ABSTRACT
Turn we to the singer of: perhaps, the most unvarying sweetness and sustained tenderness of soul that ever caressed the chords of the lyre. Whom can we mean, if not Mr. William Morris, the author of The Life and Death of Jason, and The Earthly Paradise? Even the critic, accustomed to grasp frail things firmly, almost shrinks from handling these exquisite poems with any but the lightest touch, and in turning them to the light, is fain to finger them as one does some beautiful fragile vase, the fruit of all that is at once simple and subtle in human love and ingenuity. Under a blossoming thorn, stretched 'neath some umbrageous beech, or sheltered from the glare ofnoon by some ferncrested Devonshire cliff: with lazy summer sea-wavesbreaking at one's feet-such were the fitting hour and mood in which-criticism all forgot-to drink in the honeyed rhythm of this melodious storier. Such has been our happy lot; and we lay before this giver of dainty things thanks which even the absenceofall personal familiarity cannot restrain from being expressed affectionately. But if we are to persist in our task-if we are really to understand the 'Poetry of the Period,' we must needs lay aside for awhile the delicacy ofmere gratitude, and attempt some more genuine estimate of Mr. Morris's poems than is implied in the fervent acknowledgment of their winsome beauty.
Delightful as a writer standing by himself and on his own merits, he is invaluable to us when considered along with the other writers whose precise station and significance in poetical literature we have striven to discover: invaluable when we apply to him the test already applied to them, and inquire how comes it that his muse is such as she is, and no other and no greater?
