" The study of Mr. William Morris's poems, in the
new collected edition, {5} has convinced me that no man, or, at least, no
middle-aged man, can be a critic. I read Mr. Morris's poems (thanks to
the knightly honours conferred on the Bard of Penrhyn, there is now no
ambiguity as to 'Mr. Morris'), but it is not the book only that I read.
The scroll of my youth is unfolded. I see the dear place where first I
perused "The Blue Closet"; the old faces of old friends flock around me;
old chaff, old laughter, old happiness re-echo and revive. St. Andrews,
Oxford, come before the mind's eye, with
"Many a place
That's in sad case
Where joy was wont afore, oh!"
as Minstrel Burne sings. These voices, faces, landscapes mingle with the
music and blur the pictures of the poet who enchanted for us certain
hours passed in the paradise of youth. A reviewer who finds himself in
this case may as well frankly confess that he can no more criticise Mr.
Morris dispassionately than he could criticise his old self and the
friends whom he shall never see again, till he meets them
"Beyond the sphere of time,
And sin, and grief's control,
Serene in changeless prime
Of body and of soul."
To write of one's own "adventures among books" may be to provide
anecdotage more or less trivial, more or less futile, but, at least, it
is to write historically. We know how books have affected, and do affect
ourselves, our bundle of prejudices and tastes, of old impressions and
revived sensations.
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