But in the feeling for pure decoration, which is the essential element in art, in the universality of his application of it, and the high excellence to which he brought it in each branch to which he devoted himself, I doubt if Morris has had a rival in our day; and I am inclined to think that in the default of an early education in art, such as the great Italian painters received, we lost one of the greatest artists who have ever lived. For with the high degree in which he possessed taste, technical abilities never fully developed in work, and exquisite feeling for color and invention in design, he had the large human mould which would have made his work majestic beyond that of any of his great contemporaries and co-workers. He remained, owing to the late discovery of himself and the poor opinion of his abilities, only a large sketch of what his completed self would have been. He had that full, sensuous vitality which Madox Brown so completely lacked to his great injury, without the excess of it which was so treacherous with Rossetti. Mr. Mackail's recent life of Morris does great injustice to Rossetti without in any way exalting his friend, for Rossetti always urged Morris to follow his artistic tendencies with the largest and most liberal encouragement and appreciation, and all the stimulus derivable from a most exalted opinion of his native abilities. Rossetti would have set everybody to painting, I think, for, in his opinion, it was the only occupation worth living for, and he was absolutely free from personal jealousy. Of Burne-Jones I saw little in those days. He was still working out his artistic problem, and came now and then to the studio of Rossetti, who had the highest opinion of his abilities. And, taking art in its special function, that of the decorator, there can hardly be a dispute as to his rank amongst the greatest of romantic designers of the centuries following that of Giotto. His fertility of invention was very great; and, considering that his studies began at a period which for most artists would have been too late for the acquisition of technical excellence of a high degree, his attainment in that direction was most remarkable. Entirely original, if that quality could be predicated of any artist, he certainly was not, and he borrowed of his predecessors to an immense extent, not slavishly but adaptingly, and what he borrowed he proved a good right to, for he used it with a high intelligence and to admirable effect. It seems to me that though he added little or nothing to the resources of art, as Rossetti undoubtedly did, he employed the precedents of past art, and especially of the Italian renaissance, to better effect than any other artist of our epoch; and, in borrowing as he did, he only followed the example of most of the great old masters, who used material of any kind found in their predecessors' works, in perfectly good conscience. His industry was prodigious, and his devotion to art supreme. CHAPTER XXV