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WILLIAM MORRIS 153
next morning for another good spell of production
; something of that sort, one fancies,
was not unlike the ideal of William Morris.
It is a craftsman's ideal ; it is a good life for
any one but an artist and it would be a ;
good
attitude towards art if art were not something
different from work. Alas ! it is
altogether
the English attitude. I never look at those
Saxon manuscripts in the British Museum but
"
I say to : myself And didn't they go out
and have a game of cricket after hours and
work all the harder next day for their whole-
"
some exercise !
But from the fatal curse Morris was free ;
no man of great ability was ever less conceited.
You will not find in his work a trace of that
tired pomposity which tells us that the great
man is showing off, or of that empty pretentious
singularity which betrays the vanity
of the lonely British artist. Morris was never
the self-conscious master calling on sun and
moon to stand and watch him sign his name,
neither was he the shy genius of the English
hedgerows sheltering his little talent from
infection and the chill winds of
contemporary
criticism.
Morris was neither a great artist nor a great
thinker, but he was a great man, and that,
I suspect, is the chief reason why Mr. Brock
loves him, and why none of the better sort