Page:The Life of William Morris.djvu/575

166 in the work of spreading Socialist doctrine, but creative work in art and letters began now to resume its normal place in his mind. The effect on his spirits and temper was soon obvious. In May, when the fortunes of the first Home Rule Bill were still swaying heavily in the balance, he could take note of the wild words that were flying in the air with a humorous side glance at the hardly wilder words of the extremists among his own colleagues. "Rebellion is getting quite fashionable now; I shall have to join the Quakers. I wonder if the Queen will order herself to be arrested after having hoisted the flag of rebellion on Buckingham Palace. I don't think, mind you, that there is much else than brag about the Orangemen; I suppose it would end in a riot or two. But you really should read the St. James's now and then; Hyndman at his wildest is nothing to it."

Indeed he seems now and then to have found it necessary to brace himself up against a moderation that was stealing over him almost against his will. "I do not love contention; I even shrink from it with indifferent persons. Indeed I know that all my faults lie on the other side: love of ease, dreaminess, sloth, sloppy good-nature, are what I chiefly accuse myself of. All these would not have been hurt by my being a 'moderate Socialist'; nor need I have forgone a good share of the satisfaction of vainglory: for in such a party I could easily have been a leader, nay, perhaps the leader, whereas amidst our rough work I can scarcely be a leader at all and certainly do not care to be. I say this because I feel that a very little self-deception would have landed me among the moderates. But self-deception it would have been."

That recovered sweetness of temper (which no one but himself would ever have thought of describing as