking amongst themselves, as I have often, and I know not whether scorn
+or anger would prevail in you at their folly and insolence. These men
+cannot speak of your order, of its aims, of its leaders, without a sneer
+or an insult; these men, if they had the power (may England perish
+rather!) would thwart your just aspirations, would silence you, would
+deliver you bound hand and foot forever to irresponsible capital.
+Fellow-citizens, look to it, and if you have any wrongs to be redressed,
+if you cherish your most worthy hope of raising your whole order
+peacefully and solidly, if you thirst for leisure and knowledge, if you
+long to lessen these inequalities which have been our stumbling-block
+since the beginning of the world, then cast aside sloth and cry out
+against an Unjust War, and urge us of the middle classes to do no less."
+
+[Illustration: _Picture by Rossetti in which the Children's Faces are
+Portraits of May Morris_]
+
+By this time he was treasurer of the Eastern Question Association, and
+working with all his might against the principles of the war party in
+England, contributing to the general agitation the political ballad called
+_Wake, London Lads!_ which was sung with much enthusiasm at one of the
+meetings to the appropriate air, _The Hardy Norseman's Home of Yore_, and
+was afterwards freely distributed in the form of a leaflet among the
+mechanics of London. It was during this period of political activity that
+J. R. Green wrote of him to E. A. Freeman: "I rejoiced to see the poet
+Morris--whom Oliphant setteth even above you for his un-Latinisms--brought
+to grief by being prayed to draw up a circular on certain Eastern matters,
+and gravelled to find 'English words.' I insidiously persuaded him that
+the literary committee had fixed on him to write one of a series of
+pamphlets which Gladstone wants brought out for the public enlightenment,
+and that the subject assigned him was 'The Results of the Incidence of
+Direct Taxation on the Christian Rayah,' but that he was forbidden to
+speak of the 'onfall of straight geld,' or other such 'English' forms. I
+left him musing and miserable." Musing and miserable he may well have been
+at finding that his duty, as he conceived it, was leading him into such
+unlovely paths, but the English of his polemical writings was unmistakable
+enough and unconfused by any affectations, Saxon or Latin. In declining to
+stand for the Professorship of Poetry at Oxford on the occasion of Matthew
+Arnold's withdrawal from it, he had confessed to a peculiar inaptitude for
+expressing himself except in the one way in which his gift lay, and it was
+true that his mind was singularly inept outside its natural course. He had
+not a reasoning mind. His opinions, dictated as they were chiefly by
+sentiment, were not worked out by the careful processes dear to genuine
+thinkers. But he was before all things a believer. No man was ever more
+certain of the absolute rectitude of his views, and by this sincerity of
+conviction they were driven home to his public. He was so eager to make
+others feel as he felt that he spent his utmost skill upon the delivery of
+his message, using the simple and downright phrases that could be
+understood by the least cultivated of his hearers. It was impossible to
+listen to him, says one of his friends, not a convert to his views,
+without for the time at least agreeing with him. Thus he conquered the
+"peculiar inaptitude" of which he speaks by the force of his great
+integrity, and although he complained that "the cursed words" went to
+water between his fingers, they accomplished their object.
+
+"When the crisis in the East was past," says Mr. Mackail, "it left Morris
+thoroughly in touch with the Radical leaders of the working class in
+London, and well acquainted with the social and economic ideas which,
+under the influence of widening education and of the international
+movement among the working classes, were beginning to transform their
+political creed from an individualist Radicalism into a more or less
+definite doctrine of State Socialism." This contact was sufficient to
+kindle into activity the ideas implanted in his own mind during his
+college days. Carlyle had then thundered forth his amazing anathemas
+against modern civilisation and had declaimed that Gurth born thrall of
+Cedric, with a brass collar round his neck, was happy in comparison with
+the poor of to-day enjoying their "liberty to die by starvation," no
+displeasing gospel to a young mediaevalist; while Ruskin had preached with
+vociferous eloquence the doctrine that happiness in labour is the end and
+aim of life. From the beginning of his work in decorative art Morris had
+shown the influence of these beliefs in peace. He was now to let them lead
+him into war.
+
+Before he wrote himself down a Socialist, however, he set on foot a
+movement not so important in the eyes of the public, but much more
+characteristic of his personal mission in the world of life and art. He
+had long before learned from Ruskin that the so-called restoration of
+public monuments meant "the most total destruction which a building can
+suffer: a destruction out of which no remnants can be gathered: a
+destruction accompanied with false description of the thing destroyed."
+Whatever his feeling may have been concerning the destructive restoration,
+of which he must have seen manifold examples before this period of his
+middle age, he seems to have awakened rather suddenly to the necessity of
+taking some active measure to check the ravages of the restorer. Goaded,
+finally, by the sight of alterations going on in one of the beautiful
+parish churches near Kelmscott, he conceived the idea of forming a society
+of protest. Early in 1877 the impending fate of the Abbey Church at
+Tewkesbury, under the devastating hands of Sir Gilbert Scott, prompted him
+to put the idea at once before the public, and he wrote to the _Athenaeum_
+a letter in which he went straight to the heart of his subject with
+clearness and simplicity.
+
+"My eye just now caught the word 'restoration' in the morning paper," he
+wrote, "and on looking closer, I saw that this time it is nothing less
+than the Minster of Tewkesbury that is to be destroyed by Sir Gilbert
+Scott. Is it altogether too late to do something to save it,--it and
+whatever else of beautiful and historical is still left us on the sites of
+the ancient buildings we were once so famous for? Would it not be of some
+use once for all, and with the least delay possible, to set on foot an
+association for the purpose of watching over and protecting these relics
+which, scanty as they are now become, are still wonderful treasures, all
+the more priceless in this age of the world, when the newly-invented study
+of living history is the chief joy of so many of our lives?
+
+"Your paper has so steadily and courageously opposed itself to these acts
+of barbarism which the modern architect, parson, and squire call
+'restoration,' that it would be waste of words here to enlarge on the ruin
+that has been wrought by their hands; but, for the saving of what is left,
+I think I may write you a word of encouragement, and say that you by no
+means stand alone in the matter, and that there are many thoughtful
+people who would be glad to sacrifice time, money, and comfort in defence
+of those ancient monuments; besides, though I admit that the architects
+are, with very few exceptions, hopeless, because interest, habit, and an
+ignorance yet grosser, bind them; still there must be many people whose
+ignorance is accidental rather than inveterate, whose good sense could
+surely be touched if it were clearly put to them that they were destroying
+what they, or more surely still, their sons and sons' sons would one day
+fervently long for, and which no wealth or energy could ever buy again for
+them.
+
+"What I wish for, therefore, is that an association should be set on foot
+to keep a watch on old monuments, to protest against all 'restoration'
+that means more than keeping out wind and weather, and, by all means,
+literary and other, to awaken a feeling that our ancient buildings are not
+mere ecclesiastical toys, but sacred monuments of the nation's growth and
+hope."
+
+In less than a month the association was formed under the title of the
+"Society for Protection of Ancient Buildings," abbreviated by Morris to
+the "Anti-Scrape Society," in cheerful reference to the pernicious
+scraping and pointing indulged in by the restorers. Morris was made
+secretary of the Society, and, as long as he lived, worked loyally in its
+behalf, giving, in addition to time and money, the labour, which to him
+was grievous, of lecturing for it. He wrote a prospectus that was
+translated into French, German, Italian, and Dutch, and among the more
+important of his protests were those against the demolition of some of the
+most beautiful portions of St. Mark's at Venice, and the "bedizening" of
+the interior of Westminster Abbey.
+
+For the sentiment which inspired him, the inextinguishable love in his
+heart toward every example however humble of the art he reverenced, we may
+turn to one of the most eloquently reasonable passages of his numerous
+lectures. Closing his account of pattern designing with a reference to the
+creation of modern or Gothic art, he says: "Never until the time of that
+death or cataleptic sleep of the so-called Renaissance did it forget its
+origin, or fail altogether in fulfilling its mission of turning the
+ancient curse of labour into something more like a blessing."
+
+"As to the way in which it did its work," he continues, "as I have no
+time, so also I have but little need to speak, since there is none of us
+but has seen and felt some portion of the glory which it left behind, but
+has shared some portion of that most kind gift it gave the world; for even
+in this our turbulent island, the home of rough and homely men, so far
+away from the centres of art and thought which I have been speaking of,
+did simple folk labour for those that shall come after them. Here in the
+land we yet love they built their homes and temples; if not so
+majestically as many peoples have done, yet in such sweet accord with the
+familiar nature amidst which they dwelt, that when by some happy chance
+we come across the work they wrought, untouched by any but natural change,
+it fills us with a satisfying untroubled happiness that few things else
+could bring us. Must our necessities destroy, must our restless ambition
+mar, the sources of this innocent pleasure, which rich and poor may share
+alike--this communion with the very hearts of the departed men? Must we
+sweep away these touching memories of our stout forefathers and their
+troublous days that won our present peace and liberties?
+
+"If our necessities compel us to it, I say we are an unhappy people; if
+our vanity lure us into it, I say we are a foolish and light-minded
+people, who have not the wits to take a little trouble to avoid spoiling
+our own goods. Our own goods? Yes, the goods of the people of England, now
+and in time to come: we who are now alive are but life-renters of them.
+Any of us who pretend to any culture know well that in destroying or
+injuring one of these buildings we are destroying the pleasure, the
+culture--in a word, the humanity--of unborn generations. It is speaking
+very mildly to say that we have no right to do this for our temporary
+convenience. It is speaking too mildly. I say any such destruction is an
+act of brutal dishonesty.... It is in the interest of living art and
+living history that I oppose 'restoration.' What history can there be in a
+building bedaubed with ornament, which cannot at best be anything but a
+hopeless and lifeless imitation of the hope and vigour of the earlier
+world? As to the art that is concerned in it, a strange folly it seems to
+me for us who live among these bricken masses of hideousness, to waste the
+energies of our short lives in feebly trying to add new beauty to what is
+already beautiful. Is that all the surgery we have for the curing of
+England's spreading sore? Don't let us vex ourselves to cure the
+antepenultimate blunders of the world, but fall to on our own blunders.
+Let us leave the dead alone, and, ourselves living, build for the living
+and those that shall live. Meantime, my plea for our Society is this, that
+since it is disputed whether restoration be good or not, and since we are
+confessedly living in a time when architecture has come on the one hand to
+Jerry building, and on the other to experimental designing (good, very
+good experiments some of them), let us take breath and wait; let us
+sedulously repair our ancient buildings, and watch every stone of them as
+if they were built of jewels (as indeed they are), but otherwise let the
+dispute rest till we have once more learned architecture, till we once
+more have among us a reasonable, noble, and universally used style. Then
+let the dispute be settled. I am not afraid of the issue. If that day ever
+comes, we shall know what beauty, romance, and history mean, and the
+technical meaning of the word 'restoration' will be forgotten.
+
+"Is not this a reasonable plea? It means prudence. If the buildings are
+not worth anything they are not worth restoring; if they are worth
+anything they are at least worth treating with common sense and prudence.
+
+"Come now, I invite you to support the most prudent Society in all
+England."
+
+It is easy to understand from such examples as this how Morris gained his
+popularity as a lecturer. In the printed sentences you read the eager,
+persuasive accent, so convincing because so convinced. On the platform he
+stood, say his friends, like a conqueror, stalwart and sturdy, his good
+grey eyes flashing or twinkling, his voice deepening with feeling, his
+gesture and speech sudden and spontaneous, his aspect that of an
+insurgent, a fighter against custom and orthodoxy.
+
+It was not long after the formation of the Society for the Protection of
+Ancient Buildings that he began to show himself a rebel in more than words
+against existing social laws. The steps by which he reached his membership
+in the Democratic Federation in the year 1883 are not very easily traced.
+Comments on the distressing gulf between rich and poor and on the
+conditions under which the modern workingman did his task became more
+frequent in his letters and addresses. His mind seemed to be gradually
+adjusting itself to the thought that the only hope for obtaining ideal
+conditions in which--this was always the ultimate goal--art might be
+constantly associated with handicraft, was perhaps to let art go for the
+time being, and upset society and all its conventions in preparation for a
+new earth. "Art must go under," he wrote in one of his private letters
+"where or however it may come up again." But it was always the fate of art
+that concerned him. He never really understood what Socialism technically
+and economically speaking meant. He read its books with labour and sorrow,
+and struggled with its theories in support of his antagonism to the
+commercial methods of modern business, but he gained no firm grasp of any
+underlying political principle. In most of his later addresses he talked
+pure sentiment concerning social questions, characteristically declaring
+it to be the purest reason. His avowed belief was that "workmen should be
+artists and artists workmen," and this, he felt, could only be attained
+under the freest conditions. A workman should not be clothed in shabby
+garments, should not be wretchedly housed, overworked, or underfed. But
+neither will it profit him much if he wear good clothes, and keep short
+hours, and eat wholesome food, and contribute to the ugliness of the wares
+turned out by commerce. The idea that a man works only to earn leisure in
+which he does no work was shocking to him as it had been to Ruskin.
+Pleasant work to do, leisure for other work of a different pleasantness,
+this was what the workingman really wanted if only he knew it. It was
+clear to Morris that he himself worked "not the least in the world for the
+sake of earning leisure by it," but "partly driven by the fear of
+starvation and disgrace," and partly because he loved the work itself;
+and while he was ready to confess that he spent a part of his leisure "as
+a dog does" in contemplation, and liked it well enough, he also spent part
+of it in work which gave him as much pleasure as his bread-earning work,
+neither more nor less. Obviously if there are men with whom such is not
+the case it is because they have not the right kind of work to do, and are
+not doing it in the right way, and it is equally obvious that the wrong
+work and the wrong way of doing it are forced upon them. Left to
+themselves they are bound to do what pleases them and what will please
+others of right minds. The ideal handicraftsman developing under an ideal
+social order "shall put his own individual intelligence and enthusiasm
+into the goods he fashions. So far from his labour being 'divided,' which
+is the technical phrase for his always doing one minute piece of work and
+never being allowed to think of any other, so far from that, he must know
+all about the ware he is making and its relation to similar wares; he must
+have a natural aptitude for his work so strong that no education can force
+him away from his special bent. He must be allowed to think of what he is
+doing and to vary his work as the circumstances of it vary, and his own
+moods. He must be forever stirring to make the piece he is at work at
+better than the last. He must refuse at anybody's bidding to turn out, I
+won't say a bad, but even an indifferent piece of work, whatever the
+public want or think they want. He must have a voice, and a voice worth
+listening to in the whole affair."
+
+This attitude is almost identical with that of Ruskin. To see how the
+theories of master and pupil coincide one has only to read _The Stones of
+Venice_ and compare with the passage quoted above the famous chapter on
+_The Nature of the Gothic_.
+
+"It is verily this degradation of the operative into a machine," says
+Ruskin, "which, more than any other evil of the times, is leading the mass
+of the nations everywhere into vain, incoherent, destructive struggling
+for a freedom of which they cannot explain the nature to themselves. Their
+universal outcry against wealth and against nobility is not forced from
+them either by the pressure of famine or the sting of mortified pride.
+These do much, and have done much in all ages; but the foundations of
+society were never yet shaken as they are at this day. It is not that men
+are ill-fed, but that they have no pleasure in the work by which they make
+their bread, and therefore look to wealth as the only means of pleasure.
+It is not that men are pained by the scorn of the upper classes, but they
+cannot endure their own; for they feel that the kind of labour to which
+they are condemned is verily a degrading one, and makes them less than
+men.... We have much studied and much perfected, of late, the great
+civilised invention of the division of labour; only we give it a false
+name. It is not, truly speaking, the labour that is divided; but the
+men--divided into mere segments of men--broken into small fragments and
+crumbs of life, so that all the little piece of intelligence that is left
+in a man is not enough to make a pin or a nail, but exhausts itself in
+making the point of a pin, or the head of a nail.... And the great cry
+that rises from all our manufacturing cities, louder than their furnace
+blast, is all in very deed for this,--that we manufacture everything there
+except men.... And all the evil to which that cry is urging our myriads
+can be met only ... by a right understanding on the part of all classes,
+of what kinds of labour are good for men, raising them and making them
+happy; by a determined sacrifice of such convenience, or beauty, or
+cheapness as is to be got only by the degradation of the workman." But
+Ruskin was altogether too much of an aristocrat, too much of an egoist, to
+root out classes. We can hardly imagine him preaching as Morris finally
+came to preach a revolution which should make it impossible for him to
+condescend. He could devote seven thousand pounds of his own money to
+establishing a St. George Society, but it would probably never have
+occurred to him to head a riot in Trafalgar Square.
+
+When Morris, under the influence of old theories and new associations,
+came to consider not only the desirability but the possibility of
+establishing a social order in which men could work quite happily and art
+could get loose from handcuffs welded and locked by commercialism, it was
+a necessity of his temperament that he should turn his back on halfway
+methods and urge drastic reforms. His way was not the way of compromise,
+and he seriously believed that if "civilisation" could be swept out of the
+path by a revolution which should destroy all class distinctions and all
+machinery and machine-made goods, which should do away with commercialism
+and strip the world to its bare bones, so that men could start afresh, all
+equal and all freed from the superfluities of life, there would grow up a
+charming communism in which kind hearts would take the place of coronets,
+and cheerful labour the place of hopeless toil. We find him writing in a
+private letter--madly, yet with the downright force that kindled where it
+struck--that he has "faith more than a grain of mustard seed in the future
+history of civilisation," that he now knows it to be doomed to
+destruction, and that it is a consolation and joy to him to think of
+barbarism once more flooding the world, "and real feelings and passions,
+however rudimentary, taking the place of our wretched hypocrisies." It was
+thus he thought, or felt, about the new field of labour upon which he was
+entering, and it is from this point of view that he must be defended
+against the slurs that have been cast at him as a "Capitalist-Socialist."
+He did not ignore the ideal of renunciation which had tempted him in his
+youth, and which he again thought of in his middle age--though less
+tempted, perhaps. But he reasoned, logically enough, that for one man or a
+few men to divide his or their wealth with the poor would not advance
+the world by a furlong or a foot toward the state of things which he had
+at heart to bring about. It might raise the beneficiaries a little higher
+in the ranks--in other words, bring them a little closer to the dangerous
+middle-class, from which came the worst of their troubles, and it might
+also have the effect of making them a trifle more content with existing
+conditions. Neither effect was desirable in his eyes. A divine discontent
+to be spread throughout all classes was the end and aim of such Socialism
+as he accepted. Nothing could be done except through the antagonism of
+classes, which seemed in itself to provide a remedy. In _News from
+Nowhere_, his best known Socialistic romance, the name of which was
+perhaps suggested by Kingsley's Utopian and anagrammatic _Erewhon_, he
+puts into the mouth of an old man who is himself a survival from the days
+of "class slavery," a description of the imaginary change to an ideal
+Communism. Toward the end of the nineteenth century, it is assumed, a
+federation of labour made it possible for the workmen or "slaves" to
+establish from time to time important strikes that would sometimes stop an
+industry altogether for a while, and to impose upon their "masters" other
+restrictions that seriously interfered with the systematic conduct of
+commerce. The resulting "bad times" reached a crisis in the year 1952,
+when the "Combined Workers" determined upon the bold step of demanding a
+practical reversal of classes, by which they should have the management
+of the whole natural resources of the country, together with the machinery
+for using them. The upper classes resisting, riots ensued, then the "Great
+Strike." "The railways did not run," the old man recalls; "the telegraph
+wires were unserved; flesh, fish, and green stuff brought to market was
+allowed to lie there still packed and perishing; the thousands of
+middle-class families, who were utterly dependent for the next meal on the
+workers, made frantic efforts through their more energetic members to
+cater for the needs of the day, and amongst those of them who could not
+throw off the fear of what was to follow, there was, I am told, a certain
+enjoyment of this unexpected picnic--a forecast of the days to come in
+which all labour grew pleasant." Out of all this came civil war, with
+destruction of wares and machinery and also the destruction of the spirit
+of commercialism. With the removal of the spur of competition it is
+admitted that there was a temporary danger of making men dull by giving
+them too much time for thought or idle musing. How was this danger
+overcome? By a growing interest in art, to be sure. The people, all
+workmen now, and providing very simply for their simple needs, "no longer
+driven desperately to painful and terrible overwork," began to wish to
+make the work they had in hand as attractive as possible, and rudely and
+awkwardly to ornament the wares they produced. "Thus at last and by slow
+degrees," the old man concludes, "we got pleasure into our work; then we
+became conscious of that pleasure, and cultivated it, and took care that
+we had our fill of it, and then all was gained and we were happy."
+
+[Illustration: HONEYSUCKLE DESIGN FOR LINEN]
+
+There is little here to charm the logically constructive mind, acquainted
+with human nature, and in the lectures setting forth in more detail and
+with more attempt at practical teaching the methods by which society could
+be enlightened and raised to his standard of excellence, Morris boldly
+invites the scorn of the political economist by the wholly visionary
+character of his pathetically "reasonable" views. Nevertheless, he was not
+without an instinct for distinguishing social evils and suggesting right
+remedies. Strip his doctrines of their exaggerated conclusions from false
+premises, and it is possible to find in them the seeds of many reforms
+that have come about to the inestimable benefit of the modern world. In
+his lecture on _Useful Work versus Useless Toil_, the very title of which
+is a flash of genius, he advocates the kind of education that is directed
+toward finding out what different people are fit for, and helping them
+along the road which they are inclined to take. He would have young people
+taught "such handicrafts as they had a turn for as a part of their
+education, the discipline of their minds and bodies; and adults would also
+have opportunities of learning in the same schools." He preaches the
+necessity of agreeable surroundings, claiming that science duly applied
+would get rid of the smoke, stench, and noise of factories, and that
+factories and buildings in which work is carried on should be made decent,
+convenient, and beautiful, while workers should be given opportunities of
+living in quiet country homes, in small towns, or in industrial colleges,
+instead of being obliged to "pig together" in close city quarters. Not one
+of these considerations is ignored by the organisations now endeavouring
+in the name of civilisation to raise the standard of the community. Manual
+training schools, free kindergartens, health protective associations,
+model tenement societies, have all arisen to meet in their own ways the
+needs to which Morris was so keenly alive. It was not the word reform,
+however, but the word revolution, that he constantly reiterated, and
+declined to relinquish in favour of any milder term. His friend William
+Clarke has summed up in a single paragraph the substance of many
+conversations held with him on the subject of social progress. "Existing
+society is, he thinks, gradually, but with increasing momentum,
+disintegrating through its own rottenness. The capitalist system of
+production is breaking down fast and is compelled to exploit new regions
+in Africa and other parts, where, he thinks, its term will be short.
+Economically, socially, morally, politically, religiously, civilisation is
+becoming bankrupt. Meanwhile it is for the Socialist to take advantage of
+this disintegration by spreading discontent, by preaching economic
+truths, and by any kind of demonstration which may harass the authorities
+and develop among the people an _esprit de corps_. By these means the
+people will, in some way or other, be ready to take up the industry of the
+world when the capitalist class is no longer able to direct or control
+it."
+
+The expression "in some way or other" very well indicates the essential
+vagueness underlying Morris's definite speech. He had no idea of the means
+by which the people could be educated to the assumption of unfamiliar
+control. The utmost that he could suggest was that they should be awakened
+to the beauty of life as he saw it in his dreams. This beauty he
+continually set before them in phrases as simple and as eloquent as he
+could make them. Nor did he shirk the responsibilities raised by his
+extreme point of view. Nothing testifies more truly to his fidelity of
+nature and devotion to his ideal than his readiness to put aside the
+pursuits he loved with his whole heart and take up activities detested by
+him for many years of that gifted, interesting life of his, in the hope of
+bringing about, for people whom he really cared for only in the mass, who
+did not understand him and whom he did not very well understand, an order
+of things which should in time, but not in his time, make them--so he
+thought--quite happy. The extent to which he renounced was not slight.
+
+Now indeed was the time when his friends might justly lament that he was
+being kept labouring at what he could not do, with work all round that he
+could do so well. First he joined the Democratic Federation and was
+promptly put on its executive committee. We find him writing that it is
+naturally harder to understand the subject of Socialism in detail as he
+gets alongside of it, and that he often gets beaten in argument even when
+he knows he is right, which only drives him to more desperate attempts to
+justify his theories by the study of other people's arguments. While he
+was a member of the Federation (a definitely Socialist body at the time)
+he delivered a lecture at Oxford with the effect of rousing consternation
+in the University despite the fact that he had taken pains to inform the
+authorities of his position as an active Socialist. They did not
+understand the extent of his activity, and when he wound up an agreeable
+talk by frankly appealing to the undergraduates of the Russell Club, at
+whose invitation he was speaking, to join the Democratic Federation, the
+Master of University was brought to his feet to explain that nothing of
+the kind had been foreseen when Mr. Morris was asked to express there "his
+opinion on art under a democracy."
+
+Besides his lecturing, which went on in London, or at Manchester, Leeds,
+Blackburn, Leicester, Glasgow, and anywhere else where a hopeful
+opportunity afforded, he was writing for the weekly paper of the
+Federation, the little sheet called _Justice_, and also writing pamphlets
+for distribution among the people. The measures urged in _Justice_ for
+immediate adoption as remedies for the evils of existing society were:
+
+Free Compulsory Education for all classes, together with the provision of
+at least one wholesome meal a day in each school.
+
+Eight Hours or less to be the normal Working day in all trades.
+
+Cumulative Taxation upon all incomes above a fixed minimum not exceeding
+L300 a year.
+
+State Appropriation of Railways, with or without compensation.
+
+The Establishment of National Banks, which shall absorb all private
+institutions that derive a profit from operations in money or credit.
+
+Rapid Extinction of the National Debt.
+
+Nationalisation of the Land and organisation of agricultural and
+industrial armies under State control on Cooeperative principles.
+
+The objects of the Federation were: "To unite the various Associations of
+Democrats and Workers throughout Great Britain and Ireland for the purpose
+of securing equal rights for all, and forming a permanent centre of
+organisation; to agitate for the ultimate adoption of the programme of the
+Federation; to aid all Social and political movements in the direction of
+these reforms." Morris believed himself to be in full sympathy with the
+fundamental principles of the Federation, and faithfully resented the
+assumption of a kindly intentioned critic who stated that his imperfect
+sympathy with them must in charity be supposed. To the implication that he
+cared only for art and not for the other side of the social questions he
+had been writing about, he responded: "Much as I love art and ornament, I
+value it chiefly as a token of the happiness of the people, and I would
+rather it were all swept away from the world than that the mass of the
+people should suffer oppression"; but he continued with the familiar
+challenge, opportunity to utter which was seldom lost, "At the same time,
+Sir, I will beg you earnestly to consider if my contention is not true,
+that genuine Art is always an expression of pleasure in Labour?" In
+explaining his point of view to the public before whom he placed his
+little collection of Socialist lectures, he expressed his conviction that
+all the ugliness and vulgarity of civilisation, which his own work had
+forced him to look upon with grief and pain are "but the outward
+expression of the innate moral baseness into which we are forced by our
+present form of society." The ethical and practical sides of the problem
+he was trying to face honestly, grew up in his mind as he dwelt upon its
+artistic side, and he made noble efforts to evolve schemes of practical
+expediency. In his reasonableness he went so far as to admit the possible
+usefulness of machinery in the new order toward which he was directing the
+attention of his followers; but he is swift to add, "for the consolation
+of the artists," that this usefulness will probably be but temporary;
+that a state of social order would lead, at first, perhaps, to a great
+development of machinery for really useful purposes, "because people will
+still be anxious about getting through the work necessary to holding
+society together"; but after a while they will find that there is not so
+much work to do as they expected and will have leisure to reconsider the
+whole subject, and then "if it seems to them that a certain industry would
+be carried on more pleasantly as regards the worker, and more effectually
+as regards the goods, by using hand-work rather than machinery they will
+certainly get rid of their machinery, because it will be possible for them
+to do so." "It isn't possible now," he adds; "we are not at liberty to do
+so; we are slaves to the monsters we have created. And I have a kind of
+hope that the very elaboration of machinery in a society whose purpose is
+not the multiplication of labour, as it now is, but the carrying on of a
+pleasant life, as it would be under social order,--that the elaboration of
+machinery, I say, will lead to the simplification of life, and so once
+more to the limitation of machinery."
