Page:The Life of William Morris.djvu/763

354 Even in matters of art they did not see alike. Just as the restless energy of the one was in strong contrast to the other's patient scholarship and continuous absorption, so they received or re-incarnated the Middle Ages through the eyes and brain in the one case of a Norman, in the other of a Florentine. But these very differences only made them the more fully complementary to one another. Morris's deep feeling for Burne-Jones's work is expressed, though in studiously restrained language, in the Birmingham address of 189 1 on the Pre-Raphaelite School. But it may be even better judged from a more casual utterance. Once at the Grange he was—perhaps for the hundredth time—pressing for more and yet more designs for woodcuts for the Kelmscott Press. "You would think," Sir Edward said, turning to me with his wonderful smile, "to listen to Top, that I was the only artist in the world." "Well," said Morris quietly, "perhaps you wouldn't be so far wrong."

With well-meaning persons who came to him for advice or information he had grown wonderfully tolerant. In reply to an earnest correspondent who had asked his views on the subject of temperance, he replied in a letter which deserves record for its exquisite interplay of demure humour and solid sense.

"Dear Sir," he wrote, "I think the question of the advantage of alcoholic liquors is a matter which each man must find out for himself, having admitted that one may easily drink too much even without getting drunk. My own experience is that I find my victuals dull without something to drink, and that tea and coffee are not fit liquors to be taken with food: in fact the latter always disagrees with me palpably, and probably tea isn't good for me. It is a remarkable fact that in Iceland toothache was almost unknown till the intro-