er 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
contemporary infection and the chill winds of 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 can help liking him. He had that
magnanimity which makes people take instinctively the right side. His
reasons might be wrong, but he was in the right. There are people in
history, and Morris is one of them, about whom we feel that if they were
alive they would sympathize with whatever were the best and most
pressing aspirations of the age. Morris would, of course, be as firm
to-day as ever against plutocracy, but one feels sure that he would take
his stand with those who are trying to win for themselves some kind of
moral and intellectual as well as economic freedom. One feels sure he
would be of that forlorn hope of civilization that carries on a sporadic
and ineffective war against officialism and militarism on the one hand,
and puritanism and superstition on the other. One feels sure that,
however little he might like new developments in art or thought, he
would be against the people who tried to suppress them. One feels quite
sure that he would never cease to believe that so long as society is
imperfect it is the right and duty of individuals to experiment. The
fact is, Morris was at once a practical craftsman and an idealist. In
practical affairs and private prejudices he could be as truculent and
wrong-headed as the rest of us; but he was always conscious of something
much more important than practical affairs and private prejudices. He
cared nothing for his own reputation and little for immediate success
because he cared for something greater. For that he cared so much that
he was able to forgive the quarrels and absurdities of the Hammersmith
Socialists and to laugh even at his own vehemence.

FOOTNOTE:

[15] "William Morris." By A. Clutton Brock. (Williams and Norgate: Home
University Library, 1s. net.)

PERSIAN MINIATURES[16]

[Sidenote: _Burlington Magazine May 1914_]

Very slowly it is becoming possible to construct a history of Persian
painting. Until quite lately all attempts were frustrated by what is
sure to frustrate the attempts of the first historians of any "school"
or "slope,"