+
+Although the discussion of methods and external forms was entirely foreign
+to Morris's habit of mind, he was not averse to discussing the history of
+society. He was not much more an historian than he was an economist in the
+strict sense. He ignored, idealised, and blackened at will, always
+perfectly certain that he was setting forth the contrast between the past
+and the present in its true light; but his delight in the mediaeval past,
+which was the only past to which he gave much attention, lends to his
+pictures of it a charm most appealing to those who have not too prodding a
+prejudice in favour of historical accuracy. He is at his best when he
+breaks from his grapple with the subject of the commercial classes and
+their development to evoke the visions which neither history nor economics
+could obscure in his mind. "Not seldom I please myself with trying to
+realise the face of mediaeval England," he says to the motley audience
+gathering at a street corner or in some dingy little hall or shed to
+listen to him, "the many chases and great woods, the stretches of common
+tillage and common pasture quite unenclosed; the rough husbandry of the
+tilled parts, the unimproved breeds of cattle, sheep, and swine;
+especially the latter, so lank and long and lathy, looking so strange to
+us; the strings of packhorses along the bridle-roads; of the scantiness of
+the wheel-roads, scarce any except those left by the Romans, and those
+made from monastery to monastery; the scarcity of bridges, and people
+using ferries instead, or fords where they could; the little towns, well
+bechurched, often walled; the villages just where they are now (except for
+those that have nothing but the church left to tell of them), but better
+and more populous; their churches, some big and handsome, some small and
+curious, but all crowded with altars and furniture, and gay with pictures
+and ornament; the many religious houses, with their glorious architecture;
+the beautiful manor-houses, some of them castles once, and survivals from
+an earlier period; some new and elegant; some out of all proportion small
+for the importance of their lords. How strange it would be to us if we
+could be landed in fourteenth-century England; unless we saw the crest of
+some familiar hill like that which yet bears upon it a symbol of an
+English tribe, and from which, looking down on the plain where Alfred was
+born, I once had many such ponderings, we should not know into what
+country of the world we were come: the name is left, scarce a thing
+else."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+PUBLIC LIFE AND SOCIALISM (_Continued_).
+
+
+By the latter part of 1884 the political agitations and internal
+differences in the Federation, now called The Social Democratic
+Federation, became so violent as to force Morris to leave the association
+in which he had had no desire to be a leader, but had been unable to keep
+the position of acquiescent follower. In his connection with this and
+other public organisations, the underlying gentleness and real humility of
+his nature was clearly to be seen. He learned patience through his
+conflict with unsympathetic minds. From the weary experience of working in
+constant intercourse with men whose temper and practice and many of whose
+theories were directly antagonistic to his own, although identified with
+them in the public mind by a common responsibility, he learned to subdue
+those elements of his temperament that worked against the success of what
+he had most loyally at heart. From self-confidence, a critical habit, an
+overbearing positiveness of assertion, he passed to comparative
+reticence, tolerance, even docility. To his equals it was painful to see
+ignorant men assign to him his task, but he never failed to comply
+instantly with their orders.
+
+[Illustration: MERTON ABBEY WORKS]
+
+[Illustration: WASHING CLOTH AT THE MERTON ABBEY WORKS]
+
+It could not, however, have been an education in which he could take
+conscious pleasure, and at this juncture he doubtless would have been
+happy indeed could he have gone quietly back to the weaving and dyeing and
+writing of poetry with which his new preoccupation had seriously
+interfered. His conscience, however, was too deeply involved to permit a
+desertion, which would, he said, be dastardly. The question now constantly
+in his mind was how he would have felt against the system under which he
+lived had he himself been poor. He was convinced that he would have found
+it unendurable. Therefore, with a longing glance at his chintz bleaching
+in the sunlight and pure air of Merton Abbey, he put his shoulder to the
+wheel again, and, gathering together a few of his sympathisers,
+inaugurated a new party, the Socialist League, with the famous little
+_Commonweal_ for its organ, a monthly paper now the joy of collectors on
+account of the beautiful headings of Walter Crane and the remarkable
+quality of the contributions by Morris himself. In this new society, for
+which he was primarily responsible, Morris found his work redoubled. He
+was editor of the _Commonweal_ as well as contributor to it. He continued
+his lecturing, often under the most depressing conditions, speaking to
+small and indifferent audiences in small and miserable quarters. At
+Hammersmith he instituted a branch of the League in the room previously
+given up to his carpet-weaving, and there he gave Sunday evening
+addresses. On Saturday afternoons and Sunday mornings he spoke at the
+outdoor meetings which were to be the insidious foes of his health, and
+which more than once brought him into personal notoriety of a disagreeable
+kind.
+
+The first of these occasions was on the 21st of September, 1885, when a
+number of people were arrested for gathering together that Sunday morning
+at the corner of Dod Street and Burdett Road against orders from the
+authorities to the effect that meetings at that place--a favourite spot
+with open-air speakers--must be stopped. Morris, with other members of the
+League, was present in court when the prisoners were brought up, and
+joined in the hisses and cries of "Shame!" when one prisoner was sentenced
+to two months' hard labour and the others were fined. Morris was arrested,
+subjected to a little questioning from the magistrate, and dismissed. The
+following Sunday another meeting, comprising many thousands of people, was
+held on the forbidden corner; nothing occurred, and they dispersed
+victoriously. The next year a Sunday-morning meeting in a street off
+Edgeware Road was interfered with by the police, and Morris was summoned
+to the police court and fined a shilling and costs for the offence of
+obstructing the highway.
+
+Out of these experiences resulted, we may very well imagine, the farce
+entitled: _The Tables Turned; or, Nupkins Awakened_, given at an
+entertainment in the Hall of the Socialist League, at Farringdon Road, on
+October 15, 1887. Copies of it are still in existence--sorry little
+pamphlets in blue wrappers, bearing no kinship to the aristocratic
+products of the Kelmscott Press so soon to follow, but extremely
+entertaining as showing Morris in his least conventional and most
+aggressive public mood. As the pamphlet is quite rare, a brief description
+of its contents is not, perhaps, superfluous, although its literary merit
+amounts to as little as possible considering its authorship. It opens with
+a scene in a court of justice, Justice Nupkins presiding, in which a Mr.
+La-di-da is found guilty of swindling and of robbing the widow and the
+orphan. He is sentenced to imprisonment for the space of one calendar
+month. Next Mary Pinch, a poor woman (the part was taken by Morris's
+daughter May), is accused of stealing three loaves of bread, and, after
+absurd and contradictory testimony by witnesses for the prosecution
+(constables and sergeants), is sentenced to eighteen months of hard
+labour. Next, John Freeman, a Socialist, is accused of conspiracy,
+sedition, and obstruction of the highway. The Archbishop of Canterbury
+(this role enacted by Morris), Lord Tennyson, and Professor Tyndall are
+called as witnesses and give testimony, the manner and speech of the
+renowned originals being somewhat rudely parodied. After contradictory
+evidence by these witnesses and the former ones, the prisoner is sentenced
+to six years' penal servitude with a fine of one hundred pounds, his
+offence having been an open-air speech advocating the principles of
+Socialism. As his sentence is pronounced the _Marseillaise_ is heard, and
+a Socialist ensign enters with news that the Revolution has begun.
+
+It is in the second part that the tables are turned upon Nupkins. The
+scene this time is laid in the fields near a country village, with a copse
+close by. The time is after the Revolution. Justice Nupkins is found
+skulking in the copse, half mad with fear at the reversal of social
+conditions, his past cruelty giving him small reason to hope for gentle
+treatment at the hands of the former "lower classes," who are now running
+affairs to suit themselves. He meets Mary Pinch, who pities his deplorable
+aspect and invites him to her house, now a pleasant and prosperous home.
+He cannot believe in the sincerity of her apparent kindness, and flees
+from her in a panic, only to meet other of his former victims who further
+alarm him by pretending to arrest him and give him a mock trial, during
+which he thinks he is to be sentenced to death. He learns at last that
+under the beautiful new order he is free to do what he pleases, and may
+dig potatoes and earn his own living by such tilling of the soil. The
+citizens dance about him singing the following words to the tune of the
+_Carmagnole_:
+
+  What's this that the days and the days have done?
+  Man's lordship over man hath gone.
+
+  How fares it, then, with high and low?
+  Equal on earth they thrive and grow.
+            Bright is the sun for everyone;
+            Dance we, dance we the Carmagnole.
+
+  How deal ye, then, with pleasure and pain?
+  Alike we share and bear the twain.
+
+  And what's the craft whereby ye live?
+  Earth and man's work to all men give.
+
+  How crown ye excellence of worth?
+  With leave to serve all men on earth.
+
+  What gain that lordship's past and done?
+  World's wealth for all and everyone.
+
+This somewhat childlike but not too bland revenge on the powers of the law
+met with an enthusiastic reception at the Hall of the Socialist League;
+Mr. Bernard Shaw, who was present, declaring that there had been no such
+successful "first night" within living memory.
+
+The year 1887 was marked, however, by events much more serious than the
+acting of a little farce. On the 13th of November,--"Bloody Sunday" it was
+called,--the efforts of the Government to check open-air speaking
+culminated in an organised riot on the part of the Socialists in alliance
+with the extreme Radicals. Sir Charles Warren had prohibited by
+proclamation the holding of any meeting in Trafalgar Square,--a meeting
+having been announced to take place there to protest against the Irish
+policy of the Government. Thereupon it was agreed by the Socialist League,
+the Social Democratic Federation, the Irish National League, and certain
+Radical clubs that their members should assemble at various centres and
+march toward Trafalgar Square. Morris put himself at the head of the
+Clerkenwell contingent, first delivering a short speech mounted on a cart
+in company with Mrs. Besant and others. He declared that wherever it was
+attempted to put down free speech it was a bounden duty to resist the
+attempt by every possible means, and told his audience that he thought
+their business was to get to the Square by some means or other; that he
+intended to do his best to get there, whatever the consequences might be,
+and that they must press on like orderly people and good citizens. Thus
+pressing on, with flags flying and bands playing, they were met at the
+Bloomsbury end of St. Martin's Lane by the police, mounted and on foot,
+who charged in among them, striking right and left, and causing complete
+disorder in the ranks. The triumph of law and order over the various
+columns of the demonstrators was soon complete, and the outcome consisted
+of the arrest of three hundred men or more (many of whom were sent to
+prison and a few condemned to penal servitude) and the killing of three.
+The first to die was Alfred Linnell, for whom a public funeral was
+given--great masses of men marching in perfect and solemn order to Bow
+Cemetery, where he was buried, the service at the grave being read by the
+light of a lantern. Such an event would inevitably stir Morris to
+sympathetic rage, and the dirge written by him to be sung as poor Linnell
+was buried has an inflammatory sound despite the obvious effort at
+restraint:
+
+  We asked them for a life of toilsome earning,
+    They bade us bide their leisure for our bread;
+  We craved to speak to tell our woful learning,
+    We came back speechless, bearing back our dead!
+
+Thus time was spent. Sometimes Morris was heading processions "with the
+face of a Crusader," says Joseph Pennell, describing one occasion on which
+he led a crowd, "among the red flags, singing with all his might the
+_Marseillaise_"--into Westminster Abbey to attend the Sunday services.
+Sometimes he was bailing out his friends who had been "run in" by the
+police. Sometimes he was tramping, whatever the weather, at the head of
+the workless workers of Hammersmith to interview the Guardians of the
+Poor. Sometimes he was delivering his lectures among woful hovels in
+tumbledown sheds to a score or so of people of whose comprehension he felt
+most doubtful. Always he was preaching "Education toward Revolution," but
+with an ever-increasing consciousness that a vast amount of education was
+needed before revolution could be effectively reforming. His imagination
+had formed great ideals and had pictured those ideals in triumphant
+practice, but his practical sense was sufficient to show him the futility
+of unintelligent action. He had spent much money, not in profit-sharing
+among his workmen (although this obtained to a certain extent in his
+business), but in bearing the various and heavy expenses imposed by the
+publication of the organs of Socialism, which he supported almost as
+largely by his purse as by his pen, and by a thousand other needs of the
+cause to which in 1882 he had also sacrificed the greater part of his
+valuable library. He had spent much time, which, to one so deeply
+interested in pursuits for which any one life is far too short, meant
+infinitely more than the expenditure of money or the relinquishing of
+property that, after all, may be got back again. And he had worked against
+the grain with all sorts and conditions of companions, from whom he was as
+widely separated as the east is from the west--never more widely than when
+he was marching by their side toward a goal that neither could see
+clearly. He was now longing more and more to get back to his own life and
+away from a life so foreign. As he had said in the first flush of his
+enthusiasm, "Art must go under," he was now prepared "to see all organised
+Socialism run into the sand for a while." It is not surprising that he
+"somehow did not seem to care much" when the Socialist League became
+disintegrated and insolvent. He had done his best for it, but its
+strongest members had drifted away from it, the executive control had been
+gained by a group of Anarchists, and Morris had been by these deposed
+from the editorship of the _Commonweal_. Before the society reached its
+lowest depths he resigned, giving expression in the _Commonweal_ for the
+15th of November, 1890, to his feeling in the form it then took toward the
+movement which so long had carried him out of his course and kept him in
+turbulent waters. This movement had then been going on for about seven
+years. Those concerned in it had made, he thought, "about as many mistakes
+as any other party in a similar space of time." When he first joined it he
+hoped that some leaders would turn up among the workingmen who "would push
+aside all middle-class help and become great historical figures." This
+hope he had pretty well relinquished. In the beginning there had been
+little said about anything save the great ideals of Socialism, but as the
+Socialist idea had become more and more impressed upon the epoch a
+somewhat vulgarised and partial realisation of these ideals had pressed
+upon the friends of the cause. They began to think of methods, and mostly
+of "methods of impatience," as Morris from his ripened and moderated point
+of view now designated them. "There are two tendencies in this matter of
+methods," he said; "on the one hand is our old acquaintance, palliation,
+elevated now into vastly greater importance than it used to have, because
+of the growing discontent, and the obvious advance of Socialism; on the
+other is the method of partial, necessarily futile, inconsequent revolt,
+or riot rather, against the authorities, who are our absolute masters, and
+can easily put it down.
+
+"With both these methods I disagree; and that the more because the
+palliatives have to be clamoured for, and the riots carried out by men who
+do not know what Socialism is, and have no idea what their next step is to
+be, if, contrary to all calculation, they should happen to be successful.
+Therefore, at the best, our masters would be our masters still, because
+there would be nothing to take their place. _We are not ready for such a
+change as that!_" The time was favourable, he thought, for preaching the
+simple principles of Socialism regardless of the policy of the passing
+hour, nor was any more active work desirable. "I say, for us _to make
+Socialists_," he concluded, "is _the_ business at present, and at present
+I do not think we can have any other useful business. Those who are not
+really Socialists--who are Trades Unionists, disturbance-breeders, or what
+not--will do what they are impelled to do, and we cannot help it. At the
+worst there will be some good in what they do; but we need not and cannot
+heartily work with them, when we know that their methods are beside the
+right way.
+
+"Our business, I repeat, is the making of Socialists, _i.e._, convincing
+people that Socialism is good for them and is possible. When we have
+enough people of that way of thinking, _they_ will find out what action is
+necessary for putting their principles in practice. Therefore, I say,
+make Socialists. We Socialists can do nothing else that is useful."
+
+This was practically the end of militant Socialism for Morris. Together
+with a handful of his true followers and sympathisers he did organise or
+reorganise under very simple rules a little society named the Hammersmith
+Socialist Society, which took the place of the Hammersmith Branch of the
+Socialist League. The manifesto explained that the separation had been
+made because the members of the new society did not hold the Anarchistic
+views of the majority of the old society's members, and would be likely to
+waste in bickering time "which should be spent in attacking capitalism."
+The business of the Hammersmith Society was to spread the principles of
+Socialism, the method so warmly recommended by Morris in his _Commonweal_
+article. But it was obvious that his interest was no longer keen in even
+this passive mode of advancing the cause for which he had laboured so long
+and, on the whole, so thanklessly. He set himself dutifully to work at
+writing the manifesto, but complained, "I would so much rather go on with
+my Saga work."
+
+It cannot be said, however, that he was inconsistent. He had gone into
+militant Socialism as he went into everything, with a superabundant energy
+that must work itself off in activity. But there was more vehemence than
+narrowness in his partisanship. When his party forsook the principles for
+the sake of which he had joined it, he forsook the party. He learned of
+human nature much that was discouraging during his efforts to make many of
+his fellows work together in harmony, but he brought out of the fiery
+experience an unharmed ideal. And among the clashing of creeds and the
+warring of minds he played the part of peacemaker to an extent remarkable
+in so impulsive a nature. "It seemed as though he wanted to have all his
+own way," says one of his acquaintances, "yet put him in the chair at a
+meeting and he was as patient as the mildest of us." His inmost belief was
+much the same at the end as at the beginning,--matured by study and
+tempered by practical failures, but holding to the fundamental idea that
+art is the great source of pleasure in human life as well as pleasure's
+best result, and must be made possible for everyone to practise with a
+free mind and a body unwearied by hopeless toil. The letter to the _Daily
+Chronicle_ of the 10th of November, 1893, on "Help for the Miners, the
+Deeper Meaning of the Struggle," sounds the familiar note as positively as
+ever, and contains all that is required to represent the creed of his
+later years. "I hold firmly to the opinion," he says in this letter, "that
+all worthy schools of art must be in the future, as they have been in the
+past, the outcome of the aspirations of the people towards the beauty and
+true pleasure of life. And, further, now that democracy is building up a
+new order, which is slowly emerging from the confusion of the commercial
+period, these aspirations of the people towards beauty can only be born
+from a condition of practical equality, of economical condition amongst
+the whole population. Lastly, I am so confident that this equality will be
+gained that I am prepared to accept, as a consequence of the process of
+that gain, the apparent disappearance of what art is now left us, because
+I am sure that that will be but a temporary loss, to be followed by a
+genuine new birth of art which will be the spontaneous expression of the
+pleasure of life innate in the whole people. This, I say, is the art which
+I look forward to, not as a vague dream, but as a practical certainty,
+founded on the general well-being of the people. It is true that the
+blossom of it I shall not see; therefore I may be excused if, in common
+with other artists, I try to express myself through the art of to-day,
+which seems to us to be only a survival of the organic art of the past, in
+which the people shared, whatever the other drawbacks of their condition
+might have been.... Yet if we shall not (those of us who are as old as I
+am) see the New Art, the expression of the general pleasure of life, we
+are even now seeing the seed of it beginning to germinate. For if genuine
+art be impossible without the help of the useful classes, how can these
+turn their attention to it if they are living amidst sordid cares which
+press upon them day in, day out? The first step, therefore, towards the
+new birth of art must be a definite rise in the condition of the workers;
+their livelihood must (to say the least of it) be less niggardly and less
+precarious, and their hours of labour shorter; and this improvement must
+be a general one and confirmed against the chances of the market by
+legislation. But, again, this change for the better can only be realised
+by the efforts of the workers themselves. 'By us, and not for us,' must be
+their motto.... What these staunch miners have been doing in the face of
+such tremendous odds other workmen can and will do; and when life is
+easier and fuller of pleasure people will have time to look around them
+and find out what they desire in the matter of art, and will also have
+time to compass their desires."
+
+Just why Morris with his extreme independence stopped short of Anarchism
+is difficult to see unless it be attributed to an instinct for order
+inherited from the sturdy stock to which he belonged. The necessity of a
+public rule of action was always, however, quite clear to him. He
+contended that you have a right to do as you like so long as you do not
+interfere with your neighbour's right to do as he likes, a contention
+which not even a fairly conservative mind finds very difficult to uphold:
+he was not willing to admit the right of an individual to act
+"unsocially." Indeed all the charm of his pictures of the ideal life
+derives from the atmosphere of loving-kindness and mutual helpfulness with
+which he surrounds them. The Golden Rule was always in his mind as he
+built up in his imagination his Paradise on earth. He possessed the
+optimism of the kind-hearted, the faith in his fellow men that made him
+sure of their right acting could they only start afresh with a field clear
+of injury and abuse. He never dreamed in all his dreaming that these would
+again grow up and destroy the beautiful fabric of his new Society, so
+bright and unspotted in his mind. Of course there would be a social
+conscience "which, being social, is common to every man." Without that
+there could be no society; and "Man without society is not only impossible
+but inconceivable." Thus he argued and thus he believed. His militant
+Socialism had, while it lasted, a very dangerous side. His Socialist
+"principles" are easily torn to ribbons by the political economist in
+possession of facts showing the increasing prosperity of the working
+classes and their increasing interest under existing conditions in the
+arts and in education; but regarding his views merely as representing one
+aspect of his impressive personality, it is easy to find them attractive.
+To quote what the _Pall Mall Gazette_ said of the Sunday evenings at the
+Hammersmith Hall, "They are patches of bright colour in the great drab,
+dreary, dull, and dirty world." They bring with them such thoughts as
+Arnold had of the repose that has fled "for ever the course of the river
+of Time." The spirit breathed through them in strong contrast to the
+spirit of many of his co-workers, ennobles all efforts toward true reform,
+diffuses the love of humanity among a cold people, and makes for the
+innocent and exquisite happiness which our human nature is so apt
+paradoxically to deny us. In Morris's world we should all be very happy if
+we were like Morris. He was not very happy in our world, yet perhaps he
+managed to get out of it as much of the joy of doing as it can be made to
+yield to any one man. His Socialism, from one point of view, was certainly
+a tremendous failure, but no other side of his life visible to the public
+at large showed so plainly his moral virtues, his generosity, his
+sincerity, his power of self-sacrifice, his effort toward self-control. It
+was significant that when, with a last rally of his forces to active work
+for the cause, he joined in a concerted effort to unite all Socialists
+into a single party, he was chosen as the best man for the purpose, all
+the societies having "a deep regard and respect for him." It is even more
+significant that his own employees in his large business also esteemed him
+highly, feeling the sincerity with which he tried to make his practices
+accord with his theories. If his business was a successful one it was not
+because he tried to get from his workmen the utmost he could claim in time
+and labour. The eight-hour working-day was in practice in the Merton
+factory, and the wages paid were the highest known in the trade. He was
+free from the self-complacency that gives to justice the name of charity,
+and he was not distinguished for civility toward the people under his
+direction, but he was, they said in their emphatic and expressive
+vernacular, "the sort of bloke you always could depend upon."
+
+Toward the end of his activity for the cause of Socialism he became
+connected with a society which perhaps would not have existed without his
+influence, although he was not directly responsible for its formation.
+This was the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society [founded in 1888], the
+aims of which were described by one of its members in the following words:
+"To assert the possibilities of Art in design, applied even to the least
+pretentious purpose and in every kind of handicraft; to protest against
+the absolute subjection of Art in its applied form to the interests of
+that extravagant waste of human energy which is called economic
+production; to claim for the artist or handicraftsman, whose identity it
+has been the rule to hide and whose artistic impulse it has been the
+custom to curb (until he was really in danger of becoming, in fact as in
+name, a mere hand), some recognition and some measure of appreciation; to
+try and discover whether the public cared at all, or could be brought to
+care, for the Art which, good or bad, is continually under their eyes; and
+whether there might not be, in association with manufacture, or apart from
+it, if that were out of the question, some scope for handicraft, some hope
+for Art."
+
+Morris's point of view is apparent in these aims, and the society was
+composed chiefly of young men who, says Mr. Mackail, "without following
+his principles to their logical issues or joining any Socialist
+organisation, were profoundly permeated with his ideas on their most
+fruitful side,--that of the regeneration, by continued and combined
+individual effort, of the decaying arts of life." The Art Workers' Guild,
+dating from 1884, was the source from which the new society sprang, the
+immediate purpose of the latter being to get the work of men who combined
+art with handicraft before the public by means of exhibitions, the
+committees of the Royal Academy and kindred associations refusing to
+accept examples of applied art for the exhibitions which they devoted to
+what they called "fine art proper." Mr. Mackail calls attention to the
+fact that Morris at this stage of his life was so thoroughly imbued with
+the idea that the general public were ignorant of and indifferent to
+decorative art, as to feel more sceptical of the success of the
+exhibitions than was justified by their outcome. He lent his aid, however,
+with his customary energy, guaranteeing a considerable sum of money, and
+contributing some valuable papers and lectures, the exhibitions being
+combined with instruction by acknowledged masters of handicraft. In 1891
+he was elected President of the Society, holding that office until the
+time of his death, when he was succeeded by Walter Crane. He was a member
+of the Art Workers' Guild as well, and was elected Master of the Guild in
+1892. He also belonged to the Bibliographical Society formed in that year,
+and in 1894 was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London.
+The societies were all directly concerned with questions in which Morris
+had all his life been interested, and his connection with them was not
+only natural but almost inevitable. He was not a man to whom public
+business made a strong appeal. He undertook it with reluctance and
+relinquished it with delight. Nor did he care for the labels of
+distinction for which most men, even among the greatly distinguished, have
+a measure of regard. He was, however, gratified when, in 1882, he was
+unanimously elected Honorary Fellow of Exeter College at Oxford, an honour
+which is rarely conferred, and is generally reserved, says Mr. Mackail,
+"for old members who have attained the highest official rank in their
+profession."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+LITERATURE OF THE SOCIALIST PERIOD.
+
+
+Despite the large amount of time and comparatively unproductive thought
+given by Morris to his Socialism, the period of his greatest activity in
+this direction was not without result in the field of pure literature. The
+years from 1884 to 1890 were crowded with pamphlets, leaflets, newspaper
+articles, manifestoes, and treatises, all with the one object--the making
+of Socialists. Many of these were more or less works of art--but of art in
+fetters; in the main they bore sad witness to the havoc made in the
+aesthetic life of their author by his propagandising policy, and in their
+deadly dulness betrayed the unwillingness of his mind to labour in a field
+so foreign to it. Not even the overwhelming tasks imposed upon him
+sufficed, however, to subdue entirely his restless imagination. From time
+to time in the arid desert of his writings for "the cause" a poem of
+romance appeared of a quality to show that the sap still ran in the
+products of his mind. Between the first issue of _The Commonweal_ and the
+inauguration of the Kelmscott Press he wrote in the following order: _The
+Pilgrims of Hope_, _A Dream of John Ball_, _The House of the Wolfings_,
+_The Roots of the Mountains_, and _News from Nowhere_.
+
+Each is interesting as throwing a varied yet steady light upon his mental
+processes, and the first is especially interesting despite its conspicuous
+defects, as one of the very few examples of its author's style when
+treating a subject belonging to the actual present, not to the past or
+future. In it the reader leaves dreamland and is confronted by modern
+problems and situations set forth in plain modern English. A garden is no
+longer a garth, a dwelling-place is no longer a stead, the writer no
+longer wots and meseems. So violent a change in vocabulary could hardly be
+accomplished with entire success; at all events it was not, and much of
+the phraseology is an affliction to the ear, showing a peculiarly
+deficient taste in the use of a style uninspired by mediaeval tradition.
+Yet, withal, _The Pilgrims of Hope_ is touched with life, as many of
+Morris's more artful compositions are not. The old bottles will not always
+serve for the new wine, Lowell warns us, and there is a noticeably
+quickening element in this wine poured from the bottle of the day. It is
+mentioned in Mr. Mackail's biography that Morris once began to write a
+modern novel, but left it unfinished. The fabric of _The Pilgrims of Hope_
+is that of a modern novel, and the characters and incidents are such as
+Morris might easily have found in his daily path. A country couple leading
+a life of peaceful simplicity go down to London, and among the sordid
+influences of the town become converts to Socialism. Much that follows may
+be considered a record of Morris's personal experience. The husband in the
+poem tries, as Morris tried, to learn the grounds of the Socialist faith,
+and takes up, as he did, the burden of spreading it among an indifferent
+people. The following description might very well have been culled from
+the diary kept by Morris during a part of his period of militant
+Socialism, but it must be confessed that the balance of poetic charm is
+all in favour of the account in the diary.
