A
reproduction of his portrait by Watts hangs over my mantlepiece
with Henley's, and those of other friends. Its grave wide-open
eyes, like the eyes of some dreaming beast, remind me of the open
eyes of Titian's' Ariosto,' while the broad vigorous body suggests
a mind that has no need of the intellect to remain sane, though it
give itself to every phantasy, the dreamer of the middle ages. It
is 'the fool of fairy ... wide and wild as a hill,' the resolute
European image that yet half remembers Buddha's motionless
meditation, and has no trait in common with the wavering, lean
image of hungry speculation, that cannot but fill the mind's eye
because of certain famous Hamlets of our stage. Shakespeare
himself foreshadowed a symbolic change, that shows a change in the
whole temperament of the world, for though he called his Hamlet
'fat, and scant of breath,' he thrust between his fingers agile
rapier and dagger.
The dream world of Morris was as much the antithesis of daily life
as with other men of genius, but he was never conscious of the
antithesis and so knew nothing of intellectual suffering.
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