MORRIS AND BURNE-JONES.


A NY record of the life of William Morris would be
.A     indeed incomplete, unless it contained a more than
passig reference to his faithful friend and sympathetic
coadjutor, Edward Burne-Jones. The two were joined
together by what would appear to be the strongest bond
of human companionship: a community of tastes coupled
with a diversity of temperament. To this union Morris
furnished the masculine, and Burne-Jones the feminine


nent. The one was passionate-often to the degree
violence, active, self-reliant, even aggressive. The
er was contemplative, endowed with a Griselda-like
lence, imaginative, idealistic. By blood both were
,ts, strong in racial characteristics. In thought and art
h were mediaevalists, with the distinction that Morris
s attracted by Anglo-Norman architecture and litera-
e; while the ideas and expression of Burne-Jones were
Dred with a pronounced Italianism. For this difference
first studies of each artist were partially responsible:
college library at Marlboro and the location of the
[ege itself providing Morris with fine and abundant
terial for archeological research; while Burne-Jones is
Dwn to have received the impulse toward an artistic
eer from a drawing of Rossetti's, which fell into his
ids during his freshman year at Oxford. In both
n also the long course of years did but fulfil the initial
,ule: Morris became a creator and inventor, bold,
erimental, and epoch-making, like the builders of the
*teenth century, whom he acknowledged as his masters,
dels and guides; Burne-Jones, on the contrary, unique
genius and personality, labored in artistic solitude,
ing little for the world's apphuse, and remaining faithful
hii early ideals with a trulyfeminine constancy. The
it accomplishments of the two men produced upon the
of their time an influence that is quite immeasurable,
to depth, breadth and lasting effect. Together, they