. . Again, how openly joyful is Chaucer,
how secretly melancholy is Morris! Both, it is true, are full of sunshine;
but Chaucer's is spring sunshine, Morris's is autumn. . . .
Chaucer rejoices as only those can who know the bound of good red blood
through unobstructed veins, and the thrilling tingle of nerve and sinew
at amity; and who can transport this healthy animalism into
their unburdened minds, and spiritualize it so that the mere drawing of breath
is at once a keen delight and an inwardly felt practical act of praise
to the God of a strong and beautiful world. Morris too
has his sensuous element, but it is utterly unlike Chaucer's;
it is dilettante, it is amateur sensualism; it is not strong,
though sometimes excessive, and it is nervously afraid of that satiety
which is at once its chief temptation and its most awful doom.
"Again, Chaucer lives, Morris dreams. . . . `The Canterbury Tales'
is simply a drama with somewhat more of stage direction than is common;
but the `Earthly Paradise' is a reverie, which would hate nothing so much
as to be broken by any collision with that rude actual life
which Chaucer portrays.
"And, finally, note the faith that shines in Chaucer and the doubt
that darkens in Morris. Has there been any man since St. John
so lovable as the `Persoune'? or any sermon since that on the Mount
so keenly analytical, . . . as `The Persoune's Tale'? . . .
A true Hindu life-weariness (to use one of Novalis' marvelous phrases)
is really the atmosphere which produces the exquisite haze
of Morris's pictures.
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