+
+                          I read day after day
+  Whatever books I could handle, and heard about and about
+  What talk was going amongst them; and I burned up doubt after doubt,
+  Until it befell at last that to others I needs must speak
+  (Indeed, they pressed me to that while yet I was weaker than weak).
+  So I began the business, and in street-corners I spake
+  To knots of men. Indeed, that made my very heart ache,
+  So hopeless it seemed, for some stood by like men of wood.
+  And some, though fain to listen, but a few words understood;
+  And some but hooted and jeered: but whiles across some I came
+  Who were keen and eager to hear; as in dry flax the flame
+  So the quick thought flickered amongst them: and that indeed was a
+      feast.
+  So about the streets I went, and the work on my hands increased;
+  And to say the very truth, betwixt the smooth and the rough
+  It was work, and hope went with it, and I liked it well enough.
+
+A similar passage, also showing the style at its worst, renders the actual
+scene encountered by Morris at many a lecture, and contains a careful
+portrait of himself as he appeared in his own eyes on such occasions. For
+the sake of its accuracy its touch of self-consciousness may well be
+forgiven. Not a conceited man, and curiously averse to mirrors, Morris was
+not in the habit of using their psychological counterparts, and it is
+impossible to surprise him in the act of posing to himself in becoming
+attitudes. There is, therefore, no irritation to the mind in his
+occasional frank assumption of interest in himself as a feature of the
+landscape, so to speak. Here he is on the Socialist platform as the
+Pilgrim of Hope beholds him, the Pilgrim explaining how it happened that
+he got upon his track.
+
+  This is how it befell: a workman of mine had heard
+  Some bitter speech in my mouth, and he took me up at the word,
+  And said: "Come over to-morrow to our Radical spouting-place;
+  For there, if we hear nothing new, at least we shall see a new face;
+  He is one of those Communist chaps, and 'tis like that you two may
+      agree."
+  So we went, and the street was as dull and as common as aught you
+      could see.
+  Dull and dirty the room. Just over the chairman's chair
+  Was a bust, a Quaker's face with nose cocked up in the air.
+  There were common prints on the walls of the heads of the party fray,
+  And Mazzini dark and lean amidst them gone astray.
+  Some thirty men we were of the kind that I knew full well,
+  Listless, rubbed down to the type of our easy-going hell.
+  My heart sank down as I entered, and wearily there I sat
+  While the chairman strove to end his maunder of this and that.
+
+  And partly shy he seemed, and partly indeed ashamed
+  Of the grizzled man beside him as his name to us he named;
+  He rose, thickset and short, and dressed in shabby blue,
+  And even as he began it seemed as though I knew
+  The thing he was going to say, though I never heard it before.
+  He spoke, were it well, were it ill, as though a message he bore.
+  A word that he could not refrain from many a million of men.
+  Nor aught seemed the sordid room and the few that were listening then
+  Save the hall of the labouring earth and the world which was to be,
+  Bitter to many the message, but sweet indeed unto me,
+  And every soul rejoicing in the sweet and bitter of life:
+  Of peace and good-will he told, and I knew that in faith he spake,
+  But his words were my very thoughts, and I saw the battle awake,
+  And I followed from end to end! and triumph grew in my heart
+  As he called on each that heard him to arise and play his part
+  In the tale of the new-told gospel, lest as slaves they should live and
+      die.
+
+  He ceased, and I thought the hearers would rise up with one cry,
+  And bid him straight enroll them; but they, they applauded indeed,
+  For the man was grown full eager, and had made them hearken and heed.
+  But they sat and made no sign, and two of the glibber kind
+  Stood up to jeer and to carp his fiery words to blind.
+
+  I did not listen to them, but failed not his voice to hear
+  When he rose to answer the carpers, striving to make more clear
+  That which was clear already; not overwell, I knew
+  He answered the sneers and the silence, so hot and eager he grew;
+  But my hope full well he answered, and when he called again
+  On men to band together lest they live and die in vain,
+  In fear lest he should escape me, I rose ere the meeting was done,
+  And gave him my name and my faith--and I was the only one.
+  He smiled as he heard the jeers, and there was a shake of the hand,
+  He spoke like a friend long known; and lo! I was one of the band.
+
+There is nothing impressive in such rhyming save its message, the form
+costing little trouble and awakening little interest. Here, obviously,
+Morris, like Dante, would rather his readers should find his doctrine
+sweet than his verses. Parts of the poem are, however, upon a much higher
+plane of accomplishment. The first section, called _The Message of the
+March Wind_, contains exquisite images and moves to a fresh elastic
+measure; a world both real and lovely being evoked by the opening stanzas:
+
+  Fair now is the springtide, now earth lies beholding
+    With the eyes of a lover the face of the sun;
+  Long lasteth the daylight, and hope is enfolding
+    The green-growing acres with increase begun.
+
+  Now sweet, sweet it is through the land to be straying
+    'Mid the birds and the blossoms and the beasts of the fields;
+  Love mingles with love and no evil is weighing
+    On thy heart or mine, where all sorrow is healed.
+
+  From township to township, o'er down and by tillage
+    Fair, far have we wandered and long was the day,
+  But now cometh eve at the end of the village,
+    Where o'er the grey wall the church riseth grey.
+
+  There is wind in the twilight; in the white road before us
+    The straw from the ox-yard is blowing about;
+  The moon's rim is rising, a star glitters o'er us,
+    And the vane on the spire-top is swinging in doubt.
+
+  Down there dips the highway, toward the bridge crossing over
+    The brook that runs on to the Thames and the sea.
+  Draw closer, my sweet, we are lover and lover;
+    This eve art thou given to gladness and me.
+
+In the course of the poem the Pilgrims are called to Paris by the voice of
+the Revolution, and there the wife is killed. Interwoven with the main
+incidents is the domestic tragedy most familiar to fiction, the alienation
+of the wife's affections by one of the husband's friends. Morris in his
+treatment of this situation shows a peculiarly fine and tender quality,
+sufficiently rare in life itself and seldom to be found in pictures of
+life. He preserves the dignity of his unhappy characters by a delicate
+sincerity in their attitude toward one another and by an immeasurable
+gentleness and self-forgetfulness on the part of the one most wronged. A
+similar situation in _News from Nowhere_ is made trivial and consequently
+revolting by the impression it gives that it was created to illustrate a
+theory. In no place does _The Pilgrims of Hope_ give such an impression.
+It is a drawing from life, clumsy and summary enough in outline, yet
+firm and expressive of the thing seen, and with power to convey a genuine
+emotion.
+
+[Illustration: _Portrait of Mrs. Morris_
+
+_By Rossetti_]
+
+_The Pilgrims of Hope_ appeared serially in _The Commonweal_ during
+1885-1886. It was soon followed by a romance called _The Dream of John
+Ball_. This subject with its mediaeval setting suited Morris well, and was
+treated by him in his ripest and strongest vein. Although the story opens
+in a lightly facetious manner, never a particularly happy one with him,
+its tone as it proceeds is that of subdued and stately pathos. The writer
+dreams himself in a village of Kent, where men are hanging upon the words
+of that poor tutor of Oxford, the "Mad Priest," preaching the equality of
+gentle and villein on the text
+
+  When Adam dalf, and Eve span
+  Who was thanne a gentilman?
+
+Apparently the dream is the result of a mournfully retrospective mood. The
+dreamer hears the plain and stirring speech of John Ball, listens to his
+eager appeal to the men of Kent that they help their brethren of Essex
+cast off the yoke placed upon them by bailiff and lord, and to his
+prophecies that in the days to come, when they are free from masters, "man
+shall help man, and the saints in heaven shall be glad, because men no
+more fear each other ... and fellowship shall be established in heaven and
+on the earth." But knowledge of the later time penetrates the dream, and
+the dreamer ponders "how men fight and lose the battle, and the thing
+that they fought for comes about in spite of their defeat, and when it
+comes it turns out not to be what they meant, and other men have to fight
+for what they meant under another name." At this time Morris was realising
+in some bitterness of heart that the thing for which he had fought was
+turning out to be not what he had meant, and the talk between John Ball
+and the dreamer concerning the future, of which the latter can reveal the
+secret, is eloquent of sober and noble resignation. The reformer of the
+earlier age receives with serenity the assurance that his sacrifice will
+count only as failure in the eyes of the coming generations, since with it
+goes the further assurance that men will continue to seek a remedy for
+their wrongs. But we read in the conception the author's foreboding that
+his own efforts toward the reconstitution of society are also doomed. The
+dreamer meditates, with an insight born of personal experience and
+disappointment, upon the darkness of our vision and the difficulty of
+directing our steps toward our actual goal. Morris obviously traced in
+John Ball's action a parallel to his own. What happened to the one was
+what might happen to the other. The hope that inspired the one was the
+same as inspired the other. The mistakes of the one were akin to the
+mistakes of the other. Thus, this prose romance, of all that Morris wrote,
+is warmest and most personal. The historical setting is an aid, not an
+obstacle, to the imagination. The pathos of the real life touched upon,
+the knowledge that the hopeful spirit of the preacher was once alive in
+the land, and that the response of the men of Kent was given in truth and
+with the might of angry, living hearts, lends a certain solidity and
+vitality to the figures and inspires Morris to a sturdier treatment of his
+material than legends could force from him. Had some of the marvellous
+activity that later went toward the making of purely imaginary situations
+and characters been spent upon realising for us the individual lives of
+more of the mediaeval workers and thinkers, so vivid to Morris and so dim
+to most of us, the result might not have been history, but it would have
+been literature of a rare and felicitous type.
+
+In April, 1888, _The Dream of John Ball_ was reprinted from _The
+Commonweal_ in one volume, together with a short story based on the life
+of Matthias Corvinus, King of Hungary, and called _A King's Lesson_. This
+also had appeared in _The Commonweal_ under the title of "An Old Story
+Retold."
+
+Hard upon this little volume followed _The House of the Wolfings_, a
+war-story of the early Middle Ages, and significant as forming, with its
+immediate successor, a link between old interests and new, marking its
+author's return to the writing of pure romance, and also his first
+awakening to an active interest in the typography of his books. The
+subject is derived from the ancient literature, half myth, half history,
+in which he had long been steeped, but in its treatment lurks a suggestion
+of the great moral excitement of the Socialist campaign. Thiodulf, the
+hero, beloved by a goddess, is the war-duke of a Gothic host and, on the
+verge of battle with Roman legionaries, is deceived into wearing a hauberk
+wrought by the dwarfs, the peculiar quality of which lies in its power to
+preserve the wearer's life at the cost of defeat for his army. Learning of
+this, Thiodulf removes the magic armour in time to gain his victory, but
+in the moment of triumph he is killed. His exaltation of mood in thus
+renouncing life suggests a spiritual ambition different from that commonly
+associated with the gods and heroes of the early world, and conveys the
+message by which Morris was at once burdened and inspired: that individual
+life may cheerfully be sacrificed if the life of the many is saved or
+elevated thereby. How far a war-duke of the Goths would have felt the
+compensatory sense that he was gaining immortality through the effect of
+his deeds on the destiny of his people was probably not in his mind. He
+himself, despite his constitutional horror of death, would perhaps not
+have been sorry at this time to lay off his hauberk if he could have been
+certain of the victory. Throughout the history of Thiodulf runs an
+elevated ethical intention absent from Morris's later romances. The
+dignity and seriousness of the women, the nobility of the men, the social
+unity of the Marksmen, and the high standard of thought and action
+maintained by them as a community place the interest on a high plane. The
+shadow of an idealised Socialism intensifies the relations of the
+characters to one another, and the reader familiar with the course of the
+author's life interprets the narrative as an expression of personal
+feeling and moral conviction not without pathos in its contrast to the
+actual world in which Morris was moving and in which he found what he
+conceived to be his duty so repugnant to his tastes.
+
+Indirectly the book was to open the way for his escape by filling his mind
+with an enthusiasm along the natural line of his gifts, a zest for further
+accomplishment in the field he loved that was not to be withstood. It was
+printed at the Chiswick Press, and owing to a new interest in fine
+printing due to his intercourse with Mr. Emery Walker, Morris chose for it
+a quaint and little-known fount of type cut by Howard half a century
+before, and gave much attention to the details of its appearance. With all
+his familiarity with mediaeval books, and his delight in illustration and
+illumination, he was still ignorant of the art of spacing and type
+designing. He had characteristically concentrated his attention on the
+special feature in which he was interested,--in the case of the old books,
+the woodcuts and ornaments,--and had passed over even the most marked
+characteristics which later were to absorb his whole attention. An
+anecdote told by Mr. Buxton Forman shows the extent to which he
+subordinated all other questions to the now supreme problem of a handsome
+page, and also the adaptability of his mind, never at a loss to meet an
+emergency. Mr. Forman had run across him at the Chiswick Press, whither
+he had repaired to settle some final points concerning his title-page.
+Presently down came the proof of the page. "It did not read quite as now,"
+says Mr. Forman; "the difference, I think, was in the fourth and fifth
+lines where the words stood 'written in prose and verse by William
+Morris.' Now unhappily the words and the type did not so accord as to come
+up to Morris's standard of decorativeness. The line wanted tightening up;
+there was a three-cornered consultation between the Author, the Manager,
+and myself. The word _in_ was to be inserted--'written in prose and in
+verse'--to gain the necessary fulness of line. I mildly protested that the
+former reading was the better sense and that it should not be sacrificed
+to avoid a slight excess of white that no one would notice. 'Ha!' said
+Morris, 'now what would you say if I told you that the verses on the
+title-page were written just to fill up the great white lower half? Well,
+that was what happened!'" The verses thus produced to fill a purely
+decorative need were the following, as delicate and filled with tender
+sentiment as any written by Morris under the most genuine inspiration--if
+one may assume that any inspiration was more genuine with him than the
+spur of a problem in decoration:
+
+  Whiles in the early winter eve
+  We pass amid the gathering night
+  Some homestead that we had to leave
+  Years past; and see its candles bright
+  Shine in the room beside the door
+  Where we were merry years agone
+  But now must never enter more,
+  As still the dark road drives us on.
+  E'en so the world of men may turn
+  At even of some hurried day
+  And see the ancient glimmer burn
+  Across the waste that hath no way;
+  Then with that faint light in its eyes
+  Awhile I bid it linger near
+  And nurse in wavering memories
+  The bitter-sweet of days that were.
+
+In glee over the fine appearance of _The House of the Wolfings_ as it came
+from the press, Morris passed on to his next book, _The Roots of the
+Mountains_, also a romance suggesting the saga literature, but without the
+mythological element. The setting hints at history without belonging to
+any especial time or place. The plan is quite complicated in incident, and
+the love-story involved has a modern tinge. Gold-mane, a chieftain of
+Burgdale, is betrothed to a damsel somewhat prematurely named the Bride.
+By a magic spell he is drawn through the woods to the Shadowy Vale where
+he meets a daughter of the Kindred of the Wolf, called Sunbeam, with whom
+he falls in love. It is a touch characteristic of Morris that makes
+Gold-mane in describing his old love to the new loyally give the former
+all the credit of her charm. "Each day she groweth fairer," he says to the
+maiden who is already her rival in his affections; "there is no man's son
+and no daughter of woman that does not love her; yea, the very beasts of
+field and fold love her." Presently an alliance is formed between the men
+of Burgdale and the Kindred of the Wolf for the purpose of attacking their
+common enemy, the Dusky Men, who belong to a race of Huns. Attached to the
+allied forces is a band of Amazons, and the two brave ladies, the Sunbeam
+and the Bride, show themselves valorous in battle. The attack on the Dusky
+Men is victorious, and peace returns to the valleys. In the meantime
+Gold-mane has firmly, though with gentle words, told the Bride of his
+intention of breaking his pledge to her, and the Sunbeam's brother,
+Folkmight, has been moved by compassion and finally by love for the
+deserted maiden, who consents to be his wife. It is quite in accord with
+the ideal established by Morris in his works of fiction, as indeed in his
+life, that sincerity takes the leading place among the virtues of his
+characters. It requires a certain defiance of the conventional modern mood
+to tolerate Gold-mane, the deserter, as he deals out cold comfort to the
+Bride, yet the downright frankness of all these people is a quality so
+native to their author as to pierce their unreality and give them the
+touch of nature without which they would be made wholly of dreams.
+
+_The Roots of the Mountains_ was written rapidly and issued with unrelaxed
+attention to typographical problems. Its title-page was made even more
+satisfactory than that of its predecessor, and the device of introducing a
+little poem to fill up the ugly white space in the centre was again
+employed. The lines in this case have nothing to do with the contents of
+the book, though forced into a relation with the author's purpose of
+providing "rest" for the reader. They were, in fact, founded upon an
+incident of a railway trip when the train passed through meadows in which
+hay-making was going on. Mr. Emery Walker was with Morris, and as they saw
+the hay-cocks defrauded by the summer breeze he exclaimed, "A subject for
+your title-page!" "Aye," said Morris, and jotted it down in his manuscript
+book.
+
+_The Roots of the Mountains_ was a favourite with Morris, and he planned
+for it an edition on Whatman paper and bound in two patterns of Morris and
+Company's chintz. Some of the paper ordered for this edition was left
+over, and eventually was used by Morris for the first little post-quarto
+catalogues and prospectuses printed at Hammersmith. Thus the book formed a
+material link between the Chiswick Press and the Kelmscott Press.
+
+Before the establishment of the latter, however, Morris gave one more book
+to Socialism. His _News from Nowhere_ was the last of his works to appear
+in _The Commonweal_ and was almost immediately reprinted from its pages by
+an American publisher. It is an account of the civilised world as it might
+be made, according to Morris's belief, by the application of his
+principles of Socialism to life in general and in particular. In 1889 he
+had reviewed for _The Commonweal_ Mr. Bellamy's _Looking Backward_, with
+how much approbation may readily be imagined. As an expression of the
+temperament of its author he considered it interesting, but as a
+reconstructive theory unsafe and misleading. "I believe," he said, "that
+the ideal of the future does not point to the lessening of man's energy by
+the reduction of _labour_ to a minimum, but rather to the reduction of
+_pain in labour_ to a minimum so small that it will cease to be pain; a
+gain to humanity which can only be dreamed of till men are more completely
+equal than Mr. Bellamy's Utopia would allow them to be, but which will
+most assuredly come about when men are really equal in condition; although
+it is probable that much of our so-called 'refinement,' our luxury,--in
+short, our civilisation,--will have to be sacrificed to it." Early in 1890
+appeared the first instalment of _News from Nowhere_, in which Morris set
+himself the task of correcting the impression produced by Mr. Bellamy's
+views of the future by substituting his own picture of a reconstructed
+society, from which all the machinery that in _Looking Backward_ was
+brought to so high a degree of efficiency is banished, and the natural
+energies of man are employed to his complete satisfaction. Homer's
+_Odyssey_, which Morris at this time was translating by way of refreshment
+and amusement, may well have served as a partial inspiration for the
+brilliant, delicate descriptions of handicrafts practised by the
+art-loving people of Nowhere. We read in both of lovely embroideries; of
+fine woven stuffs, soft and pliant in texture, and deeply dyed in rich
+forgotten colours of antiquity; of the quaint elaboration and charm of
+metals wrought into intricate designs; of all beautiful ornament to be
+gained from the zeal of skilled and sensitive fingers. The image is before
+us in _News from Nowhere_ of a life as busy and as bright as that of the
+ancient Greeks, whose cunning hands could do everything save divide use
+from beauty. As a natural consequence of happy labour, the inhabitants of
+Nowhere have also the superb health and personal beauty of the Greeks.
+Their women of forty and fifty have smooth skins and fresh colour, bright
+eyes and a free walk. Their men have no knowledge of wrinkles and grey
+hairs. Everywhere is the freshness and sparkle of the morning. The
+pleasant homes nestle in peaceful security among the lavish fruits of the
+earth. The water of the Thames flows clean and clear between its banks;
+the fragrance of flowers pervades the pages and suggests a perpetual
+summer; athletic sports are mingled with athletic occupations. There is
+little studying. History is sad and often shameful--why then study it?
+Knowledge of geography is not important; it comes to those who care to
+travel. Languages one naturally picks up from intercourse with the people
+of other countries. Political economy? When one practises good fellowship
+what need of theories? Mathematics? They would wrinkle the brow; moreover,
+one learns all that is necessary of them by building houses and bridges
+and putting things together in the right way. It is not surprising that
+in this buoyant life filled with active interests, the religion of which
+is good-will and mutual helpfulness, the thought of death is not a welcome
+one. A dweller in Nowhere admits that in the autumn he almost believes in
+death; but no one entertains such a belief longer than he must. Thus we
+get in this fair idyll the purely visible side of the society depicted.
+The depths of the human heart and of the human soul are left unsounded. To
+have what they desire, what is claimed by their hands, by their eyes, by
+their senses, is the aim of the people. Renunciation, like mathematics,
+would wrinkle the brow. Arbitrary restraint is not to be considered.
+Nothing is binding, neither marriage vow nor labour contract, or, to speak
+more precisely, neither marriage vow nor contract for labour exists. The
+people live, as we are told, as some of the so-called savages in the South
+Seas really do live,--in a state of interdependence so perfect that if an
+individual lays down an obligation the community takes it up. For the
+fading of life, for the death that may not delay till autumn to thrust
+itself upon the attention, for the development of spiritual strength to
+meet an enemy against whom art and beauty will not avail, for the battle
+with those temptations of the flesh that are not averted by health and
+comeliness, no provision is made. The author's philosophy is that work,
+under pleasant conditions will do away with all the evils of both soul and
+body.
+
+As a document for active Socialists _News from Nowhere_ is not effective.
+Absolutely without any basis of economic generalisation, it is merely the
+fabric of a vision. At the time of writing it Morris was cutting the last
+threads that bound him to conventional Socialist bodies. He was making
+ready to live again, so far as modernity would let him, the life he loved.
+"No work that cannot be done with pleasure in the doing is worth doing,"
+was a maxim counted by him of the first importance, and assuredly he had
+not found pleasure in the management of Socialist organisations. His last
+Socialist book rings with the joy of his release. On its title-page it
+appears as _Some Chapters from a Utopian Romance_, and it is interesting
+to see how he regarded the original _Utopia_, to Ralph Robinson's
+translation of which he wrote a preface, issuing it from his own press in
+1893. His interpretation of Sir Thomas More's attitude is not the
+conventional one, and is inspired chiefly by his own attitude toward the
+great social question which he continued to ponder, insisting still upon
+his hope for a new earth.
+
+"Ralph Robinson's translation of More's _Utopia_," he says, "would not
+need any foreword if it were to be looked upon merely as a beautiful book
+embodying the curious fancies of a great writer and thinker of the period
+of the Renaissance. No doubt till within the last few years it has been
+considered by the moderns as nothing more serious than a charming literary
+exercise, spiced with the interest given to it by the allusions to the
+history of the time, and by our knowledge of the career of its author. But
+the change of ideas concerning 'the best state of a publique weale,' which
+I will venture to say is the great event of the end of this century, has
+thrown a fresh light upon the book; so that now to some it seems not so
+much a regret for days which might have been, as (in its essence) a
+prediction of a state of society which will be. In short this work of the
+scholar and Catholic, of the man who resisted what has seemed to most the
+progressive movement of his own time, has in our days become a Socialist
+tract familiar to the meetings and debating rooms of the political party
+which was but lately like 'the cloud as big as a man's hand.' Doubtless
+the _Utopia_ is a necessary part of a Socialist's library; yet it seems to
+me that its value as a book for the study of sociology is rather historic
+than prophetic, and that we Socialists should look upon it as a link
+between the surviving Communism of the Middle Ages (become hopeless in
+More's time, and doomed to be soon wholly effaced by the advancing wave of
+Commercial Bureaucracy), and the hopeful and practical progressive
+movement of to-day. In fact I think More must be looked upon rather as the
+last of the old than the first of the new.
+
+"Apart from what was yet alive in him of mediaeval Communist tradition, the
+spirit of association, which amongst other things produced the Gilds, and
+which was strong in the mediaeval Catholic Church itself, other influences
+were at work to make him take up his parable against the new spirit of his
+age. The action of the period of transition from mediaeval to commercial
+society, with all its brutalities, was before his eyes; and though he was
+not alone in his time in condemning the injustice and cruelty of the
+revolution which destroyed the peasant life of England and turned it into
+a grazing farm for the moneyed gentry; creating withal at one stroke the
+propertyless wage-earner and the masterless vagrant (hodie 'pauper'), yet
+he saw deeper into its root-causes than many other men of his own day, and
+left us little to add to his views on this point except a reasonable hope
+that those 'causes' will yield to a better form of society before long.
+
+"Moreover the spirit of the Renaissance, itself the intellectual side of
+the very movement which he strove against, was strong in him, and
+doubtless helped to create his Utopia by means of the contrast which it
+put before his eyes of the ideal free nations of the ancients, and the
+sordid welter of the struggle for power in the days of dying feudalism, of
+which he himself was a witness. This Renaissance enthusiasm has supplanted
+in him the chivalry feeling of the age just passing away. To him war is no
+longer a delight of the well-born, but rather an ugly necessity to be
+carried on, if so it must be, by ugly means. Hunting and hawking are no
+longer the choice pleasures of knight and lady, but are jeered at by him
+as foolish and unreasonable pieces of butchery; his pleasures are in the
+main the reasonable ones of learning and music. With all this, his
+imaginations of the past he must needs read into his ideal vision,
+together with his own experiences of his time and people. Not only are
+there bond slaves and a king, and priests almost adored, and cruel
+punishments for the breach of marriage contract, in that happy island, but
+there is throughout an atmosphere of asceticism which has a curiously
+blended savour of Cato the Censor and a mediaeval monk.
+
+"On the subject of war, on capital punishment, the responsibility to the
+public of kings and other official personages, and such-like matters, More
+speaks words that would not be out of place in the mouth of an
+eighteenth-century Jacobin, and at first sight this seems rather to show
+sympathy with what is now mere Whigism than with Communism; but it must be
+remembered that opinions which have become (in words) the mere commonplace
+of ordinary bourgeoise politicians were then looked on as a piece of
+startlingly new and advanced thought, and do not put him on the same plane
+with the mere radical life of the last generation.
+
+[Illustration: _Study of Mrs. Morris_
+
+_Made by Rossetti for pictures called "The Day Dream"_]
+
+"In More, then, are met together the man naturally sympathetic with the
+Communistic side of mediaeval society, the protestor against the ugly
+brutality of the earliest period of commercialism, the enthusiast of the
+Renaissance, ever looking toward his idealised ancient society as the type
+and example of all really intelligent human life; the man tinged with
+the asceticism at once of the classical philosopher and of the monk, an
+asceticism, indeed, which he puts forward not so much as a duty but rather
+as a kind of stern adornment of life. These are, we may say, the moods of
+the man who created _Utopia_ for us; and all are tempered and harmonised
+by a sensitive clearness and delicate beauty of style, which make the book
+a living work of art.
