o those who in the sleepy region stay,
Lulled by the singer of an empty day.
--_From "The Earthly Paradise"_

[Illustration: WILLIAM MORRIS]

The parents of William Morris were well-to-do people who lived in the
village of Walthamstow, Essex. The father was a London bill-broker,
cool-headed, calculating, practical. In the home of his parents William
Morris received small impulse in the direction of art; he, however, was
taught how to make both ends meet, and there were drilled into his
character many good lessons of plain commonsense--a rather unusual
equipment for a poet, but still one that should not be waived or
considered lightly. At the village school William was neither precocious
nor dull, neither black nor white: his cosmos being simply a sort of
slaty-gray, a condition of being which attracted no special attention from
either his schoolfellows or his tutors. From the village school he went to
Marlborough Academy, where by patient grubbing he fitted himself for
Exeter College, Oxford.

Morris, the elder, proved his good sense by taking no very special
interest in the boy's education. Violence of direction in education falls
flat: man is a lonely creature, and has to work out his career in his own
way. To help the grub spin its cocoon is quite unnecessary, and to play
the part of Mrs. Gamp with the butterfly in its chrysalis stage is to
place a quietus upon its career.

The whole science of modern education is calculated to turn out a good,
fairish, commonplace article; but the formula for a genius remains a
secret with Deity. The great man becomes great in spite of teachers and
parents: and his near kinsmen, being color-blind, usually pooh-pooh the
idea that he is anything more than mediocre. At Oxford, William Morris
fell in with a young man of about his own age, by the name of Edward
Burne-Jones. Burne-Jones was studying theology. He was slender in stature,
dreamy, spiritual, poetic. Morris was a giant in strength, blunt in
speech, bold in manner, and had a shock of hair like a lion's mane. This
was in the year Eighteen Hundred Fifty-three--these young men being
nineteen years of age. The slender, yellow, dreamy student of theology and
the ruddy athlete became fast friends.

"Send your sons to college and the boys will educate them," said Emerson.
These boys read poetry together; and it seems the first author that
specially attracted them was Mrs. Browning; and she attracted