MORRIS, William, English poet and artist: b. Walthamstow, Essex, 24 March 1834; d. Ham mersmith, London, 3 Oct. 1896. He was edu cated at Marlborough College and Exeter Col lege, Oxford, where he began a lifelong friend ship with Edward Burine-Jones. Both were at tracted by the Anglo-Catholic revival, and in tended to enter the Anglican priesthood, but early abandoned that resolve, and was for some nine months a pupil in the office of the noted architect, George Edmund Street. In 1856 he founded The Oxford and Cambridge Maga zine, to which he contributed often, and which he published at his own expense for the year it was issued. Two years later (1858) appeared The Defense of Guinevere and Other Poems,' in the pages of which the temper of the Middle Ages may be said to find its most accurate mod, ern interpretation. In 1867 he published the 'Life and Death of Jason,' an epic of 17• cantos in heroic couplets, which showed him to be a teller of stories par excellence. By this time he had definitely entered upon his career of weaver anew of old tales from classic or mediaeval sources, and the next year (1868) ap peared the first volume of (The Earthly Para dise,' a series of stories retold from classical and mediaeval originals, but with a mediaeval setting. A second and third volume followed in 1869 and 1870, the entire work comprising 24 tales with the addition of interludes and pre ludes and 12 lyrics of the months. In 'The Earthly Paradise,) as in the
Morris took Chaucer for his master as well in the structure of his verse as in what may be termed the processional nature of his descriptive pas sages. Three verse forms are employed by him, the seven-lined decasyllabic stanza known as the Chaucerian heptastich, the four-foot couplet and the heroic couplet. 'The Earthly Paradise' includes some 40,000 lines, but when once the reader has fallen under the poet's sway his leisurely manner will not be found wearisome. In
Lovers of Gudrun,' one of the tales of
Earthly Paradise,' Morris had already turned to Iceland for a theme and in
Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs> (1876) he returned to Icelandic myth for his subject.- The poet regarded this poem as his masterpiece and in the opinion of not a few critics it ranks as almost the greatest, if not the greatest epic of the 19th century. In his hands the ancient myth becomes alive and throbs with all the intensity of primeval pas sion. Besides these works Morris published also in verse 'Love is Enough, or the Freeing of Pharamond) (1872);
In 1859 Morris married Miss Jane Burden. In 1861 he founded the firm of Morris, Mar shall, Faulkner and Company and began the manufacture of wall-paper, stained glass and artistic furniture, and to his labors in this par ticular is traceable much of the reform which English and American trade has experienced in household art during the last generation. In 1890 he established the Kelmscott Press at Hammersmith, and there published exquisitely printed editions of Chaucer, Beowulf and other works, as well as of his own writings. Still
another side of his nature was shown in the trend of his human sympathies. He had long been known as poet and craftsman, but from 1885 he was active as a social reformer, lectur ing frequently to workingmen in halls or in the open air, and helping to support the Common wealth, a Socialist journal. It is not wholly easy to understand this side of his nature, for intensely democratic as he became, in theory at least, he was an equally intense lover of that very beauty which a social upheaval would de stroy. The ugliness of much of modern life led him to Socialism, hut he was thoroughly sincere in his attitude, illogical as it may seem to many. However difficult it may be to ad just satisfactorily to our minds the attitude of the poet-Socialist with the character of his work as a craftsman, which was offered to the world at prices practically prohibitory for the majority of persons, it is an unquestionable fact that the world is a pleasanter, wholesomer world for his having lived in it. He helped his generation to perceive that there is no necessary alliance between utility and ugliness; he raised the standard of household taste, and as a poet he was one of the most melodious of his time. In his later years he essayed a form of composition in mingled prose and verse greatly enjoyed by many, though perhaps not wholly to the taste of those who liked him best as the author of
Earthly Paradise' and
a series of romances beginning with
Tale of the House of the Wolfings' (1889), and succeeded by
Roots of the Mountains) (1890);
from Nowhere' (1891);
Story of the Glittering Plain' (1891); (The Wood beyond the World' (1894);