+
+"But lastly, we Socialists cannot forget that these qualities and
+excellences meet to produce a steady expression of the longing for a
+society of equality of condition; a society in which the individual man
+can scarcely conceive of his existence apart from the commonwealth of
+which he forms a portion. This, which is the essence of his book, is the
+essence also of the struggle in which we are engaged. Though, doubtless,
+it was the pressure of circumstances in his own days that made More what
+he was, yet that pressure forced him to give us, not a vision of the
+triumph of the new-born capitalistic society, the element in which lived
+the new learning and the freedom of thought of his epoch, but a picture
+(his own indeed, not ours) of the real New Birth which many men before him
+had desired; and which now indeed we may well hope is drawing near to
+realisation, though after such a long series of events which at the time
+of their happening seemed to nullify his hopes completely."[1]
+
+Morris's own hope was never completely nullified; nor was he ever
+indifferent to the questions which for nearly a decade had absorbed his
+energy. But there was to be little more writing for the sake of Socialism,
+save as some public incident called out a public letter. What he had done
+covered a wide field. Beside the works already mentioned he had
+collaborated with Mr. E. Belfort Bax in a history of the growth and
+outcome of Socialism, first published in the _Commonweal_ under the title
+of _Socialism from the Root Up_, had written a series of poems called
+_Chants for Socialists_, and a series of lectures for "the cause" later
+published as _Signs of Change_, and had produced numerous short addresses
+to be scattered abroad in the form of penny leaflets that must have been
+typographical eyesores to him even before the rise of his enthusiasm for
+typography of the finer sort. In addition his bibliographer has to take
+into account any number of ephemeral contributions to the press and
+"forewords" as he liked to call them, to the works of others, a feature
+rarely present in his own books. In the spring of 1890 he wrote the
+romance entitled, _The Story of the Glittering Plain_ for the _English
+Illustrated Magazine_. When it was brought out in book form the following
+year, it was printed at his own press.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+THE KELMSCOTT PRESS.
+
+
+Although Morris turned with what seemed a sudden inspiration to the study
+of typography, it was, as we have already seen, no less than his other
+occupations a direct outcome of his early tastes. As long before as 1866
+he had planned a folio edition of _The Earthly Paradise_ with woodcut
+illustrations to be designed by Burne-Jones, and printed in a more or less
+mediaeval fashion. Burne-Jones made a large number of drawings for the
+projected edition, and some thirty-five of those intended for the story of
+Cupid and Psyche were cut on wood by Morris himself. Specimen pages were
+set up, but the result was not technically satisfying and the idea was
+allowed to drop. Later, as we have seen, he had in mind an illustrated and
+sumptuous edition of _Love is Enough_, which also came to nothing,
+although a number of marginal decorations were drawn and engraved for it.
+After that, however, he apparently had been content to have his books
+printed in the usual way on machine-made paper with the modern effeminate
+type, without further remonstrance than emphatic denunciation of modern
+methods in printing as in other handicrafts. About 1888 or 1889, his
+Hammersmith neighbour, Mr. Emery Walker, whose love of fine printing was
+combined with practical knowledge of methods and processes, awakened in
+him a desire for conquest in this field also. He began again collecting
+mediaeval books, this time with the purpose of studying their type and
+form. Among his acquisitions were a copy of Leonard of Arezzo's _History
+of Florence_, printed by Jacobus Rubens in 1476, in a Roman type, and a
+copy of Jensen's _Pliny_ of the same year. Parts of these books Morris had
+enlarged by the hated process of photography, which in this case aided and
+abetted him to some purpose. He could thus study the individual letters
+and master the underlying principles of their design. He then proceeded to
+design a fount of type for himself with the aim of producing letters fine
+and generous in form, solid in line, without "preposterous thicks and
+thins," and not compressed laterally, "as all later type has grown to be
+owing to commercial exigencies." After he had drawn his letters on a large
+scale he had them reduced by photography to the working size and revised
+them carefully before submitting them to the typecutter. How minute was
+his attention to detail is shown in the little reproduction of one of his
+corrected letters with the accompanying notes. This first type of his,
+having been founded on the old Roman letters, is of course Roman in
+character and is very clear and beautiful in form. The strong broad
+letters designed on "something like a square" make easy reading, and there
+is nothing about the appearance of the attractive page to suggest
+archaism. The fount, consisting of eighty-one designs including stops,
+figures, and tied letters, was completed about the beginning of 1891, and
+on the 12th of January in that year, a cottage was taken at number 16
+Upper Mall, near the Kelmscott House, a compositor and a pressman were
+engaged, and the Kelmscott Press began its career. The new type, which
+Morris called the "regenerate" or "Jenson-Morris" type, received its
+formal name, "Golden type," from Caxton's _Golden Legend_, which Morris
+had intended to reprint as the first work of the Press, and which was
+undertaken as soon as _The Glittering Plain_ was out of the way. Caxton's
+first edition of 1483 was borrowed from the Cambridge University Library
+for the purpose and transcribed for the Press by the daughter of Morris's
+old friend and publisher, F. S. Ellis. No paper in the market was good
+enough for the great venture, and Morris took down to Mr. Batchelor at
+Little Chart a model dating back to the fifteenth century and had
+especially designed from it an unbleached linen paper, thin and tough, and
+somewhat transparent, made on wire moulds woven by hand for the sake of
+the slight irregularities thus caused in the texture, and "pleasing not
+only to the eye, but to the hand also; having something of the clean crisp
+quality of a new bank-note." For the three different sizes Morris
+designed three watermarks, an apple, a daisy, and a perch with a spray in
+its mouth. To print his strong type upon this handmade paper it was
+necessary to dampen the latter and use a hand-press, the ink being applied
+by pelt balls, insuring an equable covering of the surface of the type and
+a rich black impression. The quality of the ink was naturally of great
+importance and Morris yearned to manufacture his own, but for the time
+contented himself with some that he procured from Hanover and with which
+he produced excellent results. One of his happiest convictions in regard
+to his materials was that heavy paper was entirely unfit for small books.
+
+[Illustration: KELMSCOTT TYPES]
+
+Concerning spacing and the placing of the matter on the page he had
+pronounced theories derived from his study of ancient books, but directed
+by his own sound taste. He held that there should be no more white space
+between the words than just clearly cuts them off from one another, and
+that "leads" (strips of metal used to increase the space between the lines
+of type) should be sparingly employed. The two pages of a book, facing
+each other as it is opened, should be considered a unit, the edge of the
+margin that is bound in should be the smallest of the four edges, the top
+should be somewhat wider, and the front edge wider still, and the tail
+widest of all. The respective measurements of the most important of the
+Kelmscott books are, one inch for the inner margin, one and
+three-eighths inches for the head margin, two and three-quarter inches
+for the fore edge, and four inches for the tail. "I go so far as to say,"
+wrote Morris, "that any book in which the page is properly put on the
+paper is tolerable to look at, however poor the type may be (always so
+long as there is no 'ornament' which may spoil the whole thing), whereas
+any book in which the page is wrongly set on the paper is intolerable to
+look at, however good the type and ornaments may be."
+
+[Illustration: PAGE FROM KELMSCOTT "CHAUCER." ILLUSTRATION BY BURNE-JONES.
+BORDER AND INITIAL LETTER BY MORRIS]
+
+_The Golden Legend_, with its ornamented borders, its handsome initials,
+its woodcuts, and its twelve hundred and eighty-six pages, kept the one
+press busy until the middle of September, 1892. Before it was completed
+Morris had designed another fount of type greatly more pleasing to him
+than the first. This was called the Troy type from Caxton's _Historyes of
+Troye_, the first book to be issued in its larger size, and was the
+outcome of careful study of the beautiful types of Peter Schoeffer of
+Mainz, Gunther Zainer of Augsburg, and Anthony Koburger of Nuremberg. It
+was Gothic in character, but Morris strove to redeem it from the charge of
+unreadableness by using the short form of the small _s_, by diminishing
+the number of tied letters, and abolishing the abbreviations to be found
+in mediaeval books. How far he succeeded is a disputed question, certainly
+not so far as to make it as easy reading for modern eyes as the Golden
+type. As time went on, however, the use of the Golden type at the
+Kelmscott Press became less and less frequent, giving place in the case of
+most of the more important books to either the Troy type or the Chaucer
+type, the latter being similar to the former, save that it is Great Pica
+instead of Primer size.
+
+Morris's success in the mechanical application of his theories was
+surprising, or would have been surprising had he not constantly proven his
+genius for success. Mr. De Vinne quotes a prominent American typefounder
+as declaring after a close scrutiny of his cuts of type that he had
+triumphantly passed the pitfalls that beset all tyros and had made types
+that in lining, fitting, and adjustment show the skill of the expert. "A
+printer of the old school may dislike many of his mannerisms of
+composition and make-up," adds Mr. De Vinne, "but he will cheerfully admit
+that his types and decorations and initials are in admirable accord: that
+the evenness of colour he maintains on his rough paper is remarkable, and
+that his registry of black with red is unexceptionable. No one can examine
+a book made by Morris without the conviction that it shows the hand of a
+master."
+
+[Illustration: TITLE-PAGE OF THE KELMSCOTT "CHAUCER"]
+
+Upon the artistic side it was natural that he should excel. His long
+practice in and love of design, his close study of the best models, and
+his exacting taste were promising of extraordinary results. None the less
+there is perhaps more room for criticism of his book decoration than of
+his plain bookmaking. He was convinced, as one would expect him to be,
+that modern methods of illustrating and decorating a book were entirely
+wrong, and he argued with indisputable logic for the unity of impression
+to be gained from ornaments and pictures forming part of the page, in
+other words, being made in line as readily printed as the type itself and
+corresponding to it in size and degree of blackness. He argued that the
+ornament to be ornament must submit to certain limitations and become
+"architectural," and also that it should be used with exuberance or
+restraint according to the matter of the book decorated. Thus "a work on
+differential calculus," he says, "a medical work, a dictionary, a
+collection of a statesman's speeches, or a treatise on manures, such
+books, though they might be handsomely and well printed, would scarcely
+receive ornament with the same exuberance as a volume of lyrical poems, or
+a standard classic, or such like. A work on Art, I think, bears less of
+ornament than any other kind of book (_non bis in idem_ is a good motto);
+again, a book that _must_ have _illustrations_, more or less utilitarian,
+should, I think, have no actual _ornament_ at all, because the ornament
+and the illustration must almost certainly fight." He designed all his
+ornaments with his own hand, from the minute leaves and flowers which took
+the place of periods on his page, to the full-page borders, titles, and
+elaborate initials. He drew with a brush, on a sheet of paper from the
+Press marked with ruled lines, showing the exact position to be occupied
+by the design. "It was most usual during the last few years of his life,"
+says Mr. Vallance, "to find him thus engaged, with his Indian ink and
+Chinese white in little saucers before him upon the table, its boards bare
+of any cloth covering, but littered with books and papers and sheets of
+MS. He did not place any value on the original drawings, regarding them as
+just temporary instruments, only fit, as soon as engraved, to be thrown
+away." Time and trouble counted for nothing with him in gaining the
+desired result. But though his ornament was always handsome, and
+occasionally exquisite, he not infrequently overloaded his page with it,
+and--preaching vigorously the necessity of restraint--allowed his fancy to
+lead him into garrulous profusion. Despite his mediaeval proclivities, his
+designs for the borders of his pages are intensely modern. Compare them
+with the early books by which they were inspired, and their flowing
+elaboration, so free from unexpectedness, so impersonal, so inexpressive,
+suggests the fatal defect of all imitative work and fails in distinction.
+But he was individual enough in temper if not in execution, and he brooked
+no conventional restriction that interfered with his doing what pleased
+him. For example, the notion of making the border ornaments agree in
+spirit with the subject matter of the page was not to be entertained for a
+moment when he had in mind a fine design of grapes hanging ripe from their
+vines and a page of Chaucer's description of April to adorn.
+
+During the life of the Kelmscott Press, a period of some half dozen years,
+Morris made six hundred and forty-four designs. The illustrations proper,
+all of them woodcuts harmonising in their strong black line with the
+ornaments and type, were made, with few exceptions, by Burne-Jones. His
+designs were nearly always drawn in pencil, a medium in which his most
+characteristic effects were obtained. They were then redrawn in ink by
+another hand, revised by Burne-Jones, and finally transferred to the block
+again by that useful Cinderella of the Kelmscott Press, photography. It is
+obvious that the Kelmscott books, whatever fault may be found with them,
+could not be other than remarkable creations with Morris and Burne-Jones
+uniting their gifts to make each of them such a picture-book as Morris
+declared at the height of his ardour was "one of the very worthiest things
+toward the production of which reasonable men should strive."
+
+The list of works selected to be issued from the Press is interesting,
+indicating as it does a line of taste somewhat narrow and tangential to
+the popular taste of the time. Before the three volumes of _The Golden
+Legend_ ("the Interminable" it was called) were out of his hands, Morris
+had bought a second large press and had engaged more workmen with an idea
+in mind of printing all his own works beginning with _Sigurd the Volsung_.
+He had already, during 1891, printed in addition to _The Glittering
+Plain_, a volume of his collected verse entitled _Poems by the Way_, the
+final long poem of which, _Goldilocks and Goldilocks_, he wrote on the
+spur of the moment, after the book was set up in type, to "plump it out a
+bit" as it seemed rather scant. During the following year, before the
+appearance of _The Golden Legend_, were issued a volume of poems by
+Wilfrid Blunt, who was one of his personal friends; the chapter from
+Ruskin's _Stones of Venice_ on "The Nature of the Gothic," with which he
+had such early and such close associations, and two more of his own works,
+_The Defence of Guenevere_ and _The Dream of John Ball_. In the case of
+the four books written by himself he issued in addition to the paper
+copies a few on vellum. All these early books were small quartos and bound
+in vellum covers. Immediately following _The Golden Legend_ came the
+_Historyes of Troye_, two volumes in the new type, Mackail's _Biblia
+Innocentium_, and Caxton's _Reynarde the Foxe_ in large quarto size and
+printed in the Troy type. The year 1893 began with a comparatively modern
+book, Shakespeare's _Poems_, followed in rapid succession by Caxton's
+translation of _The Order of Chivalry_, in one volume with _The Ordination
+of Knighthood_, translated by Morris himself from a twelfth-century French
+poem; Cavendish's _Life of Cardinal Wolsey_; Caxton's history of Godefrey
+of Boloyne; Ralph Robinson's translation of Sir Thomas More's _Utopia_;
+Tennyson's _Maud_; a lecture by Morris on _Gothic Architecture_,
+forty-five copies of which he printed on vellum; and Lady Wilde's
+translation of _Sidonia the Sorceress_ from the German of William
+Meinhold, a book for which both Morris and Rossetti had a positive
+passion, Morris considering it without a rival of its kind, and an almost
+faultless reproduction of the life of the past. The year ended with two
+volumes of Rossetti's _Ballads and Narrative Poems_, and _The Tale of King
+Florus and Fair Jehane_, translated by Morris from the French of a little
+volume that forty years before had served to introduce him to mediaeval
+French romance and had been treasured by him ever since.
+
+[Illustration: THE SMALLER KELMSCOTT PRESS-MARK]
+
+[Illustration: THE LARGER KELMSCOTT PRESS-MARK]
+
+[Illustration: DRAWING BY MORRIS OF THE LETTER "h" FOR KELMSCOTT TYPE,
+WITH NOTES AND CORRECTIONS]
+
+"After this continuous torrent of production," says Mr. Mackail, "the
+Press for a time slackened off a little," but the output in 1894 consisted
+of ten books as against the eleven of the previous year. The first was a
+large quarto edition of _The Glittering Plain_, printed this time in the
+Troy type and illustrated with twenty-three pictures by Walter Crane. Next
+came another little volume of mediaeval romance, the story of _Amis and
+Amile_, translated in a day and a quarter; and after this, Keats's
+_Poems_.
+
+In July of the same year the bust of Keats, executed by the American
+sculptor, Miss Anne Whitney, was unveiled in the Parish Church of
+Hampstead, the first memorial to Keats on English ground. The scheme for
+such a memorial had been promoted in America, Lowell being one of the
+earliest to encourage it, and a little notice of the ceremony was printed
+at the Kelmscott Press with the card of invitation. Swinburne's _Atalanta
+in Calydon_ followed _Keats_ in a large quarto edition. Next came the
+third volume of the French romances containing _The Tale of the Emperor
+Constans_ and _The History of Oversea_. At this point Morris returned
+again to the printing of his own works, and the next book to be issued
+from the Press was _The Wood beyond the World_, with a lovely frontispiece
+by Burne-Jones representing "the Maid," the heroine of the romance, and
+one of the most charming of the visionary women created by Morris. _The
+Book of Wisdom and Lies_, a Georgian story-book of the eighteenth century,
+written by Sulkhan-Saba Orbeliani, and translated by Oliver Wardrop, was
+the next stranger to come from the Press, and after it was issued the
+first of a set of Shelley's _Poems_. A rhymed version of _The Penitential
+Psalms_ found in a manuscript of _The Hours of Our Lady_, written in the
+fifteenth century, followed it, and _The Epistola de Contemptu Mundi_, a
+letter in Italian by Savonarola, the autograph original of which belonged
+to Mr. Fairfax Murray, completed the list of this prolific year. The year
+1895 produced only five volumes, the first of them the _Tale of Beowulf_,
+which Morris with characteristic daring had translated into verse by the
+aid of a prose translation made for him by Mr. A. J. Wyatt. Not himself an
+Anglo-Saxon scholar, Morris was unable to give such a rendering of this
+chief epic of the Germanic races as would appeal to the scholarly mind,
+and his zeal for literal translation led him to employ a phraseology
+nothing short of outlandish. At the end of the book he printed a list of
+"words not commonly used now," but his constructions were even more
+obstructive than his uncommon words. In the following passage, for
+example, which opens the section describing the coming of Beowulf to the
+land of the Danes, only the word "nithing" is defined in the index, yet
+certainly the average reader may be expected to pause for the meaning:
+
+  So care that was time-long the kinsman of Healfdene
+  Still seethed without ceasing, nor might the wise warrior
+  Wend otherwhere woe, for o'er strong was the strife
+  All loathly so longsome late laid on the people,
+  Need-wrack and grim nithing, of night-bales the greatest.
+
+Morris himself found his interest wane before the work was completed, but
+he made a handsome quarto volume of it, with fine marginal decorations,
+and an exceptionally well-designed title-page. A reprint of _Syr
+Percyvelle of Gales_ after the edition printed by J. O. Halliwell from the
+MS. in the library of Lincoln Cathedral, a large quarto edition of _The
+Life and Death of Jason_; two 16mo volumes of a new romance entitled,
+_Child Christopher and Goldilands the Fair_; and Rossetti's _Hand and
+Soul_, reprinted from the _Germ_, brought the Press to its great year
+1896. This year was to see the completion of the folio _Chaucer_, which
+since early in 1892 had been in preparation, and had filled the heart of
+Morris with anxiety, anticipation, and joy. Before it came from the press
+three other books were issued. Herrick's _Poems_ came first. Then a
+selection of thirteen poems from Coleridge, "a muddle-brained
+metaphysician, who by some strange freak of fortune turned out a few real
+poems amongst the dreary flood of inanity which was his wont!"
+
+The poems chosen were, _Christabel_, _Kubla Khan_, _The Rime of the
+Ancient Mariner_, _Love_, _A Fragment of a Sexton's Tale_, _The Ballad of
+the Dark Ladie_, _Names_, _Youth and Age_, _The Improvisatore_, _Work
+without Hope_, _The Garden of Boccaccio_, _The Knight's Tomb_, and _Alice
+du Clos_. The first four were the only ones, however, concerning which
+Morris would own to feeling any interest. The Coleridge volume was
+followed by the large quarto edition of Morris's latest romance, _The Well
+at the World's End_ in two volumes, and then appeared the _Chaucer_, the
+mere printing of which had occupied a year and nine months. The first two
+copies were brought home from the binders on the second of June, in a
+season of "lots of sun" and plentiful apple-blossoms, during which Morris
+was beginning to realise that the end of his delight in seasons and in
+books was fast approaching.
+
+Mr. Ellis has declared the Kelmscott _Chaucer_ to be, "for typography,
+ornament, and illustration combined, the grandest book that has been
+issued from the press since the invention of typography." Morris lavished
+upon it the utmost wealth of his invention. The drawing of the title-page
+alone occupied a fortnight, and the splendid initial letters were each an
+elaborate work of art. The ornament indeed was too profuse to be wholly
+satisfactory, especially as much of it was repeated; nevertheless, the
+book was one of great magnificence and the glee with which Morris beheld
+it is not to be wondered at. The Chaucer type had been specially designed
+for it, and Burne-Jones had made for it eighty-seven drawings, while
+Morris himself designed for it the white pigskin binding with silver
+clasps, executed at the Doves Bindery for those purchasers who desired
+their elaborate and costly volume in a more suitable garb than the
+ordinary half holland covers which gave it the appearance of a silken
+garment under a calico apron.
+
+During the remainder of the year 1896 the Press issued the first volumes
+of the Kelmscott edition of _The Earthly Paradise_, a volume of Latin
+poems (_Laudes Beatae Mariae Virginis_), the first Kelmscott book to be
+printed in three colours, the quotation heading each stanza being in red,
+the initial letter in pale blue, and the remaining text in black: _The
+Floure and the Leafe_ and _The Shepherde's Calender_. Before _The
+Shepherde's Calender_ reached its completion, however, Morris was dead,
+and the subsequent work of the Press was merely the clearing up of a few
+books already advertised. The first of these to appear was the prose
+romance by Morris entitled _The Water of the Wondrous Isles_: this was
+issued on the first day of April, 1897, with borders and ornaments
+designed entirely by Morris save for a couple of initial words completed
+from his unfinished designs by R. Catterson-Smith. To this year belong
+also the two trial pages made for the intended folio edition of
+_Froissart_, the heraldic borders of which far surpass any of the
+_Chaucer_ ornaments, and the two old English romances, _Sire Degravaunt_
+and _Syr Ysambrace_. In 1898 came a large quarto volume of German
+woodcuts, and three more works by Morris, a small folio edition of _Sigurd
+the Volsung_, which was to have been a large folio with twenty-five
+woodcuts by Burne-Jones; _The Sundering Flood_, the last romance written
+by Morris, and a large quarto edition of _Love is Enough_. These were
+followed by a "Note" written by Morris himself on his aims in starting the
+Kelmscott Press, accompanied with facts concerning the Press, and an
+annotated list of all the books there printed, compiled by Mr. S. C.
+Cockerell, who, since July, 1894, had been secretary to the Press. This
+was the end.[2]
+
+[Illustration: _Specimen Page from the Kelmscott "Froissart"_
+
+(_Projected Edition_)]
+
+Although Morris not only neglected commercial considerations in printing
+his books, lavishing their price many times over in valuable time and
+labour and the actual expenditure of money to secure some inconspicuous
+detail; but defied commercial methods openly in the character of his type,
+the quality of his materials, and the slowness of his processes, the
+Kelmscott Press testified, as most of his enterprises did testify, to the
+practical worth of his ideals. Quite content to make just enough by his
+books to continue printing them in the most conscientious and desirable
+way he knew, he gradually obtained from them a considerable profit. The
+Press had early been moved to quarters larger than the first occupied
+by it, and three presses were kept busy. By the end of 1892 Morris had
+become his own publisher, and after that time all the Kelmscott books were
+published by him except in cases of special arrangement. A few copies,
+usually less than a dozen, of nearly all the books were printed on vellum
+and sold at a proportionately higher price than the paper copies. The
+volumes were bound either in vellum or half holland, these temporary and
+unsatisfactory covers probably having been chosen on account of the
+strength and slow-drying qualities of the ink used, a note to the
+prospectus of the _Chaucer_ stating that the book would not be fit for
+ordinary full binding with the usual pressure for at least a year after
+its issue. The issue prices charged for the books were not low, but
+certainly not exorbitant when time, labour, and expense of producing them
+are taken into consideration. They were prizes for the collector from the
+beginning, the impossibility of duplicating them and the small editions
+sent out giving them a charm and a value not easily to be resisted, and
+Morris himself and his trustees adopted measures tending to protect the
+collector's interests. After the death of Morris all the woodblocks for
+initials, ornaments, and illustrations were sent to the British Museum and
+were accepted, with the condition that they should not be reproduced or
+printed from for the space of one hundred years. The electrotypes were
+destroyed. The matter was talked over with Morris during his lifetime and
+he sanctioned this course on the part of the trustees, its aim being to
+keep the series of the Kelmscott Press "a thing apart and to prevent the
+designs becoming stale by repetition." While there is a fair ground for
+the criticism frequently made that a man urging the necessity of art for
+the people showed inconsistency by withdrawing from their reach art which
+he could control and deemed valuable, it must be remembered that in his
+mind the great result to be obtained was the stirring up the people to
+making art for themselves. Morris rightly counted the joy to be gained
+from making a beautiful thing as far higher than the joy to be gained from
+seeing one. He was never in favour of making a work of art "common" by
+reproducing or servilely imitating it. He had shown the printers of books
+his idea of the way they should manage their craft, now let them develop
+it themselves along the lines pointed out for them. And whether he was or
+was not consistent in allowing the works of the Kelmscott Press to be cut
+off from any possibility of a large circulation, his was the temperament
+to feel all the delight to be won from exclusive ownership. He had the
+true collector's passion for possession. If he was bargaining for a book,
+says his biographer, he would carry on the negotiation with the book
+tucked tightly under his arm, as if it might run away. His collection of
+old painted books gave him the keenest emotions before and after his
+acquisition of them. Of one, which finally proved unattainable, he wrote,
+"_Such_ a book! _my_ eyes! and I am beating my brains to see if I can find
+any thread of an intrigue to begin upon, so as to creep and crawl toward
+the possession of it." It is no matter for wonder if in imagination he
+beheld the love of bibliophiles for his own works upon which he had so
+ardently spent his energies, and was gratified by the prevision.
+
+Whether the Kelmscott books will increase or decrease in money value as
+time goes on is a question that stirs interest in book-buying circles.
+They have already had their rise and ebb to a certain extent, and the
+prices brought by the copies owned by Mr. Ellis at the sale of his library
+after his death indicate that a steady level of interest has been reached
+among collectors for the time being at least; only five of the copies
+printed on paper exceeding prices previously paid for them. The
+presentation copy on vellum of the great _Chaucer_ brought five hundred
+and ten pounds, certainly a remarkable sum for a modern book, under any
+conditions, and nearly a hundred pounds more than the highest price which
+Morris himself up to the summer of 1894 had ever paid for even a
+fourteenth-century book. The paper copy of the _Chaucer_ sold at the Ellis
+sale for one hundred and twelve pounds and a paper copy in ordinary
+binding sold in America in 1902 for $650, while a paper copy in the
+special pigskin binding brought $950 the same year. The issue price for
+the four hundred and twenty-five paper copies was twenty pounds apiece,
+and for the eight copies on vellum offered for sale out of the thirteen
+printed, a hundred and twenty guineas apiece. The posthumous edition of
+_Sigurd the Volsung_, the paper copies of which were issued at six guineas
+apiece, brought at the Ellis sale twenty-six pounds. _News from Nowhere_,
+issued at two guineas, has never yet brought a higher price than the five
+pounds, fifteen shillings paid for it in 1899, while Keats's _Poems_
+issued at one pound, ten shillings, rose as high as twenty-seven pounds,
+ten shillings, also in 1899. As a general measure of the advance in the
+Kelmscott books since the death of Morris, it may be noted that the series
+owned by Mr. Ellis, excluding duplicates, and including a presentation
+copy of _Jason_ and two fine bindings for the paper and the vellum
+_Chaucer_, represented a gross issue price of six hundred and twelve
+pounds, ten shillings, and realised two thousand, three hundred and
+sixty-seven pounds, two shillings. For one decade of the life of a modern
+series that is a great record, and it would be a rash prophet who should
+venture to predict future values.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+LATER WRITINGS.
+
+
+The writings of Morris's later years consist, as we have seen, chiefly of
+prose romances. The little group beginning with _The House of the
+Wolfings_ and ending with _The Sundering Flood_ were written with no
+polemical or proselytising intention, with merely his old delight in
+storytelling and in depicting the beauty of the external world and the
+kindness of men and maids. Curiosity had never played any great part in
+his mental equipment; he cared little to know or speculate further than
+the visible and tangible surface of life. "The skin of the world" was
+sufficient for him, and in these later romances all that is beautiful and
+winning has chiefly to do with the skin of the world presented in its
+spring-time freshness. The background of nature is always exquisite. With
+the landscape of the North, which had made its indelible impression upon
+him, he mingled the scenes--"the dear scenes" he would have called
+them--of his childhood and the fairer portions of the Thames shore as he
+had long and intimately known them; and in his books, as in his familiar
+letters, he constantly speaks of the weather and the seasons as matters of
+keen importance in the sum of daily happiness. Thus, whatever we miss from
+his romances, we gain, what is missing from the majority of modern books,
+familiarity with the true aspect of the outdoor world. We have the
+constant sense of ample sky and pleasant air, and green woods and cool
+waters. The mountains are near us, and often the ocean, and the freedom of
+a genuine wildwood that is no enchanted forest or ideal vision.
