“Say ten or twelve.”
“When you got a bite at ten or twelve, did you get as interested, as excited, as I get when I see my float bob?”
“No.”
The way in which he said, “I thought not,” conveyed a world of disparagement of me as a man who could care to gaze upon a brother angler instead of upon his own float.
II.
In whatsoever William Morris does or says the hand or the voice of the poet is seen or heard: in his house decorations no less than in his epics, in his illuminated manuscripts no less than in his tapestries, in his philippics against “restoration” no less than in his sage-greens, in his socialism no less than in his samplers. And first a word as to his poetry. Any critic who, having for contemporaries such writers as Tennyson, Browning, Swinburne, and William Morris, fails to see that he lives in a period of great poets may rest assured that he is a critic born—may rest assured that had he lived in the days of the Elizabethans he would have joined the author of ‘The Returne from Parnassus’ in despising the unacademic author of ‘Hamlet’ and ‘Lear.’ Among this band of great contemporary poets what is the special position held by him who, having set his triumphant hand to everything from the sampler up to the epic, has now, by way of recreation, or rather by way of opening a necessary safety-valve to ease his restless energies, invented a system of poetic socialism and expounded it in a brand-new kind of prose fiction?
A special and peculiar position Morris holds among his peers—on that we are all agreed; but what is that position? We must not talk too familiarly about the Olympian gods; but is it that, without being the greatest where all are great, Morris is the one who on all occasions produces pure poetry and nothing else? Without affirming that it is so, we may at least ask the question. If other poets of our time show more intellectual strength than he, are they, perchance, given sometimes to adulterating their poetry with ratiocination and didactic preachments such as were better left to the proseman? Without affirming that it is so, we may at least ask the question. If other poets of our time can reach a finer frenzy than he and give it voice with a more melodious throat, are they, perchance, apt to forget that “eloquence is heard while poetry is overheard”? Without affirming that it is so, we may at least ask the question. If others, again, are more picturesque than he (though these it might be difficult to find), are they, perchance, a little too self-conscious in their word-pictures, and are they, perchance, apt to pass into those flowery but uncertain ways that were first discovered by Euphues? Without affirming that it is so, we may at least ask the question.
But supposing that we really had to affirm all these things about the other Olympians, where then would be the position of him about whose
work such questions could not even be asked? Where would then be the place of him who never passes into ratiocination or rhetoric, never passes into excessive word-painting or into euphuism, never speaks so loud as to be heard rather than overheard, but, on the contrary, gives us always clear and simple pictures, and always in musical language? Where would then be the place of him who is the very ideal, if not of the poet as vates, yet of the poet as “maker”—the poet who always looks out upon life through a poetic atmosphere which, if sometimes more attenuated than suits some readers, is as simple and as clear as the air of a May morning? A question which would be variously answered according to the various temperaments of those who answer—of those who define poetry to be “making,” or those who define it to be “prophesying,” or those who define it to be “singing.”
Exception has, no doubt, been taken to certain archaisms in which Morris indulges not only in the epic of ‘Sigurd,’ but also, and in a greater degree, in his translations, especially in that rendering of the Odyssey. It is not our business here to examine into the merits and demerits of Morris as a translator; but if it were, this is what we should say on his behalf. While admitting that now and again his diction is a little too Scandinavian to be in colour, we should point to Matthew Arnold’s