CHAPTER XII.

THE END.

Theend with Morris seemed to come suddenly, although for months and even for years there had been warnings of its approach. He had enjoyed—and greatly enjoyed—unusual strength and vitality up to almost his sixtieth year. The seeds of gout were in his constitution, and from attacks of this disease he occasionally suffered, but not until the one occurring in the spring of 1891, just as the Kelmscott Press was getting under way, did they give reason for alarm. At that time other complications were discovered and he was told that he must consider himself an invalid. After this, as we have seen, he plunged with rapture into new undertakings involving the use of all his faculties, and carried them on with no apparent lessening of intellectual vigour. But he had too long overtaxed his physical frame by his extraordinary labours, and especially by his activity in the cause of Socialism, which had led him out in all weathers and under the most adverse conditions.By the beginning of 1895 he began to show plainly the weakness that had been gaining on him, and to admit it, though still keeping busy at his various occupations. His increasing illness brought home to him the thought of that final check upon his activities which he had always found so difficult to conceive. “If,” he said, “it merely means that I am to be laid up for a little while, it doesn’t so much matter, you know; but if I am to be caged up here for months, and then it is to be the end of all things, I shouldn’t like it at all. This has been a jolly world to me and I find plenty to do in it.”

As the folioChauceradvanced through the Press, he grew impatient, no doubt fearing that he would not see its completion, and it is pleasant to read of his gratification when a completed copy reached him, bound in the cover designed by himself. Late in July, 1896, by the recommendation of his physician he took a sea voyage, going to Norway for the bracing influences of its air and associations. No benefit was gained, however, and on his return a congestion of one lung set in that proved unyielding, while his general weakness was such that he was unable to cross the threshold of his room. We find him responding to an old friend who had urged him to try the effect of the pure air of Swainslow, that this was the case and he could not come, but was “absolutely delighted to find another beautiful place which is still in its untouchedloveliness.” Up to the last he did a little work, dictating the final passage ofThe Sundering Floodless than a month before his death, which occurred in his home at Hammersmith on the morning of the 3rd of October, 1896. He died without apparent suffering, and surrounded by his friends. He had lived almost sixty-three years in the “jolly world” wherein he had found so much to do, but he left the impression of having been cut down in the flower of his life.

His burial was in keeping with those tastes and preferences that had meant so much to him. The strong oak coffin in which he was laid was of an ancient, simple shape, with handles of wrought iron, and the pall that covered it was a strip of rich Anatolian velvet from his own collection of textiles. He was carried from Lechlade station to the little Kelmscott church in an open hay-cart, cheerful in colour, with bright red wheels, and festooned with vines, alder, and bulrushes. The bearers and the drivers of the country waggons in which his friends followed him to his grave were farmers of the neighbourhood clad in their moleskins, people who had lost, said one of them, “a dear good friend in Master Morris.” The hearse, with its bright decorations and the little group of mourners wound their way along pleasant country roads, beaten upon by a storm of unusual fury. “The north-west wind bent trees and bushes,” writes one of those who were present, “turning the leaves of the bird maplesback upon their footstalks, making them look like poplars, and the rain beat on the straggling hedges, the lurid fruit, such as only grows in rural England,—the fruit of privet with ripe hips and haws; the foliage of the Guelder roses hung on the bushes; along the road a line of slabs of stone extended, reminding one of Portugal; ragweed and loosestrife, with rank hemp agrimony, were standing dry and dead, like reeds beside a lake, and in the rain and wind the yokels stood at the cross-roads, or at the openings of the bridle-paths.”

InNews from NowhereMorris describes Kelmscott Church, with its little aisle divided from the nave by three round arches, its windows, “mostly of the graceful Oxfordshire fourteenth-century type,” and the interior trimmed with flowers for a village merrymaking. On the day of his burial, by a curious coincidence it was trimmed with fruits of the harvest in preparation for the autumn festival. The service was read by an old schoolfellow and friend, and Morris was left to his rest “from patience and from pain” in the place he had best loved and to which in his final weakness he had longed to return.

