his wife lay. A public service was held in
Westminster Abbey, and a portrait medallion there preserves the memory
of his features. The patient toil, the even temper, the noble purpose
which inspired his life, had achieved their goal--he was a national hero
as truly as any statesman or soldier of his generation; and if,
according to his nature he wished his body to lie in a humble grave, he
deserved full well to have his name preserved and honoured in our most
sacred national shrine.

WILLIAM MORRIS

1834-96

1834. Born at Walthamstow, March 24.
1848-51. Marlborough College.
1853-5. Exeter College, Oxford.
1856. Studies architecture under Street.
1857. Red Lion Square; influence of D. G. Rossetti.
1858. _Defence of Guenevere_.
1859. Marries Miss Jane Burden.
1860-5. 'Red House', Upton, Kent.
1861. Firm of Art Decorators founded in Queen Square, Bloomsbury.
(Dissolved and refounded 1875.)
1867-8. _Life and Death of Jason_. 1868-70. _Earthly Paradise_.
1870. Tenant of Kelmscott Manor House, on the Upper Thames.
1871-3. Visits to Iceland; work on Icelandic Sagas.
1876. _Sigurd the Volsung_.
1878. Tenant of Kelmscott House, Hammersmith.
1881. Works moved to Merton.
1883-4. Active member of Social Democratic Federation.
1884-90. Founder and active member of Socialist League.
1891. Kelmscott Press founded.
1892-6. Preparation and printing of Kelmscott _Chaucer_.
1896. Death at Hammersmith, October 3.
1896. Burial at Kelmscott, Oxfordshire.

WILLIAM MORRIS

CRAFTSMAN AND SOCIAL REFORMER

In general it is difficult to account for the birth of an original man
at a particular place and time. As Carlyle says: 'Priceless Shakespeare
was the free gift of nature, given altogether silently, received
altogether silently.' Of his childhood history has almost nothing to
relate, and what is true of Shakespeare is true in large measure of
Burns, of Shelley, of Keats. Even in an age when records are more
common, we can only discern a little and can explain less of the silent
influences at work that begin to make the man. There are few things more
surprising than that, in an age given up chiefly to industrial
development, two prosperous middle-class homes should have given birth
to John Ruskin and William Morris, so alien in temper to all that
traditionally springs from such a soil. In the case of Morris there is
nothing known of his ancestry to explain his rich and various gifts.
From a child he seemed to have found