The House of the Woifings. By William Morris. (Reeves and
Turner.)—There can be no doubt that, whatever extravagancies exist in The House of the Wotfings, Mr. William Morris has caught in a marvellous manner the martial stir and the war- like sentiment of the times of the ancient Goths. And he imitates with considerable skill and real poetic fervour their fanciful but natural mode of expression, the outcome of a vigorous and generous life. The occasional bursts of descrip- tive power are perhaps rather finer than we ought to expect from " the men of the mid-mark," and the love-scenes, with their delicate and tender beauty, are hardly rude enough to suit those days. These and other touches, such as "the glory of the western sky was unseen," betray the hand of the modern rather than the ancient poet. None the less is The House of the Wolfings, both as regards its prose and its verse, in spite of the occasionally strained language, a striking effort of sympathetic skill ; and it contains some passages of great beauty, and even splendour.
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