In regarding Morris through the medium of his work it is difficult to gain a coherent impression. He turned one side and another to the world with such rapidity of succession as to give a sense of kaleidoscopic change. What new combination of colour and form his activities would take was always impossible to forecast. And the thing thathe was doing seemed to him at the time the one thing in the world that was worth doing, the one thing that “a reasonable and healthy man” would make it his pleasure to do. Yet, as we have seen, all these pursuits taken up by him with so much zest and laid down by him with such suddenness, fitted harmoniously and accurately into the plan of his life, which, with the decade of militant Socialism deducted, presented a smooth and even surface, unbroken by any violent change of circumstance or method or motive. He has been described by nearly all who have written of him as “a rebel,” and a rebel he was in the true Quixotic sense, his lance in rest to charge at any moment against any windmill of convention that might offend him. A friend who was once talking with him about a forthcoming election to the London School Board, expressing a hope that the progressive party would win,—“Well,” said Morris, striding up and down, “I am not sure that a clerical victory would not be a good thing. I was educated at Marlborough under clerical masters, and I naturally rebelled against them. Had they been advanced men, my spirit of rebellion would probably have led me to conservatism merely as a protest. One naturally defies authority, and it may be well that the London School Board should be controlled by Anglican parsons, in order that the young rebels in the schools may grow up to defy and hate church authority.” His own “natural” defiance of authority entailed what seems to the ordinary toiler in harness a waste of his extraordinary gifts.His work was most of it in the experimental stage when he left it. He was too content to point the road without following to the end his own direction. “He did not learn a trade in the natural way, from those who knew, and seek then to better the teaching of his masters,” says one of his fellow-workers in arts and crafts, “but, acknowledging no master, except perhaps the ancients, he would worry it out always for himself. He had a wonderful knack of learning that way.”[4]He had a wonderful knack also of persuading himself that there was no other to learn, and Goldsmith’s criticism of Burke—that he spent much of his time “cutting blocks with a razor”—has been happily applied to him. But it is doubtful whether he would have made as strong an impression on his generation as he did if he had devoted his time to one branch of art and worked along conventional lines. His greatest gift was not so much the ability to produce art, artistic though he was in faculty and feeling, as it was the ability to make people see the difference between the kind of beauty to which his eyes were open and the ugliness commonly preferred to it. Nothing is so convincing as to see a man accomplish with his own hands what he has declared possible for anyone to accomplish. Morris’s continual illustration of his theories was perhaps more useful in awakening interest in just the matters which he had at heart than any more patient pursuit of an ideal less readily achieved. He had the habit when listening to questions and criticisms afterhis lectures of tracing charming rapid designs on paper. On a large scale that is what he did throughout his life: lecture people about the way to make things, and by way of proving his point, turn off delightful examples of the things he describes. “It is very easy” he seems to say; “watch me for a moment, and we will then pass on.”

Considered superficially, he appeared the very prince of paradox. Art was a word continually on his lips, the future and fortunes of art were constantly in his mind, yet for the greatest art of the world he had few words, and the most passing interest. The names of Raphael and Leonardo, Giotto, Dürer, Rembrandt, Velasquez, were seldom if ever on his lips. Art had for him an almost single meaning, namely, the beauty produced by humble workers as an every-day occurrence and for every day’s enjoyment, art by the people and for the people. So individual that he will never be forgotten by those who have once seen him and heard his voice raised in its inevitable protest, he nevertheless preached a kind of communism in which any high degree of individuality must have been submerged.

His preferences among books, as might be assumed, were clearly marked, and a list of his favourite authors contains many contrasts. Once asked to contribute to thePall Mall Gazettehis opinions on “the best hundred books,” he complied by naming those which, he said, had most profoundly impressed him, excluding all which he considered merely as toolsand not as works of art. True to himself, he starts the list with books “of the kind Mazzini calls Bibles,” books which are “in no sense the work of individuals, but have grown up from the very hearts of the people.” Among these are “the Hebrew Bible (excluding some twice-done parts and some pieces of mere Jewish ecclesiasticism),Homer,Hesiod,The Edda(including some of the other early old Norse romantic genealogical poems),Beowulf,Kalevale,Shahnameh,Mahabharata, collections of folk tales headed by Grimm and the Norse ones, Irish and Welsh traditional poems.”

After these “Bibles” follow the “realancient imaginative works:Herodotus,Plato,Æschylus,Sophocles,Aristophanes,Theocritus,Lucretius,Catullus.” The greater part of the Latins were esteemed “shamclassics.” “I suppose,” says Morris in his character of reasonable man, “that they have some good literary qualities; but I cannot help thinking that it is difficult to find out how much. I suspect superstition and authority have influenced our estimate of them till it has become a mere matter of convention. Of course I admit the archæological value of some of them, especiallyVirgilandOvid.”

