Page:William-morris-and-the-early-days-of-the-socialist-movement.djvu/187



ELIGION was a subject on which Morris never touched, not at any rate in a critical or confessionary way, in his writings or public addresses, and but rarely I think in private conversation. Only on one or two occasions did he ever speak of his own ideas about religion in my hearing, and the subject is rarely alluded to in his letters or conversations in Mr. Mackail's life and May Morris' biographical notes.

Usually he spoke of himself as a pagan or an atheist, but never dogmatically or boastfully; nor did he encourage argument on the subject.

He rather liked, when among us in Glasgow, to poke fun at Scottish 'unco guidism' and 'Sabbatarianism'—both of which national characteristics had, however, already become, or were becoming, issues of tradition rather than conviction so far as the bulk of the town people in Scotland were concerned.

On one occasion I happened incidentally to refer to the decay of religious observances in Scotland. 'But,' said Morris, with a challenging twinkle in his eye, 'you Scotch folk never had any religion, never at least since John Knox's day. You have merely a sort of theology, or rather a devilology mixed up with Calvinistic metaphysics.'

I retorted by saying that English people never had any religion, they had merely 'Churchgoing.' 'Perhaps you are in the main right,' he replied, 'but at any rate their churchgoing was on the whole not an unpleasant sort of