ABSTRACT
William Morris is intellectually far more healthy than Rossetti and Swinburne. His deviations from mental equilibrium betray themselves, not through mysticism, but through a want of individuality, and an overweening tendency to imitation. His affectation consists in medievalism. He calls himself a pupil of Chaucer. He artlessly copies whole stanzas also from Dante, e.g., the well-known Francesca and Paolo episode from Canto V. of the Inferno, when he writes in his 'Guenevere' :
In that garden fair Came Lancelot walking; this is true, the kiss Wherewith we kissed in meeting that spring day, I scarce dare talk of the remembered bliss.