Next in importance to the Latin masterpieces he puts mediæval poetry, Anglo-Saxon lyrical pieces (like theRuinand theExile), Dante, Chaucer,Piers Plowman,Nibelungenlied, the Danish and Scotch-English Border Ballads,Omar Khayyam, “though I don’t know how much of the charm of this lovelypoem,” he says, “is due to Fitzgerald, the translator”; other Arab and Persian poetry,Reynard the Fox, and a few of the best rhymed romances. Mediæval story books follow, theMorte d’Arthur,The Thousand and One Nights, Boccaccio’sDecameron, and theMabinogion. After these, “modern poets” up to his own generation, “Shakespeare, Blake (the part of him which a mortal can understand), Coleridge, Shelley, Keats, Byron.” German he could not read, so he left out German masterpieces. Milton he left out on account of his union of “cold classicalism with Puritanism” (“the two things which I hate most in the world,” he said).

Pilgrim’s Progressheads the department of modern fiction, in which is also includedRobinson Crusoe,Möll Flanders,Colonel Jack,Captain Singleton,Voyage Round the World, Scott’s novels, “except the one or two which he wrote when he was hardly alive,” the novels of the elder Dumas (the “good” ones), Victor Hugo, Dickens, and George Borrow. The list concludes with certain unclassified works, Ruskin, Carlyle, theUtopia, and Grimm’sTeutonic Mythology. It may safely be assumed that no other list sent in by the “best judges” who responded to Mr. Stead’s request in the least resembled this one, which was compiled with high sincerity and represented Morris quite fairly on the bookish side of his mind. Mr. Mackail mentions also among the volumes oftenest in his hands and “imposed upon his friends unflinchingly” Surtees’s famousMr. Jorrocks,and records that he consideredHuckleberry FinnAmerica’s masterpiece. For the Uncle Remus stories he had also a peculiar fondness, and for one of his cotton prints he designed what he called a “Brer Rabbit pattern.”

The perversity that one marks in Morris beneath—or, perhaps, on the surface of—his essential seriousness, the tendency to whim and paradox so freely noted by his critics, may be attributed to his extraordinarily childlike spirit. His lack of restraint, his dislike of subtlety, his love of spontaneity, his inability to conform to conventions, his hatred of gloom, austerity, and introspection, his readiness to throw himself into enjoyment of the smallest subject that happened to come within the range of his interest, his unflagging vigour, his unjaded humour, all qualities copiously commented upon by his friends, testify to the youthfulness of his temperament, which was like that of a child, also in a certain apparently unpremeditated reticence, an inability to reveal itself fully or satisfactorily to even his closest intimates. What is most attractive and appealing in him is doubtless due to his freedom from artificialities and from the sophistries that ordinarily come with age, but what is noblest in him, and most impressive in the effect produced by his accomplishment, is due to a quality of which a child is and should be ignorant, a sense of personal responsibility. Without this he would have been a pitiful figure, disoriented, and inharmonious with the world into which he was born.It was his persistent unwearying effort to set the crooked straight by example as well as by precept, and in defiance of a certain paradoxical mental languor that flowed by the side of his energy and impulse, which made him an influence to be counted with among the many conflicting influences of his generation. While he counselled he produced, while he preached he laboured. Declaring that work could and should be lovely, he demonstrated in his own life how intensely one man loved it. He fought for the principle of art with the ardour other men have shown in fighting for the principle of political liberty. He held himself bound to justify his theories in his own action, and while it would be absurd to claim for him complete consistency and freedom from error in even this, it certainly guided him safely past the quicksands of empty and inflated rhetoric by which the expressed philosophy of his own great masters is marred. It will be remembered by those who share his admiration for Dickens that when the proprietor of Dotheboys Hall wished to teach his pupils to spell “window” he had them clean one. The effectiveness of such a method is deeper than the satire, and Morris was its most convincing exponent. What he learned out of books he tried at once to put into practice. He had the highest ideal of service:

How crown ye excellence of worth?With leave to serve all men on earth,

and nothing deflected him from his efforts thus toserve in his own person the most crying needs of humanity as he conceived them.

