tin
than Morris. He was always the craftsman who kept close to his
material, and thought more about the block and the chisel than about
aesthetic ecstasy. The thrills and ecstasies of life, he seems to have
felt, must come as by-products out of doing one's job as well as one
could: they were not things, he thought, to aim at, or even talk about
overmuch. I do not agree with Morris, but that is beside the point. The
point is that Clutton Brock is unwilling to disagree with him violently.
He has a peculiar kindness for Morris that does not surprise me. He is a
man who works for his living, and does his work so well that we may be
sure he wins from it delight. The greater part of what he writes he does
not sign; and there are thousands of people in England who, though they
hardly know his name, have yet been affected by his mind. As he sits
quietly producing a surprising quantity of good literature, he must
sometimes feel very near those anonymous craftsmen of the Middle Ages
who, lost in the scaffolding, struck out forms that would to-day make
only too familiar the names of their creators. At such moments, can he
be less than partial to the man who understood so well the greatness and
the dignity of those nameless artists?

Morris was amongst the first to perceive that much of the greatest art
has been produced anonymously and collectively; and we may be sure that
Clutton Brock shares his dislike for that worship of names, that
interest in catalogues and biographies, which amongst the collecting
classes still does duty for aesthetic sensibility. Morris was indignant,
as well he might be, when he heard the pictures of some famous
artist--famous because he signed his name and left some record of his
life--exalted above the sculpture and windows of Chartres--the work of
obscure stone-cutters and verriers. He loved the mediaeval craftsmen for
the fineness of their work and for their personal modesty. He liked to
think of men who could take their orders from a _contre-maitre_ and
execute them superbly, partly, I think, because he saw that these were
men who could be fitted into his ideal State. And Mr. Clutton Brock,
good Socialist that he is, must, I suppose, himself have been perplexed
by that problem which confronts every modern State-projector: What is to
be done about the artists? How are these strange, turbulent,
individualistic creatures to be fitted into any rational collectivism?
What place can be found in Utopia for