Page:The Life of William Morris.djvu/438

ÆT. 48] again, how to do it well or ill, is a matter of art like other things."

A matter of art like other things! from this position he strayed far, in the opinion of many of his perplexed friends and jeering opponents, in the years when he was an active worker for the Socialist cause: and certainly the storm-laden air that he began to feel round him was partly at least an atmosphere of his own creation: a mirage, a fool's paradise, it was freely called by those who, if they ever strayed into a fool's paradise of their own, would at all events never be lured towards it by any superflux of sympathy or any ardour of imagination. Yet to look a little deeper, this atmosphere, imagined or created, and created so far as really imagined, is just what art and art alone gives; and it is well to realize that mankind, if they propose to do without such dreams as this, can buy release from them only by the deliberate destruction of art and renunciation of beauty. Whether the result would be worth the price is a remote and rather abstract question; the price is unpayable.

These last letters are from Kelmscott. The return to London had its natural effect of shaping more or less vague broodings into matters of clear visible right and wrong. "As to my 'symptoms' on being pitchforked into the dirt and misery of the Centre of Intelligence," he breaks out on his return, "I must hold my peace about them, I suppose: only in sober earnest I must ask you to believe that they are not wholly selfish; since I could, if I would, more or less escape from this captivity, and would do so if it were not for the cause."

The reference in the use of the word "symptoms" may not be at once obvious. It is explained by another letter written a few months before. He Rh