Pretentiousness was his least defect. No priggish sense of virtue interfered with his consecration to what he believed were the highest interests of his fellow-men. The cant of the moralist was absolutely unused by him, and he was innocent of any intention to improve the morals of his companions. Get them happy, he thought, with a faith little less than magnificent, get them happy and they will be good. Nor was he guilty of æsthetic priggishness. Art was the concern of his mind and the desire of his heart, but it was by no means his meat and drink. He liked good food, and was proud of his connoisseurship in matters of cookery, and wines. Few things pleased him better than himself to take the cook’s place and prove his practical skill. When asked for his opinions on the subject of temperance, he replied that so far as his own experience went he found his victuals dull without something to drink, and that tea and coffee were not fit liquors to be taken with food. He smoked his briarwood pipe with much satisfaction. In his daily habits he was thoroughly, aggressively human, and in nothing more so than in his candid admiration of the work of his own hands, a feeling in which there was no fatuity.

His biographer comments on the singular element of impersonality in his nature, speaking of him as moving among men and women “isolated, self-centred, almost empty of love or hatred,” and quoteshis most intimate friend’s extreme statement that he lived “absolutely without the need of man or woman.” In this idea of him those who knew him best seemed to agree, but from his own letters as represented in the biography, a stranger to him gains a different impression. His letters to his invalid daughter are in themselves sufficient to evoke in the mind of the reader an image of unlimited and poignant tenderness impossible to associate with the aloofness and lack of keen personal sympathy said to be characteristic of him. He did not give himself readily or rashly to intense feelings; but he seemed to feel within himself capacity for emotions of force so violent as to be destructive. When his friend Faulkner was stricken with paralysis and other trouble came upon the family, we find him writing: “It is such a grievous business altogether that, rightly or wrongly, I try not to think of it too much lest I should give way altogether, and make an end of what small use there may be in my life.” Leaving out the case of Rossetti, there is no record of his having relinquished any friendship of importance, nor did he weary of constant intercourse with his friends. His habit of breakfasting with Burne-Jones on Sunday mornings and dining with him on Wednesdays was unbroken for many years. “The last three Sundays of his life,” says this oldest and closest friend, “I went to him.”

Loyalty, sincerity, simplicity, and earnestness, these are the qualities conspicuous in the fabric of hislife. His influence upon his generation, so far as it may now be observed, has been definite but diffused. It may be doubted whether he would not have been best pleased to have it so, to know that his name will live chiefly as that of one who stimulated others toward art production of and interest in beautiful handiwork. But the last word to be said about him is that he was greater than his work.

1.The Story of the Glittering Plain. Which has been also called The Land of Living Men or The Acre of the Undying.Written byWilliam Morris. Small 4to. Golden type. Border 1. 200 paper copies at two guineas, and 6 on vellum. Dated April 4, issued May 8, 1891. Sold by Reeves & Turner. Bound in stiff vellum with wash leather ties.[6]

This book was set up from Nos. 81-84 ofThe English Illustrated Magazine, in which it first appeared; some of the chapter headings were rearranged, and a few small corrections were made in the text. A trial page, the first printed at the Kelmscott Press, was struck off on January 31, 1891, but the first sheet was not printed until about a month later.[7]The border was designed in January of the same year, and engraved by W. H. Hooper. Mr. Morris had four of the vellum copies bound in green vellum, three of which he gave to friends. Only two copies on vellum were sold, at twelve and fifteen guineas. This was the only book with wash leather ties. All the other vellum bound books have silk ties, exceptShelley’s PoemsandHand and Soul, which have no ties.

2.Poems by the Way.Written byWilliam Morris. Small 4to. Golden type. In black and red. Border 1. 300 paper copies at two guineas, thirteen on vellum at about twelve guineas. Dated September 24, issued October 20, 1891. Sold by Reeves & Turner. Bound in stiff vellum.

This was the first book printed at the Kelmscott Press in two colours, and the first book in which the smaller printer’s mark appeared. AfterThe Glittering Plainwas finished, at the beginning of April, no printing was done until May 11th. In the meanwhile the compositors were busy setting up the early sheets ofThe GoldenLegend. The printing ofPoems by the Way, which its author first thought of callingFlores Atramenti, was not begun until July. The poems in it were written at various times. In the manuscript,Hafburg and Signyis dated February 4, 1870;Hildebrand and Hillilel, March 1, 1871; andLove’s Reward, Kelmscott, April 21, 1871.Meeting in Winteris a song fromThe Story of Orpheusan unpublished poem intended for theEarthly Paradise. The last poem in the book,Goldilocks and Goldilooks, was written on May 20, 1891, for the purpose of adding to the bulk of the volume, which was then being prepared. A few of the vellum covers were stained at Merton red, yellow, indigo, and dark green, but the experiment was not successful.[8]

3.The Love-Lyrics and Songs of Proteus, by Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, with the Love Sonnets of Proteus, by the same author, now reprinted in their full text with many sonnets omitted from the earlier editions.London, MDCCCXCII. Small 4to. Golden type. In black and red. Border 1. 300 paper copies at two guineas, none on vellum. Dated January 26, issued February 27, 1892. Sold by Reeves & Turner. Bound in stiff vellum.

