Morris produced, in
1866 or 1867, "The Life and Death of Jason." Young men who had read
"Guenevere" hastened to purchase it, and, of course, found themselves in
contact with something very unlike their old favourite. Mr. Morris had
told a classical tale in decasyllabic couplets of the Chaucerian sort,
and he regarded the heroic age from a mediaeval point of view; at all
events, not from an historical and archaeological point of view. It was
natural in Mr. Morris to "envisage" the Greek heroic age in this way, but
it would not be natural in most other writers. The poem is not much
shorter than the "Odyssey," and long narrative poems had been out of
fashion since "The Lord of the Isles" (1814).
All this was a little disconcerting. We read "Jason," and read it with
pleasure, but without much of the more essential pleasure which comes
from magic and distinction of style. The peculiar qualities of Keats,
and Tennyson, and Virgil are not among the gifts of Mr. Morris. As
people say of Scott in his long poems, so it may be said of Mr.
Morris--that he does not furnish many quotations, does not glitter in
"jewels five words long."
In "Jason" he entered on his long career as a narrator; a poet retelling
the immortal primeval stories of the human race. In one guise or another
the legend of Jason is the most widely distributed of romances; the North
American Indians have it, and the Samoans and the Samoyeds, as well as
all Indo-European peoples.
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