when belabouring for the hundredth time Gladstone, Chamberlain, and Balfour, or rating as if by rote some capitalist apologia by Professor Leone Levi or Sir Thomas Brassey, he seldom failed to introduce some phrase or turn of thought outside the range of ordinary journalist allusion.
Such as it was, considering the limitations of its space, and the restrictions of its purpose, the Commonweal compared favourably with any other Socialist or propagandist journal of its day. There are to be found in it, I venture to think, more pages of matter interesting to read to-day than can be found in any similar contemporary publication. Alike in get-up and in the quality of its contributions, especially during the three years 1887-1889, when Morris was rid of the disturbing meddlings of Dr. Aveling (his then sub-editor) and before the Anarchist influences began to force themselves upon him, it will bear comparison proudly with either its weekly rival Justice, or with Our Corner, To-Day, or the Practical Socialist, monthly magazines which enjoyed the advantages of the collaboration of such experienced journalists as Annie Besant, Hubert Bland, Bernard Shaw, and other Fabian Fleet Street intellectuals. Nor should we fail to note that from the outset of his editorship of the Commonweal, as with all things to which he turned his hands, Morris sought as best he could with the means at his disposal to embody in his work right principles of conduct and of art. Thus he tried to make the paper in some degree a good example of typographical art, designing for it a simple but beautiful title block, and insisting upon good, readable type and consistency of headings and spacing throughout—eschewing all vulgarisations of display. Also he set his face like flint against any log-rolling or personal flattery in its columns, and against all commercial advertisements that would degrade the character of the paper, and against purveying merely 'spicy' or garish paragraphs. Also he aimed that the paper should be primarily educational in its
