To enquire whether Marlowe was a greater poet than Milton or Milton a
greater than Keats is but to juggle with words and to spin them into
nothingness. It is enough that all were great. It is no honour to
the giants of the earth to pit them one against another for our
sport. That Morris was or was not the greatest poet of his age or
century is a matter of complete unimportance upon which nothing
depends. The supremely important thing, the splendid circumstance,
is that here again in due season was a man unmistakably moulded in
heroic proportions, one claiming and proving kinship with the masters
whose names are but few. If humanity was fortunate enough to see
others of his peers in his own day we can but be thankful for grace
so prodigal; but, however that may be, here at least was one
establishing anew the proudest succession of mankind. The creator of
_Sigurd the Volsung_ and so much more that is compact of sane and
wholesome magnificence has his rightful company, and it may well be
the gladdest boast of the world that he has; but in that company
there are no degrees. Æschylus, Homer, Virgil, Dante, Michael
Angelo, Shakespeare, Milton, Goethe, Beethoven, Wagner, Shelley,
Wordsworth--there is an inspiration to the lips in the very names of
these men and their fellows, but there must be no disputation as to
the headship in their presence; they themselves will but laugh if
they heed us at all. And Morris is, as I see him, clearly of that
fellowship. By some strange generosity of nature he was not only
allowed to give great poetry to the world, but also to readjust for
us the significance of life in phases a little lower than the
highest. It happened that a man who had the profoundest sense of the
real nature of circumstance and conditions in his generation could
enforce his direct and practical teaching by a creative imagination
of the highest order. It would, perhaps, be fitter to say that in
this man a supreme creative faculty was allied to another faculty
that enabled him to interpret his imaginative art to the world in
terms of immediate practice. The result of this is that although the
indirect influence of his creative art--and that is always the
profoundest influence in these things--is neither more nor less
definable than that of other men of an equal power, his direct
influence not upon abstract or scientific thought but upon the
spiritual perception of men, has perhaps been more instant and
far-reaching than that of any man in the history of English genius.
It is, indeed, difficult to find anywhere a precise parallel to the
curious phenomenon that was Morris. Experience proves the advent of
a great poet to be apparently capricious, the unconsidered whim of
powers that make but little distinction of seasons. The "Songs of
Innocence" were quite definitely sung in the wilderness. But that
manifestation of genius which covers a range wider than its own
finest creation, and takes on something of universality in pervading
itself not only with its own life but with the life of the world,
would seem to be reserved for days that mark the culmination of some
memorable epoch of imaginative activity, and in itself to be the
crowning expression of such days. Michael Angelo and Shakespeare
came at times when national life had been running with rare spiritual
force for some years; when, that is to say, the world was cherishing
beauty and had rich gifts to offer such men when they arose. The
great word was but seeking a voice, and it is difficult to dissociate
Michael Angelo from the impulse of Renaissance Italy, or Shakespeare
from the impulse of Elizabethan England. The mighty utterance of
these men was their own, wrought into its perfection by their
separate and distinctive temperaments; of the essential isolation of
the artist I have already spoken. But it is nevertheless an
utterance in some measure made possible by the currents of the time
in which it came and one for which an examination of the immediately
preceding years prepares us. These men are exultant figures
challenging the world for ever from heights that they did not build
unaided. This, of course, does not effect their achievement, and the
subordination of many splendid forces to one supreme end is, perhaps,
the highest exercise of the faculty of design in the cosmic genius.
The coming of such men is not less moving because it seems to be
inevitable, but that it does seem inevitable is clear. There are,
too, times when men move, as it were, in a kind of receptive stupor,
times when great forces are latent in their midst; it is possible for
a man of this imaginative universality to arrive at such a time
without any apparent preparation in the days before him, and, being
at once the pioneer and culmination of a new era, yet not to excite
our astonishment as well as our worship, because the time, although
lending him no impulse, at least offers him no resistance. The world
could not be said to be expecting Goethe or--Collins and Gray
notwithstanding--Wordsworth, and yet we are not surprised when we
come to these men, because we have been moving through darkness
between light and light, and have been expecting any new and sudden
revelation that might be made--expecting to be surprised. Goethe and
Wordsworth, unlike Michael Angelo and Shakespeare, did not appear as
the final and perfect articulation of a word passed freely from lip
to lip by their fellows, but they were at least allowed to speak
without any violent denial being implicit in the whole intellectual
and spiritual and artistic attitude of their time. Having the
revelation of new temperaments to make, they found, inevitably,
isolated voices of criticism against them, but, save for these, the
age, although not demanding them as the logical issue of its own
effort, at least did not appear to be essentially unfitted to produce
them. _Lyrical Ballads_ was printed at a time that had no deliberate
artistic purpose of its own, but was, nevertheless, ripe for some new
and striking manifestation of the spirit of man. The night had
already lasted over-long. Wordsworth, it is true, came strangely
early in the new day, but although the great voice in the dawn was
unusual, it was not amazing.