This is the only book in which the initials are printed in red. This was done by the author’s wish.

4.The Nature of Gothic, a Chapter of the Stones of Venice.ByJohn Ruskin. With a preface by William Morris. Small 4to. Golden type. Border 1. Diagrams in text. 500 paper copies at thirty shillings, none on vellum. Dated in preface, February 15, issued March 22, 1892. Published by George Allen. Bound in stiff vellum.

This chapter of the Stones of Venice, which Ruskin always considered the most important in the book, was first printed separately, in 1854, as a sixpenny pamphlet. Mr. Morris paid more than one tribute to it inHopes and Fears for Art. Of him Ruskin said, in 1887, “Morris is beaten gold.”

5.The Defence of Guenevere, and Other Poems.ByWilliam Morris. Small 4to. Golden type. In black and red. Borders 2 and 1. 300 paper copies at two guineas, 10 on vellum at about twelve guineas. Dated April 2, issued May 19, 1892. Sold by Reeves & Turner. Bound in limp vellum.

This book was set up from a copy of the edition published by Reeves & Turner in 1880, the only alteration, except a few corrections, being in the eleventh line ofSummer Dawn.[9]It is divided into three parts, the poems suggested by Malory’sMorte d’Arthur, the poems inspired by Froissart’sChronicles, and poems on various subjects. The two first sections have borders, and the last has a half border. The first sheet was printed on February 17, 1892. It was the first book bound in limp vellum, and the only one of which the title was inscribed by hand on the back.

6.A Dream of John Ball and a King’s Lesson.ByWilliam Morris. Small 4to. Golden type. In black and red. Borders 3a, 4, and 2. With a woodcut designed by Sir E. Burne-Jones. 300 paper copies at thirty shillings, 11 on vellum at ten guineas. Dated May 13, issued September 24, 1892. Sold by Reeves & Turner. Bound in limp vellum.

This was set up with a few alterations from a copy of Reeves & Turner’s third edition, and the printing was begun on April 4, 1892. The frontispiece was redrawn from that to the first edition, and engraved on wood by W. H. Hooper, who engraved all Sir E. Burne-Jones’s designs for the Kelmscott Press, except those forThe Wood Beyond the WorldandThe Life and Death of Jason. The inscription below the figures,[10]and the narrow border, were designed by Mr. Morris and engraved with the picture on one block, which was afterwards used on a leaflet printed for the Ancoats Brotherhood in February, 1894.

7.The Golden Legend.ByJacobus De Voragine. Translated by William Caxton. Edited by F. S. Ellis. 3 vols. Large 4to. Golden type. Borders 5a, 5, 6a and 7. Woodcut title and two woodcuts designed by Sir E. Burne-Jones. 500 copies at five guineas, none on vellum. Dated September 12, issued November 3, 1892. Published by Bernard Quaritch. Bound in half Holland, with paper labels printed in the Troy type.

In July, 1890, when only a few letters of the Golden type had been cut, Mr. Morris bought a copy of this book, printed by Wynkyn de Worde in 1527. He soon afterwards determined to print it, and on September 11th entered into a formal agreement with Mr. Quaritch for its publication. It was only an unforeseen difficulty about the size of the first stock of paper that led toThe Golden Legendnot being the first book put in hand. It was set up from a transcript of Caxton’s first edition, lent by the Syndics of the Cambridge University Library for the purpose. A trial page was got out in March, 1891, and fifty pages were in type by May 11th, the day on which the first sheet was printed. The first volume was finished, with the exception of the illustrations and the preliminary matter, in October, 1891. The two illustrations and the title (which was the first woodcut title designed by Mr. Morris) were not engraved until June and August, 1892, when the third volume was approaching completion. About half a dozen impressions of the illustrations were pulled on vellum. A slip asking owners of the book not to have it bound with pressure, nor to have the edges cut instead of merely trimmed, was inserted in each copy.

