Arthur Waugh

“ He went up to Balliol from Harrow in 1850, and was soon known in Oxford as the most daring and most high-spirited undergraduate of his time. He was a universal favourite, a delightful companion, a brilliant scholar and the playful enemy of all “dons.” In 1851 he won the Chancellor’s prize for Latin verse, and it is said that the entire exercise was written in an afternoon, when his friends had locked him into his rooms, declining to let him out till he had finished what they were confident would prove the prize poem. ”

“ In house decoration of all kinds—furniture, wall-papers and hangings (which he preferred to paper) , carpet-weaving, and the painting of glass and tiles, needlework, tapestry—he formed a school which was dominated by his protest against commercialism and his assertion of the necessity for natural decoration and pure colour, produced by hand work and inspired by a passion for beauty irrespective of cheapness or quickness of manufacture (see Arts and Crafts) . ”

“ Constitutionally indolent, he was endowed with singular gifts in every department of culture; he was a scholar, a musician, an athlete and a brilliant talker. What is left us marks only a small portion of his talent, but his sparkling, dancing verses, which have had many clever imitators, are still without a rival in their own line. ”

“ For ten or twelve years this movement had been gaining ground in England, and the Social Democratic Federation was formed in 1881. In January 1883, within a week of his election to an honorary fellowship at Exeter, Morris was enrolled among its members. Thenceforward for two years his advocacy of the cause of Socialism absorbed not only his spare time, but the thought and energy of all his working hours. ”

“ In the following year he was again looking for a country house, and lighted upon Kelmscott manor house, in the Upper Thames valley, which he took at first in joint-tenancy with Rossetti and used principally as a holiday home. In 1872 appeared Love is Enough, structurally the most elaborate of his poems for its combination of the epic and dramatic spirits; and in the autumn he began to translate the shorter Icelandic sagas, to which his enthusiasm had been directed by two inspiring journeys to Iceland. ”

“ Here he was again successful in Latin verse, and remains the unique example of an undergraduate who has won the Chancellor’s prize at both universities. In 1856 he took second place in the first class in the Classical Tripos. He was elected fellow of Christ’s (1858) , published Verses and Translations in 1862, and was called to the bar in 1865. Owing to an accident while skating he was prevented from following up a professional career, and during the last years of his life he was an invalid. ”