These men, it would seem then, are to be looked for in a time that
either demands them for its own sublimated utterance or is at least
negatively ready to receive them. Morris, however, whose genius was
distinguished clearly by this universality, not only was not the
essential figure of a great movement that had grown before and about
him, but he came at a time that, far from demanding him as its
natural fulfilment, was not even waiting to receive any new
impression that might be struck upon it. When Tennyson had sounded
his clearest music and Browning had wrought his subtlest perceptions
into poetry, it was felt that the highest achievement of a new age
had been reached. Then when the wonderful second summer of the
romantic revival seemed to be exhausted, Swinburne gave to it a new
term of strong life. Taking all the material that the new poetry had
used since the first beginnings over a hundred years earlier, he
blended it with his own temperament and gift of speech and, when men
looked for no more than the quiet lapse into imitation and echoes, he
showed it to be capable of an added and ringing significance that had
been wholly unexpected. Taking language at the value that use had
allotted to it, he not only retained the poetry that had already been
found in those values but made it clear that no one had wrung the
full measure of poetry from them. After this piling of crest above
crest no further great expression could justly be looked for until in
due time a fresh impulse had been fostered to its full strength. The
Victorian development of romantic poetry had reached its splendid
final achievement, and quiet if not wholly songless years would have
been the natural succession. And yet, at the very time that
Swinburne was lending this last glory to the marvellous epoch of
which Collins had been the herald, another poet was already
announcing a new day with the authentic voice of a master. The
eternal impulse that conspired with Morris's own vision to create his
poetry is, perhaps, more difficult to define than in the case of any
other poet. It certainly is not to be found in his own age, and
although to say that he sought to continue the mediæval tradition may
account for much in his literary form, it does not help very greatly
in the understanding of his spiritual temper. The fact is that in
its fundamental qualities Morris's art came as near as any art can do
to being unaffected by any external impulse at all. His love for
certain aspects of mediævalism did not prevent him from reaching far
beyond them both in the construction and the philosophy of his art.
The quality in mediæval art that chiefly attracted him was its direct
simplicity, and this quality he took up into his own work. Instead
of using words for their cumulative poetic value he threw poetry over
words that had hitherto gone naked. Apart from a few of his early
poems and the use that he makes of models from time to time in verse
forms, there is scarcely any evidence in the manner of his work that
he had ever read any of the poetry before him. Reducing life to its
simplest equation, he embodied it in an utterance as simple. But, in
its interpretation of life, the world that he created was rather a
world of the future than a world of the past, and it incorporates the
essence of the spiritual and intellectual experience of the ages that
had passed between, say, Chaucer and his own day. The intensity of
his vision and the certainty with which he disentangled the essential
from the ephemeral forced in him an utterance of a nature not unlike
that of the earlier masters whom he was never tired of praising, but
it is a mistake to suppose that he saw the history of the world shorn
of five centuries. He was not misled into thinking that the
fundamental meaning of life had changed, but he knew that man's power
of adjusting his understanding to that meaning develops and is
increased by the succession of prophetic voices, and in assimilating
the cumulative growth of this power he was modern in the only worthy
and valuable way. He applied a definitely modern faculty of analysis
and definition to the permanent things of life, and embodied it in an
utterance that was clearly his own but coloured in the shaping by a
mediæval rather than any other influence.
That such a poet should come was in itself not remarkable, but that
he should come at such a moment was a phenomenon scarcely to be
paralleled in literature. The current tradition of poetry when he
was writing was not only hostile to his method, but in a negative way
it had helped to make the age one peculiarly unfitted for his
message. The eager selfishness of the new scientific thought had
paid but little attention to the social ideal for which Morris stood.
