Page:Men of Letters, Scott, 1916.djvu/331

THE FIRST MORRIS 305 of song, to remind us that birth involves travail, and service crucifixion, that the Grail is only granted to those who have suffered vigils and fastings, and that he who would bring us a little nearer to an earthly- paradise must wander in the wilderness himself. " Art is the expression of man's joy " — but the labour involves laceration. He who would save our lives must lose his own. But do not let us end too sadly ! That large deduc- tion, it is true, is damping : we would all so much rather believe that poetry is just printed song, purified laughter ; and Morris's own teaching and the tradi- tion he established had almost buoyed us into the belief. But at the same time we must not magnify our losses. No man can defy his daemon for ever, his instincts will discover a ruse, and the strange journeys Morris undertook to Iceland, the twilit moods they aroused, the emotional travail they cost him, were really, if one had only time to tell the tale, but the elaborate subterfuge the Spirit of Letters adopted in order to drive him out into the darkness for a little, there to gather the material which he of all men could use, and ultimately to produce, strengthened by his weariness, his second great masterpiece Sigurd. And even in the meantime, while that plot is brewing, we have some other com- pensations. If Jason seems limp, we have the lusty picture of his own life for a make-weight ; precisely because he refused to produce a second Guenevere^ he lived on a scale, with a gusto, that kindles the heart like wine and song. And, lastly, we have, too, the very human satisfac- tion of knowing that he was most exquisitely punished for his traitorousness. Poetry took a sweet revenge. For the decorative dimness of his paradisiacal works (the result, as we have seen, of his uproariousness) was caught up as the Morris characteristic — copied Men^of Letters, 21