Page:The Life of William Morris.djvu/158

ÆT. 24] Haystack in the Floods are as clearly before his eyes as if the riding of the knights had gone by but a day before: the talk of Sir Peter Harpdon and his man seems transcribed from memory. It is this amazing power of realization, when he is dealing with his own period, that gives to the masterpiece of his later years, "The Dream of John Ball," so vivid a colour and truth; it is the want of it, when he is off that ground, that leaves him open to the accusation of being mannered or languid when he deals with a story which is either not mediæval or not treated in a frankly mediæval spirit.

Browning himself, it may not be without interest to know, was one of the earliest and the most enthusiastic admirers of this volume. "It has been my delight," he said of it many years afterwards, "ever since I read it." When the first volume of "The Earthly Paradise" was published, he wrote to Morris a letter of warm and finely-appreciative praise. "It is a double delight to me," he added, "to read such poetry, and know you of all the world wrote it,—you whose songs I used to sing while galloping by Fiesole in old days,—'Ho, is there any will ride with me?'"

Between the charm of the Malory poems and that of the Froissart poems the choice is one of personal feeling. But the part of the volume which one gathers to represent its spirit and form most intimately to many lovers of poetry, is neither of these. It consists of the poems of a wholly unbased and fantastic romance, in which any traceable poetical influence is that of Poe rather than of Browning. Their very names—such names as "The Blue Closet," or "The Sailing of the Sword," or "Two Red Roses across the Moon"—are taken straight out of dreamland. It is these poems on which the unjust praise and the blame