Morris’ contributions to the literature of Socialism include, besides his romance, “News from Nowhere,” two volumes of verse, “Poems by the Way” (1891)and “The Dream of John Ball”; together with “Socialism:  Its Growth and Outcome” (1893), an historical sketch of the subject written in collaboration with Mr. E. Belfort Bax.  Mackail also describes a satirical interlude, entitled “The Tables Turned, or Nupkins Awakened,” which was acted thrice at Farringden Road in the autumn of 1887—­a Socialistic farce in the form of a mediaeval miracle play—­a conjunction quite typical of the playwright’s political principles and literary preferences.  Morris’ ideal society, unlike Ruskin’s, included no feudal elements; there was no room in it for kings, or nobles, or great cities, or a centralised government.  It was primitive Teutonic rather than mediaeval; resembling the communal type described in “The House of the Wolfings.”  There were to be no more classes—­no rich or poor.  To ordinary Socialists the reform means a fairer distribution of the joint product of capital and labour; higher wages for the workingman, shorter hours, better food and more of it, better clothes, better houses, more amusements—­in short, “beer and skittles” in reasonable amount.  The Socialism of Ruskin and Morris was an outcome of their aesthetic feeling.  They liked to imagine the work people of the future as an intelligent and artistic body of handicraftsmen, living in pretty Gothic cottages among gardens of their own, scattered all over England in small rural towns or villages, and joyfully engaged in making sound and beautiful objects of use, tools, furniture, woven goods, etc.  To the followers of Mr. Hyndman these motives, if not these aims, must have seemed somewhat unpractical.  And in reading “Fors Clavigera,” one sometimes has a difficulty in understanding just what sort of person Ruskin imagined the British workman to be.

THE NEO-ROMANTICISTS.—­The literature of each new generation is apt to be partly an imitation of the last, and partly a reaction against it.  The impulse first given by Rossetti was communicated, through Morris and Swinburne, to a group of younger poets whom Mr. Stedman distinguishes as “Neo-Romanticists.” [45] The most noteworthy among these are probably Arthur O’Shaughnessy,[46] John Payne,[47] and Theophile Marzials;[48] though mention (want of space forbids more) should also be made of George Augustus Simcox, whose “Poems and Romances” (1869) are in the Pre-Raphaelite tradition.  The work of each of these has pronounced individuality; yet, as a whole, it reminds one continually now of Rossetti, now of Morris, and again of Swinburne; not infrequently, too, of Keats or Leigh Hunt, but never of the older romanticism, never of Scott nor even of Coleridge or Tennyson.  The reminder comes sometimes through a turn of phrase or the trick of the verse; but more insistently in the choice of subject and the entire attitude of the poet towards art and life, an attitude