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152
WILLIAM MORRIS
that Morris, as an artist, was cursed with two
of the three modern English vices, that he
was provincial and amateurish. But he gives
him full credit for not being goaded to
futility by a sense of his own genius.
Morris was provincial as the Pre-Raphaelites
and Tennyson and Carlyle were provincial,
as Swinburne and Whistler were not ; his
mind could rarely escape from the place and
age in which it was formed. He looked at art
and life, and at the future even, from the
point of view of an Englishman
and a Vic-
torian ; and when he tries to change his
position we feel the Victorian labouring, more
or less unsuccessfully, to get out of himself.
When I accuse him of being " amateurish "
I do not use that vile word in contradistinction
to " professional." In a sense all true artists
must be amateurs ;
the professional view, the
view that art is a hopeful and genteel way of
earning one's living, is possible only to official
portrait-painters and contractors for public
monuments. When I say that Morris, like
almost all our visual artists and too many of
our modern writers, was amateurish, I mean
that he was not serious enough about his art.
He tended to regard art as a part
of life
instead of regarding life as a means to art.
A long morning's work, an afternoon of fresh
air, a quiet evening,
and so to bed and fit