+Inexpressibly charming are such pictures as those of Elfhild (in _The
+Sundering Flood_) piping to her sheep and dancing on the bank of the
+river, on the bright mid-April day, whose sun dazzles her eyes with its
+brilliant shining; and of Birdalone (in _The Water of the Wondrous Isles_)
+embroidering her gown and smock in the wood of Evilshaw. What could be
+more expressive of lovely open-air peace than this description? "Who was
+glad now but Birdalone; she grew red with new pleasure, and knelt down and
+kissed the witch's hand, and then went her way to the wood with her
+precious lading, and wrought there under her oak-tree day after day, and
+all days, either there, or in the house when the weather was foul. That
+was in the middle of March, when all birds were singing, and the young
+leaves showing on the hawthorns, so that there were pale green clouds, as
+it were, betwixt the great grey boles of oak and sweet-chestnut; and by
+the lake the meadow-saffron new-thrust-up was opening its blossom; and
+March wore and April, and still she was at work happily when now it was
+later May, and the harebells were in full bloom down the bent before her
+... and still she wrought on at her gown and her smock, and it was
+well-nigh done. She had broidered the said gown with roses and lilies, and
+a tall tree springing up from amidmost the hem of the skirt, and a hart on
+either side thereof, face to face of each other. And the smock she had
+sewn daintily at the hems and the bosom with fair knots and buds. It was
+now past the middle of June hot and bright weather."
+
+And only less delightful than these glimpses of the natural world are the
+recurring portraits of half-grown boys and girls, all different and all
+lovable. The sweetness of adolescent beauty had for Morris an irresistible
+appeal, and while his characters have little of the psychological charm
+inseparable in real life from dawning qualities and undeveloped
+potentialities, they are as lovely as the morning in the brightness of
+hair, the slimness of form, the freedom of gesture with which he endows
+them. The shapely brown hands and feet of Ursula, her ruddy colour, her
+slender sturdiness, and brave young laugh are attractions as potent as the
+more delicate charm of Birdalone's serious eyes and thin face, or
+Elfhild's flower-like head and tender playfulness; and all these heroines
+are alike in a fine capability for useful toil and pride in it. When the
+old carle says to Birdalone, "It will be no such hard life for thee, for I
+have still some work in me, and thou mayst do something in spite of thy
+slender and delicate fashion," she replies with merry laughter, "Forsooth,
+good sire, I might do somewhat more than something; for I am deft in all
+such work as here ye need; so fear not but I should earn my livelihood,
+and that with joy." Ursula also knows all the craft of needlework, and all
+the manners of the fields, and finds nothing in work to weary her; and
+even in the Maid of _The Wood beyond the World_, with her magic power to
+revive flowers by the touch of her fingers, is felt the preferable human
+power to make comfort and pleasantness by the right performance of plain
+tasks.
+
+Nearly if not quite equal to Morris's expression of love for the beauty of
+nature and of fair humanity is his expression of the love for beautiful
+handicraft, to which his whole life and all his writings alike testify.
+Whatever is omitted from his stories of love and adventure, he never omits
+to familiarise his readers with the ornament lavished upon buildings and
+garments and countless accessories; hardly a dozen pages of any one of the
+romances may be turned before the description of some piece of artistic
+workmanship is met. Osberne's knife in _The Sundering Flood_ is early
+introduced to the reader as "a goodly weapon, carven with quaintnesses
+about the heft, the blade inlaid with runes done in gold and the sheath
+of silver," and the gifts he sends to Elfhild across the flood are "an
+ouch or chain or arm-ring" fashioned "quaintly and finely," or "fair
+windowed shoon, and broidered hosen and dainty smocks, and silken
+kerchiefs"; much is made of his holiday raiment of scarlet and gold, of
+his flowered green coat, and of the fine gear of gold and green for which
+Elfhild changes her grey cloak. In _The Story of the Glittering Plain_,
+filled as it is with the sterner spirit of the sagas, there is still room
+for much detail concerning the carven panelling of the shut-bed, in which
+was pictured "fair groves and gardens, with flowery grass and fruited
+trees all about," and "fair women abiding therein, and lovely young men
+and warriors, and strange beasts and many marvels, and the ending of wrath
+and beginning of pleasure, and the crowning of love," and for the account
+of the painted book, "covered outside with gold and gems" and painted
+within with woods and castles, "and burning mountains, and the wall of the
+world, and kings upon their thrones, and fair women and warriors, all most
+lovely to behold." As for the fair Birdalone, her pleasure in fine stuffs
+and rich embroideries is unsurpassed in the annals of womankind. The
+wood-wife with canny knowledge of her tastes brings her the fairy web,
+declaring that if she dare wear it she shall presently be clad as goodly
+as she can wish. Birdalone can be trusted to don any attire that meets her
+fancy (and to doff it as willingly, for she has a startling habit not
+uncommon with Morris's heroines of stripping off her garments to let the
+winds of heaven play upon her unimpeded). The wood-wife places the raiment
+she has brought on Birdalone's outstretched arms, "and it was as if the
+sunbeam had thrust through the close leafage of the oak, and made its
+shadow nought a space about Birdalone, so gleamed and glowed in shifty
+brightness the broidery of the gown; and Birdalone let it fall to earth,
+and passed over her hands and arms the fine smock sewed in yellow and
+white silk, so that the web thereof seemed of mingled cream and curd; and
+she looked on the shoon that lay beside the gown, that were done so nicely
+and finely that the work was as the feather-robe of a beauteous bird,
+whereof one scarce can say whether it be bright or grey, thousand-hued or
+all simple of colour. Birdalone quivered for joy of all the fair things,
+and crowed in her speech as she knelt before Habundia to thank her." Thus
+Morris carried into his "pleasure-work of books" the "bread-and-butter
+work" of which he was hardly less fond.
+
+But in the deeper realities of life with which even romantic fiction may
+deal, and must deal if it is to lay hold of the modern imagination, these
+romances are poor. Not one of his characters is developed by circumstance
+into a fully equipped human being thoroughly alive to the intellectual and
+moral as to the physical and emotional world. His men and women are
+eternally young and, with the physical freshness of youth, have also the
+crude, unrounded, unfinished, unmoulded character of youth. They have all
+drunk of the Well at the World's End, and the scars of experience have
+disappeared, leaving a blank surface. The range of their emotions and
+passions is as simple and narrow as with children, and life as the great
+story-tellers understand it is not shown by the chronicle of their days.
+In many of the romances, it is true, the introduction of legendary and
+unreal persons and incidents relieves the writer from all obligation to
+make his account more lifelike than a fairy-tale; but Morris is never
+content to make a fairy-tale pure and simple. Marvellous adventures told
+directly as to a child are not within his method. One of his critics has
+described _The Water of the Wondrous Isles_ as a three-volume novel in the
+environment of a fairy-tale, and the phrase perfectly characterises it. A
+sentimental atmosphere surrounds his figures, and suggests languor and
+soft moods not to be tolerated by the writer of true fairy-tales, for
+while love is certainly not alien to even the purest type of the latter,
+with its witch and its princess and its cruel step-mother and rescuing
+prince, it is not love as Morris depicts it any more than it is love as
+Dante or Shakespeare depicts it. In Morris's stories the lovers are
+neither frankly symbolic creatures of the imagination whose loves are
+secondary to their heroic or miraculous achievements, and who apparently
+exist only to give a reason for the machinery of witchcraft, nor are
+they, like the lovers of the great novels, endowed with thoughtful minds
+and spiritual qualities. They are too sophisticated not to be more
+complex. The modern taste is unsympathetic to their endless kissing and
+"fawning" and "clipping," nor would ancient taste have welcomed their
+refinements of kindness toward each other or the lack of zest in their
+adventures. Morris seems to have tried somewhat, as in the case of his
+handicrafts, to start with the traditions of the Middle Ages and to infuse
+into them a modern spirit that should make them legitimate successors and
+not mere imitations of the well-beloved mediaeval types. That he did not
+entirely succeed was the fault not so much of his method as of his
+deficient insight into human nature. He could not create what he had never
+closely investigated.
+
+When we read his prose romances, their framework gives many a clue to
+their ancestry, but it is an ancestry so remote from the interest of the
+general reader as to puzzle more than charm in its influence upon the
+modern product. In _The House of the Wolfings_, _The Roots of the
+Mountains_, and especially _The Glittering Plain_, we have more or less
+modernised sagas, obviously derived from the Icelandic literature of which
+he had been drinking deep. The hero of _The Glittering Plain_ is as
+valorous a youth and as given to brave adventures as the great Sigurd, the
+environment is Norse, and so are the names of the characters--Sea-eagle,
+Long-hoary, Grey Goose of the Ravagers, and Puny Fox. Other words and
+phrases also drawn from the "word-hoard" of the Icelandic tongue are
+sprinkled over the pages. We find "nithing-stake" and byrny, and bight,
+spoke-shave and ness and watchet, sley and ashlar and ghyll, used as
+expressions of familiar parlance. The characters give each other "the sele
+of the day," retire to shut-beds at night, and look "sorry and sad and
+fell" when fortune goes against them. They wander in garths and call each
+other faring-fellow and they yea-say and nay-say and wot and wend. It is
+not altogether surprising to find some of Morris's most loyal followers
+admitting that they can make nothing of books written in this archaic
+prose.
+
+In the subsequent romances the comparative sturdiness imparted by the
+writings of the North gives place to a mildness and grace suggestive of
+those early French romances the charm of which Morris had always keenly
+felt. We still have much the same vocabulary and more or less use of the
+same magic arts, "skin-changing" holding its own as a favourite method of
+overcoming otherwise insuperable difficulties; but we have more of the
+love motive and a clearer endeavour to portray the relations of the
+characters to each other. In all, however, the French and Scandinavian
+influences are so mingled with each other and with the element provided by
+Morris alone, and so fused by his fluent prolix style, as to produce a
+result somewhat different from anything else in literature, with a
+character and interest personal to itself, and difficult to imitate in
+essence, although wofully lending itself to parody. The subject never
+seems important. There is no sense that the writer was spurred to
+expression by the pressure of an irresistible message or sentiment. We
+feel that anything may have started this copious flow of words, and that
+there is no logical end to them. The title of _The Well at the World's
+End_ was taken from an old Scottish ballad called by that name which
+Morris had never read, but the title of which struck his fancy, and the
+book reads as though it had grown without plan from the fanciful,
+meaningless title.
+
+Of these later romances, _The Glittering Plain_ is the most saga-like, and
+_The Water of the Wondrous Isles_ is most permeated by the romantic spirit
+of the Arthurian legends and their kin. Despite all defects, the latter
+has a bright bejewelled aspect that pleases the fancy although it does not
+deeply enlist the imagination. The story is leisurely and wandering. The
+heroine, Birdalone, some of whose characteristics have already been
+mentioned, is stolen in her infancy from her home near a town called
+Utterhay, by a witch-wife who brings her up on the edge of a wood called
+Evilshaw and teaches her to milk and plough and sow and reap and bake and
+shoot deer in the forest. When she is seventeen years of age she meets in
+the forest Habundia, a fairy woman, who gives her a magic ring by which
+she may make herself invisible and a lock of hair by burning a bit of
+which she may summon her in time of need. Birdalone soon after escapes
+from the witch-wife in a magic boat, and passes through fabulous scenes to
+enchanted islands, where she finds friends and enemies. Three maidens,
+Atra, Viridis, and Aurea, save her from the latter, and send her forth to
+find for them their lovers. While on her quest she travels to various
+isles,--the Isle of the Young and the Old, the Isle of the Queens, the
+Isle of the Kings, and the Isle of Nothing,--which afford opportunity for
+strange pictures and quaint conceits but have nothing to do with the
+narrative. When Birdalone finds the lovers of her friends, the Golden
+Knight, the Green Knight, and Arthur the Black Squire, called the Three
+Champions, they are charmed by her beauty and friendliness, and she
+immediately falls in love with the Black Squire, betrothed of Atra.[3] The
+Black Squire returns her prompt affection, but has grace to show himself
+moody and downcast at the thought of breaking faith with his lady.
+Presently the Three Champions go their ways to find the three maidens who
+were kind to Birdalone and who are kept on the Isle of Increase Unsought
+by a witch, sister to Birdalone's early guardian, and Birdalone, weary of
+waiting for their return, fares forth to meet adventures and lovers in
+plenty. To all the brave knights and youths who take their turn at wooing
+her she is pitiful and gentle after her fashion, and thanks them kindly,
+and praises them and suffers them to kiss her for their comfort, and deems
+them "fair and lovely and sweet," but keeps her preference for the Black
+Squire. Now, when the Three Champions come back with their ladies and find
+Birdalone fled there is much distress among them, and the knights set
+forth to find her. Meeting with her, they are set upon by the bad Red
+Knight, into whose custody she has recently been thrown, and Baudoin, the
+Golden Knight, is killed. Returning with this bad news to the three
+ladies, the two remaining knights, who have rescued Birdalone and killed
+the Red Knight, decide to ride back into the latter's domain and make war
+upon his followers. In the meantime Atra has learned that the Black Squire
+has transferred his affections from her to Birdalone, and does not attempt
+to dissemble her grief thereat, none of Morris's characters being gifted
+in the art of dissimulation, particularly where love is concerned.
+Birdalone, departing from the course which Morris elsewhere is most
+inclined to sanction, decides to renounce in Atra's favour, and betakes
+herself to the town of Greenford, where she is received into the
+broiderers' guild and works with a woman who turns out to be her own
+mother, from whom she was stolen by the witch. With her she lives for five
+years, when sickness slays Audrey, the mother, and Birdalone can no
+longer resist the temptation to seek her love, the Black Squire, again. So
+she makes her way once more through marvellous adventures into the old
+forest of Evilshaw, where she comes again upon her fairy friend Habundia,
+by whose aid she finds the Black Squire. The latter has met with
+misfortunes and is lost in the forest, where he falls ill. Birdalone
+nurses him back to health, and they decide that whether Atra be dead or
+alive they will have no more parting from one another. They are soon to be
+put to the test, as in the wood they come upon Atra and their other
+friends, who have set out to seek them, being anxious for their welfare,
+and who have been overcome by caitiffs and bound and held prisoners.
+Arthur and Birdalone rescue them, and all these friends make up their
+minds to go together and dwell in Utterhay for the rest of their lives.
+Aurea finds another lover in place of the Golden Knight she has lost, but
+Atra is faithful in heart to the Black Squire, though able to bear with
+philosophy his union with Birdalone. Thus they live happily ever after.
+Upon this skeleton of mingled reality and dream Morris built his general
+idea of happy love. The tale might easily be twisted into an allegory,
+since all the creatures of his imagination stand for either the
+satisfactions or dissatisfactions of the visible world, but nothing is
+more certain than that he meant no such interpretations to be put upon it.
+When one of his critics assumed an allegorical intention in the story
+called _The Wood Beyond the World_, he was moved to public refutation,
+writing to the _Spectator_: "It is meant to be a tale pure and simple,
+with nothing didactic about it. If I have to write or speak on social
+problems, I always try to be as direct as I possibly can." The truth of
+this is best known by those who most faithfully have followed his
+writings, and it is entirely vain to try to squeeze from his "tales" any
+ethical virtue beyond their frank expression of his singularly simple
+temperament. Nevertheless, like the rest of his work, they reveal in some
+degree his way of regarding the moral world. As we have seen, Birdalone
+has her impulse toward renunciation, and for a brief interval one feels
+that the story possibly may be allowed to run along the conventional lines
+laid down by the civilised human race for the greatest good of the
+greatest number. This, however, would have been wholly alien to the
+writer's temper, and there is no shock to those familiar with this temper
+in finding that in the end the hero and heroine eat their cake and have
+it. Renunciation on the side of the unbeloved is effected with grace and
+nobility, but it is made clear that it is a question of accepting the
+inevitable in as lofty a spirit as possible. It is perhaps the most
+obvious moral characteristic of Morris's types in general, that they are
+no more prone than children to do what they dislike unless circumstance
+forces them to it. If we were to argue from his romances alone we could
+almost imagine him contending that what one dislikes in conduct is wrong,
+just as he did contend that what one dislikes in art is bad. But if his
+men and women do not willingly renounce, at least they do not exult. The
+sight of unhappiness pains them. For stern self-denial he substitutes the
+softer virtues of amiability and sweetness of temper. A high level of
+kindliness and tenderness takes the place of more compelling and
+formidable emotions. "Kind," indeed, is one of the adjectives of which one
+soonest wearies when confined to his vocabulary, and "dear," is another.
+We read of "dear feet and legs," of dear and kind kisses, of kind
+wheedling looks, of kind and dear maidens, and dear and kind lads, and
+everyone is kind and dear who is not evil and cruel. What Morris's
+romances preach, if they preach anything, is: that we should get from life
+all the enjoyment possible, hurting others as little as may be consistent
+with our own happiness, but claiming the satisfaction of all honest
+desires; that, in thus satisfying ourselves, we should keep toward those
+about us a kind and pleasant countenance and a consideration for their
+pain even when our duty toward ourselves forces us to inflict it. It is a
+narrow and exclusive teaching, and ill adapted to foster freedom of mind
+and spirit. It is a teaching that provides no breastplate for the buffets
+of fortune, and sets before one no ideal of intellectual or spiritual life
+the attainment of which would bring pleasure austere and exquisite. There
+is no stimulus and no sting in the love depicted. Even its ardour is
+checked and wasted by its dallying with the external charms that seem to
+veil rather than to reveal the spirit within the flesh. It is the essence
+of immaturity. But while we gain from the observation of Morris's
+childlike characters, playing in a world that knows no conventions and
+consequently no shame, a foreboding of the weariness that would attend
+such a life as he plans for them, we are conscious also that he is trying
+characteristically, to go back to the beginning, and to start humanity
+aright and afresh; to show us fine and healthy sons of Adam and daughters
+of Eve, "living," to use his own words, "in the enjoyment of animal life
+at least, happy therefore, and beautiful according to the beauty of their
+race." He sets them among the surroundings he loves, gives them the
+education he values, and leaves them with us--the blithe children of a new
+world, whose maturity he is content not to forecast. With such health of
+body, he seems to say, and such innocence of heart, what noble
+commonwealth may not arise, what glory may not enter into civilisation?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+THE END.
+
+
+The end with Morris seemed to come suddenly, although for months and even
+for years there had been warnings of its approach. He had enjoyed--and
+greatly enjoyed--unusual strength and vitality up to almost his sixtieth
+year. The seeds of gout were in his constitution, and from attacks of this
+disease he occasionally suffered, but not until the one occurring in the
+spring of 1891, just as the Kelmscott Press was getting under way, did
+they give reason for alarm. At that time other complications were
+discovered and he was told that he must consider himself an invalid. After
+this, as we have seen, he plunged with rapture into new undertakings
+involving the use of all his faculties, and carried them on with no
+apparent lessening of intellectual vigour. But he had too long overtaxed
+his physical frame by his extraordinary labours, and especially by his
+activity in the cause of Socialism, which had led him out in all weathers
+and under the most adverse conditions. By the beginning of 1895 he began
+to show plainly the weakness that had been gaining on him, and to admit
+it, though still keeping busy at his various occupations. His increasing
+illness brought home to him the thought of that final check upon his
+activities which he had always found so difficult to conceive. "If," he
+said, "it merely means that I am to be laid up for a little while, it
+doesn't so much matter, you know; but if I am to be caged up here for
+months, and then it is to be the end of all things, I shouldn't like it at
+all. This has been a jolly world to me and I find plenty to do in it."
+
+As the folio _Chaucer_ advanced through the Press, he grew impatient, no
+doubt fearing that he would not see its completion, and it is pleasant to
+read of his gratification when a completed copy reached him, bound in the
+cover designed by himself. Late in July, 1896, by the recommendation of
+his physician he took a sea voyage, going to Norway for the bracing
+influences of its air and associations. No benefit was gained, however,
+and on his return a congestion of one lung set in that proved unyielding,
+while his general weakness was such that he was unable to cross the
+threshold of his room. We find him responding to an old friend who had
+urged him to try the effect of the pure air of Swainslow, that this was
+the case and he could not come, but was "absolutely delighted to find
+another beautiful place which is still in its untouched loveliness." Up
+to the last he did a little work, dictating the final passage of _The
+Sundering Flood_ less than a month before his death, which occurred in his
+home at Hammersmith on the morning of the 3rd of October, 1896. He died
+without apparent suffering, and surrounded by his friends. He had lived
+almost sixty-three years in the "jolly world" wherein he had found so much
+to do, but he left the impression of having been cut down in the flower of
+his life.
+
+His burial was in keeping with those tastes and preferences that had meant
+so much to him. The strong oak coffin in which he was laid was of an
+ancient, simple shape, with handles of wrought iron, and the pall that
+covered it was a strip of rich Anatolian velvet from his own collection of
+textiles. He was carried from Lechlade station to the little Kelmscott
+church in an open hay-cart, cheerful in colour, with bright red wheels,
+and festooned with vines, alder, and bulrushes. The bearers and the
+drivers of the country waggons in which his friends followed him to his
+grave were farmers of the neighbourhood clad in their moleskins, people
+who had lost, said one of them, "a dear good friend in Master Morris." The
+hearse, with its bright decorations and the little group of mourners wound
+their way along pleasant country roads, beaten upon by a storm of unusual
+fury. "The north-west wind bent trees and bushes," writes one of those who
+were present, "turning the leaves of the bird maples back upon their
+footstalks, making them look like poplars, and the rain beat on the
+straggling hedges, the lurid fruit, such as only grows in rural
+England,--the fruit of privet with ripe hips and haws; the foliage of the
+Guelder roses hung on the bushes; along the road a line of slabs of stone
+extended, reminding one of Portugal; ragweed and loosestrife, with rank
+hemp agrimony, were standing dry and dead, like reeds beside a lake, and
+in the rain and wind the yokels stood at the cross-roads, or at the
+openings of the bridle-paths."
+
+In _News from Nowhere_ Morris describes Kelmscott Church, with its little
+aisle divided from the nave by three round arches, its windows, "mostly of
+the graceful Oxfordshire fourteenth-century type," and the interior
+trimmed with flowers for a village merrymaking. On the day of his burial,
+by a curious coincidence it was trimmed with fruits of the harvest in
+preparation for the autumn festival. The service was read by an old
+schoolfellow and friend, and Morris was left to his rest "from patience
+and from pain" in the place he had best loved and to which in his final
+weakness he had longed to return.
+
+In regarding Morris through the medium of his work it is difficult to gain
+a coherent impression. He turned one side and another to the world with
+such rapidity of succession as to give a sense of kaleidoscopic change.
+What new combination of colour and form his activities would take was
+always impossible to forecast. And the thing that he was doing seemed to
+him at the time the one thing in the world that was worth doing, the one
+thing that "a reasonable and healthy man" would make it his pleasure to
+do. Yet, as we have seen, all these pursuits taken up by him with so much
+zest and laid down by him with such suddenness, fitted harmoniously and
+accurately into the plan of his life, which, with the decade of militant
+Socialism deducted, presented a smooth and even surface, unbroken by any
+violent change of circumstance or method or motive. He has been described
+by nearly all who have written of him as "a rebel," and a rebel he was in
+the true Quixotic sense, his lance in rest to charge at any moment against
+any windmill of convention that might offend him. A friend who was once
+talking with him about a forthcoming election to the London School Board,
+expressing a hope that the progressive party would win,--"Well," said
+Morris, striding up and down, "I am not sure that a clerical victory would
+not be a good thing. I was educated at Marlborough under clerical masters,
+and I naturally rebelled against them. Had they been advanced men, my
+spirit of rebellion would probably have led me to conservatism merely as a
+protest. One naturally defies authority, and it may be well that the
+London School Board should be controlled by Anglican parsons, in order
+that the young rebels in the schools may grow up to defy and hate church
+authority." His own "natural" defiance of authority entailed what seems to
+the ordinary toiler in harness a waste of his extraordinary gifts. His
+work was most of it in the experimental stage when he left it. He was too
+content to point the road without following to the end his own direction.
+"He did not learn a trade in the natural way, from those who knew, and
+seek then to better the teaching of his masters," says one of his
+fellow-workers in arts and crafts, "but, acknowledging no master, except
+perhaps the ancients, he would worry it out always for himself. He had a
+wonderful knack of learning that way."[4] He had a wonderful knack also of
+persuading himself that there was no other to learn, and Goldsmith's
+criticism of Burke--that he spent much of his time "cutting blocks with a
+razor"--has been happily applied to him. But it is doubtful whether he
+would have made as strong an impression on his generation as he did if he
+had devoted his time to one branch of art and worked along conventional
+lines. His greatest gift was not so much the ability to produce art,
+artistic though he was in faculty and feeling, as it was the ability to
+make people see the difference between the kind of beauty to which his
+eyes were open and the ugliness commonly preferred to it. Nothing is so
+convincing as to see a man accomplish with his own hands what he has
+declared possible for anyone to accomplish. Morris's continual
+illustration of his theories was perhaps more useful in awakening interest
+in just the matters which he had at heart than any more patient pursuit of
+an ideal less readily achieved. He had the habit when listening to
+questions and criticisms after his lectures of tracing charming rapid
+designs on paper. On a large scale that is what he did throughout his
+life: lecture people about the way to make things, and by way of proving
+his point, turn off delightful examples of the things he describes. "It is
+very easy" he seems to say; "watch me for a moment, and we will then pass
+on."
+
+Considered superficially, he appeared the very prince of paradox. Art was
+a word continually on his lips, the future and fortunes of art were
+constantly in his mind, yet for the greatest art of the world he had few
+words, and the most passing interest. The names of Raphael and Leonardo,
+Giotto, Duerer, Rembrandt, Velasquez, were seldom if ever on his lips. Art
+had for him an almost single meaning, namely, the beauty produced by
+humble workers as an every-day occurrence and for every day's enjoyment,
+art by the people and for the people. So individual that he will never be
+forgotten by those who have once seen him and heard his voice raised in
+its inevitable protest, he nevertheless preached a kind of communism in
+which any high degree of individuality must have been submerged.
+
+His preferences among books, as might be assumed, were clearly marked, and
+a list of his favourite authors contains many contrasts. Once asked to
+contribute to the _Pall Mall Gazette_ his opinions on "the best hundred
+books," he complied by naming those which, he said, had most profoundly
+impressed him, excluding all which he considered merely as tools and not
+as works of art. True to himself, he starts the list with books "of the
+kind Mazzini calls Bibles," books which are "in no sense the work of
+individuals, but have grown up from the very hearts of the people." Among
+these are "the Hebrew Bible (excluding some twice-done parts and some
+pieces of mere Jewish ecclesiasticism), _Homer_, _Hesiod_, _The Edda_
+(including some of the other early old Norse romantic genealogical poems),
+_Beowulf_, _Kalevale_, _Shahnameh_, _Mahabharata_, collections of folk
+tales headed by Grimm and the Norse ones, Irish and Welsh traditional
+poems."
+
+After these "Bibles" follow the "_real_ ancient imaginative works:
+_Herodotus_, _Plato_, _AEschylus_, _Sophocles_, _Aristophanes_,
+_Theocritus_, _Lucretius_, _Catullus_." The greater part of the Latins
+were esteemed "_sham_ classics." "I suppose," says Morris in his character
+of reasonable man, "that they have some good literary qualities; but I
+cannot help thinking that it is difficult to find out how much. I suspect
+superstition and authority have influenced our estimate of them till it
+has become a mere matter of convention. Of course I admit the
+archaeological value of some of them, especially _Virgil_ and _Ovid_."
