GARDENS OF CELEBRITIES 



sometimes touch the heart, and his does not thrill or move ; while 

 even in his vigorous translation into verse from the Icelandic, he 

 never terrifies. But he certainly charms and soothes ; hence, an 

 hour spent with him in " The Earthly Paradise " the best-known of 

 his poems is infinitely restful ; is an hour well spent. 



Morris wrote copiously, composing reams of polished verses ; 

 these he made a practice of afterwards reading to his friends. On 

 one occasion he produced seven hundred lines in a day. But he 

 under- valued his gifts when he said : " That talk of inspiration is 

 sheer nonsense, I may tell you that flat ; there is no such thing ; 

 it is a mere matter of craftsmanship ; " and again : " If a chap 

 can't compose an epic while he is weaving tapestry, he had better 

 shut up ; he'll never do any good at all." For it could only have 

 been under the stimulus of a mood, an insistent call to express 

 himself in verse, rather than in prose or the decorative arts, that he 

 could possibly have poured out his melodious narrative in such 

 unstinted measure. It must, however, be remembered that his 

 poetry is objective, not subjective, and that ideas and images 

 suggested by outside things, are naturally more numerous than 

 those deeper thoughts that spring unbidden from the brain and 

 heart. 



Although Morris wrote so flowingly, his range in subjects and 

 centuries was limited by his own choice. 1C In the scheme of 

 4 The Earthly Paradise,' : says Mr. Mackail, " the two corner- 

 stones are the Greek and the Northern epic cycles, the two greatest 

 bodies of imaginative narration which the world has produced. 

 The stories which he chose out of both are told by Greeks and by 

 Norsemen of the later Middle Ages." Some additional material 

 was derived from Oriental and European sources ; but outside the 

 mediaeval period Morris never went ! He delighted in the old 

 ballad poetry as he did in Chaucer, but he knew little of Elizabethan 

 literature, and many of our English classics interested him not at 

 all. Besides this, he was in no sense cosmopolitan, and therefore 



never could it be said of him, great story-teller though he was, 

 that : 



" Each phase of many-coloured life he drew, 

 Exhausted worlds and then imagined new." 



Morris had early conceived a passionate admiration for Rossetti. 

 who held the comfortable doctrine that it was the business of half 



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