Page:The Life of William Morris.djvu/322

ÆT. 40] have, as it were, carried my house on my back: but the little Turnham Green house is really a pleasure to me;—may all that be a good omen! Yet you must come and see me here too when you come home, if you won't be too much terrified at my housekeeper, who is like a troll-wife in an Icelandic story: with a deep bass voice, big and O so ugly!

"We have had cold weather enough lately, snow and a dreadful east wind; all of which I don't care a penny about to say the truth.

"On Saturday I am going down to Cambridge, to Magnússon, to do Icelandic: as stupid over the language as you others who are such quick linguists would think me, I am really getting on with it now: when I am down there, which has been once or twice, we all talk nothing but Icelandic together.

"Well, I had best make an end now before I get too dull. Once again forgive me for not writing to you oftener: I have really had a hard time of it: but I hope things have taken a long turn now, and that I shall be something worth as a companion when I see you again; which I look forward to very much indeed. Write soon again, please, and tell me how you are.

"Good-bye, then, with love and best wishes. "I am your affectionate "."

With a mind still so full of his first journey to Iceland and so excited at the prospect of a second, it is not surprising that his first visit to Italy, which took place this spring, was something of an anti-climax. It was a very short one, and gave him little satisfaction. With the noble Italian art of the earlier Renaissance he had but little sympathy: for that of the later Renaissance and the academic traditions he had