+
+Next in importance to the Latin masterpieces he puts mediaeval poetry,
+Anglo-Saxon lyrical pieces (like the _Ruin_ and the _Exile_), Dante,
+Chaucer, _Piers Plowman_, _Nibelungenlied_, the Danish and Scotch-English
+Border Ballads, _Omar Khayyam_, "though I don't know how much of the charm
+of this lovely poem," he says, "is due to Fitzgerald, the translator";
+other Arab and Persian poetry, _Reynard the Fox_, and a few of the best
+rhymed romances. Mediaeval story books follow, the _Morte d'Arthur_, _The
+Thousand and One Nights_, Boccaccio's _Decameron_, and the _Mabinogion_.
+After these, "modern poets" up to his own generation, "Shakespeare, Blake
+(the part of him which a mortal can understand), Coleridge, Shelley,
+Keats, Byron." German he could not read, so he left out German
+masterpieces. Milton he left out on account of his union of "cold
+classicalism with Puritanism" ("the two things which I hate most in the
+world," he said).
+
+_Pilgrim's Progress_ heads the department of modern fiction, in which is
+also included _Robinson Crusoe_, _Moell Flanders_, _Colonel Jack_, _Captain
+Singleton_, _Voyage Round the World_, Scott's novels, "except the one or
+two which he wrote when he was hardly alive," the novels of the elder
+Dumas (the "good" ones), Victor Hugo, Dickens, and George Borrow. The list
+concludes with certain unclassified works, Ruskin, Carlyle, the _Utopia_,
+and Grimm's _Teutonic Mythology_. It may safely be assumed that no other
+list sent in by the "best judges" who responded to Mr. Stead's request in
+the least resembled this one, which was compiled with high sincerity and
+represented Morris quite fairly on the bookish side of his mind. Mr.
+Mackail mentions also among the volumes oftenest in his hands and "imposed
+upon his friends unflinchingly" Surtees's famous _Mr. Jorrocks_, and
+records that he considered _Huckleberry Finn_ America's masterpiece. For
+the Uncle Remus stories he had also a peculiar fondness, and for one of
+his cotton prints he designed what he called a "Brer Rabbit pattern."
+
+The perversity that one marks in Morris beneath--or, perhaps, on the
+surface of--his essential seriousness, the tendency to whim and paradox so
+freely noted by his critics, may be attributed to his extraordinarily
+childlike spirit. His lack of restraint, his dislike of subtlety, his love
+of spontaneity, his inability to conform to conventions, his hatred of
+gloom, austerity, and introspection, his readiness to throw himself into
+enjoyment of the smallest subject that happened to come within the range
+of his interest, his unflagging vigour, his unjaded humour, all qualities
+copiously commented upon by his friends, testify to the youthfulness of
+his temperament, which was like that of a child, also in a certain
+apparently unpremeditated reticence, an inability to reveal itself fully
+or satisfactorily to even his closest intimates. What is most attractive
+and appealing in him is doubtless due to his freedom from artificialities
+and from the sophistries that ordinarily come with age, but what is
+noblest in him, and most impressive in the effect produced by his
+accomplishment, is due to a quality of which a child is and should be
+ignorant, a sense of personal responsibility. Without this he would have
+been a pitiful figure, disoriented, and inharmonious with the world into
+which he was born. It was his persistent unwearying effort to set the
+crooked straight by example as well as by precept, and in defiance of a
+certain paradoxical mental languor that flowed by the side of his energy
+and impulse, which made him an influence to be counted with among the many
+conflicting influences of his generation. While he counselled he produced,
+while he preached he laboured. Declaring that work could and should be
+lovely, he demonstrated in his own life how intensely one man loved it. He
+fought for the principle of art with the ardour other men have shown in
+fighting for the principle of political liberty. He held himself bound to
+justify his theories in his own action, and while it would be absurd to
+claim for him complete consistency and freedom from error in even this, it
+certainly guided him safely past the quicksands of empty and inflated
+rhetoric by which the expressed philosophy of his own great masters is
+marred. It will be remembered by those who share his admiration for
+Dickens that when the proprietor of Dotheboys Hall wished to teach his
+pupils to spell "window" he had them clean one. The effectiveness of such
+a method is deeper than the satire, and Morris was its most convincing
+exponent. What he learned out of books he tried at once to put into
+practice. He had the highest ideal of service:
+
+  How crown ye excellence of worth?
+  With leave to serve all men on earth,
+
+and nothing deflected him from his efforts thus to serve in his own
+person the most crying needs of humanity as he conceived them.
+
+Pretentiousness was his least defect. No priggish sense of virtue
+interfered with his consecration to what he believed were the highest
+interests of his fellow-men. The cant of the moralist was absolutely
+unused by him, and he was innocent of any intention to improve the morals
+of his companions. Get them happy, he thought, with a faith little less
+than magnificent, get them happy and they will be good. Nor was he guilty
+of aesthetic priggishness. Art was the concern of his mind and the desire
+of his heart, but it was by no means his meat and drink. He liked good
+food, and was proud of his connoisseurship in matters of cookery, and
+wines. Few things pleased him better than himself to take the cook's place
+and prove his practical skill. When asked for his opinions on the subject
+of temperance, he replied that so far as his own experience went he found
+his victuals dull without something to drink, and that tea and coffee were
+not fit liquors to be taken with food. He smoked his briarwood pipe with
+much satisfaction. In his daily habits he was thoroughly, aggressively
+human, and in nothing more so than in his candid admiration of the work of
+his own hands, a feeling in which there was no fatuity.
+
+His biographer comments on the singular element of impersonality in his
+nature, speaking of him as moving among men and women "isolated,
+self-centred, almost empty of love or hatred," and quotes his most
+intimate friend's extreme statement that he lived "absolutely without the
+need of man or woman." In this idea of him those who knew him best seemed
+to agree, but from his own letters as represented in the biography, a
+stranger to him gains a different impression. His letters to his invalid
+daughter are in themselves sufficient to evoke in the mind of the reader
+an image of unlimited and poignant tenderness impossible to associate with
+the aloofness and lack of keen personal sympathy said to be characteristic
+of him. He did not give himself readily or rashly to intense feelings; but
+he seemed to feel within himself capacity for emotions of force so violent
+as to be destructive. When his friend Faulkner was stricken with paralysis
+and other trouble came upon the family, we find him writing: "It is such a
+grievous business altogether that, rightly or wrongly, I try not to think
+of it too much lest I should give way altogether, and make an end of what
+small use there may be in my life." Leaving out the case of Rossetti,
+there is no record of his having relinquished any friendship of
+importance, nor did he weary of constant intercourse with his friends. His
+habit of breakfasting with Burne-Jones on Sunday mornings and dining with
+him on Wednesdays was unbroken for many years. "The last three Sundays of
+his life," says this oldest and closest friend, "I went to him."
+
+Loyalty, sincerity, simplicity, and earnestness, these are the qualities
+conspicuous in the fabric of his life. His influence upon his generation,
+so far as it may now be observed, has been definite but diffused. It may
+be doubted whether he would not have been best pleased to have it so, to
+know that his name will live chiefly as that of one who stimulated others
+toward art production of and interest in beautiful handiwork. But the last
+word to be said about him is that he was greater than his work.
+
+
+
+
+BIBLIOGRAPHY[5]
+
+
+1. _The Story of the Glittering Plain. Which has been also called The Land
+of Living Men or The Acre of the Undying._ Written by WILLIAM MORRIS.
+Small 4to. Golden type. Border 1. 200 paper copies at two guineas, and 6
+on vellum. Dated April 4, issued May 8, 1891. Sold by Reeves & Turner.
+Bound in stiff vellum with wash leather ties.[6]
+
+    This book was set up from Nos. 81-84 of _The English Illustrated
+    Magazine_, in which it first appeared; some of the chapter headings
+    were rearranged, and a few small corrections were made in the text. A
+    trial page, the first printed at the Kelmscott Press, was struck off
+    on January 31, 1891, but the first sheet was not printed until about a
+    month later.[7] The border was designed in January of the same year,
+    and engraved by W. H. Hooper. Mr. Morris had four of the vellum copies
+    bound in green vellum, three of which he gave to friends. Only two
+    copies on vellum were sold, at twelve and fifteen guineas. This was
+    the only book with wash leather ties. All the other vellum bound books
+    have silk ties, except _Shelley's Poems_ and _Hand and Soul_, which
+    have no ties.
+
+2. _Poems by the Way._ Written by WILLIAM MORRIS. Small 4to. Golden type.
+In black and red. Border 1. 300 paper copies at two guineas, thirteen on
+vellum at about twelve guineas. Dated September 24, issued October 20,
+1891. Sold by Reeves & Turner. Bound in stiff vellum.
+
+    This was the first book printed at the Kelmscott Press in two colours,
+    and the first book in which the smaller printer's mark appeared. After
+    _The Glittering Plain_ was finished, at the beginning of April, no
+    printing was done until May 11th. In the meanwhile the compositors
+    were busy setting up the early sheets of _The Golden Legend_. The
+    printing of _Poems by the Way_, which its author first thought of
+    calling _Flores Atramenti_, was not begun until July. The poems in it
+    were written at various times. In the manuscript, _Hafburg and Signy_
+    is dated February 4, 1870; _Hildebrand and Hillilel_, March 1, 1871;
+    and _Love's Reward_, Kelmscott, April 21, 1871. _Meeting in Winter_ is
+    a song from _The Story of Orpheus_ an unpublished poem intended for
+    the _Earthly Paradise_. The last poem in the book, _Goldilocks and
+    Goldilooks_, was written on May 20, 1891, for the purpose of adding to
+    the bulk of the volume, which was then being prepared. A few of the
+    vellum covers were stained at Merton red, yellow, indigo, and dark
+    green, but the experiment was not successful.[8]
+
+3. _The Love-Lyrics and Songs of Proteus, by Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, with
+the Love Sonnets of Proteus, by the same author, now reprinted in their
+full text with many sonnets omitted from the earlier editions._ London,
+MDCCCXCII. Small 4to. Golden type. In black and red. Border 1. 300 paper
+copies at two guineas, none on vellum. Dated January 26, issued February
+27, 1892. Sold by Reeves & Turner. Bound in stiff vellum.
+
+    This is the only book in which the initials are printed in red. This
+    was done by the author's wish.
+
+4. _The Nature of Gothic, a Chapter of the Stones of Venice._ By JOHN
+RUSKIN. With a preface by William Morris. Small 4to. Golden type. Border
+1. Diagrams in text. 500 paper copies at thirty shillings, none on vellum.
+Dated in preface, February 15, issued March 22, 1892. Published by George
+Allen. Bound in stiff vellum.
+
+    This chapter of the Stones of Venice, which Ruskin always considered
+    the most important in the book, was first printed separately, in 1854,
+    as a sixpenny pamphlet. Mr. Morris paid more than one tribute to it in
+    _Hopes and Fears for Art_. Of him Ruskin said, in 1887, "Morris is
+    beaten gold."
+
+5. _The Defence of Guenevere, and Other Poems._ By WILLIAM MORRIS. Small
+4to. Golden type. In black and red. Borders 2 and 1. 300 paper copies at
+two guineas, 10 on vellum at about twelve guineas. Dated April 2, issued
+May 19, 1892. Sold by Reeves & Turner. Bound in limp vellum.
+
+    This book was set up from a copy of the edition published by Reeves &
+    Turner in 1880, the only alteration, except a few corrections, being
+    in the eleventh line of _Summer Dawn_.[9] It is divided into three
+    parts, the poems suggested by Malory's _Morte d'Arthur_, the poems
+    inspired by Froissart's _Chronicles_, and poems on various subjects.
+    The two first sections have borders, and the last has a half border.
+    The first sheet was printed on February 17, 1892. It was the first
+    book bound in limp vellum, and the only one of which the title was
+    inscribed by hand on the back.
+
+6. _A Dream of John Ball and a King's Lesson._ By WILLIAM MORRIS. Small
+4to. Golden type. In black and red. Borders 3a, 4, and 2. With a woodcut
+designed by Sir E. Burne-Jones. 300 paper copies at thirty shillings, 11
+on vellum at ten guineas. Dated May 13, issued September 24, 1892. Sold by
+Reeves & Turner. Bound in limp vellum.
+
+    This was set up with a few alterations from a copy of Reeves &
+    Turner's third edition, and the printing was begun on April 4, 1892.
+    The frontispiece was redrawn from that to the first edition, and
+    engraved on wood by W. H. Hooper, who engraved all Sir E.
+    Burne-Jones's designs for the Kelmscott Press, except those for _The
+    Wood Beyond the World_ and _The Life and Death of Jason_. The
+    inscription below the figures,[10] and the narrow border, were
+    designed by Mr. Morris and engraved with the picture on one block,
+    which was afterwards used on a leaflet printed for the Ancoats
+    Brotherhood in February, 1894.
+
+7. _The Golden Legend._ By JACOBUS DE VORAGINE. Translated by William
+Caxton. Edited by F. S. Ellis. 3 vols. Large 4to. Golden type. Borders 5a,
+5, 6a and 7. Woodcut title and two woodcuts designed by Sir E.
+Burne-Jones. 500 copies at five guineas, none on vellum. Dated September
+12, issued November 3, 1892. Published by Bernard Quaritch. Bound in half
+Holland, with paper labels printed in the Troy type.
+
+    In July, 1890, when only a few letters of the Golden type had been
+    cut, Mr. Morris bought a copy of this book, printed by Wynkyn de Worde
+    in 1527. He soon afterwards determined to print it, and on September
+    11th entered into a formal agreement with Mr. Quaritch for its
+    publication. It was only an unforeseen difficulty about the size of
+    the first stock of paper that led to _The Golden Legend_ not being the
+    first book put in hand. It was set up from a transcript of Caxton's
+    first edition, lent by the Syndics of the Cambridge University Library
+    for the purpose. A trial page was got out in March, 1891, and fifty
+    pages were in type by May 11th, the day on which the first sheet was
+    printed. The first volume was finished, with the exception of the
+    illustrations and the preliminary matter, in October, 1891. The two
+    illustrations and the title (which was the first woodcut title
+    designed by Mr. Morris) were not engraved until June and August, 1892,
+    when the third volume was approaching completion. About half a dozen
+    impressions of the illustrations were pulled on vellum. A slip asking
+    owners of the book not to have it bound with pressure, nor to have the
+    edges cut instead of merely trimmed, was inserted in each copy.
+
+8. _The Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye._ By RAOUL LEFEVRE. Translated
+by William Caxton. Edited by H. Halliday Sparling. 2 vols. Large 4to. Troy
+type, with table of chapters and glossary in Chaucer type. In black and
+red. Borders 5a, 5, and 8. Woodcut title. 300 paper copies at nine
+guineas, 5 on vellum at eighty pounds. Dated October 14, issued November
+24, 1892. Published by Bernard Quaritch. Bound in limp vellum.
+
+    This book, begun in February, 1892, is the first book printed in Troy
+    type, and the first in which Chaucer type appears. It is a reprint of
+    the first book printed in English. It had long been a favourite with
+    William Morris, who designed a great quantity of initials and
+    ornaments for it, and wrote the following note for Mr. Quaritch's
+    catalogue: "As to the matter of the book, it makes a thoroughly
+    amusing story, instinct with mediaeval thought and manners. For though
+    written at the end of the Middle Ages and dealing with classical
+    mythology, it has in it no token of the coming Renaissance, but is
+    purely mediaeval. It is the last issue of that story of Troy which
+    through the whole of the Middle Ages had such a hold on men's
+    imaginations; the story built up from a rumour of the Cyclic Poets, of
+    the heroic City of Troy, defended by Priam and his gallant sons, led
+    by Hector the Preux Chevalier, and beset by the violent and brutal
+    Greeks, who were looked on as the necessary machinery for bringing
+    about the undeniable tragedy of the fall of the City. Surely this is
+    well worth reading, if only as a piece of undiluted mediaevalism." 2000
+    copies of a 4to announcement, with specimen pages, were printed at the
+    Kelmscott Press in December, 1892, for distribution by the
+    publisher.[11]
+
+9. _Biblia Innocentium: Being the Story of God's Chosen People before the
+Coming of Our Lord Jesus Christ upon Earth._ Written anew for children, by
+J. W. MACKAIL, Sometime Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford. 8vo. Border 2.
+200 on paper at a guinea, none on vellum. Dated October 22, issued
+December 9, 1892. Sold by Reeves & Turner. Bound in stiff vellum.
+
+    This was the last book issued in stiff vellum except _Hand and Soul_,
+    and the last with untrimmed edges. It was the first book printed in
+    8vo.
+
+10. _The History of Reynard the Foxe._ By WILLIAM CAXTON. Reprinted from
+his edition of 1481. Edited by H. Halliday Sparling. Large 4to. Troy type,
+with Glossary in Chaucer type. In black and red. Borders 5a and 7. Woodcut
+title. 300 on paper at three guineas, 10 on vellum at fifteen guineas.
+Dated December 15, 1892, issued January 25, 1893. Published by Bernard
+Quaritch. Bound in limp vellum.
+
+    About this book, which was first announced as in the press in the list
+    dated July, 1892, William Morris wrote the following note for Mr.
+    Quaritch's catalogue: "This translation of Caxton's is one of the very
+    best of his works as to style; and being translated from a kindred
+    tongue is delightful as mere language. In its rude joviality, and
+    simple and direct delineation of character, it is a thoroughly good
+    representative of the famous ancient Beast Epic." The edges of this
+    book, and of all subsequent books, were trimmed in accordance with the
+    invariable practice of the early printers. Mr. Morris much preferred
+    the trimmed edges.
+
+11. _The Poems of William Shakespeare_, printed after the original copies
+of _Venus and Adonis_, 1593. _The Rape of Lucrece_, 1594. _Sonnets_, 1609.
+_The Lover's Complaint._ Edited by F. S. Ellis. 8vo. Golden type. In black
+and red. Borders 1 and 2. 500 paper copies at twenty-five shillings, 10 on
+vellum at ten guineas. Dated January 17, issued February 13, 1893. Sold by
+Reeves & Turner. Bound in limp vellum.
+
+    A trial page of this book was set up on November 1, 1892. Though the
+    number was large, this has become one of the rarest books issued from
+    the Press.[12]
+
+12. _News from Nowhere: or, An Epoch of Rest, Being Some Chapters from a
+Utopian Romance._ By WILLIAM MORRIS. 8vo. Golden type. In black and red.
+Borders 9a and 4, and a woodcut engraved by W. H. Hooper from a design by
+C. M. Gere. 300 on paper at two guineas, 10 on vellum at ten guineas.
+Dated November 22, 1892, issued March 24, 1893. Sold by Reeves & Turner.
+Bound in limp vellum.
+
+    The text of this book was printed before Shakespeare's _Poems and
+    Sonnets_, but it was kept back for the frontispiece, which is a
+    picture of the old manor-house in the village of Kelmscott by the
+    upper Thames, from which the Press took its name. It was set up from a
+    copy of one of Reeves & Turner's editions, and in reading it for the
+    press the author made a few slight corrections. It was the last book
+    except the _Savonarola_ (No. 31) in which he used the old paragraph
+    mark [Illustration], which was discarded in favour of the leaves,
+    which had already been used in the two large 4to books printed in the
+    Troy type.
+
+13. _The Order of Chivalry._ Translated from the French by William Caxton
+and reprinted from his edition of 1484. Edited by F. S. Ellis. And
+_L'Ordene de Chevalerie_, with translation by William Morris. Small 4to.
+Chaucer type, in black and red. Borders 9a and 4, and a woodcut designed
+by Sir Edward Burne-Jones. 225 on paper at thirty shillings, 10 on vellum
+at ten guineas. _The Order of Chivalry_ dated November 10, 1892,
+_L'Ordene de Chevalerie_ dated February 24, 1893, issued April 12, 1893.
+Sold by Reeves & Turner. Bound in limp vellum.
+
+    This was the last book printed in small 4to. The last section is in
+    8vo. It was the first book printed in the Chaucer type. The reprint
+    from Caxton was finished while _News from Nowhere_ was in the press,
+    and before Shakespeare's _Poems and Sonnets_ was begun. The French
+    poem and its translation were added as an afterthought, and have a
+    separate colophon. Some of the three-line initials which were designed
+    for _The Well at the World's End_ are used in the French poem, and
+    this is their first appearance. The translation was begun on December
+    3, 1892, and the border round the frontispiece was designed on
+    February 13, 1893.
+
+14. _The Life of Thomas Woolsey, Cardinal Archbishop of York._ Written by
+GEORGE CAVENDISH. Edited by F. S. Ellis from the author's autograph MS.
+8vo. Golden type. Border 1. 250 on paper at two guineas, 6 on vellum at
+ten guineas. Dated March 30, issued May 3, 1893. Sold by Reeves & Turner.
+Bound in limp vellum.
+
+15. _The History of Godefrey of Boloyne and of the Conquest of
+Iherusalem._ Reprinted from Caxton's edition of 1841. Edited by H.
+Halliday Sparling. Large 4to. Troy type, with list of chapter headings and
+glossary in Chaucer type. In black and red. Borders 5a and 5, and woodcut
+title. 300 on paper at six guineas, 6 on vellum at twenty guineas. Dated
+April 27, issued May 24, 1893. Published by William Morris at the
+Kelmscott Press. Bound in limp vellum.
+
+    This was the fifth and last of the Caxton reprints, with many new
+    ornaments and initials, and a new printer's mark. It was first
+    announced as in the press in the list dated December, 1892. It was the
+    first book published and sold at the Kelmscott Press. An announcement
+    and order form, with two different specimen pages, was printed at the
+    Press, besides a special invoice. A few copies were bound in half
+    holland, not for sale.
+
+16. _Utopia._ Written by SIR THOMAS MORE. A reprint of the second edition
+of Ralph Robinson's translation, with a foreword by William Morris.[13]
+Edited by F. S. Ellis. 8vo. Chaucer type, with the reprinted title in Troy
+type. In black and red. Borders 4 and 2. 300 on paper at thirty shillings,
+8 on vellum at ten guineas. Dated August 4, issued September 8, 1893. Sold
+by Reeves & Turner. Bound in limp vellum.
+
+    This book was first announced as in the press in the list dated May
+    20, 1893.
+
+17. _Maud, A Monodrama._ By ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON. 8vo. Golden type. In
+black and red. Borders 10a and 10, and woodcut title. 500 on paper at two
+guineas, 5 on vellum, not for sale. Dated August 11, issued September 30,
+1893. Published by Macmillan & Co. Bound in limp vellum.
+
+    The borders were specially designed for this book. They were both used
+    again in the Keats, and one of them appears in _The Saundering Flood_.
+    It is the first of the 8vo books with a woodcut title.
+
+18. _Gothic Architecture: A Lecture for the Arts and Crafts Exhibition
+Society._ By WILLIAM MORRIS. 16mo. Golden type. In black and red. 1500 on
+paper at two shillings and sixpence, 45 on vellum at ten and fifteen
+shillings. Bound in half holland.
+
+    This lecture was set up at Hammersmith and printed at the New Gallery
+    during the Arts and Crafts Exhibition in October and November, 1893.
+    The first copies were ready on October 21st and the book was twice
+    reprinted before the Exhibition closed. It was the first book printed
+    in 16mo. The four-line initials used in it appear here for the first
+    time. The vellum copies were sold during the Exhibition at ten
+    shillings, and the price was subsequently raised to fifteen
+    shillings.[14]
+
+19. _Sidonia the Sorceress._ By WILLIAM MEINHOLD. Translated by Francesca
+Speranza, Lady Wilde. Large 4to. Golden type. In black and red. Border 8.
+300 paper copies at four guineas, 10 on vellum at twenty guineas. Dated
+September 15, issued November 1, 1893. Published by William Morris. Bound
+in limp vellum.
+
+    Before the publication of this book a large 4to announcement and order
+    form was issued, with a specimen page and an interesting description
+    of the book and its author, written and signed by William Morris. Some
+    copies were bound in half holland not for sale.
+
+20. _Ballads and Narrative Poems by Dante Gabriel Rossetti._ 8vo. Golden
+type. In black and red. Borders 4a and 4, and woodcut title. 310 on paper
+at two guineas, 6 on vellum at ten guineas. Dated October 14, issued in
+November, 1893. Published by Ellis & Elvey. Bound in limp vellum.
+
+    This book was announced as in preparation in the list of August 1,
+    1893.
+
+21. _The Tale of King Florus and the Fair Jehane._ Translated by William
+Morris from the French of the 13th century. 16mo. Chaucer type. In black
+and red. Borders 11a and 11, and woodcut title. 350 on paper at seven
+shillings and sixpence, 15 on vellum at thirty shillings. Dated December
+16, issued December 28, 1893. Published by William Morris. Bound in half
+holland.
+
+    This story, like the three other translations with which it is
+    uniform, was taken from a little volume called _Nouvelles Francoises
+    en prose du XIIIe siecle_, Paris, Jannet, 1856. They were first
+    announced as in preparation under the heading _French Tales_ in the
+    list dated May 20, 1893. Eighty-five copies of _King Florus_ were
+    bought by J. & M. L. Tregaskis, who had them bound in all parts of the
+    world. These are now in the Rylands Library at Manchester.
+
+22. _The Story of the Glittering Plain. Which has been also called The
+Land of Living Men or The Acre of the Undying._ Written by WILLIAM MORRIS.
+Large 4to. Troy type, with list of chapters in Chaucer type. In black and
+red. Borders 12a and 12, 23 designs by Walter Crane, engraved by A.
+Leverett, and a woodcut title. 250 on paper at five guineas, 7 on vellum
+at twenty pounds. Dated January 13, issued February 17, 1894. Published by
+William Morris. Bound in limp vellum. Neither the borders in this book nor
+six out of the seven frames round the illustrations appear in any other
+book. The seventh is used round the second picture in _Love is Enough_. A
+few copies were bound in half holland.
+
+23. _Of the Friendship of Amis and Amile._ _Done out of the ancient French
+by_ WILLIAM MORRIS. 16mo. Chaucer type. In black and red. Borders 11a and
+11, and woodcut title. 500 on paper at seven shillings and sixpence, 15 on
+vellum at thirty shillings. Dated March 13th, issued April 4, 1894.
+Published by William Morris. Bound in half holland.[15]
+
+    A poem entitled _Amys and Amillion_, founded on this story, was
+    originally to have appeared in the second volume of the _Earthly
+    Paradise_, but, like some other poems announced at the same time, it
+    was not included in the book.
+
+20a. _Sonnets and Lyrical Poems by Dante Gabriel Rossetti._ 8vo. Golden
+type. In black and red. Borders 1a and 1, and woodcut title. 310 on paper
+at two guineas, 6 on vellum at ten guineas. Dated February 20, issued
+April 21, 1894. Published by Ellis & Elvey. Bound in limp vellum.
+
+    This book is uniform with No. 20, to which it forms a sequel. Both
+    volumes were read for the press by Mr. W. M. Rossetti.
+
+24. _The Poems of John Keats._ Edited by F. S. Ellis. 8vo. Golden type. In
+black and red. Borders 10a and 10, and woodcut title. 300 on paper at
+thirty shillings, 7 on vellum at nine guineas. Dated March 7, issued May
+8, 1894. Published by William Morris. Bound in limp vellum.
+
+    This is now (January, 1898) the most sought after of all the smaller
+    Kelmscott Press books. It was announced as in preparation in the lists
+    of May 27 and August 1, 1893, and as in the press in that of March 31,
+    1894, when the woodcut title still remained to be printed.[16]
+
+25. _Atalanta in Calydon: A Tragedy._ By ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE. Large
+4to. Troy type, with argument and _dramatis personae_ in Chaucer type; the
+dedication and quotation from Euripides in Greek type designed by Selwyn
+Image. In black and red. Borders 5a and 5, and woodcut title. 250 on paper
+at two guineas, 8 on vellum at twelve guineas. Dated May 4, issued July
+24, 1894. Published by William Morris. Bound in limp vellum.
+
+    In the vellum copies of this book the colophon is not on the
+    eighty-second page as in the paper copies, but on the following page.
