James Morris

“ We seem in this tale of "Pygmalion" truly to inhabit the bright and silent workroom of a great Greek artist, and, standing among shapes and forms of perfect beauty, to breathe the incense-tainted air in which lovely statues were conceived and shining stones chiselled into immortality.
Mr. Morris is indubitably a sensuous poet, to his credit be it said; his senses are constantly proffering their testimony and crying out their delight. But while they take their freedom, they employ it in no degree to their own debasement. ”

“ Morris Gedge went on, insisting as solemnly and softly, for his bewildered hearers, as over a pulpit-edge; "there's nothing at all like it anywhere in the world. There's nothing, only reflect, for the combination of greatness and, as we venture to say, of intimacy. ”

“ He can’t help it; we can’t govern our affections. Do I govern mine? mightn’t he say that to me? It’s because he is so fond of my mother, whom we lost so long ago. She was beautiful, and very, very brilliant; he is always thinking of her. I am not at all like her; Aunt Penniman has told me that. Of course, it isn’t my fault; but neither is it his fault. All I mean is, it’s true; and it’s a stronger reason for his never being reconciled than simply his dislike for you.”
“‘Simply?’” cried Morris, with a laugh, “I am much obliged for that!” ”

“ And it was the first note, for Gedge, of a further awkwardness—as if he had definitely heard it make the husband's hand, in a full pocket, begin to fumble.
It was even a little awkwardly that the husband still held off. "Oh, we like it as it is. There's always something." With which they had approached the door of egress.
"What is there, please?" asked Morris Gedge, not yet opening the door, as he would fain have kept the pair on, and conscious only for a moment after he had spoken that his question was just having, for the young man, too dreadfully wrong a sound. ”

“ Morris was not a young man who needed to be pressed, and he found quite enough encouragement in the superior quality of the claret. The Doctor’s wine was admirable, and it may be communicated to the reader that while he sipped it Morris reflected that a cellar-full of good liquor—there was evidently a cellar-full here—would be a most attractive idiosyncrasy in a father-in-law. The Doctor was struck with his appreciative guest; he saw that he was not a commonplace young man. “He has ability,” said Catherine’s father, “decided ability; he has a very good head if he chooses to use it. ”

“ Morris's poem is ushered into the world with a very florid birthday speech from the pen of the author of the too famous Poems and Ballads,—a circumstance, we apprehend, in no small degree prejudicial to its success. But we hasten to assure all persons whom the knowledge of Mr. Swinburne's enthusiasm may have led to mistrust the character of the work, that it has to our perception nothing in common with this gentleman's own productions, and that his article proves very little more than that his sympathies are wiser than his performance. If Mr. ”

“ Ruskin's life was a perpetual protest against the sacrificing of beauty, peace, harmony, and brotherhood for the rush and show of material prosperity. William Morris's life, work, voice, and pen were ever in active, open, contemporaneous hostility and opposition to the damnable spirit of modern competition, and demoralizing commercialism which destroyed artistic labor, banished fellowship, and substituted therefor the rule of the jungle where the strong devour the weak. Thank God! the ranks of the morally courageous have always [212] found glad and willing recruits ”

“ The father had not profited sufficiently by his studies either in law or philosophy to recognise the folly of a man in disgrace [Pg 96] venturing to measure swords with one of fortune's favourites. And Sir James at the time of his quarrel with Claverhouse was in disgrace. At the close of 1681 he had been dismissed from the office of President of the Court of Session for refusing the Test Act; and for some while previously he had been coldly regarded for his advocacy of gentler measures than suited Lauderdale and his creatures. The Dalrymples were strict Presbyterians ”

“ This was not strong, he felt, as, pausing with his hands in his pockets, he stood before her; and he knew it as weaker still after she had looked at him a minute. "Morris Gedge, I propose to be your true companion, and I've come here to stay. That's all I've got to say." It was not, however, for "You had better try yourself and see," she presently added. "Give the place, give the story away, by so much as a look, and—well, I'd allow you about nine days. Then you'd see."
He feigned, to gain time, an innocence. "They'd take it so ill?" And then, as she said nothing: "They'd turn and rend me? ”

