Mary wrote a good hand and spelled well, and would sit down and write with gravity such a note as the following, dictated to her by Edward.  “Mr. Bogie Jones’ compts. to Mr. Price and begs to inform him he expects to be down for Commemoration and that he hopes to meet him, clean, well shaved, and with a contrite heart.”  Morris’ quick temper annoyed her, but she once prettily said, “Though he was so short-tempered, I seemed so necessary to him at all times, and felt myself his man Friday.”

ELEPHANT
[Sidenote:  Memorials of Edward Burne-Jones]

My reading aloud to him began soon after our marriage, with Plutarch’s “Lives”—­an old folio edition.  Holland’s translation of Pliny’s “Natural History” was also a treasure for the purpose, and the “Arabian Nights” were ever fresh.  The description of “Mrs. Gamp’s apartment in Kingsgate Street, High Holborn,” was read over and over again until I, but not he, was wearied for a time.  These were all classics admitting of no criticism, but some books were illuminated by commentary.  For instance, the frequent comparison of Goethe with Shakespeare which G.H.  Lewes makes in his “Life of Goethe” grew tiresome to the hearer, who quietly asked me to read the word Elephant instead of Shakespeare next time it occurred, and the change proved refreshing.  But there was a kind of book that he reserved for himself and never liked any one to read to him—­“The Broad Stone of Honour” and “Mores Catholici” are instances:  they were kept in his own room, close to his hand, and often dipped into in wakeful nights or early mornings.

“Sillyish books both,” he once said, “but I can’t help it, I like them.”  And no wonder, for his youth lay enclosed in them.

MY FACES [Sidenote:  Memorials of Edward Burne-Jones]

“Of course my faces have no expression in the sense in which people use the word.  How should they have any?  They are not portraits of people in paroxysms—­paroxysms of terror, hatred, benevolence, desire, avarice, veneration, and all the ‘passions’ and emotions that Le Brun and that kind of person find so magnifique in Raphael’s later work—­mostly painted by his pupils and assistants, by the way.  It is Winckelmann, isn’t it, who says that when you come to the age of expression in Greek art you have come to the age of decadence?  I don’t remember how or where it is said, but of course it is true—­can’t be otherwise in the nature of things.”

“Portraiture,” he also said, “may be great art.  There is a sense, indeed, in which it is perhaps the greatest art of any.  Any portraiture involves expression.  Quite true, but expression of what?  Of a passion, an emotion, a mood?  Certainly not.  Paint a man or woman with the damned ‘pleasing expression,’ or even the ‘charmingly spontaneous’ so dear to the ‘photographic artist,’ and you see at once that the thing is a mask, as silly as the old tragic and comic mask.  The only expression allowable in great portraiture is the expression of character and moral quality, not of anything temporary, fleeting, accidental.  Apart from portraiture you don’t want even so much, or very seldom:  in fact you only want types, symbols, suggestions.  The moment you give what people call expression, you destroy the typical character of heads and degrade them into portraits which stand for nothing.”