William Morris: A Critical Study

by John Drinkwater

'Mother and Son' is wider than 'The Message of the March Wind' in its scope inasmuch as it deals with a subject less peculiar to a particular generation or age, narrower in that it is concerned with one definite event instead of general conditions. A woman is speaking to her love-child. To analyse the poem would be to quote it almost line by line, but the conflict of the very roots of humanity with the blind dictates of circumstance, the tenderness of motherhood and the wistful yearning of a soul crossed in an uncharitable social scheme could scarcely find an expression more purely poetic. And 'The Half of Life Gone' touches this conflict with equal vigour and pity.

Reading these poems we are glad that Morris ordered his art as he did. Beautiful as they are and perfectly as they show the possibility of bringing all things into the purifying influence of the imaginative faculty, they yet leave us with an exultation that has in it some strain of despondency. Through no fault in the poet's working there is somewhere a flaw in the crystal. We thank him for showing us these things as we had not seen them before, but he has already tutored us too well. We turn back to the life that he has already made necessary to our being in the quiet ways of The Earthly Paradise and the great wind-swept world of Sigurd the Volsung.

VIII
CONCLUSION

To enquire whether Marlowe was a greater poet than Milton or Milton a greater than Keats is but to juggle with words and to spin them into nothingness. It is enough that all were great. It is no honour to the giants of the earth to pit them one against another for our sport. That Morris was or was not the greatest poet of his age or century is a matter of complete unimportance upon which nothing depends. The supremely important thing, the splendid circumstance, is that here again in due season was a man unmistakably moulded in heroic proportions, one claiming and proving kinship with the masters whose names are but few. If humanity was fortunate enough to see others of his peers in his own day we can but be thankful for grace so prodigal; but, however that may be, here at least was one establishing anew the proudest succession of mankind. The creator of Sigurd the Volsung and so much more that is compact of sane and wholesome magnificence has his rightful company, and it may well be the gladdest boast of the world that he has; but in that company there are no degrees. Æschylus, Homer, Virgil, Dante, Michael Angelo, Shakespeare, Milton, Goethe, Beethoven, Wagner, Shelley, Wordsworth—there is an inspiration to the lips in the very names of these men and their fellows, but there must be no disputation as to the headship in their presence; they themselves will but laugh if they heed us at all. And Morris is, as I see him, clearly of that fellowship. By some strange generosity of nature he was not only allowed to give great poetry to the world, but also to readjust for us the significance of life in phases a little lower than the highest. It happened that a man who had the profoundest sense of the real nature of circumstance and conditions in his generation could enforce his direct and practical teaching by a creative imagination of the highest order. It would, perhaps, be fitter to say that in this man a supreme creative faculty was allied to another faculty that enabled him to interpret his imaginative art to the world in terms of immediate practice. The result of this is that although the indirect influence of his creative art—and that is always the profoundest influence in these things—is neither more nor less definable than that of other men of an equal power, his direct influence not upon abstract or scientific thought but upon the spiritual perception of men, has perhaps been more instant and far-reaching than that of any man in the history of English genius. It is, indeed, difficult to find anywhere a precise parallel to the curious phenomenon that was Morris. Experience proves the advent of a great poet to be apparently capricious, the unconsidered whim of powers that make but little distinction of seasons. The "Songs of Innocence" were quite definitely sung in the wilderness. But that manifestation of genius which covers a range wider than its own finest creation, and takes on something of universality in pervading itself not only with its own life but with the life of the world, would seem to be reserved for days that mark the culmination of some memorable epoch of imaginative activity, and in itself to be the crowning expression of such days. Michael Angelo and Shakespeare came at times when national life had been running with rare spiritual force for some years; when, that is to say, the world was cherishing beauty and had rich gifts to offer such men when they arose. The great word was but seeking a voice, and it is difficult to dissociate Michael Angelo from the impulse of Renaissance Italy, or Shakespeare from the impulse of Elizabethan England. The mighty utterance of these men was their own, wrought into its perfection by their separate and distinctive temperaments; of the essential isolation of the artist I have already spoken. But it is nevertheless an utterance in some measure made possible by the currents of the time in which it came and one for which an examination of the immediately preceding years prepares us. These men are exultant figures challenging the world for ever from heights that they did not build unaided. This, of course, does not effect their achievement, and the subordination of many splendid forces to one supreme end is, perhaps, the highest exercise of the faculty of design in the cosmic genius. The coming of such men is not less moving because it seems to be inevitable, but that it does seem inevitable is clear. There are, too, times when men move, as it were, in a kind of receptive stupor, times when great forces are latent in their midst; it is possible for a man of this imaginative universality to arrive at such a time without any apparent preparation in the days before him, and, being at once the pioneer and culmination of a new era, yet not to excite our astonishment as well as our worship, because the time, although lending him no impulse, at least offers him no resistance. The world could not be said to be expecting Goethe or—Collins and Gray notwithstanding—Wordsworth, and yet we are not surprised when we come to these men, because we have been moving through darkness between light and light, and have been expecting any new and sudden revelation that might be made—expecting to be surprised. Goethe and Wordsworth, unlike Michael Angelo and Shakespeare, did not appear as the final and perfect articulation of a word passed freely from lip to lip by their fellows, but they were at least allowed to speak without any violent denial being implicit in the whole intellectual and spiritual and artistic attitude of their time. Having the revelation of new temperaments to make, they found, inevitably, isolated voices of criticism against them, but, save for these, the age, although not demanding them as the logical issue of its own effort, at least did not appear to be essentially unfitted to produce them. Lyrical Ballads was printed at a time that had no deliberate artistic purpose of its own, but was, nevertheless, ripe for some new and striking manifestation of the spirit of man. The night had already lasted over-long. Wordsworth, it is true, came strangely early in the new day, but although the great voice in the dawn was unusual, it was not amazing.

