absorbing one. A series of exquisite books, which gain in value every year, witnesses to the thorough and whole-hearted fashion in which he invariably threw himself into the exigencies of his life-work.
The last years of his life were peacefully occupied. He was sounded as to whether he would accept the laureateship upon the death of Tennyson, but declined, feeling that his tastes and his record were too remote from the requirements of a court appointment. His last piece of work, the crowning glory of his printing-press, was the Kelmscott Chaucer, which had taken nearly two years to print, and fully five to plan and mature. It was finished in June 1896, and before it was in his hands he already knew that his working day was over. His vigour had been slowly declining for some time, and he sank gradually during the autumn, dying on the 3rd of October 1896. He was buried in Kelmscott churchyard, followed to the grave by the workmen whom he had inspired, the members of the league which he had supported, the students of the art gild he had founded, and the villagers who had learnt to love him.
Essentially the child of the Gothic revival, he had put an ineffaceable stamp on Victorian ornament and design, his place being that of a follower of Ruskin and Pugin, but with a greater practical influence than either. In house decoration of all kinds—furniture, wall-papers and hangings (which he preferred to paper), carpet-weaving, and the painting of glass and tiles, needlework, tapestry—he formed a school which was dominated by his protest against commercialism and his assertion of the necessity for natural decoration and pure colour, produced by hand work and inspired by a passion for beauty irrespective of cheapness or quickness of manufacture (see Arts and Crafts). The truest criticism of William Morris is that attributed to his friend, the poet Swinburne, who said that he was always more truly inspired by literature than by life. His Socialism, though it made a brave show at times, was at heart a passionate enthusiasm for an inaccessible artistic ideal. Morris, indeed, was not primarily interested in men at all, but in objects. His poetry deals, it is true, with the human passions, but the emotion is always seen as in a picture; he is more concerned with the attitude of the group than with the realization of a character. He had very little adaptability in dealing with his fellows; the crowd, as a crowd, fired his enthusiasm, but he was unable to cope with the individuals that composed it. Many of his colleagues bear witness to his generosity and magnanimity, but as a general principle he certainly lacked the wider humanity. This is the one failing of his art: it is also the shortcoming of his poetry. Granted this, there is left an immense amount that will always command admiration. The spirit of beauty breathes in every line; a sense of music and of colour is everywhere abundant; the reader moves, as it were, under a canopy of apple-blossom, over a flower-starred turf, to the faint harmony of virginals. Nor does the poet lack power and vigour when an adventurous story is to be told. The clash of arms breaks upon his pagan paradise with no uncertain sound; he is swift in narrative, breathless in escapade. And over all hangs the faint atmosphere of medievalism, of an England of green gardens and grey towers, of a London “small and white and clean,” of chivalry and adventure in every brake. The critic has also to remember the historical value of Morris’s literary influence, following upon the prim domesticities of early Victorian verse, and breaking in upon Tennyson’s least happy phase of natural homeliness.
See the Life and Letters, in 2 vols. (Longmans), by J. W. Mackail. An article on “William Morris and his Decorative Art,” by Lewis F. Day, appeared in the Contemporary Review for June 1903. (A. Wa.)
MORRIS, a city and the county-seat of Grundy county,
Illinois, U.S.A., on the north bank of the Illinois river, about
62 m. S.W. of Chicago. Pop. (1900), 4273; (1910) 4563. Morris
is served by the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific railway, and by
the Illinois & Michigan canal. Electric power is derived from
the Illinois river at Marseilles, Ill. (pop. in 1910, 3291), about
15 m. west. Morris (named in honour of Isaac P. Morris, a
commissioner of the Illinois & Michigan canal) was settled in
1834, and was chartered as a city in 1857.
MORRIS-DANCE, or Morrice-Dance (Span. Morisco, Moorish), an old English dance, which is said by various authorities to have been introduced by John of Gaunt from Spain or borrowed from the French or Flemings. That it was a development of the morisco-dance or Spanish fandango is not invalidated by the fact that the morisco was for one person only, for, although latterly the morris-dance was represented by various characters, uniformity in this respect was not always observed. There are few references to it earlier than the reign of Henry VII., but it would appear that in the reign of Henry VIII. it was an almost essential part of the principal village festivities. In earlier times it was usually danced by five men and a boy dressed in a girl’s habit, who was called Maid Marian. There were also two musicians; and, at least sometimes, one of the dancers, more gaily and richly dressed than the others, acted as “foreman of the morris.” The garments of the dancers were ornamented with bells tuned to different notes so as to sound in harmony. Robin Hood, Friar Tuck and Little John were characters extraneous to the original dance, and were introduced when it came to be associated with the May-games. At Betley, in Staffordshire, there is a painted window, of the time of Henry VIII. or earlier, portraying the morris—the characters including Maid Marian, Friar Tuck, the hobby-horse, the piper, the tabourer, the fool and five other persons apparently representing various ranks or callings. The hobby-horse, which, latterly at least, was one of the principal characters of the dance, consisted of a wooden figure attached to the person of the actor, who was covered with trappings reaching to the ground, so as to conceal his feet. The morris-dance was abolished along with the May-games and other festivities by the Puritans, and, although revived at the Restoration, the pageant gradually degenerated in character and declined in importance. Maid Marian latterly was personated by a clown, who was called Malkin or Marykin. The interest of the subject has revived in recent years in connexion with the new movements associated with folk-music generally.
See The Morris Book, by Cecil J. Sharp and H. C. McIlwaine. Among older authorities see Douce, “Dissertations on the Ancient Morris Dance,” in his Illustrations of Shakespeare (1839); Strutt, Sports and Pastimes of the People of England; Brand, Popular Antiquities (1849).
MORRISON, ARTHUR (1863–), English novelist, was
born in Kent on the 1st of November 1863. He was for a short
time a clerk in the civil service, and in 1890 took to journalism.
He had already published scattered tales and sketches of low life
in London when W. E. Henley, with whom he was connected as a
contributor to the National Observer, suggested their publication
in volume form. Tales of Mean Streets (1894) immediately attracted attention, and this was followed by A Child of the Jago (1896), the scene of which is laid between High Street, Shoreditch, and Bethnal Green Road. Cunning Murrell (1900), The Hole in the Wall (1902), and the detective stories, Martin Hewitt, Investigator (1894), which had sequels in 1894 and 1896, and The Green Eye of Gorma, are among his other works.
MORRISON, RICHARD JAMES (1795–1874), English astrologer, commonly known by his pseudonym “Zadkiel,” was born on the 15th of June 1795. He served in the Royal Navy, but resigned with the rank of lieutenant in 1829. He then devoted himself to the study of astrology, and in 1831 issued The Herald of Astrology, subsequently known as Zadkiel’s Almanac. In this annual pamphlet Morrison, over the signature “Zadkiel Tao-Sze,” published predictions of the chief events of the coming year. In 1863 Morrison brought a libel action against Admiral Sir Edward Belcher, who had accused him of obtaining money by charlatanism in the form of crystal-gazing. He was awarded twenty shillings damages, but was deprived of his costs. Morrison died on the 5th of April 1874.
MORRISON, ROBERT (1782–1834), the first Protestant
missionary to China, was born of Scottish parents at Buller’s Green, near Morpeth, on the 5th of January 1782. After receiving an elementary education in Newcastle, he was apprenticed to a lastmaker, but his spare hours were given to theology, and in 1803 he was received into the Independent Academy at
