Page:Men of Letters, Scott, 1916.djvu/300

274 274 THE FIRST MORRIS mouth ; and the last stanza smoothly assuages it. The rose is gently displaced, the half -mystical gesture which laid it there is turned into an amiable act of knightly ministration. We are left with a graceful description of a credible incident — it is exactly as though a picture by the popular artist who painted " The Knight Errant " had been substituted for one by the master of the same name who painted the " Lorenzo and Isabella." It is a curious bit of restoration, and, at first, unmistakably disconcerting ; it seems to throw a doubt upon the authenticity of the spell; if the stumbling tension in the voices, for instance, which seemed to hint at an unspeakable burden, was merely a result of the workman's awkwardness, are we not hoaxing ourselves rather absurdly when we allow it to thrill us so profoundly? Nor may we use those seventeen years as a shield. Morris's hands had gained strength in the interval, they could carry out his plans more completely — but that was all ; there seems no doubt that the picture on the right was the one he always wanted to paint, that it was upon a graceful description of a credible incident that he believed himself to be engaged, and that even when the lines were actively shrilling and sharpening beneath his fingers into the shapes we know, he still felt he was producing work of a blameless virility. For this we have his own assurance. Asked, in the early days, whom he thought his work most resembled, "Why, Browning, I suppose," said he, surprised ; and when some rapt disciple besought him to expound the inner meaning of the symbol Three red roses across the moon, he blurted out indignantly, " But it's the knight's coat-of-arms, of course ! " These are remarkable asser-