+
+26. _The Tale of the Emperor Coustans and of Over Sea._ Done out of
+ancient French by WILLIAM MORRIS. 16mo. Chaucer type. In black and red.
+Borders 11a and 11, both twice, and two woodcut titles. 525 on paper at
+seven shillings and sixpence, 20 on vellum at two guineas. Dated August
+30, issued September 26, 1894. Published by William Morris. Bound in half
+holland.
+
+    The first of these stories, which was the source of _The Man Born to
+    be King_ in _The Earthly Paradise_, was announced as in preparation in
+    the list of March 31, 1894.
+
+27. _The Wood Beyond the World._ By WILLIAM MORRIS. 8vo. Chaucer type. In
+black and red. Borders 13a and 13, and a frontispiece designed by Sir E.
+Burne-Jones, and engraved on wood by W. Spielmeyer. 350 on paper at two
+guineas, 8 on vellum at ten guineas. Dated May 30, issued October 16,
+1894. Published by William Morris. Bound in limp vellum.
+
+    The borders in this book, as well as the ten half borders, are here
+    used for the first time. It was first announced as in the press in the
+    list of March 31, 1894. Another edition was published by Lawrence &
+    Bullen in 1895.
+
+28. _The Book of Wisdom and Lies. A Book of Traditional Stories from
+Georgia and Asia._ Translated by Oliver Wardrop from the original of
+Sulkhan-Saba Orbeliani. 8vo. Golden type. In black and red. Borders 4a and
+4, and woodcut title. 250 on paper at two guineas, none on vellum.
+Finished September 20, issued October 29, 1894. Published by Bernard
+Quaritch. Bound in limp vellum.
+
+    The arms of Georgia, consisting of the Holy Coat, appear in the
+    woodcut title of this book.[17]
+
+29. _The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley._ Volume 1. Edited by F.
+S. Ellis. 8vo. Golden type. Borders 1a and 1, and woodcut title. 250 on
+paper at twenty-five shillings, 6 on vellum at eight guineas. Not dated,
+issued November 29, 1894. Published by William Morris. Bound in limp
+vellum without ties.
+
+    Red ink is not used in this volume, though it is used in the second
+    volume, and more sparingly in the third. Some of the half borders
+    designed for _The Wood Beyond the World_ reappear before the longer
+    poems. The Shelley was first announced as in the press in the list of
+    March 31, 1894.[18]
+
+30. _Psalmi Penitentiales. An English rhymed version of the Seven
+Penitential Psalms._ Edited by F. S. Ellis. 8vo. Chaucer type. In black
+and red. 300 on paper at seven shillings and sixpence, 12 on vellum at
+three guineas. Dated November 15, issued December 10, 1894. Published by
+William Morris. Bound in half holland.
+
+    These verses were taken from a manuscript Book of Hours, written at
+    Gloucester in the first half of the fifteenth century, but the Rev.
+    Professor Skeat has pointed out that the scribe must have copied them
+    from an older manuscript, as they are in the Kentish dialect of about
+    a century earlier. The half border on p. 34 appears for the first time
+    in this book.
+
+31. _Epistolade Contemptumundi di Frate Hieronymo da Ferrara Dellordinede
+Frati Predicatori la Quale Manda ad Elena Buonaccorsi Sua Madre._ Per
+CONSOLARLA DELLA MORTE DEL FRATELLO, _Suo Zio_. Edited by Charles Fairfax
+Murray from the original autograph letter. 8vo. Chaucer type. In black
+and red. Border 1. Woodcut on title designed by C. F. Murray and engraved
+by W. H. Hooper. 150 on paper and 6 on vellum. Dated November 30, ready
+December 12, 1894. Bound in half holland.
+
+    This little book was printed for Mr. C. Fairfax Murray, the owner of
+    the manuscript, and was not for sale in the ordinary way. The colophon
+    is in Italian, and the printer's mark is in red.
+
+32. _The Tale of Beowulf._ Done out of the old English tongue by WILLIAM
+MORRIS and A. J. WYATT. Large 4to. Troy type, with argument, side-notes,
+list of persons and places, and glossary in Chaucer type. In black and
+red. Borders 14a and 14, and woodcut title. 300 on paper at two guineas, 8
+on vellum at ten pounds. Dated January 10, issued February 2, 1895.
+Published by William Morris. Bound in limp vellum.
+
+    The borders in this book were only used once again, in the Jason. A
+    note to the reader printed on a slip in the Golden type was inserted
+    in each copy. _Beowulf_ was first announced as in preparation in the
+    list of May 20, 1893. The verse translation was begun by Mr. Morris,
+    with the aid of Mr. Wyatt's careful paraphrase of the text, on
+    February 21, 1893, and finished on April 10, 1894, but the argument
+    was not written by Mr. Morris until December 10, 1894.
+
+33. _Syr Perecyvelle of Gales._ Overseen by F. S. Ellis, after the edition
+edited by J. O. Halliwell from the Thornton MS. in the Library of Lincoln
+Cathedral. 8vo. Chaucer type. In black and red. Borders 13a and 13, and a
+woodcut designed by Sir E. Burne-Jones. 350 on paper at fifteen shillings,
+8 on vellum four guineas. Dated February 16, issued May 2, 1895. Published
+by William Morris. Bound in limp vellum.
+
+    This is the first of the series to which _Sire Degrevaunt and Syr
+    Isumbrace_ belong. They were all reprinted from the Camden Society's
+    volume of 1844, which was a favourite with Mr. Morris from his Oxford
+    days. _Syr Perecyvelle_ was first announced in the list of December 1,
+    1894. The shoulder-notes were added by Mr. Morris.
+
+34. _The Life and Death of Jason_, A Poem by WILLIAM MORRIS. Large 4to.
+Troy type, with a few words in Chaucer type. In black and red. Borders 14a
+and 14, and two woodcuts designed by Sir E. Burne-Jones and engraved on
+wood by W. Spielmeyer. 200 on paper at five guineas, 6 on vellum at twenty
+guineas. Dated May 25, issued July 5, 1895. Published by William Morris.
+Bound in limp vellum.
+
+    This book, announced as in the press in the list of April 21, 1894,
+    proceeded slowly, as several other books, notably the Chaucer, were
+    being printed at the same time. The text, which had been corrected for
+    the second edition of 1868, and for the edition of 1882, was again
+    revised by the author. The line fillings on the last page were cut on
+    metal for the book, and cast like type.
+
+29a. _The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley._ Volume 11. Edited by F.
+S. Ellis. 8vo. Golden type. In black and red. 250 on paper at twenty-five
+shillings, 6 on vellum at eight guineas. Not dated, issued March 25, 1895.
+Published by William Morris, Bound in limp vellum without ties.
+
+35. _Child Christopher and Goldilind the Fair._ By WILLIAM MORRIS. 2 vols.
+16mo. Chaucer type. In black and red. Borders 15a and 15, and woodcut
+title. 600 on paper at fifteen shillings, 12 on vellum at four guineas.
+Dated July 25, issued September 25, 1895. Published by William Morris.
+Bound in half holland, with labels printed in the Golden type.
+
+    The borders designed for this book were only used once again, in _Hand
+    and Soul_. The plot of the story was suggested by that of Havelok the
+    Dane, printed by the Early English Text Society.
+
+29b. _The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley._ Volume III. Edited by
+F. S. Ellis. 8vo. Golden type. In black and red. 250 on paper at
+twenty-five shillings, 6 on vellum at eight guineas. Dated August 21,
+issued October 28, 1895. Published by William Morris. Bound in limp vellum
+without ties.
+
+36. _Hand and Soul._ By DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. Reprinted from _The Germ_,
+for Messrs. Way & Williams, of Chicago. 16mo. Golden type. In black and
+red. Borders 15a and 15, and woodcut title. 300 paper copies and 11 vellum
+copies for America. 225 paper copies for sale in England at ten shillings,
+and 10 on vellum at thirty shillings. Dated October 24, issued December
+12, 1895. Bound in stiff vellum, without ties.
+
+    This was the only 16mo book bound in vellum. The English and American
+    copies have a slightly different colophon. The shoulder-notes were
+    added by Mr. Morris.
+
+37. _Poems Chosen out of the Works of Robert Herrick._ Edited by F. S.
+Ellis. 8vo. Golden type. In black and red. Borders 4a and 4, and woodcut
+title. 250 on paper at thirty shillings, 8 on vellum at eight guineas.
+Dated November 21, 1895, issued February 6, 1896. Published by William
+Morris. Bound in limp vellum.
+
+    This book was first announced as in preparation in the list of
+    December 1, 1894, and as in the press in that of July 1, 1895.
+
+38. _Poems Chosen out of the Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge._ Edited by
+F. S. Ellis. 8vo. Golden type. In black and red. Borders 13a and 13. 300
+on paper at a guinea, 8 on vellum at five guineas. Dated February 5,
+issued April 12, 1896. Published by William Morris. Bound in limp
+vellum.[19]
+
+    This book contains thirteen poems. It was first announced as in
+    preparation in the list of December 1, 1894, and as in the press in
+    that of November 26, 1895. It is the last of the series to which
+    Tennyson's _Maud_, and the poems of Rossetti, Keats, Shelley, and
+    Herrick belong.
+
+39. _The Well at the World's End._ By WILLIAM MORRIS. Large 4to. Double
+columns. Chaucer type. In black and red. Borders 16a, 16, 17a, 17, 18a,
+18, 19a, 19, and four woodcuts designed by Sir E. Burne-Jones. 350 on
+paper at five guineas, 8 on vellum at twenty guineas. Dated March 2,
+issued June 4, 1896. Sold by William Morris. Bound in limp vellum.
+
+    This book, delayed for various reasons, was longer on hand than any
+    other. It appears in no less than twelve lists, from that of December,
+    1892, to that of November 26, 1895, as "in the press." Trial pages,
+    including one in a single column, were ready as early as September,
+    1892, and the printing began on December 16th, of that year. The
+    edition of _The Well at the World's End_, published by Longmans, was
+    then being printed from the author's manuscript at the Chiswick Press,
+    and the Kelmscott Press edition was set up from the sheets of that
+    edition, which, though not issued until October, 1896, was finished in
+    1894. The eight borders and the six different ornaments between the
+    columns appear here for the first time, but are used again in _The
+    Water of the Wondrous Isles_, with the exception of two borders.
+
+40. _The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer._ Edited by F. S. Ellis. Folio. Chaucer
+type, with headings to the longer poems in Troy type. In black and red.
+Borders 20a to 26, woodcut title, and eighty-seven woodcut illustrations
+designed by Sir E. Burne-Jones. 425 on paper at twenty pounds, 13 on
+vellum at 120 guineas. Dated May 8, issued June 26, 1896. Published by
+William Morris. Bound in half holland.
+
+    The history of this book, which is by far the most important
+    achievement of the Kelmscott Press, is as follows:
+
+    As far back as June 11, 1891, Mr. Morris spoke of printing a Chaucer
+    with a black-letter fount, which he hoped to design. Four months
+    later, when most of the Troy type was designed and cut, he expressed
+    his intention to use it first on John Ball, and then on a Chaucer,
+    and perhaps a _Gesta Romanorum_. By January 1, 1892, the Troy type was
+    delivered, and early in that month two trial pages, one from _The
+    Cook's Tale_ and one from _Sir Thopas_, the latter in double columns,
+    were got out. It then became evident that the type was too large for a
+    Chaucer, and Mr. Morris decided to have it re-cut in the size known as
+    pica. By the end of June he was thus in possession of the type which,
+    in the list issued in December, 1892, he named the Chaucer type. In
+    July, 1892, another trial page, a passage from _The Knight's Tale_, in
+    double columns of fifty-eight lines, was got out, and found to be
+    satisfactory. The idea of the Chaucer as it now exists, with
+    illustrations by Sir Edward Burne-Jones, then took definite shape.
+
+    In a proof of the first list, dated April, 1892, there is an
+    announcement of the book as in preparation, in black-letter, large
+    quarto, but this was struck out, and does not appear in the list as
+    printed in May, nor yet in the July list. In that for December, 1892,
+    it is announced for the first time as to be in Chaucer type "with
+    about sixty designs by E. Burne-Jones." The next list, dated March 9,
+    1893, states that it will be a folio, and that it is in the press, by
+    which was meant that a few pages were in type. In the list dated
+    August 1, 1893, the probable price is given as twenty pounds. The next
+    four lists contain no fresh information, but on August 17, 1894, nine
+    days after the first sheet was printed, a notice was sent to the trade
+    that there would be 325 copies at twenty pounds, and about sixty
+    woodcut designs by Sir Edward Burne-Jones. Three months later it was
+    decided to increase the number of illustrations to upwards of seventy,
+    and to print another 100 copies of the book. A circular letter was
+    sent to the subscribers on November 14th, stating this, and giving
+    them an opportunity of cancelling their orders. Orders were not
+    withdrawn, the extra copies were immediately taken up, and the list
+    for December 1, 1894, which is the first containing full particulars,
+    announces that all paper copies are sold.[20]
+
+    Mr. Morris began designing his first folio border on February 1, 1893,
+    but was dissatisfied with the design and did not finish it. Three days
+    later he began the vine border for the first page, and finished it in
+    about a week, together with the initial word "Whan," the two lines of
+    heading, and the frame for the first picture, and Mr. Hooper engraved
+    the whole of these on one block. The first picture was engraved at
+    about the same time. A specimen of the first page (differing slightly
+    from the same page as it appears in the book) was shown at the Arts
+    and Crafts Exhibition in October and November, 1893, and was issued to
+    a few leading booksellers, but it was not until August 8, 1894, that
+    the first sheet was printed at 14, Upper Mall. On January 8, 1895,
+    another press was started at 21, Upper Mall, and from that time two
+    presses were almost exclusively at work on the Chaucer. By September
+    10th, the last page of _The Romaunt of the Rose_ was printed. In the
+    middle of February, 1896, Mr. Morris began designing the title. It was
+    finished on the 27th of the same month and engraved by Mr. Hooper in
+    March. On May 8th, a year and nine months after the printing of the
+    first sheet, the book was completed. On June 2nd, the first two copies
+    were delivered to Sir Edward Burne-Jones and Mr. Morris. Mr. Morris's
+    copy is now at Exeter College, Oxford, with other books printed at the
+    Kelmscott Press.
+
+    Besides the eighty-seven illustrations designed by Sir Edward
+    Burne-Jones, and engraved by W. H. Hooper, the Chaucer contains a
+    woodcut title, fourteen large borders, eighteen different frames
+    around the illustrations, and twenty-six large initial words designed
+    for the book by William Morris. Many of these were engraved by C. E.
+    Keats, and others by W. H. Hooper and W. Spielmeyer.
+
+    In February, 1896, a notice was issued respecting special bindings, of
+    which Mr. Morris intended to design four.
+
+    Two of these were to have been executed under Mr. Cobden-Sanderson's
+    direction at the Doves Bindery, and two by Messrs. J. & J. Leighton.
+    But the only design that he was able to complete was for a full white
+    pigskin binding, which has now been carried out at the Doves Bindery
+    on forty-eight copies, including two on vellum.[21]
+
+41. _The Earthly Paradise._ By WILLIAM MORRIS. Volume I. _Prologue: The
+Wanderers._ March: _Atalanta's Race. The Man Born to be King._ Medium
+4to. Golden type. In black and red. Borders 27a, 27, 28a, and 28, and
+woodcut title. 225 on paper at thirty shillings, 6 on vellum at seven
+guineas. Dated May 7, issued July 24, 1896. Published by William Morris.
+Bound in limp vellum.
+
+    This was the first book printed on the paper with the apple
+    water-mark. The seven other volumes followed it at intervals of a few
+    months. None of the ten borders used in the _Earthly Paradise_ appear
+    in any other book. The four different half-borders round the poems to
+    the months are also not used elsewhere. The first border was designed
+    in June, 1895.
+
+42. _Laudes Beatae Mariae Virginis._ Latin poems taken from a Psalter
+written in England about A.D. 1220. Edited by S. C. Cockerell. Large 4to.
+Troy type. In black, red, and blue. 250 on paper at ten shillings, 10 on
+vellum at two guineas. Dated July 7, issued August 7, 1896. Published by
+William Morris. Bound in half holland.
+
+    This was the first book printed at the Kelmscott Press in three
+    colours.[22] The manuscript from which the poems were taken was one of
+    the most beautiful of the English books in Mr. Morris's possession,
+    both as regards writing and ornament. No author's name is given to the
+    poems, but after this book was issued the Rev. E. S. Dewick pointed
+    out that they had already been printed at Tegernsee in 1579, in a 16mo
+    volume in which they are ascribed to Stephen Langton. A note to this
+    effect was printed in the Chaucer type in December 28, 1896, and
+    distributed to the subscribers.
+
+41a. _The Earthly Paradise._ By WILLIAM MORRIS. Volume II. April: _The
+Doom of King Acrisius. The Proud King._ Medium 4to. Golden type. In black
+and red. Borders 29a, 29, 28a, and 28. 225 on paper at thirty shillings, 6
+on vellum at seven guineas. Dated June 24, issued September 17, 1896.
+Published by William Morris. Bound in limp vellum.
+
+43. _The Floure and the Leafe, and The Boke of Cupide, God of Love, or The
+Cuckow and the Nightingale._ Edited by F. S. Ellis. Medium 4to. Troy type,
+with note and colophon in Chaucer type. In black and red. 300 on paper at
+ten shillings, 10 on vellum at two guineas. Dated August 21, issued
+November 2, 1896. Published at the Kelmscott Press. Bound in half holland.
+
+    Two of the initial words from the Chaucer are used in this book, one
+    at the beginning of each poem. These poems were formerly attributed to
+    Chaucer, but recent scholarship has proved that _The Floure and the
+    Leafe_ is much later than Chaucer, and that _The Cuckow and the
+    Nightingale_ was written by Sir Thomas Clanvowe about A.D. 1405-10.
+
+44. _The Shepheardes Calender: Conteyning Twelve Aeglogues, Proportionable
+to the Twelve Monethes._ By EDMUND SPENCER. Edited by F. S. Ellis. Medium
+4to. Golden type. In black and red. With twelve full page illustrations by
+A. J. Gaskin. 225 on paper at a guinea, 6 on vellum at three guineas.
+Dated October 14, issued November 26, 1896. Published at the Kelmscott
+Press. Bound in half holland.
+
+    The illustrations in this book were printed from process blocks by
+    Walker & Boutall. By an oversight, the names of author, editor, and
+    artist were omitted from the colophon.
+
+41b. _The Earthly Paradise._ By WILLIAM MORRIS. Volume III. May: _The
+Story of Cupid and Psyche. The Writing on the Image._ June: _The Love of
+Alcestis. The Lady of the Land._ Medium 4to. Golden type. In black and
+red. Borders 30a, 30, 27a, 27, 28a, 28, 29a, and 29. 225 on paper at
+thirty shillings, 6 on vellum at seven guineas. Dated August 24, issued
+December 5, 1896. Published at the Kelmscott Press. Bound in limp vellum.
+
+41c. _The Earthly Paradise._ By WILLIAM MORRIS. Volume IV. July: _The Son
+of Croesus. The Watching of the Falcon._ August: _Pygmalion and the Image.
+Ogier the Dane._ Medium 4to. Golden type. In black and red. Borders 31a,
+31, 29a, 29, 28a, 28, 30a, and 30. Dated November 25, 1896, issued
+January 22, 1897. Published at the Kelmscott Press. Bound in limp vellum.
+
+41d. _The Earthly Paradise._ By WILLIAM MORRIS. Volume V. September. _The
+Death of Paris. The Land East of the Sun and West of the Moon._ October:
+_The Story of Acontius and Cydippe. The Man Who Never Laughed Again._
+Medium 4to. Golden type. In black and red. Borders 29a, 29, 27a, 27, 28a,
+28, 31a, and 31. Finished December 24, 1896, issued March 9, 1897.
+Published at the Kelmscott Press. Bound in limp vellum.
+
+41e. _The Earthly Paradise._ By WILLIAM MORRIS. Volume VI. November: _The
+Story of Rhodope. The Lovers of Gudrun._ Medium 4to. Golden type. In black
+and red. Borders 27a, 27, 30a, and 30. Finished February 18, issued May
+11, 1897. Published at the Kelmscott Press. Bound in limp vellum.
+
+41f. _The Earthly Paradise._ By WILLIAM MORRIS. Volume VII. December: _The
+Golden Apples. The Fostering of Aslaug._ January: _Bellerophon at Argos.
+The Ring Given to Venus._ Medium 4to. Golden type. In black and red.
+Borders 29a, 29, 31a, 31, 30a, 30, 27a, and 27. Finished March 17, issued
+July 29, 1897. Published at the Kelmscott Press. Bound in limp vellum.
+
+45. _The Water of the Wondrous Isles._ By WILLIAM MORRIS. Large 4to.
+Chaucer type, in double columns, with a few lines in Troy type at the end
+of each of the seven parts. In black and red. Borders 16a, 17a, 18a, 19,
+and 19a. 250 on paper at three guineas, 6 on vellum at twelve guineas.
+Dated April 1, issued July 29, 1897. Published at the Kelmscott Press.
+Bound in limp vellum.
+
+    Unlike _The Well at the World's End_, with which it is mainly uniform,
+    this book has red shoulder-notes and no illustrations. Mr. Morris
+    began the story in verse on February 4, 1895. A few days later he
+    began it afresh in alternate prose and verse; but he was again
+    dissatisfied, and finally began it a third time in prose alone, as it
+    now stands. It was first announced as in the press in the list of June
+    1, 1896, at which date the early chapters were in type, although they
+    were not printed until about a month later. The designs for the
+    initial words "Whilom" and "Empty" were begun by William Morris
+    shortly before his death, and were finished by R. Catterson-Smith.
+    Another edition was published by Longmans on October 1, 1897.
+
+41g. _The Earthly Paradise._ By WILLIAM MORRIS. Volume VIII. February:
+_Bellerophon in Lycia. The Hill of Venus. Epilogue. L'Envoi._ Medium 4to.
+Golden type. In black and red. Borders 28a, 28, 29a, and 29. Finished
+June 10, issued September 27, 1897. Published at the Kelmscott Press.
+Bound in limp vellum.
+
+    The colophon of this final volume of _The Earthly Paradise_ contains
+    the following note: "The borders in this edition of _The Earthly
+    Paradise_ were designed by William Morris, except those on page 4 of
+    Volumes ii., iii., and iv., afterwards repeated, which were designed
+    to match the opposite borders, under William Morris's direction, by R.
+    Catterson-Smith, who also finished the initial words 'Whilom' and
+    'Empty' for _The Water of the Wondrous Isles_. All the other letters,
+    borders, title-pages, and ornaments used at the Kelmscott Press,
+    except the Greek type in _Atalanta in Calydon_, were designed by
+    William Morris."
+
+46. Two trial pages of the projected edition of Lord Berners's Translation
+of Froissart's Chronicles. Folio. Chaucer type, with heading in Troy type.
+In black and red. Border 32, containing the shields of France, the Empire,
+and England, and a half-border containing those of Reginald, Lord Cobham,
+Sir John Chandos, and Sir Walter Manny. 160 on vellum at a guinea, none on
+paper. Dated September, issued October 7, 1897. Published at the Kelmscott
+Press. Not bound.
+
+    It was the intention of Mr. Morris to make this edition of what was
+    since his college days almost his favourite book a worthy companion to
+    the Chaucer. It was to have been in two volumes folio, with new cusped
+    initials and heraldic ornament throughout. Each volume was to have had
+    a large frontispiece designed by Sir Edward Burne-Jones; the subject
+    of the first was to have been St. George, that of the second Fame. A
+    trial page was set up in the Troy type soon after it came from the
+    foundry, in January, 1892. Early in 1893 trial pages were set up in
+    the Chaucer type, and in the list for March 9th of that year the book
+    is erroneously stated to be in the press. In the three following lists
+    it is announced as in preparation. In the list dated December 1, 1893,
+    and in the three next lists, it is again announced as in the press,
+    and the number to be printed is given as 150. Meanwhile the printing
+    of the Chaucer had been begun, and as it was not feasible to carry on
+    two folios at the same time, the Froissart again comes under the
+    heading "in preparation" in the lists from December 1, 1894, to June
+    1, 1896. In the prospectus of _The Shepheardes Calender_, dated
+    November 12, 1896, it is announced as abandoned. At that time about
+    thirty-four pages were in type, but no sheet had been printed. Before
+    the type was broken up, on December 24, 1896, thirty-two copies of
+    sixteen of these pages were printed and given as a memento to personal
+    friends of the poet and printer whose death now made the completion of
+    the book impossible. This suggested the idea of printing two pages for
+    wider distribution. The half-border had been engraved in April, 1894,
+    by W. Spielmeyer, but the large border only existed as a drawing. It
+    was engraved with great skill and spirit by C. E. Keates, and the two
+    pages were printed by Stephen Mowlem, with the help of an apprentice,
+    in a manner worthy of the designs.
+
+47. _Sire Degrevaunt._ Edited by F. S. Ellis after the edition printed by
+J. O. Halliwell. 8vo. Chaucer type. In black and red. Borders 1a and 1,
+and a woodcut designed by Sir Edward Burne-Jones. 350 on paper at fifteen
+shillings, 8 on vellum at four guineas. Dated March 14, 1896, issued
+November 12, 1897. Published at the Kelmscott Press. Bound in half
+holland.
+
+    This book, subjects from which were painted by Sir Edward Burne-Jones
+    on the walls of the Red House, Upton, Bexley Heath, many years ago,
+    was always a favourite with Mr. Morris. The frontispiece was not
+    printed until October, 1897, eighteen months after the text was
+    finished.
+
+48. _Syr Ysambrace._ Edited by F. S. Ellis after the edition printed by J.
+O. Halliwell from the MS, in the Library of Lincoln Cathedral, with some
+corrections. 8vo. Chaucer type. In black and red. Borders 4a and 4, and a
+woodcut designed by Sir Edward Burne-Jones. 350 on paper at twelve
+shillings, 8 on vellum at four guineas. Dated July 14, issued November 11,
+1897. Published at the Kelmscott Press. Bound in half holland.
+
+    This is the third and last of the reprints from the Camden Society's
+    volume of Thornton Romances. The text was all set up and partly
+    printed by June, 1896, at which time it was intended to include _Sir
+    Eglamour_ in the same volume.
+
+49. _Some German Woodcuts of the Fifteenth Century. Being thirty-five
+reproductions from books that were in the library of the late William
+Morris._ Edited, with a list of the principal woodcut books in that
+library, by S. C. Cockerell. Large 4to. Golden type. In red and black. 225
+on paper at thirty shillings, 8 on vellum at five guineas. Dated December
+15, 1897, issued January 6, 1898. Published at the Kelmscott Press. Bound
+in half holland.
+
+    Of these thirty-five reproductions twenty-nine were all that were done
+    of a series chosen by Mr. Morris to illustrate a catalogue of his
+    library, and the other six were prepared by him for an article in the
+    fourth number of _Bibliographical_ part of which is reprinted as an
+    introduction to the book. The process blocks (with one exception) were
+    made by Walker & Boutall, and are of the same size as the original
+    cuts.
+
+50. _The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs._ By
+WILLIAM MORRIS. Small folio. Chaucer type, with title and headings to the
+four books in Troy type. In black and red. Borders 33a and 33, and two
+illustrations designed by Sir Edward Burne-Jones and engraved by W. H.
+Hooper. 160 on paper at six guineas, 6 on vellum at twenty guineas. Dated
+January 19, issued February 25, 1898. Published at the Kelmscott Press.
+Bound in limp vellum, with blue silk ties.
+
+    The two borders used in this book were almost the last that Mr. Morris
+    designed. They were intended for an edition of _The Hill of Venus_,
+    which was to have been written in prose by him and illustrated by Sir
+    Edward Burne-Jones. The foliage was suggested by the ornament in two
+    Psalters of the last half of the thirteenth century in the library at
+    Kelmscott House. The initial A at the beginning of the third book was
+    designed in March, 1893, for the Froissart, and does not appear
+    elsewhere.
