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s told by one of them; on a night when i had done perhaps more than my share of the talking; that i had talked more nonsense in one evening than he had heard in the whole course of his past life。 i had merely preferred parnell; then at the height of his career; to michael davitt who had wrecked his irish influence by international politics。 we sat round a long unpolished and unpainted trestle table of new wood in a room where hung rossettis pomegranate; a portrait of mrs。 morris; and where one wall and part of the ceiling were covered by a great persian carpet。 morris had said somewhere or other that carpets were meant for people who took their shoes off when they entered a house; and were most in place upon a tent floor。 i was a little disappointed in the house; for morris was an old man content at last to gather beautiful things rather than to arrange a beautiful house。 i saw the drawing?room once or twice and there alone all my sense of decoration; founded upon the background of rossettis pictures; was satisfied by a big cupboard painted with a scene from chaucer by burne jones; but even there were objects; perhaps a chair or a little table; that seemed accidental; bought hurriedly perhaps; and with little thought; to make wife or daughter fortable。 i had read as a boy in books belonging to my father; the third volume of the earthly paradise and the defence of guinevere; which pleased me less; but had not opened either for a long time。 the man who never laughed again had seemed the most wonderful of tales till my father had accused me of preferring morris to keats; got angry about it and put me altogether out of countenance。 he had spoiled my pleasure; for now i questioned while i read and at last ceased to read; nor had morris written as yet those prose romances that became; after his death; so great a joy that they were the only books i was ever to read slowly that i might not e too quickly to the end。 it wasnow morris himself that stirred my interest; and i took to him first because of some little tricks of speech and body that reminded me of my old grandfather in sligo; but soon discovered his spontaneity and joy and made him my chief of men。 to?day i do not set his poetry very high; but for an odd altogether wonderful line; or thought; and yet; if some angel offered me the choice; i would choose to live his life; poetry and all; rather than my own or any other mans。 a reproduction of his portrait by watts hangs over my mantlepiece with henleys; and those of other friends。 its grave wide?open eyes; like the eyes of some dreaming beast; remind me of the open eyes of titians ariosto; while the broad vigorous body suggests a mind that has no need of the intellect to remain sane; though it give itself to every phantasy; the dreamer of the middle ages。 it is the fool of fairy 。。。 wide and wild as a hill; the resolute european image that yet half remembers buddhas motionless meditation; and has no trait in mon with the wavering; lean image of hungry speculation; that cannot but fill the minds eye because of certain famous hamlets of our stage。 shakespeare himself foreshadowed a symbolic change; that shows a change in the whole temperament of the world; for though he called his hamlet fat; and scant of breath; he thrust between his fingers agile rapier and dagger。
the dream world of morris was as much the antithesis of daily life as with other men of genius; but he was never conscious of the antithesis and so knew nothing of intellectual suffering。 his intellect; unexhausted by speculation or casuistry; was wholly at the service of hand and eye; and whatever he pleased he did with an unheard of ease and simplicity; and if style and vocabulary were at times monotonous; he could not have made them otherwise without ceasing to be himself。 instead of the language of chaucer and shakespeare; its warp fresh from field and market; if the woof were learned; his age offered him a speech; exhausted from abstraction; that only returned to its full vitality when written learnedly and slowly。 the roots of his antithetical dream were visible enough: a never idle man of great physical strength and extremely irascible??did he not fling a badly baked plum pudding through the window upon xmas day???a man more joyous than any intellectual man of our world; called himself the idle singer of an empty day created new forms of melancholy; and faint persons; like the knights & ladies of burne jones; who are never; no; not once in forty volumes; put out of temper。 a blunderer; who had said to the only unconverted man at a socialist picnic in dublin; to prove that equality came easy; i was brought up a gentleman and now; as you can see; associate with all sorts; and left wounds thereby that rankled after twenty years; a man of whom i have heard it said he is always afraid that he is doing something wrong; and generally is; wrote long stories with apparently no other object than that his persons might show one another; through situations of poignant difficulty; the most exquisite tact。
he did not project; like henley or like wilde; an image of himself; because; having all his imagination set on making and doing; he had little self?knowledge。 he imagined instead new conditions of making and doing; and; in the teeth of those scientific generalisations that cowed my boyhood; i can see some like imagining in every great change; believing that the first flying fish leaped; not because it sought adaptation to the air; but out of horror of the sea。
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Four YearsX
soon after i began to attend the lectures; a french class was started in the old coach?house for certain young socialists who planned a tour in france; and i joined it and was for a time a model student constantly encouraged by the pliments of the old french mistress。 i told my father of the class; and he asked me to get my sisters admitted。 i made difficulties and put off speaking of the matter; for i knew that the new and admirable self i was making would turn; under family eyes; into plain rag doll。 how could i pretend to be industrious; and even carry dramatization to the point of learning my lessons; when my sisters were there and knew that i was nothing of the kind? but i