Page:The Life of William Morris.djvu/758

ÆT. 63] or ornament (with the exception of a little Greek type which occurs in two books) printed at the Kelmscott Press and not actually designed by Morris himself and drawn with his own hand.

Among the projects that had dated from the earliest days of the Press were two which various circumstances had from time to time put off, and which were now once more much in his mind. One of these was the printing of a selection of mediæval English lyrical poetry. He had discussed the plan of such a book with Mr. Wyatt when they were working together at "Beowulf," and just before he started on the voyage to Norway Mr. Wyatt had sent him a list of early English poems for consideration. But he was too weak then to do anything with it. The other proposed volume was one which lay even nearer his heart; it was a volume of the Border Ballads, which had been his delight since boyhood, and which he often maintained to be the highest achievement in poetry which the language had to show. This also had been planned years before; and early in 1894 he had been discussing the thorny question of a text with Ellis. He had persuaded himself that it was possible to form such a text by selection from the different versions. "You see," he said, "no one version has more authority than another; it is a matter of literary merit;"—and no doubt were the formation of such a text at all possible, it would have had its best chances of success in his hands. During this autumn, when he was too ill to do anything else, he amused himself by having the ballads read aloud to him and beginning to form his own version. Mr. Ellis, who was daily with him, and who did most of this work for him, was well aware that the selection could never be completed, and no longer argued the question with him. Rh