Men and thought in modern history . wer of simple enthusiasm is your great gift, willnot comprehend how progress towards mans best perfec-tion—the adorning and ennobling of his spirit—shouldhave been reluctantly undertaken; how it should havebeen for years and years retarded by barren commonplaces,by worn-out clap-traps. You will wonder at the labour of itsfriends in proving the self-proving; you will know nothingof the doubts, the fears, the prejudices they had to dispel;nothing of the outcry they had to encounter; of the fierceprotestations of life from policies which were dead and didnot kn
Men and thought in modern history . wer of simple enthusiasm is your great gift, willnot comprehend how progress towards mans best perfec-tion—the adorning and ennobling of his spirit—shouldhave been reluctantly undertaken; how it should havebeen for years and years retarded by barren commonplaces,by worn-out clap-traps. You will wonder at the labour of itsfriends in proving the self-proving; you will know nothingof the doubts, the fears, the prejudices they had to dispel;nothing of the outcry they had to encounter; of the fierceprotestations of life from policies which were dead and didnot know it, and the shrill querulous upbraiding from publi-cists in their dotage. But you, in your turn, with difficultiesof your own, will then be mounting some new step in thearduous ladder whereby man climbs towards his perfection,towards that unattainable but irresistible load-star, gazedafter with earnest longing, and invoked with bitter tears;the longing of thousands of hearts, the tears of many gene-rations.—Matthew WILLIAM MORRIS. [Page 302 Chapter XXII. WILLIAM MORRIS AND THE RELATION OFART TO LIFE. IT is told of a Tory peer, once prominent in Britishpolitics, that, discussing some literary question witha friend in his library, he went to the shelves to lookfor a book; and as he searched his finger rested fora moment on his copy of The Odyssey of Homer, done intoEnglish Verse, by William Morris. Ah! he said, tappingthe volume, if I had known that that fellow Morris wasgoing to become a Socialist, I wouldnt have had him boundin red morocco. Doubtless the adherence of this distinguished artist andman of letters to communistic Socialism in the eighties ofthe nineteenth century, and his frequently very vehementassertion of its principles in the course of the agitationsinto which he threw himself, were surprising and not alittle shocking to many who had known him only as a poet,a designer of beautiful patterns, and a maker of fine relation could there
Size: 1273px × 1963px
Photo credit: © The Reading Room / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: ., boo, bookcentury1900, bookdecade1920, booksubjectpoliticalscience
