For a critical discussion or a detailed analysis of Morris's work this is not the place. It must be sufficient to indicate briefly the ideas which underlie that work and give it its literary _cachet_. Two main currents, derivable perhaps from a common source but running in different directions can be easily discerned. The subjects of his tales are almost without exception derived either from Greek myth or from mediæval folklore. After all that has been said and written of the gulf that divides the classic from the romantic feeling--_"Barbaren und Hellenen_", as Heine puts it, such a conjunction might appear incongruous. But the connecting link has here been found in the poet's mind. He looks upon his classical subject-matter through a mediæval atmosphere, in other words he writes about Venus and Cupid and Psyche and Medea as a poet of Chaucer's age might have done, barring of course the differences of language, although in this respect also it may be noted that the archaisms of expression affected by the modern poet appear indifferently in the Greek and the mediæval tales. The phenomenon is by no means unique in literature. Let the reader compare Chapman's Homer with Pope's, or let him open Morris's _Jason_ where the bells of Colchis "melodiously begin to ring", and the meaning of the afore-mentioned "mediæval atmosphere" will at once be as palpable to him as it was to Keats when, reading Chapman's rude verse, after Pope's polished stanzas, he felt like some watcher of the skies When a new planet swims into his ken. It was the romantic chord of Keats's nature, that chord which vibrates in _La belle Dame sans Merci_, which was harmoniously struck and made the great master of form overlook the formal imperfection of the earlier poet. To the same element such stories as _Jason_, or _The Love of Alcestis_ and the _Bellerophon_ in _The Earthly Paradise_ owe their charm. Morris's position towards mediæval subjects did not at first essentially differ from that of other poets of similar tendency. In his first volume English and French knights and damsels figure prominently, and the beautiful and frail wife of King Arthur is the heroine of the chief poem and has given her name to the book. But in the interval which elapsed between that volume and the _Earthly Paradise_ a considerable change had come over the poet's dream. By the aid of Mr. Magnusson he had become acquainted with the treasure of northern folklore hidden in the Icelandic sagas, the two Eddas, the story of the Volsungs (of which a masterly translation is due to the two friends), the Laxdæla saga and other tales of more or less remote antiquity.