Besides the above Norse subjects, I might call your attention to the following titles: "The Folk-Mote by the River," "Knight Aagen and Maiden Else," "Hafbur and Signy," "The Raven and the King's Daughter." All these are well worth reading. So are the purely fairy tales. Northern fairy tales had a great charm for Morris. He chose them as subjects, perhaps because he saw a way of putting into them a new charm, a charm not suited for child readers, but attractive to the adult public. I suppose you know that fairy tales, as written for children, are written so as to appeal chiefly to the imagination, and to those simple emotions of which children are capable. But originally such stories were told for the amusement of grown up people, and a great deal of love sentiment figures in some of them. Morris, remembering this, took several charming stories and infused them with a new artistic sensuousness, making love the motive and the principal sentiment. In the other volume of which I spoke, the old story of "Rapunzel" is treated in this way; in the volume now under consideration we have the story "Goldilocks and Goldilocks." It is the wildest, the most impossible kind of fairy tale (so, for that matter, is Coleridge's "Christabel"), but he gave it a very human charm by putting delightful little bits of human nature into it--such as the passage where the enchanted maiden, who never saw a man before, meets the handsome knight for the first time: But the very first step he made from the place He met a maiden face to face. Face to face, and so close was she, That their lips met soft and lovingly. Sweet-mouthed she was, and fair he wist; And again in the darksome wood they kissed. Then first in the wood her voice he heard, As sweet as the song of the summer bird. "O thou fair man with the golden head, What is the name of thee?" she said. "My name is Goldilocks," said he, "O sweet-breathed, what is the name of thee?" "O Goldilocks the Swain," she said, "My name is Goldilocks the Maid." He spake, "Love me as I love thee, And Goldilocks one flesh shall be." She said, "Fair man, I wot not how Thou lovest, but I love thee now." And they go on talking together, like two children, in their eighteenth century English--she full of wonder at the beauty of the stranger of another sex, he full of loving pity for her supreme innocence. And then all kinds of magical dangers and troubles come to separate them, but love conquers all. The story is known by many children, but not as Morris tells it. His principal purpose is to picture a character of perfect innocence and perfect trust; and he does this so delightfully that we cease to care whether the tale is a fairy one or not. It stirs most agreeably something which is true in everybody's heart; we love what is beautiful in the character of the child or the supremely innocent young girl.