8.The Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye.ByRaoul Lefevre. Translated by William Caxton. Edited by H. Halliday Sparling. 2 vols. Large 4to. Troy type, with table of chapters and glossary in Chaucer type. In black and red. Borders 5a, 5, and 8. Woodcut title. 300 paper copies at nine guineas, 5 on vellum at eighty pounds. Dated October 14, issued November 24, 1892. Published by Bernard Quaritch. Bound in limp vellum.

This book, begun in February, 1892, is the first book printed in Troy type, and the first in which Chaucer type appears. It is a reprint of the first book printed in English. It had long been a favourite with William Morris, who designed a great quantity of initials and ornaments for it, and wrote the following note for Mr. Quaritch’s catalogue: “As to the matter of the book, it makes a thoroughly amusing story, instinct with mediæval thought and manners. For though written at the end of the Middle Ages and dealing with classical mythology, it has in it no token of the coming Renaissance, but is purely mediæval. It is the last issue of that story of Troy which through the whole of the Middle Ages had such a hold on men’s imaginations; the story built up from a rumour of the Cyclic Poets, of the heroic City of Troy, defended by Priam and his gallant sons, led by Hector the Preux Chevalier, and beset by the violent and brutal Greeks, who were looked on as the necessary machinery for bringing about the undeniable tragedy of the fall of the City. Surely this is well worth reading, if only as a piece of undiluted mediævalism.” 2000 copies of a 4to announcement, with specimen pages, were printed at the Kelmscott Press in December, 1892, for distribution by the publisher.[11]

9.Biblia Innocentium: Being the Story of God’s Chosen People before the Coming of Our Lord Jesus Christ upon Earth.Written anew for children, byJ. W. Mackail, Sometime Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford. 8vo. Border 2. 200 on paper at a guinea, none on vellum. Dated October 22, issued December 9, 1892. Sold by Reeves & Turner. Bound in stiff vellum.

This was the last book issued in stiff vellum exceptHand and Soul, and the last with untrimmed edges. It was the first book printed in 8vo.

10.The History of Reynard the Foxe.ByWilliam Caxton. Reprinted from his edition of 1481. Edited by H. Halliday Sparling. Large 4to. Troy type, with Glossary in Chaucer type. In black and red. Borders 5a and 7. Woodcut title. 300 on paper at three guineas, 10 on vellum at fifteen guineas. Dated December 15, 1892, issued January 25, 1893. Published by Bernard Quaritch. Bound in limp vellum.

About this book, which was first announced as in the press in the list dated July, 1892, William Morris wrote the following note for Mr. Quaritch’s catalogue: “This translation of Caxton’s is one of the very best of his works as to style; and being translated from a kindred tongue is delightful as mere language. In its rude joviality, and simple and direct delineation of character, it is a thoroughly good representative of the famous ancient Beast Epic.” The edges of this book, and of all subsequent books, were trimmed in accordance with the invariable practice of the early printers. Mr. Morris much preferred the trimmed edges.

11.The Poems of William Shakespeare, printed after the original copies ofVenus and Adonis, 1593.The Rape of Lucrece, 1594.Sonnets, 1609.The Lover’s Complaint.Edited by F. S. Ellis. 8vo. Golden type. In black and red. Borders 1 and 2. 500 paper copies at twenty-five shillings, 10 on vellum at ten guineas. Dated January 17, issued February 13, 1893. Sold by Reeves & Turner. Bound in limp vellum.

A trial page of this book was set up on November 1, 1892. Though the number was large, this has become one of the rarest books issued from the Press.[12]

12.News from Nowhere: or, An Epoch of Rest, Being Some Chapters from a Utopian Romance.ByWilliam Morris. 8vo. Golden type. In black and red. Borders 9a and 4, and a woodcut engraved by W. H. Hooper from a design by C. M. Gere. 300 on paper at two guineas, 10 on vellum at ten guineas. Dated November 22, 1892, issued March 24, 1893. Sold by Reeves & Turner. Bound in limp vellum.

The text of this book was printed before Shakespeare’sPoems and Sonnets, but it was kept back for the frontispiece, which is a picture of the old manor-house in the village of Kelmscott by the upper Thames, from which the Press took its name. It was set up from a copy of one of Reeves & Turner’s editions, and in reading it for the press the author made a few slight corrections. It was the last book except theSavonarola(No. 31) in which he used the old paragraph mark, which was discarded in favour of the leaves, which had already been used in the two large 4to books printed in the Troy type.