+
+    An edition of _Sigurd the Volsung_, which Mr. Morris justly considered
+    his masterpiece, was contemplated early in the history of the
+    Kelmscott Press. An announcement appears in a proof of the first list,
+    dated April, 1892, but it was excluded from the list as issued in May.
+    It did not reappear until the list of November 26, 1895, in which, the
+    Chaucer being near its completion, _Sigurd_ comes under the heading
+    "in preparation," as a folio in Troy type, "with about twenty-five
+    illustrations by Sir Edward Burne-Jones." In the list of June 1, 1896,
+    it is finally announced as "In the press," the number of illustrations
+    is increased to forty, and other particulars are given. Four borders
+    had then been designed for it, two of which were used on pages 470 and
+    471 of the Chaucer. The other two have not been used, though one of
+    them has been engraved. Two pages only were in type, thirty-two copies
+    of which were struck off on January 11, 1897, and given to friends,
+    with the sixteen pages of Froissart mentioned above.
+
+51. _The Sundering Flood._ Written by WILLIAM MORRIS. Overseen for the
+press by May Morris. 8vo. Chaucer type. In black and red. Border 10, and a
+map. 300 on paper at two guineas. Dated November 15, 1897, issued February
+25, 1898. Published at the Kelmscott Press. Bound in half holland.
+
+    This was the last romance by William Morris. He began to write it on
+    December 21, 1895, and dictated the final words on September 8, 1896.
+    The map pasted into the cover was drawn by H. Cribb for Walker &
+    Boutall, who prepared the block. In the edition that Longmans are
+    about to issue the bands of robbers called in the Kelmscott edition
+    Red and Black Skinners appear correctly as Red and Black Skimmers. The
+    name was probably suggested by that of the pirates called "escumours
+    of the sea" on page 154 of _Godfrey of Boloyne_.
+
+52. _Love is Enough, or the Freeing of Pharamond; A Morality._ Written by
+William Morris. Large 4to. Troy type, with stage directions in Chaucer
+type. In black, red, and blue. Borders 6a and 7, and two illustrations
+designed by Sir Edward Burne-Jones. 300 on paper at two guineas, 8 on
+vellum at ten guineas. Dated December 11, 1897, issued March 24, 1898.
+Published at the Kelmscott Press. Bound in limp vellum.
+
+    This was the second book printed in three colours at the Kelmscott
+    Press. As explained in the colophon, the final picture was not
+    designed for this particular edition.
+
+53. _A Note by William Morris on his Aims in Founding the Kelmscott Press.
+Together with a Short Description of the Press_, by S. C. COCKERELL. And
+an Annotated List of the Books Printed Thereat. Octavo. Golden type, with
+five pages in the Troy and Chaucer types. In black and red. Borders 4a and
+4, and a woodcut designed by Sir E. Burne-Jones. 525 on paper at ten
+shillings, 12 on vellum at two guineas. Dated March 4, issued March 24,
+1898. Published at the Kelmscott Press. Bound in half holland.
+
+Various Lists, Leaflets, and Announcements Printed at the Kelmscott Press:
+
+Eighteen lists of the books printed or in preparation at the Kelmscott
+Press were issued to booksellers and subscribers. The dates of these are
+May, July, and December, 1892; March 9, May 20, May 27, August 1, and
+December 1, 1893; March 31, April 21, July 2, October 1 (a leaflet), and
+December 1, 1894; July 1 and November 26, 1895; June 1, 1896; February 16
+and July 28, 1897. The three lists for 1892, and some copies of that for
+March 9, 1893, were printed on Whatman paper, the last of the stock bought
+for the first edition of _The Roots of the Mountains_. Besides these,
+twenty-nine announcements, relating mainly to individual books, were
+issued; and eight leaflets, containing extracts from the lists, were
+printed for distribution by Messrs. Morris & Co. The following items, as
+having a more permanent interest than most of these announcements, merit a
+full description:
+
+1. Two forms of invitation to the annual gatherings of the Hammersmith
+Socialist Society on January 30, 1892, and February 11, 1893. Golden type.
+
+2. A four-page leaflet for the Ancoats Brotherhood, with the frontispiece
+from the Kelmscott Press edition of _A Dream of John Ball_ on the first
+page. March, 189 Golden type. 2500 copies.
+
+3. An address to Sir Lowthian Bell, Bart., from his employees, dated 30th
+June, 1894. Eight pages. Golden type. 250 on paper and 2 on vellum.
+
+4. A leaflet, with fly-leaf, headed _An American Memorial to Keats_,
+together with a form of invitation to the unveiling of his bust in
+Hampstead Parish Church on July 16, 1894. Golden type. 750 copies.
+
+5. A slip giving the text of a memorial tablet to Dr. Thomas Sadler, for
+distribution at the unveiling of it in Rosslyn Hill Chapel, Hampstead.
+November, 1894. Golden type. 450 copies.
+
+6. Scholarship certificates for the technical Education Board of the
+London County Council, printed in the oblong borders designed for the
+pictures in Chaucer's Works. One of these borders was not used in the
+book, and this is its only appearance. The first certificate was printed
+in November, 1894, and was followed in January, 1896, by eleven
+certificates; in January, 1897, by six certificates; and in February,
+1898, by eleven certificates, all differently worded. Golden type. The
+numbers varied from 12 to 2500 copies.
+
+7. Programmes of the Kelmscott Press annual _Wayzgoose_ for the years
+1892-95. These were printed without supervision from Mr. Morris.
+
+8. Specimen showing the three types used at the Press for insertion in the
+first edition of Strange's _Alphabets_ March, 1895. 2000 ordinary copies
+and 60 on large paper.
+
+9. Cards for Associates of the Deaconess Institution for the Diocese of
+Rochester. One side of this card is printed in Chaucer type; on the other
+there is a prayer in the Troy type enclosed in a small border which was
+not used elsewhere. It was designed for the illustrations of a projected
+edition of _The House of the Wolfings_, April, 1897. 250 copies.
+
+
+
+
+INDEX.
+
+
+  A
+
+  _AEneid, The_, 122-124, 144
+
+  _AEschylus_, 262
+
+  _Agamemnon_, Browning's, 124
+
+  Allingham, William, 42, 48, 70
+
+  Amiens Cathedral, article on, by Morris, 34, 36-39
+
+  _Amis and Amile_, translation by Morris, 229
+
+  Archbishop of Canterbury, 177
+
+  Aristophanes, 262
+
+  Arnold, Matthew, 149
+
+  Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society, The, 191
+
+  Art Worker's Guild, The, 192
+
+  _Atalanta in Calydon_, Swinburne's, 229
+
+  _Athenaeum, The_, 152
+
+
+  B
+
+  Bagehot, Walter, quoted, 36
+
+  _Ballads and Narrative Poems_, Rossetti's, 229
+
+  Batchelor, Mr., 221
+
+  Bax, E. Belfort, 218
+
+  _Beata Beatrix_, picture by Rossetti, 55
+
+  _Beauty of Life, The_, Morris's lecture on, 65
+
+  Belgium, 110
+
+  _Beowulf, The Tale of_, 230, 231, 262
+
+  Besant, Mrs., 180
+
+  Bethel, Alfred, article on, by Morris, 34
+
+  Bible, the, 262
+
+  _Biblia Innocentium_, Mackail's, 228
+
+  Bibliographical Society, The, 192
+
+  Birkbeck Hill, Dr., 47, 73
+
+  Birmingham Society of Artists, lecture to, 62
+
+  Blackburn, 168
+
+  Blake, William, 263
+
+  "Bloody Sunday," 179
+
+  Boccaccio, 263
+
+  _Book of Wisdom and Lies, The_, 230
+
+  Borrow, George, 263
+
+  British Museum, the woodblocks of Kelmscott Press in possession of, 235
+
+  Brown, Madox, 113
+
+  Browning, Robert, his poems, 37, 39, 40, 57-59
+
+  Bryant, William Cullen, his translation of _The Odyssey_ compared with
+      Morris's translation, 142
+
+  Bulgaria, 146
+
+  Burne-Jones, Edward, 1;
+    his first meeting with Morris, 23, 24;
+    the beginning of his art, 26;
+    his trip with Morris and Fulford through Northern France, 26, 27;
+    his decision to leave college and study art, 27;
+    his admiration for Rossetti, 26, 27 _et seq._
+
+  Bury Wood, 15, 16
+
+  Byron, 236
+
+
+  C
+
+  Cambridge University Library, 221
+
+  Canterbury Cathedral, Morris's early visit to, 6
+
+  _Canterbury Tales, The_, 115
+
+  _Captain Singleton_, 263
+
+  Carlyle, Thomas, 24, 150, 263
+
+  _Carmagnole, The_, song, 178
+
+  Carpets, 89
+
+  Catterson-Smith, R., 233
+
+  Catullus, 262
+
+  _Chants for Socialists_, 218
+
+  Chartres, 27
+
+  Chaucer, 115, 116, 119, 137, 231-234, 237, 238, 256, 262
+
+  Chaucer type, the, 224
+
+  _Child Christopher and Goldilands the Fair_, 231
+
+  Chingford Hotel, 15
+
+  Chiswick Press, the, 33, 205, 206
+
+  Clarke, William, 166
+
+  Clay Road, 15
+
+  Cockerell, S. C., 234
+
+  Coleridge's _Poems_, selection from, by Morris, 232, 263
+
+  _Colonel Jack_, 263
+
+  Colour, Morris's opinions on, 83, 84, 92
+
+  _Commonweal, The_, organ of the Socialist League, 175, 183, 185, 195,
+      201, 203, 209, 210, 218
+
+  Crane, Walter, 175, 192, 229
+
+
+  D
+
+  _Daily Chronicle, The_, Morris's letters to, concerning Epping Forest,
+      12-18;
+    letter by Morris on Socialism, 186-189
+
+  _Daily News, The_, quotation from, 146-148
+
+  _Daisy Chain, The_, its influence on Morris, 24
+
+  Dante, 262
+
+  Day, Lewis, 31, 78
+
+  _Defence of Guenevere, The_, 54, 59, 228
+
+  Democratic Federation, the, 157, 168, 170, 174, 180
+
+  De Vinne, Th., on the Kelmscott Press, 224
+
+  Dickens, Charles, 263
+
+  Dixon, Canon, 34
+
+  _Dream of John Ball, A_, 195, 201-203, 228
+
+  Dumas, Alexandre, 263
+
+  Duerer, 261
+
+  Dyes, Morris's preferences in, 91
+
+
+  E
+
+  _Earthly Paradise, The_, 59, 115, 116-120, 144, 219, 233
+
+  Eastern Question Association, The, 148
+
+  _Edda, The_, 262
+
+  Ellis, F. S., 221-232, 237
+
+  _English Illustrated Magazine, The_, 218
+
+  _Epistola de Contemptu Mundi_, 230
+
+  Epping Forest, Morris's early familiarity with, 7, 11;
+    his letters concerning its destruction, 11-18
+
+  _Erewhon_, Kingsley's, 163
+
+  _Eve of Crecy_, poem by Morris, 55
+
+  Exeter College, 193
+
+  _Exile, The_, 262
+
+  _Eyrbyggja Saga, The_, 144
+
+
+  F
+
+  Fair Mead Bottom, 15
+
+  Farringdon Road, 101, 177
+
+  Faulkner, Charles, 47, 70, 73, 108, 111, 263
+
+  _Floure and the Leafe, The_, 233
+
+  Forman, Buxton, 205, 206
+
+  Freeman, E. A., 149
+
+  Froissart, 57, 233
+
+
+  G
+
+  _Germ, The_, 33
+
+  _Gertha's Lovers_, 36
+
+  _Ghirlandata, The_, picture by Rossetti, 55
+
+  Giotto, 261
+
+  Gisli, 109
+
+  Glasgow, 168
+
+  _Glittering Plain, The_, 221, 229, 246, 248
+
+  Godefrey of Boloyne, Caxton's history of, 228
+
+  _Golden Legend_, Caxton's, 221, 223, 227, 228
+
+  Golden type, the, 221
+
+  _Goldilocks and Goldilocks_, 7, 228
+
+  _Good King Wenceslas_, ballad printed at the Kelmscott Press, 4, 5
+
+  _Gothic Architecture_, lecture by Morris, 228
+
+  Green, J. R., 149
+
+  Grettir, 109
+
+  Grimm, 263
+
+  Gudrun, 109
+
+
+  H
+
+  Hammersmith, 97, 107, 108, 176, 181, 257
+
+  Hammersmith Socialist Society, The, 185, 189
+
+  _Hand and Soul_, Rossetti's, 231
+
+  _Hardy Norseman's Home of Yore_, 149
+
+  Havre, 27
+
+  _Heir of Redclyffe, The_, 24
+
+  Herodotus, 262
+
+  Herrick's _Poems_, 231
+
+  Hesiod, 262
+
+  High Beach, 17
+
+  _History of Florence_, Arezzo's, 220
+
+  _History of Oversea_, translated by Morris, 230
+
+  _Historyes of Troye_, Caxton's, 223, 228
+
+  _Hollow Land, The_, 36, 40
+
+  Homer, 262
+
+  Hornbeams, Morris's liking for, 13
+
+  _House of the Wolfings, The_, 195, 203-205, 207, 239, 246
+
+  _Huckleberry Finn_, 263
+
+  Hughes, Arthur, 49
+
+  Hugo, Victor, 263
+
+
+  I
+
+  Iceland, Morris's first voyage to, 108-110;
+    second voyage, 110
+
+  _Idylls of the King_, Tennyson's, 126, 136
+
+  Irish National League, The, 180
+
+
+  J
+
+  _Jorrocks, Mr._, 263
+
+  _Justice_, organ of the Democratic Federation, 168, 169
+
+
+  K
+
+  Kalevala, 262
+
+  Keats, John, 24, 27, 34, 229, 238, 263
+
+  Kelmscott Church, 258
+
+  Kelmscott House, 108, 221
+
+  Kelmscott Books, prices of, 238
+
+  Kelmscott Manor House, 101-108
+
+  Kelmscott Press, The, 177, 219-239, 255
+
+  _King's Lesson, A_, 203
+
+  Kingsley, Charles, 24, 25
+
+  Koburger, Anthony, 223
+
+
+  L
+
+  Lang, Andrew, 122-124
+
+  _Laudes Beatae Mariae Virginis_, 233
+
+  _Laxdaela Saga, The_, 116
+
+  Lechlade, 101
+
+  Leeds, 168
+
+  Leicester, 168
+
+  Leonardo, 261
+
+  _Lesser Arts, The_, lecture by Morris on, 94
+
+  _Life and Death of Jason, The_, 114, 231, 238
+
+  _Life of Cardinal Wolsey_, Cavendish's, 228
+
+  Linnell, Alfred, 180, 181
+
+  _Looking Backward_, Bellamy's, 209
+
+  Loughton, 15
+
+  _Love is Enough_, 120-122, 219, 234
+
+  _Lovers of Gudrun, The_, 116
+
+  Lowell, J. R., quoted, 57, 229
+
+  Lucretius, 262
+
+
+  M
+
+  _Mabinogion_, 263
+
+  Mackail, Mr., 24, 33, 62, 71, 97, 110, 111, 120, 122, 150, 191, 193,
+      229, 263
+
+  Maeterlinck, Morris compared to, 57
+
+  Madox-Brown, Ford, 70
+
+  Magnusson, Mr., 108, 125
+
+  _Mahabbarata_, 262
+
+  _Making the Best of It_, lecture by Morris on house-decoration, 83
+
+  Manchester, 168
+
+  Marlborough College, Morris a student in, 6, 9
+
+  Marshall, Peter Paul, 70
+
+  _Maud_, Tennyson's, 228
+
+  Meinhold, William, 229
+
+  _Men and Women_, Browning's, reviewed by Morris, 34, 39
+
+  Merton Abbey, 175, 190
+
+  Milton, 263
+
+  _Moll Flanders_, 263
+
+  Monk Wood, 15
+
+  Morris, May (Mrs. Sparling), daughter of Wm. Morris, 177
+
+  Morris, Mrs., wife of William Morris, 51, 53, 59, 66
+
+  Morris and Co., 69;
+    formation of the firm, 69;
+    prospectus of, 71, 72;
+    dissolution of, 111-113
+
+  _Morte d'Arthur_, painting from, at Oxford Union, 49, 263
+
+  Murray, Fairfax, 230
+
+
+  N
+
+  _Nature of the Gothic, The_, 160, 228
+
+  _Newcomes, The_, quotation from, 30
+
+  Newman, Jno., 25
+
+  _News from Nowhere_, 98, 102;
+    quotation from, 103-107, 163-165, 195, 200, 209-212, 213, 238, 258
+
+  _Nibelungen Lied_, 262
+
+  Njal, 109
+
+
+  O
+
+  _Odyssey, The_, 142-144, 210
+
+  _Old Story Retold, An_, see _A King's Lesson_
+
+  _Omar Khayyam_, 262
+
+  Orbeliani, Sulkhan-Saba, 230
+
+  _Order of Chivalry, The_, Caxton's translation of, 228
+
+  _Ordination of Knighthood_, Morris's translation of, 228
+
+  Ovid, 262
+
+  Oxford, 191;
+    Morris's life at, 1-29;
+    abuses at, 22-23, 31, 41, 168, 193
+
+  _Oxford and Cambridge Magazine, The_, 33
+
+  Oxford Union, paintings for, 49-52, 54
+
+
+  P
+
+  _Pall-Mall Gazette, The_, 189, 261
+
+  Paper used at Kelmscott Press, 222
+
+  Patmore, Coventry, on Oxford Union paintings, 52, 120
+
+  _Penitential Psalms, The_, 230
+
+  Pennell, Joseph, 181
+
+  _Percyvelle of Gales, Syr_, 231
+
+  _Piers Plowman_, 262
+
+  _Pilgrims of Hope, The_, poem by Morris, 195-201
+
+  _Pilgrim's Progress_, 263
+
+  Plato, 262
+
+  _Pliny_, Jensen's 220
+
+  _Poems_, Keats's, 229
+
+  _Poems_, Shakespeare's, 228
+
+  _Poems by the Way_, 7, 227
+
+  Pollen, J. Hungerford, 49
+
+  _Praise of My Lady_, poem by Morris, 52, 53
+
+  _Prinsep_, Valentine, 49
+
+  _Prioress's Tale, The_, Burne-Jones's paintings from, 47
+
+  Professorship of Poetry at Oxford, Morris declines, 149
+
+  _Proserpine_, picture by Rossetti, 54
+
+  Pugin, 31
+
+
+  Q
+
+  Queen Square, Morris's residence in, 97, 101
+
+  _Quest, The_, article by Morris in, 102
+
+
+  R
+
+  Raphael, 261
+
+  _Rapunzel_, poem by Morris, 57
+
+  Red Lion Square, 46, 71, 81
+
+  Red House, The, 61-68, 96, 97, 101, 114
+
+  Rembrandt, 261
+
+  Restoration of ancient buildings, 32
+
+  _Reynard the Fox_, 263
+
+  _Robinson Crusoe_, 263
+
+  Robinson, Ralph, 213, 228
+
+  Rome, 61
+
+  _Roots of the Mountains, The_, 195, 207-209, 246
+
+  _Rosamond_, Swinburne's, 54
+
+  Rossetti, Dante Gabriel, 1, 9, 27;
+    Morris's first meeting with, 40-42;
+    his service to Morris, 43-46;
+    at Oxford, 49-51;
+    and Jane Burden, 51;
+    _The Defence of Guenevere_ dedicated to, 54, 55;
+    his part in the formation of the firm "Morris, Marshall, Faulkner,
+      & Co.," 69-74;
+    at Kelmscott, 101-103, 108;
+    his attitude respecting the dissolution of the firm, 111-113;
+    his _Hand and Soul_, 231
+
+  Rossetti, William, 70, 112, 113
+
+  _Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, The_, 144
+
+  Rubens, Jacobus, 220
+
+  _Ruin, The_, 262
+
+  Ruskin, 19, 23, 24, 27, 151, 160, 263
+
+
+  S
+
+  St. Mark's Cathedral, 154
+
+  Savernake Forest, Morris's early familiarity with, 7
+
+  Savonarola, 230
+
+  Schoeffer, Peter, 223
+
+  Scott, Gilbert, 31, 152
+
+  Scott, Walter, 5, 19, 263
+
+  _Shahnameh_, 262
+
+  Shakespeare, 24, 137
+
+  Shaw, Bernard, on _Nupkins Awakened_, 31, 179
+
+  Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 24, 101, 230, 263
+
+  _Shepherde's Calender, The_, 233
+
+  _Sidonia the Sorceress_, Lady Wilde's, 228
+
+  _Signs of Change_, lectures by Morris, 218
+
+  Sigurd, 109
+
+  _Sir Galahad_, 54
+
+  _Sire Degravaunt_, 66, 234
+
+  Socialism, 162-218
+
+  _Socialism from the Root Up_, book by Morris and Bax, 218
+
+  Socialist League, The, 175-177, 180, 182, 185
+
+  Society for Protection of Ancient Buildings, The, 153, 157
+
+  Society of Antiquaries, 192
+
+  Sophocles, 262
+
+  _Spectator, The_, letter from Morris in, 252
+
+  Stanhope, Spencer, 49
+
+  Stanmore Tapestry, The, 99
+
+  Stead, William, 263
+
+  Stevenson, Robert Louis, his letter to his father, 9, 124
+
+  _Stones of Venice, The_, 27, 160, 228
+
+  _Story of the Glittering Plain, The_, 109, 218, 227, 243
+
+  _Story of Sigur the Volsung, The_, 125-142, 144, 146, 227, 234, 238
+
+  Street, George Edmund, 31, 42, 63
+
+  _Sundering Flood, The_, 234, 239, 240, 242, 257
+
+  Surts-hellir, cave at, 109
+
+  _Svend and his Brethren_, 36, 37
+
+  Swainslow, 256
+
+  Swinburne, A. C., 229
+
+  _Syr Ysambrace_, 234
+
+
+  T
+
+  _Tables Turned, The; or, Nupkins Awakened_, farce by Morris, 177
+
+  _Tale of the Emperor Constans, The_, translated by Morris, 230
+
+  _Tale of King Florus and Fair Tehane_, translated by Morris, 227
+
+  Taylor, George Warrington, Morris's business manager, 97
+
+  Tennyson, Alfred, 24, 177
+
+  _Teutonic Mythology_, 263
+
+  Tewkesbury, restoration of the Abbey Church at, 152
+
+  Thackeray, William M., 24
+
+  Theocritus, 262
+
+  _Thousand and One Nights, The_, 263
+
+  _Three Northern Love-Stories and Other Tales_, translations by
+      Morris, 125
+
+  Trafalgar Square, 161, 179-181
+
+  Troy Type, The, 223, 225
+
+  Tyndall, Prof., 177
+
+
+  U
+
+  _Uncle Remus_, 263
+
+  Upton, Morris's residence at, 62, 96
+
+  _Useful Work versus Useless Toil_, lecture by Morris, 165
+
+  _Utopia_, More's, 213-217, 228, 263
+
+
+  V
+
+  Van Eyck, his motto chosen by Morris, 68
+
+  Velasquez, 261
+
+  Verona, 61
+
+  Viollet-le-Duc, 31
+
+  Virgil, 122-124, 262
+
+  _Volsunga Saga, The_, 125
+
+  _Voyage Round the World_, 263
+
+
+  W
+
+  Wagner, Richard, 135, 141
+
+  _Wake, London Lads!_ ballad by Morris, 148
+
+  Walker, Emery, 22, 205, 209
+
+  Wall-papers, 81-83
+
+  Wallace, Alfred, his suggestion that Epping Forest be planted with
+      North American trees, 11
+
+  Walthamstow, 3, 10
+
+  Wardrop, Oliver, 230
+
+  Warren, Sir Charles, 179
+
+  _Water of the Wondrous Isles, The_, 233, 240, 245, 248-251
+
+  Watts-Dunton, Theodore, 69
+
+  Waverley Novels, the, Morris's early fondness for, 3
+
+  Weaving, 85, 86
+
+  Webb, Philip, architect of the Red House, 61, 70, 75, 82, 111
+
+  _Well at the World's End, The_, 232, 245, 248
+
+  Westminster Abbey, 154, 181
+
+  White Horse, The, 30
+
+  Whitney, Miss Anne, 229
+
+  Whittingham, Charles, 33
+
+  Wilde, Lady, 228
+
+  _Women and Roses_, Browning's, 39
+
+  _Wood beyond the World, The_, Morris's, 7, 230, 242, 252
+
+  Woodford Hall, home of the Morrises, 3
+
+  Working Men's College, Burne-Jones's visit to, 40
+
+  Wyatt, A. J., 230
+
+
+  Y
+
+  Yonge, Miss, 24
+
+
+  Z
+
+  Zainer, Gunther, 223
+
+
+
+
+Messrs. MORRIS & COMPANY have appointed as their general agent Mr. A. E.
+Bulkley of 42 East 14th St., New York City, and he will be pleased to give
+all information respecting the various fabrics, etc., designed by the late
+Mr. Morris and sold by MORRIS & COMPANY. These may also be obtained of Mr.
+A. H. Davenport, 96-98 Washington St., Boston.
+
+
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] When the _Utopia_ appeared with this introduction an Eton master who
+had ordered forty copies in advance, intending the books to be used as
+prizes for the boys in his school, withdrew his order, Young England not
+being allowed at that time to keep such Socialistic company.
+
+[2] The trustees are now publishing the remainder of Morris's own works in
+the type of the Kelmscott Press, though without the ornaments, that a
+uniform edition may be had.
+
+[3] The reader here is expected to note the correspondence between the
+names of the ladies and the titles of their lovers, and the same
+correspondence is carried out in the colour of the ladies' garments and
+the armour of the knights.
+
+[4] Lewis F. Day.
+
+[5] This bibliography is reprinted, with certain slight additions, from
+the bibliography prepared by S. C. Cockerell for the monograph entitled,
+"A Note by William Morris on his Aims in Founding the Kelmscott Press."
+
+[6] At the Ellis Sale (1901) a presentation vellum copy brought L114.
+
+[7] The first sheet was printed on the 2d of March, the last on the 4th of
+April.
+
+[8] At the Ellis Sale a presentation vellum copy brought L60.
+
+[9] In this line as it originally stood, "dawn" was the rhyme provided for
+"corn." In the new line the rhyme for corn is "daylight new-born;" but Mr.
+Buxton Forman writes that Morris was wont to declare that "No South
+Englishman makes any difference in ordinary talk between dawn and morn for
+instance."
+
+[10] "When Adam dalf and Eve span, who was thanne the gentleman."
+
+[11] This book realised at the Ellis Sale L8.5s. for the paper copy, and
+L61 in vellum. Since its publication it has sold as low as L2.15s. for
+paper copies, and L29 for vellum.
+
+[12] Mr. Ellis's presentation copy sold for L91.
+
+[13] This "foreword" is a socialist document occupying pp. III to VIII.
+
+[14] At the Ellis Sale a copy on vellum (not presentation) brought L9.10s.
+
+[15] This story Morris said he translated in a day and a quarter.
+
+[16] At the Ellis Sale a paper copy brought L25.10s., while in 1900 one
+brought L27.5s.
+
+[17] Mr. Vallance says, "This is noteworthy as being the sole instance of
+a heraldic device among the _published_ designs of William Morris."
+
+[18] In the list of Dec. 1st, 1894, the 2d and 3d volumes are announced to
+follow "early in the New Year." The third volume did not, however, appear
+until the autumn of 1895.
+
+[19] Dull red silk ties. Gold lettering on back.
+
+[20] Also that 7 of the 8 vellum copies have been subscribed for.
+
+[21] In the prospectus the price for full white tooled pigskin binding
+executed under Mr. Cobden-Sanderson's direction is given at L13.
+
+[22] The quotations heading each stanza are in red, the initial letters
+pale blue, the remaining text in black.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of William Morris, by Elizabeth Luther Cary
+
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