atest activity in this direction was not without result in the field of pure literature. The years from 1884 to 1890 were crowd

eld 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

logy is an affliction to the ear, showing a peculiarly deficient taste in the use of a style uninspired by medi?val 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

day a

ould handle, and h

ongst them; and I burn

last that to others

me to that while yet I

iness, and in stre

ndeed, that made m

ed, for some stood

n to listen, but a f

and jeered: but whil

ager to hear; as in

ckered amongst them: and

I went, and the work

truth, betwixt the

went with it, and I

iousness 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

efell: a workman

n my mouth, and he t

to-morrow to our Ra

nothing new, at least

nist chaps, and 'tis lik

t was as dull and as comm

room. Just over t

r's face with nose

s on the walls of the h

and lean amidst

were of the kind th

wn to the type of o

as I entered, and

trove to end his mau

seemed, and part

beside him as his

and short, and dre

began it seemed

ng to say, though I

l, were it ill, as th

not refrain from ma

rdid room and the few t

abouring earth and the

e message, but sw

icing in the sweet

he told, and I knew t

very thoughts, and I

end to end! and triu

that heard him to a

ld gospel, lest as slaves

ght the hearers would

nroll them; but they,

ull eager, and had made

de no sign, and two

nd to carp his fie

them, but failed n

r the carpers, strivi

lear already; no

s and the silence, so

ll he answered, and

ether lest they li

escape me, I rose ere

e and my faith-and

the jeers, and there w

d long known; and lo!

ld 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,

pringtide, now ea

f a lover the f

daylight, and h

ing acres with

t is through the l

he blossoms and the

th love and no

mine, where all

township, o'er do

e wandered and l

eve at the end

rey wall the chu

e twilight; in the

the ox-yard i

s rising, a star

he spire-top is s

highway, toward the

uns on to the Th

sweet, we are

hou given to g

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 fr

t of Mr

Ros

d 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 st

dalf, an

hanne a g

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

er with a short story based on the life of Matthias Corvinus, King of Hungary, and called A Ki

arer'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 th

,-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

the early

id the gat

ead that we

and see its

e room besi

ere merry

st never e

dark road d

world of m

f some hu

e ancient

waste that

at faint lig

bid it li

in waverin

sweet of da

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 wit

he 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

nd 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-quar

s 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

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

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

he period of transition from medi?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 w

upplanted 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. W

n 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 m

of Mrs

for pictures call

s 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

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 t

lism, 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