tt gives evidence of in the too facile eloquence of these
pages.

The most interesting part of the book is that which is devoted to
personalia. But even in the matter of personalia Mr. Cunninghame Graham
tells us more vital things in a page of his introduction than Mr.
Compton-Rickett scatters through a chapter. His description of Morris's
appearance, if not a piece of heroic painting, gives us a fine grotesque
design of the man:

His face was ruddy, and his hair inclined to red, and grew in waves
like water just before it breaks over a fall. His beard was of the
same colour as his hair. His eyes were blue and fiery. His teeth,
small and irregular, but white except upon the side on which he hew
his pipe, where they were stained with brown. When he walked he
swayed a little, not like (_sic_) a sailor sways, but as a man who
lives a sedentary life toddles a little in his gait. His ears were
small, his nose high and well-made, his hands and feet small for a
man of his considerable bulk. His speech and address were fitting
the man; bold, bluff, and hearty.... He was quick-tempered and
irritable, swift to anger and swift to reconciliation, and I should
think never bore malice in his life.

When he talked he seldom looked at you, and his hands were always
twisting, as if they wished to be at work.

Such was the front the man bore. The ideal for which he lived may be
summed up, in Mr. Compton-Rickett's expressive phrase, as "the
democratization of beauty." Or it may be stated more humanly in the words
which Morris himself spoke at the grave of a young man who died of
injuries received at the hands of the police in Trafalgar Square on
"Bloody Sunday." "Our friend," he then said:

Our friend who lies here has had a hard life, and met with a hard
death; and, if society had been differently constituted, his life
might have been a delightful, a beautiful, and a happy one. It is
our business to begin to organize for the purpose of seeing that
such things shall not happen; to try and make this earth a
beautiful and happy place.

There you have the sum of all Morris's teaching. Like so many fine artists
since Plato, he dreamed of a society which would be as beautiful as a work
of art. He saw the future of society as a radiant picture, full of the
bright light of hope, as he saw the past of society as a picture steeped
in the charming lights of fancy