Page:The Life of William Morris.djvu/679

270 specimen of the new paper this morning, it is admirable—couldn't be better." While there, he designed the ornamental border for the first page of "The Golden Legend," and several of the large floriated initials, or "bloomers," as they are called in the traditional slang of the press. As soon as he came back to London, a regular pressman was permanently engaged (the one got in to help in the printing of "The Story of the Glittering Plain" had only been taken for the job) and the printing of "The Golden Legend" began to go steadily on. The first sheet was printed off by the middle of May: and before the end of that month the Press had been removed into larger premises in Sussex House, next door to the cottage first occupied by it.

"The new printed sheets of the G.L. look very well indeed," says a letter of the 20th of May.

"Pleased as I am with my printing, when I saw my two men at work on the press yesterday with their sticky printers' ink, I couldn't help lamenting the simplicity of the scribe and his desk, and his black ink and blue and red ink, and I almost felt ashamed of my press after all. I am writing a short narrative poem to top up my new book with. My wig! but it is garrulous: I can't help it, the short lines and my old recollections lead me on."

The volume of his own collected verses which, under the title of "Poems by the Way," was the second book issued from the Kelmscott Press, did not actually begin to be printed till July: but during May he was busy in collecting and passing judgment on those shorter unpublished poems of his own which were to form its main contents. He was habitually careless about his own manuscripts, and kept no record of what he had written or even of what he had pub-