" Later, he set
about slaying monsters, like Jason, or unlike Jason, scattering dragon's
teeth to raise forces which he could not lay, and could not direct.
I shall go no further into politics or agitation, and I say this much
only to prove that Mr. Morris's "criticism of life," and prolonged,
wistful dwelling on the thought of death, ceased to satisfy himself. His
own later part, as a poet and an ally of Socialism, proved this to be
true. It seems to follow that the peculiarly level, lifeless, decorative
effect of his narratives, which remind us rather of glorious tapestries
than of pictures, was no longer wholly satisfactory to himself. There is
plenty of charmed and delightful reading--"Jason" and the "Earthly
Paradise" are literature for The Castle of Indolence, but we do miss a
strenuous rendering of action and passion. These Mr. Morris had rendered
in "The Defence of Guinevere": now he gave us something different,
something beautiful, but something deficient in dramatic vigour.
Apollonius Rhodius is, no doubt, much of a pedant, a literary writer of
epic, in an age of Criticism. He dealt with the tale of "Jason," and
conceivably he may have borrowed from older minstrels. But the Medea of
Apollonius Rhodius, in her love, her tenderness, her regret for home, in
all her maiden words and ways, is undeniably a character more living,
more human, more passionate, and more sympathetic, than the Medea of Mr.
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