“ On the whole, I consider Morris to have been the largest all-round man of the group, not merely on account of the diversity of his faculties, for he had in his composition a measure, greater or less, of most of the gifts which go to make up the intellectual man and artist, but because he had, in addition to those, a largeness and nobility of nature, a magnanimity and generosity, which rarely enter into the character of the artist ”

“ For the last two years of his life Morris was prostrated by an incurable and distressing illness, which he bore with characteristic fortitude, preserving his cheerfulness and his love of a good story to the last. He retired to the railway-side hamlet of Harold Wood in Essex, and there he died on 12 May 1894. ”

“ In 1869 he edited Spenser for Macmillan's 'Globe' edition, again using manuscripts as well as the original editions. In 1867 he published at the Clarendon Press, Oxford, 'Specimens of Early English,' which has been augmented in subsequent editions by Professor Skeat. These are books for scholars and students. But Morris's long experience as a schoolmaster induced him to undertake a series of educational works, which have contributed largely to place the teaching of English upon a sound basis. ”

“ Should a union be secured on the terms the South offered? or should it be declined, as Morris proposed, if it could not be a union of equality? The next day Madison again set forth the real issue, quietly but unmistakably. "It seemed now," he said, "to be pretty well understood that the real difference of interests lay, not between the large and small, but between the Northern and Southern States. The institution of slavery and its consequences formed the line of discrimination." There is sometimes great power, as he well knew, in firm reiteration. ”

“ In a word, his lays are not 'night and storm and darkness'—they are morning and music and sunshine.
"It were idle at this time to quote or comment upon all those songs of Morris best known and oftenest sung. It would be introducing to my readers old friends who took lodgings in their memories 'long time ago.' In reference to them, I would only remark their peculiar adaptedness to popular taste, the keen discrimination, the nice tact, or, to use one of Sir James Mackintosh's happy expressions, the 'FEELosophy' with which the poet has interlaced them with the heart-strings of a nation. ”

“ They were rich, passing knowledge, passing belief. Sums of which you and I dream in moments of supreme excitement would not have paid one of Mrs. Williams's cable bills; would not have supported Granny Williams's hot-houses and Angora cat farm through a late spring frost. James Williams and his father before him were as magnets where money was concerned. And it is a fact of family history that once James, returning from a walk in the mud, found a dime sticking to the heel of his right boot. ”

“ The letters to himself, which he summarises for Murray's benefit, must have been those acknowledged in the postscript to Melfort of June 28th. It is, as we shall presently see, certain that about this time James was induced to assume, as he had before assumed when it was too late, the virtue of toleration. How much of these promises Dundee really believed, it is impossible to say. The history of our own time has shown, and is every day showing, that neither wisdom nor experience will always avail to prevent a man from believing that which it is his interest to believe. ”

“ To call a man healthy nowadays is almost an insult—invalids learn so many secrets. But the health of the intellect is often promoted by physical disability. We say therefore, finally, that however the faculty may have been promoted—with the minimum of suffering, we certainly hope—Mr. Morris is a supremely healthy writer. This poem is marked by all that is broad and deep in nature, and all that is elevating, profitable, and curious in art.
MATTHEW ARNOLD'S ESSAYS
A review of Essays in Criticism. ”

“ Some of his old troopers, however, still kept by the captain whom they had known as Claverhouse.
Hamilton and his party pressed William to exempt from the general amnesty certain members of the [Pg 151] Scottish Council whom they named as particular and unscrupulous instruments of James's tyranny, and unsafe to be let go at large. But the Prince with his usual good sense refused to drive any man into opposition: the past even of the most guilty should, he said, be forgotten till he was forced to remember it. Against Dundee and Balcarres he had been especially warned. ”

