Mr. Brock has told a little of the man, sometimes in an interesting way, but he does not make us intimate with him. However, as he tells us in his preface, he had no pretensions. He is lucid and thoughtful, he is excellent in his criticism of Morris's poetry, and on the whole gives us a book well worthy of an hour's quietude. The facts given are good by way of an introduction--sufficient to send one in quest for greater knowledge of the man. One of Nature's henchmen, fresh, bold, Viking in the marrow, with a spirit of steel, a man for whom the sea would smile, poet, painter, stainer of glass, weaver of carpets, spinning a world with the strains of his song, socialist and revolutionist, Morris comes as a teasing wind through the dank atmosphere of nineteenth-century commercialism, daring conventions and going his way a body all soul, a majesty supreme to the last. We get a little of the air of the man when we read these lines from the _Sigurd_. I quote from the biography: There was a dwelling of Kings ere the world was waxen old, Dukes were the door wards there, and the roofs were thatched with gold; Earls were the wrights that wrought it, and silver nailed the doors; Earls' wives were the weaving women, queens' daughters strewed the floor. And the masters of its song craft were the mightiest men that cast The sails of the storm of battle adown the bickering blast. One cannot but remark the manhood and courage of this. A Luxury of Life. A freedom here that would fill the winds. It is not to be wondered that such a man should chafe under the tyranny of skin-girt stupidity, and feel a loathing toward the flannel-souled people who in his time were already making machines of men and building a world around them of ugliness,--cities without bearing, without character, without mirth, without life. Cities of the dead, where ghosts might abide. It is in the realm of art, however, that we must look for Morris would we view him in the light. Art gave the world a child who would lead it by the hand to the Princess Beautiful that the maiden should have a lover to woo. A child--yes; and a warrior too, who would do battle with any of her enemies. I would not say that he knew more of art in its relation to life than did Ruskin, Wilde, and Whistler; he was, however, far more active of the purpose. He saw that art was not a mere thing for the galleries, where Mediocrity can sniff and vaunt its conceits; for him it was serious of all nature, of the whole circle and the endless series of circles.