These men, it would seem then, are to be looked for in a time that either demands them for its own sublimated utterance or is at least negatively ready to receive them. Morris, however, whose genius was distinguished clearly by this universality, not only was not the essential figure of a great movement that had grown before and about him, but he came at a time that, far from demanding him as its natural fulfilment, was not even waiting to receive any new impression that might be struck upon it. When Tennyson had sounded his clearest music and Browning had wrought his subtlest perceptions into poetry, it was felt that the highest achievement of a new age had been reached. Then when the wonderful second summer of the romantic revival seemed to be exhausted, Swinburne gave to it a new term of strong life. Taking all the material that the new poetry had used since the first beginnings over a hundred years earlier, he blended it with his own temperament and gift of speech and, when men looked for no more than the quiet lapse into imitation and echoes, he showed it to be capable of an added and ringing significance that had been wholly unexpected. Taking language at the value that use had allotted to it, he not only retained the poetry that had already been found in those values but made it clear that no one had wrung the full measure of poetry from them. After this piling of crest above crest no further great expression could justly be looked for until in due time a fresh impulse had been fostered to its full strength. The Victorian development of romantic poetry had reached its splendid final achievement, and quiet if not wholly songless years would have been the natural succession. And yet, at the very time that Swinburne was lending this last glory to the marvellous epoch of which Collins had been the herald, another poet was already announcing a new day with the authentic voice of a master. The eternal impulse that conspired with Morris's own vision to create his poetry is, perhaps, more difficult to define than in the case of any other poet. It certainly is not to be found in his own age, and although to say that he sought to continue the mediæval tradition may account for much in his literary form, it does not help very greatly in the understanding of his spiritual temper. The fact is that in its fundamental qualities Morris's art came as near as any art can do to being unaffected by any external impulse at all. His love for certain aspects of mediævalism did not prevent him from reaching far beyond them both in the construction and the philosophy of his art. The quality in mediæval art that chiefly attracted him was its direct simplicity, and this quality he took up into his own work. Instead of using words for their cumulative poetic value he threw poetry over words that had hitherto gone naked. Apart from a few of his early poems and the use that he makes of models from time to time in verse forms, there is scarcely any evidence in the manner of his work that he had ever read any of the poetry before him. Reducing life to its simplest equation, he embodied it in an utterance as simple. But, in its interpretation of life, the world that he created was rather a world of the future than a world of the past, and it incorporates the essence of the spiritual and intellectual experience of the ages that had passed between, say, Chaucer and his own day. The intensity of his vision and the certainty with which he disentangled the essential from the ephemeral forced in him an utterance of a nature not unlike that of the earlier masters whom he was never tired of praising, but it is a mistake to suppose that he saw the history of the world shorn of five centuries. He was not misled into thinking that the fundamental meaning of life had changed, but he knew that man's power of adjusting his understanding to that meaning develops and is increased by the succession of prophetic voices, and in assimilating the cumulative growth of this power he was modern in the only worthy and valuable way. He applied a definitely modern faculty of analysis and definition to the permanent things of life, and embodied it in an utterance that was clearly his own but coloured in the shaping by a mediæval rather than any other influence.

That such a poet should come was in itself not remarkable, but that he should come at such a moment was a phenomenon scarcely to be paralleled in literature. The current tradition of poetry when he was writing was not only hostile to his method, but in a negative way it had helped to make the age one peculiarly unfitted for his message. The eager selfishness of the new scientific thought had paid but little attention to the social ideal for which Morris stood. This neglect the poets had either flattered or, certainly, had not opposed, and the result was that at a time when poetry was passing through one of its most memorable epochs, the life of the people was suffused with vulgarity and meanness. Neither art nor science, whatever else they might be doing, realized that the basis of a wholesome national life is a delight among the people in their daily labour. The people did not discover this for themselves, and when Morris wanted to furnish his rooms he was forced to make his own chairs and tables. His work henceforward was to show his age its errors on the one hand in his social teaching, and on the other in his poetry and craftsmanship to announce its possibilities. This was a perfectly natural result of the influence of the conditions that surrounded him upon his own creative impulse, but how that impulse came to birth among such conditions must remain a splendid perplexity. Morris's work was directed to certain ends by the requirements of his age, but his spirit was one to which the age had no logical claim. He came not in due time but by some large generosity of the gods.