This neglect the poets had either flattered or, certainly, had not
opposed, and the result was that at a time when poetry was passing
through one of its most memorable epochs, the life of the people was
suffused with vulgarity and meanness. Neither art nor science,
whatever else they might be doing, realized that the basis of a
wholesome national life is a delight among the people in their daily
labour. The people did not discover this for themselves, and when
Morris wanted to furnish his rooms he was forced to make his own
chairs and tables. His work henceforward was to show his age its
errors on the one hand in his social teaching, and on the other in
his poetry and craftsmanship to announce its possibilities. This was
a perfectly natural result of the influence of the conditions that
surrounded him upon his own creative impulse, but how that impulse
came to birth among such conditions must remain a splendid
perplexity. Morris's work was directed to certain ends by the
requirements of his age, but his spirit was one to which the age had
no logical claim. He came not in due time but by some large
generosity of the gods.
When a great poet comes not unexpectedly but as the natural and full
development of a long tradition, it is easy not only to estimate the
positive value of his own achievement, but also to trace or even to
predict his influence upon his successors. New poets will come,
possessing some measure of genuine inspiration, and carry the
tradition through to its quiet and often lovely close; they will take
their honourable places about the few commanding figures, worthy of
their kinship and proud of it. But when the great poet happens to be
at the beginning instead of at the full day of an epoch, we can but
await the event. Morris not only discovered a new world in his art,
but he was allowed to explore and establish it. His word was not one
of rumour and promise alone, but more or less of fulfilment. Strands
of his influence have already been drawn through the art and life of
his followers, but the work that has been done in deliberate
imitation of his is scarcely recognizable as such. A poet may
imitate Tennyson with some success because he may inherit the same
tradition that shaped Tennyson; the impulse is already in his blood
towards the expression and temper of which his model is the
consummation. But there is no such tradition behind Morris; his art
was in a peculiar degree the creation of his own vision alone, and
that is a thing which is beyond imitation. The new tradition that
Morris himself began may or may not be carried along a clear line of
progression, but it can only be taken up in its full compass by a
poet that shall be not far short of Morris's own stature, and by the
time he comes it is possible that the influence of the author of
_Sigurd_ may have done its work by operating indirectly through many
new movements rather than through a direct succession of its own
begetting. If this should happen, Morris's influence will be no less
valuable a force in the world, but it is not unlikely that when the
history of poetry in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries comes to
be written, he will stand as a lonely titanic figure, excelled by
none in the depth and range of his art, but outside any categorical
lines of development.
About Morris's own attitude towards his art a good deal of nonsense
has been written. It appears, for example, that he once, in a moment
of irresponsible conversation, said that poetry was 'tommy rot.' The
remark had, of course, the exact value of all such small talk, but it
is the kind of thing that has been solemnly advanced as a proof that
he was primarily what is commonly called a man of action, who wrote
poetry as a pleasant recreation. The truth is, of course, that
Morris was a great artist, and knew that he was a great artist.
That, to him, was the supremely important thing, because his art
meant for him the sweetest and noblest life that he could perceive
through his imagination. As a man of action he proved himself fully
when occasion arose, but he undertook his propagandist work with
reluctance and often turned from it in disgust. It was not that he
was ever for a moment in doubt as to the excellence of the end at
which such work was aiming, but that he knew that his own great work
in the world, the work by which he could most effectually help it a
little towards that end, was his art. To suggest that the man who
created _Jason_ and _The Earthly Paradise_, _Sigurd_ and _Love is
Enough_ had anything but the profoundest reverence for his art, and
especially for the supreme expression of his art--poetry--would be a
preposterous insult if it were not ludicrous. Art was his gospel,
and all his social teaching and activity were but an effort to bring
his gospel to pass upon earth.
