ABSTRACT
It is always a fresh surprise to find reflected in such books and artworks as appear the most removed from public life and politics the spirit of the great world ofgovernment and commerce. For this world busies itself with matters that seem quite alien to the thoughts ofmany authors and artists. Often one detects in them a distinct note ofprotest or contempt for it, and therefore naturally supposes that it would be the last to have an influence on them. But struggle as men will, and persuade themselves as they may that they can rise superior to their environment, the facts are that the environment is sure to exert its good or bad effect sooner or later. Mr. William Morris, who is not only a ready and pointed lecturer on the decorative arts, but a highly popular writer ofmodern epics-not only an artist in decoration, but a successful business man, reflects, in spite of himself the prevalent tone which his masters and associates assume toward that patient, if somewhat dull, monster, the public. It is true enough that he declares, in the lecture on 'The Lesser Arts,' with which the collection begins, that 'I, neither, when 1 think ofwhat history has been, am inclined to lament the past, to despise the present, or despair of the future; that I believe all the change and stir about us is a sign of the world's life, and that it will lead-by ways, indeed, of which we have no guess-to the bettering of all mankind.' This is a sort of Credo which is all very well to make, but which is not borne out by the tone of the lectures. A low-spiritedness, not to say a hopelessness, pervades all his remarks, and the very fervor withwhich he chants his creed at the outset makes one guess the hollowness of his belie£ Against it set this statement in 'The Beauty ofLife' : 'The danger that the present course ofcivilization will destroy the beauty oflife. These are hard words, and I wish I could mend them, but I cannot while I speak what I believe to be the truth.' And when he has done with outlining a somewhat formless and shadowy 'philosophy of the decorative arts,' and reaches practical matters, when he gives valuable suggestions in decoration of interiors in the fourth lecture, what does he call his address? 'Making the Best of It.' This, by all odds
the most fruitful and encouraging lecture of the five, bears in its title the feeling of profound discouragement that exhales from every part of the book. It is merely, one may say, the Morris phase of the glorious British privilege of grumbling. But where there is chronic discontent, there is likely to be a persistent cause for discontent. Now, Mr. William Morris has, for himself, very little to complain of. There was doubtless a time when he had not yet sold many editions of The Earthly Paradise in America and England, nor yet of The Story of Sigurd the Volsung, his translation of the .L£neid, and other volumes ofverse. And, at one day, Morris wall-papers had not invaded Anglo-Saxondom to such an extent that the classic bar-rooms of Leadville exhibited their peculiar designs above Eastlake dados. But what makes Mr. Morris now such a Jeremiah about architecture and decorative art? Is it that there are still many, many lords in Great Britain who need kicking? Or do the enormously rich bankers, manufacturers, and mine-owners excite his wrath? For, to tell the truth, the general impression got from his lectures is that obtained from the face of the Englishman whom Thackeray loved to pursue, note-book in hand-the impression that he could not be happy unless he were kicking some one, or being by some one kicked. But Mr. Morris ought to have not only the calm satisfaction of worldly success, but a conscience which tells him that in some respects at least, he has been an honor to his country-if not from the excellence ofhis wall-paper patterns, yet surely from the fact that he has not truckled with artistic snobbery, but has followed his natural bent and striven to be a higWy educated First Artisan rather than a fifth-rate Royal Academician.
