Page:The Life of William Morris.djvu/308

ÆT. 39] space of less than three inches by two, with a title in gold above each. In that central space, alongside and between the verses, is a running ornament of flowers and fruits. On the other five pages the margins are completely filled with floriated design, among which are minute but beautifully drawn and coloured figures, the lower half of the last page being also filled by a design of two figures holding a scroll. The treatment of the fruit and flower work is an admirable adaptation of an almost Pre-Raphaelite naturalism to the methods and limits of ornamental design: the raspberries on page 14 and the honeysuckles on page 21 may be specially instanced as unsurpassable in their truth to nature and their decorative effect.

The fine lambskin vellum for this, as for his other manuscripts, he procured from Rome. The English lime-dressed vellum used for a few special copies of "Love is Enough" had been found disagreeable in surface and almost useless for fine work. Owing to the continuous demand for vellum at the Vatican, the tradition of its proper manufacture had been preserved more fully at Rome than elsewhere. But sometimes the orders from the Vatican absorbed the whole annual output, and no skins were to be had. When the Kelmscott Press was started, a sufficient supply of Roman vellum could not be procured for it; and an English maker, after many unsuccessful trials, at last succeeded in producing sheets of a quality nearly equal to the Roman.

Before this Omar Khayyám was finished, he had begun another copy of the same poem for Burne-Jones on paper. This was executed more in the style of the "Book of Verses," but with somewhat more profuse ornament; and in it Burne-Jones himself painted six extraordinarily beautiful pictures, each in a different