Page:The Life of William Morris.djvu/127

106 strongly marked in the conclusion of Clough's "Bothie of Tober-na-Vuolich," published in 1848. Woolner had actually gone to Australia in 1852, and Tennyson had had serious thoughts of accompanying him. The arousal caused by the Crimean War united with other causes to check the impulse; and work for the elevation and sweetening of life in England took the place in the ideals of younger men that had for a few years been occupied by the somewhat fantastic dreams of an Antipodean Golden World.

In his spare time, besides the poems and stories which he went on pouring forth, Morris was beginning to practise more than one handicraft—clay-modelling, carving in wood and stone, and illuminating. A page of his illumination is extant, done in this year. It shows great certainty and mastery in colour, but not the complete grasp of the art which he had acquired a year later; the drawing is uncertain, and the writing not good. His eye for colour was always perfect, and his knowledge with regard to it amazing. There is a singular instance of this in a passage in "The Hollow Land." "As the years went on," says the Son of the House of the Lilies, "and we grew old, we painted purple pictures and green ones instead of the scarlet and yellow, so that the walls looked altered." That this is what actually happens from the yellowing of the crystalline lens of the eye in advanced life was only discovered by specialists many years later. How did Morris know, or divine it?

From the day he put on his Bachelor's gown, he ceased the practice, then still enforced on all undergraduates, of shaving the moustache. From that time forward he never touched a razor; and now also he began, partly as a symbol of his profession, partly from mere disinclination to take unnecessary trouble, to wear