13.The Order of Chivalry.Translated from the French by William Caxton and reprinted from his edition of 1484. Edited by F. S. Ellis. AndL’Ordene de Chevalerie, with translation by William Morris. Small 4to. Chaucer type, in black and red. Borders 9a and 4, and a woodcut designed by Sir Edward Burne-Jones. 225 on paper at thirty shillings, 10 on vellum at ten guineas.The Order of Chivalrydated November10, 1892,L’Ordene de Chevaleriedated February 24, 1893, issued April 12, 1893. Sold by Reeves & Turner. Bound in limp vellum.

This was the last book printed in small 4to. The last section is in 8vo. It was the first book printed in the Chaucer type. The reprint from Caxton was finished whileNews from Nowherewas in the press, and before Shakespeare’sPoems and Sonnetswas begun. The French poem and its translation were added as an afterthought, and have a separate colophon. Some of the three-line initials which were designed forThe Well at the World’s Endare used in the French poem, and this is their first appearance. The translation was begun on December 3, 1892, and the border round the frontispiece was designed on February 13, 1893.

14.The Life of Thomas Woolsey, Cardinal Archbishop of York.Written byGeorge Cavendish. Edited by F. S. Ellis from the author’s autograph MS. 8vo. Golden type. Border 1. 250 on paper at two guineas, 6 on vellum at ten guineas. Dated March 30, issued May 3, 1893. Sold by Reeves & Turner. Bound in limp vellum.

15.The History of Godefrey of Boloyne and of the Conquest of Iherusalem.Reprinted from Caxton’s edition of 1841. Edited by H. Halliday Sparling. Large 4to. Troy type, with list of chapter headings and glossary in Chaucer type. In black and red. Borders 5a and 5, and woodcut title. 300 on paper at six guineas, 6 on vellum at twenty guineas. Dated April 27, issued May 24, 1893. Published by William Morris at the Kelmscott Press. Bound in limp vellum.

This was the fifth and last of the Caxton reprints, with many new ornaments and initials, and a new printer’s mark. It was first announced as in the press in the list dated December, 1892. It was the first book published and sold at the Kelmscott Press. An announcement and order form, with two different specimen pages, was printed at the Press, besides a special invoice. A few copies were bound in half holland, not for sale.

16.Utopia.Written bySir Thomas More. A reprint of the second edition of Ralph Robinson’s translation, with a foreword by William Morris.[13]Edited by F. S. Ellis. 8vo. Chaucer type, with the reprinted title in Troy type. In black and red. Borders 4 and 2. 300 on paper at thirty shillings, 8 on vellum at ten guineas. Dated August 4, issued September 8, 1893. Sold by Reeves & Turner. Bound in limp vellum.

This book was first announced as in the press in the list dated May 20, 1893.

17.Maud, A Monodrama.ByAlfred, Lord Tennyson. 8vo. Golden type. In black and red. Borders 10a and 10, and woodcut title. 500 on paper at two guineas, 5 on vellum, not for sale. Dated August 11, issued September 30, 1893. Published by Macmillan & Co. Bound in limp vellum.

The borders were specially designed for this book. They were both used again in the Keats, and one of them appears inThe Saundering Flood. It is the first of the 8vo books with a woodcut title.

18.Gothic Architecture: A Lecture for the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society.ByWilliam Morris. 16mo. Golden type. In black and red. 1500 on paper at two shillings and sixpence, 45 on vellum at ten and fifteen shillings. Bound in half holland.

This lecture was set up at Hammersmith and printed at the New Gallery during the Arts and Crafts Exhibition in October and November, 1893. The first copies were ready on October 21st and the book was twice reprinted before the Exhibition closed. It was the first book printed in 16mo. The four-line initials used in it appear here for the first time. The vellum copies were sold during the Exhibition at ten shillings, and the price was subsequently raised to fifteen shillings.[14]

19.Sidonia the Sorceress.ByWilliam Meinhold. Translated by Francesca Speranza, Lady Wilde. Large 4to. Golden type. In black and red. Border 8. 300 paper copies at four guineas, 10 on vellum at twenty guineas. Dated September 15, issued November 1, 1893. Published by William Morris. Bound in limp vellum.

Before the publication of this book a large 4to announcement and order form was issued, with a specimen page and an interesting description of the book and its author, written and signed by William Morris. Some copies were bound in half holland not for sale.

20.Ballads and Narrative Poems by Dante Gabriel Rossetti.8vo. Golden type. In black and red. Borders 4a and 4, and woodcut title. 310 on paper at two guineas, 6 on vellum at ten guineas. Dated October 14, issued in November, 1893. Published by Ellis & Elvey. Bound in limp vellum.