When a great poet comes not unexpectedly but as the natural and full development of a long tradition, it is easy not only to estimate the positive value of his own achievement, but also to trace or even to predict his influence upon his successors. New poets will come, possessing some measure of genuine inspiration, and carry the tradition through to its quiet and often lovely close; they will take their honourable places about the few commanding figures, worthy of their kinship and proud of it. But when the great poet happens to be at the beginning instead of at the full day of an epoch, we can but await the event. Morris not only discovered a new world in his art, but he was allowed to explore and establish it. His word was not one of rumour and promise alone, but more or less of fulfilment. Strands of his influence have already been drawn through the art and life of his followers, but the work that has been done in deliberate imitation of his is scarcely recognizable as such. A poet may imitate Tennyson with some success because he may inherit the same tradition that shaped Tennyson; the impulse is already in his blood towards the expression and temper of which his model is the consummation. But there is no such tradition behind Morris; his art was in a peculiar degree the creation of his own vision alone, and that is a thing which is beyond imitation. The new tradition that Morris himself began may or may not be carried along a clear line of progression, but it can only be taken up in its full compass by a poet that shall be not far short of Morris's own stature, and by the time he comes it is possible that the influence of the author of Sigurd may have done its work by operating indirectly through many new movements rather than through a direct succession of its own begetting. If this should happen, Morris's influence will be no less valuable a force in the world, but it is not unlikely that when the history of poetry in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries comes to be written, he will stand as a lonely titanic figure, excelled by none in the depth and range of his art, but outside any categorical lines of development.

About Morris's own attitude towards his art a good deal of nonsense has been written. It appears, for example, that he once, in a moment of irresponsible conversation, said that poetry was 'tommy rot.' The remark had, of course, the exact value of all such small talk, but it is the kind of thing that has been solemnly advanced as a proof that he was primarily what is commonly called a man of action, who wrote poetry as a pleasant recreation. The truth is, of course, that Morris was a great artist, and knew that he was a great artist. That, to him, was the supremely important thing, because his art meant for him the sweetest and noblest life that he could perceive through his imagination. As a man of action he proved himself fully when occasion arose, but he undertook his propagandist work with reluctance and often turned from it in disgust. It was not that he was ever for a moment in doubt as to the excellence of the end at which such work was aiming, but that he knew that his own great work in the world, the work by which he could most effectually help it a little towards that end, was his art. To suggest that the man who created Jason and The Earthly Paradise, Sigurd and Love is Enough had anything but the profoundest reverence for his art, and especially for the supreme expression of his art—poetry—would be a preposterous insult if it were not ludicrous. Art was his gospel, and all his social teaching and activity were but an effort to bring his gospel to pass upon earth.

We can imagine a race that had attained a wisdom fuller than has yet been found, adopting one simple form of daily supplication. Always from the people's lips this prayer should go up, "Lord, give us character." Character. That is the supreme need of man, and it is simply the faculty of being himself and expressing himself in all the conduct of his life. He may not be a very great man, or a very wise man, or even a very good man, but if he be himself he may, in some measure he must, become these. There is, at the outset, the necessity of material opportunity for so being himself. One who is overworked, or employed all the while in degrading work, or insufficiently paid for his work, one who is, in short, driven, cannot be himself, just as the man who is denied the chance of working at all cannot be himself. But, given the material opportunity, the power of proving his character, of asserting his individuality, of being himself, is inherent in every man. And this Morris felt with the whole energy of his being. He saw men having no adventurousness in their own spirits, dulled by routine, and with their own wills bent and impoverished by the will of some one else, degraded into mere echoes and reflections. He saw that the crying need of the world was character, and he sought to teach men that in bringing back joy to their daily work they would put their feet on the first step towards the only true dignity and pride of life. The satisfaction that comes of a piece of work truly done and having in it something of the soul of the worker was, to him, a holy thing. His own craftsmanship and manufacture were the expression of a man with this conviction; his imaginative writing was of a world peopled by such men. The spiritual exaltation of which I have spoken, the finer tissue of some mysterious emotional experience that is laid over the definable substance of poetry, is always in his work, translating its message into the imaginative terms of art; but the message itself is perfectly articulated, and it is one of the profoundest and most inspiriting that it has been given to any man to deliver. Other poets have given us courage to face a world fallen into uncharitable ways, or directed us to secluded places where we may forget the dust and trouble of a life that we must accept as an unfortunate necessity, or given good promise of revelation and comfort in a life to come; but none has ever announced so clearly as Morris the hope of life here upon earth. Cloistered quiet was an impossible state to this man who so loved fellowship, and the world beyond death he was content to leave to its own proving. But he did not endeavour to encourage men to face the life that he knew was unwholesome and draining them of freedom and manhood; he cried to them to destroy it and he showed them in his art the life that might be theirs in its stead.