Page:Men of Letters, Scott, 1916.djvu/303

277 THE FIRST MORRIS 277 charnel flames ; and that twisted the very wine-cup itself and the bright armour and even the act of drinking into a sinister device : — Once at a feast ; how slowly it sank in, As though you feared that some wild fate might twine Within that cup and slay you for a sin.; I saw you kissing once, like a curved sword That bites with all its edge, did your lips lie, Curled gently, slowly, long time could afford For caught-up breathings : like a dying sigh." . . . Beardsley rather than Browning, you would say ; yet with the example of that restored " Chapel " in front of us it is easy to see how Morris, once his hand was in, would have planed away these twisted aberrations and left the tale as smooth as Edward's beard. Indeed, there is a danger of our sympathies swinging us too far. The later Morris, all bearded and blithe, radiating legends and hammering down his lusty dogmas (" Poetry is tommy-rot" was one of these ; and another, more deliberate, " Half a dozen stanzas of ballad poetry are worth a cart-load of the whining introspective pieces of to-day "), makes such an entirely satisfying and wholesome figure that the reader may easily be swept off his feet and bullied out of his first priceless impression. Readers have yielded thus ; nay, Criticism herself has been coerced ! " The life of our mediaeval ancestors," says one distinguished writer, too close a friend of Morris to resist him, " The life of our mediaeval ancestors is here depicted with a sympathy and insight perhaps unparalleled." Even Mr. Andrew Lang was carried away : " We found Froissart's people
 * 'I saw you drink red wine,