This book was announced as in preparation in the list of August 1, 1893.

21.The Tale of King Florus and the Fair Jehane.Translated by William Morris from the French of the 13th century. 16mo. Chaucer type. In black and red. Borders 11a and 11,and woodcut title. 350 on paper at seven shillings and sixpence, 15 on vellum at thirty shillings. Dated December 16, issued December 28, 1893. Published by William Morris. Bound in half holland.

This story, like the three other translations with which it is uniform, was taken from a little volume calledNouvelles Françoises en prose du XIIIe siècle, Paris, Jannet, 1856. They were first announced as in preparation under the headingFrench Talesin the list dated May 20, 1893. Eighty-five copies ofKing Floruswere bought by J. & M. L. Tregaskis, who had them bound in all parts of the world. These are now in the Rylands Library at Manchester.

22.The Story of the Glittering Plain. Which has been also called The Land of Living Men or The Acre of the Undying.Written byWilliam Morris. Large 4to. Troy type, with list of chapters in Chaucer type. In black and red. Borders 12a and 12, 23 designs by Walter Crane, engraved by A. Leverett, and a woodcut title. 250 on paper at five guineas, 7 on vellum at twenty pounds. Dated January 13, issued February 17, 1894. Published by William Morris. Bound in limp vellum. Neither the borders in this book nor six out of the seven frames round the illustrations appear in any other book. The seventh is used round the second picture inLove is Enough. A few copies were bound in half holland.

23.Of the Friendship of Amis and Amile.Done out of the ancient French byWilliam Morris. 16mo. Chaucer type. In black and red. Borders 11a and 11, and woodcut title. 500 on paper at seven shillings and sixpence, 15 on vellum at thirty shillings. Dated March 13th, issued April 4, 1894. Published by William Morris. Bound in half holland.[15]

A poem entitledAmys and Amillion, founded on this story, was originally to have appeared in the second volume of theEarthly Paradise, but, like some other poems announced at the same time, it was not included in the book.

20a.Sonnets and Lyrical Poems by Dante Gabriel Rossetti.8vo. Golden type. In black and red. Borders 1a and 1, and woodcut title. 310 on paper at two guineas, 6 on vellum at ten guineas. Dated February 20, issued April 21, 1894. Published by Ellis & Elvey. Bound in limp vellum.

This book is uniform with No. 20, to which it forms a sequel. Both volumes were read for the press by Mr. W. M. Rossetti.

24.The Poems of John Keats.Edited by F. S. Ellis. 8vo. Golden type. In black and red. Borders 10a and 10, and woodcut title. 300 on paper at thirty shillings, 7 on vellum at nine guineas. Dated March 7, issued May 8, 1894. Published by William Morris. Bound in limp vellum.

This is now (January, 1898) the most sought after of all the smaller Kelmscott Press books. It was announced as in preparation in the lists of May 27 and August 1, 1893, and as in the press in that of March 31, 1894, when the woodcut title still remained to be printed.[16]

25.Atalanta in Calydon: A Tragedy.ByAlgernon Charles Swinburne. Large 4to. Troy type, with argument anddramatis personæin Chaucer type; the dedication and quotation from Euripides in Greek type designed by Selwyn Image. In black and red. Borders 5a and 5, and woodcut title. 250 on paper at two guineas, 8 on vellum at twelve guineas. Dated May 4, issued July 24, 1894. Published by William Morris. Bound in limp vellum.

In the vellum copies of this book the colophon is not on the eighty-second page as in the paper copies, but on the following page.

26.The Tale of the Emperor Coustans and of Over Sea.Done out of ancient French byWilliam Morris. 16mo. Chaucer type. In black and red. Borders 11a and 11, both twice, and two woodcut titles. 525 on paper at seven shillings and sixpence, 20 on vellum at two guineas. Dated August 30, issued September 26, 1894. Published by William Morris. Bound in half holland.

The first of these stories, which was the source ofThe Man Born to be KinginThe Earthly Paradise, was announced as in preparation in the list of March 31, 1894.

27.The Wood Beyond the World.ByWilliam Morris. 8vo. Chaucer type. In black and red. Borders 13a and 13, and a frontispiece designed by Sir E. Burne-Jones, and engraved on wood by W. Spielmeyer. 350 on paper at two guineas, 8 on vellum at ten guineas. Dated May 30, issued October 16, 1894. Published by William Morris. Bound in limp vellum.

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