“ But the name of Queensberry was not now the power it had been at Whitehall. It is difficult to believe that he was much more concerned with religion than Lauderdale; but he was, at any rate [Pg 142] by profession, a staunch Protestant, and there were those among his colleagues ready to take every advantage of this passport to James's disfavour. It was determined to hear what Claverhouse had to say for himself. He was summoned to London, graciously received by the King, and pleaded his cause so effectually that the Treasurer was ordered to refund the money. ”

“ He has gone through a very extensive course of reading, and is acquainted with all the sciences. No Man has more wit,—nor can any one engage the attention more than Mr Morris. He was bred to the Law, but I am told he disliked the profession, and turned Merchant. He is engaged in some great mercantile matters with his namesake, Mr Robt Morris. This Gentleman is about 38 years old, he has been unfortunate in losing one of his Legs, and getting all the flesh taken off his right arm by a scald, when a youth."—Pierce's Notes, Am. ”

“ Mr. Morris excelled as a banjoist.
Lon Morris was born in Fort Erie, N. Y., May 15, 1830; he died in New York, May 6, 1882.
Billy Morris was born in Rochester, N. Y., April 11, 1831; he died in Boston, Mass., October 11, 1878.
Charles A. Morris was born in Rochester, N. Y., March 27, 1834; he is now a guest of the Actors Home in Staten Island, N. Y.
Sam Sharpley, Nelse Seymour, James Unsworth, James Budworth and Dan Bryant—all died within a hundred days in 1875. ”

“ These others in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred are women. What our young friends chiefly insist upon is that some one else shall suffer for them; and women do that sort of thing, as you must know, wonderfully well.” The Doctor paused a moment, and then he added abruptly, “You have suffered immensely for your brother!”
This exclamation was abrupt, as I say, but it was also perfectly calculated. The Doctor had been rather disappointed at not finding his compact and comfortable little hostess surrounded in a more visible degree by the ravages of Morris Townsend’s immorality ”

“ The gentleman of the portrait, a somewhat pouchy-cheeked, hook-nosed Revolutionary, in whose wooden and chalky hand was a rolled document, seemed to return Forrest's glance with a kind of bored courtesy.
"That is probably the Signer," thought Forrest, and he went closer. "A great buck in your time," he approved.
The butler entered the dining-room from the pantry, and, though a man accustomed to emergencies, was considerably nonplussed at the sight of the stranger. That the stranger was a bona fide stranger, James, who had served the Ballins for thirty years, knew ”

“ Morris, Sir Lewis, a poet, born in Carmarthen, Wales; the author of “Songs of Two Worlds,” “The Epic of Hades,” “A Vision of Saints,” &c.; often confounded with the succeeding, with whom he has next to nothing in common; b. 1833.
Morris, William, poet, art-worker, and Socialist, born in Walthamstow, near London, son and heir of a wealthy merchant; studied at Oxford, where he became the lifelong bosom friend of Burne-Jones; of an artistic temperament, he devoted his working hours to decorative art, in particular designing wall-papers ”

“ Athole had more than once coquetted with the Whigs, and his present Jacobitism was shrewdly suspected to be due to the coolness with which his advances had been received: his son Lord Murray, who had married a daughter of Hamilton, had declared for William. These great noblemen had indeed the satisfaction of feeling that, however the die might fall, their titles and estates were at least secured. But the wisdom of their family arrangements did not increase their reputation with their parties. The Duke of Gordon held the castle of Edinburgh for James ”

“ He was nursing his effect; Isabel intently watched him, and the others hung on his lips. "Yes, speak⸻?"
"Well, volumes. They tell the truth."
At this Mr. Hayes laughed again. "Oh, they at least do?"
Near him thus, once more, Gedge knew their intelligence as one—which was so good a consciousness to get back that his tension now relaxed as by the snap of a spring and he felt his old face at ease. "So you can't say," he continued, "that we don't want it."
"I bow to it," the young man smiled. "It's what I said then. It's great."
"It's great," said Morris Gedge. "It couldn't be greater." ”