GARDENS OF CELEBRITIES 



therefore worth the doing ; and surely one born with a natural 

 taste for science, for music or for painting, yet condemned by 

 circumstance to work for which he has no particular aptitude, 

 need not fail to make it " worth the doing," nor even to find a 

 modicum of satisfaction in it. 



Experimental work delighted Morris, who cared less for the 

 end attained, than the end unattained. 



I think all true artists show that feeling ; and, like Morris, spare 

 no pains in the doing. Mr. Mackail, referring to a piece of cabbage- 

 and-vine tapestry, executed at Kelmscott House, at which he 

 sometimes laboured nine or ten hours a day, remarks " and this 

 was the work of a man who had a hundred other things to attend 

 to, and was never in a hurry." 



But when Morris felt a thing to be good he left it, he did not seek 

 to make good better he did not want to gild refined gold, to paint 

 the lily. This may have been partly the secret of the stupendous 

 amount of very varied work that he accomplished in a life that 

 terminated at sixty -two. 



Another explanation was the great physical strength and 

 resulting unflagging energy that enabled him, after sound and 

 dreamless sleep, to rise, like a giant, refreshed, to the engrossing 

 task of the moment, and to continue working at it all day ; another 

 lay in the rare ability to detach himself from one piece of work 

 whilst still interested in it, and to turn with freshness and en- 

 thusiasm to another. He thus found sufficient recreation in the 







change of occupation ; but if he needed any further relaxation, 

 he sought it, indoors, in back-gammon, cribbage and draughts, out 

 of doors in angling, or in the good old game of bowls, for which the 

 lawn at Kelmscott House offered excellent opportunities. 



Although Morris soon gave up his youthful intention to become 

 an architect, yet architecture, using the term in its widest sense, 

 was his mistress, for he held that painting and sculpture were 

 but component parts of architecture, and had only intelligible pur- 

 pose when employed decoratively in relation to an entire archi- 

 tectural scheme. 



The " sister arts," in his view, were not sisters at all sisterhood 

 implying equality. Architecture was the mistress art, and sculpture 

 and painting merely her agreeable handmaidens, very useful 

 adjuncts to her state, when kept in due subordination. " He 



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