We can imagine a race that had attained a wisdom fuller than has yet
been found, adopting one simple form of daily supplication. Always
from the people's lips this prayer should go up, "Lord, give us
character." Character. That is the supreme need of man, and it is
simply the faculty of being himself and expressing himself in all the
conduct of his life. He may not be a very great man, or a very wise
man, or even a very good man, but if he be himself he may, in some
measure he must, become these. There is, at the outset, the
necessity of material opportunity for so being himself. One who is
overworked, or employed all the while in degrading work, or
insufficiently paid for his work, one who is, in short, driven,
cannot be himself, just as the man who is denied the chance of
working at all cannot be himself. But, given the material
opportunity, the power of proving his character, of asserting his
individuality, of being himself, is inherent in every man. And this
Morris felt with the whole energy of his being. He saw men having no
adventurousness in their own spirits, dulled by routine, and with
their own wills bent and impoverished by the will of some one else,
degraded into mere echoes and reflections. He saw that the crying
need of the world was character, and he sought to teach men that in
bringing back joy to their daily work they would put their feet on
the first step towards the only true dignity and pride of life. The
satisfaction that comes of a piece of work truly done and having in
it something of the soul of the worker was, to him, a holy thing.
His own craftsmanship and manufacture were the expression of a man
with this conviction; his imaginative writing was of a world peopled
by such men. The spiritual exaltation of which I have spoken, the
finer tissue of some mysterious emotional experience that is laid
over the definable substance of poetry, is always in his work,
translating its message into the imaginative terms of art; but the
message itself is perfectly articulated, and it is one of the
profoundest and most inspiriting that it has been given to any man to
deliver. Other poets have given us courage to face a world fallen
into uncharitable ways, or directed us to secluded places where we
may forget the dust and trouble of a life that we must accept as an
unfortunate necessity, or given good promise of revelation and
comfort in a life to come; but none has ever announced so clearly as
Morris the hope of life here upon earth. Cloistered quiet was an
impossible state to this man who so loved fellowship, and the world
beyond death he was content to leave to its own proving. But he did
not endeavour to encourage men to face the life that he knew was
unwholesome and draining them of freedom and manhood; he cried to
them to destroy it and he showed them in his art the life that might
be theirs in its stead.
The basis of Morris's social creed was an unchanging faith in the
essential dignity of the nature of man. The trickeries and
jealousies that beset our commercial phase of civilization he refused
to accept as being fundamental in humanity, thinking of them rather
as ill habits imposed upon humanity by some cruel sport of
circumstance that made men forgetful of their own better instincts.
He did not suppose that habits that had been slowly assimilated could
be put off in a moment of violent reaction, but he never doubted if
once men could be brought to consider the real purpose of traffic and
social community, and so free themselves from a tyranny that endured
only because part of its method was to carry its victims along in a
continuous necessity of adjusting themselves to the immediate moment
without allowing them to pause for reflection and see life in its
completeness, that then these habits would inevitably be set aside.
His desire always was that men should at least be allowed to prove
themselves freely. From the turbulent passions and sorrows
inseparable from humanity he asked no escape, taking them gladly as
the darker threads in the many-coloured web of our heritage, but he
denounced fiercely the doctrine that, finding men forced into daily
betrayal of themselves, blandly announced that here was proof of
their radical meanness and unworth. For the people who told him that
before he could hope for the world of his imagining he must change
human nature, he had a fine contempt. That this cleaner life was
realizable on earth, and that without any revolutionary excesses, he
showed as clearly in the work of his own life as any one man could
do. He conducted a large business enterprise profitably and in open
competition, but he did not degrade labour in employing it. He
accepted the normal conditions of society in public and family life,
but he did not allow them to cramp or violate his own personality.
He realized fully that a great social fabric is not constructed out
of mere unreason, and he had no wish to destroy systems that had been
evolved from perfectly sound impulses; the thing that he fought
against with all his extraordinary power was their abuse. Principles
of exchange and of labour for the common good were a necessary
complement of his belief that a man must get from his labour two
things: joy in the work itself and the means whereby to live; but he
knew that the real significance of these principles had been
forgotten. His life was an active endeavour to impress it once again
on the mind of the people, and in his poetry was the same endeavour
embodied in creative imagination.
Writing of the northern stories Morris said, 'Well, sometimes we must
needs think that we shall live again; yet if that were not, would it
not be enough that we helped to make this unnameable glory, and lived
not altogether deedless? Think of the joy we have in praising great
men, and how we turn their stories over and over, and fashion their
lives for our joy: and this also we ourselves may give to the world.'
It was curiously prophetic of that which we feel about Morris
himself. His life, his art, the figure of the man, all fit into the
outlines of a heroic story such as those that he loved. He gave,
indeed, to the world in this manner and in large measure. And he
added generously to the joy that we have in praising great men.