He was not an ascetic, giving up what
is half an incumbrance and half a terror; nor was he naturally a
melancholy and detached person; but he gave up work which he loved
passionately, and a life which he lived in a full-blooded, generous
way, that he might try to share his blessings with others, out of a
supreme pity for those less richly endowed than himself.
How, then, should not this corner of the world, which he loved so
dearly, speak to the spirit with a voice and an accent far louder
and more urgent than its own tranquil habit of sunny peace and
green-shaded sweetness! "You know my faith," wrote Morris from
Kelmscott in a bewildered hour, "and how I feel I have no sort of
right to revenge myself for any of my private troubles on the kind
earth; and here I feel her kindness very specially, and am bound
not to meet it with a long face." Noble and high-hearted words! for
he of all men seemed made by nature to enjoy security and beauty
and the joys of living, if ever man was so made. His very lack of
personal sensitiveness, his unaptness to be moved by the pathetic
appeal of the individual, might have been made a shield for his own
peace; but he laid that shield down, and bared his breast to the
sharp arrows; and in his noble madness to redress the wrongs of the
world he was, perhaps, more like one of his great generous knights
than he himself ever suspected.
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