he may have borrowed from older minstrels.  But the Medea of Apollonius Rhodius, in her love, her tenderness, her regret for home, in all her maiden words and ways, is undeniably a character more living, more human, more passionate, and more sympathetic, than the Medea of Mr. Morris.  I could almost wish that he had closely followed that classical original, the first true love story in literature.  In the same way I prefer Apollonius’s spell for soothing the dragon, as much terser and more somniferous than the spell put by Mr. Morris into the lips of Medea.  Scholars will find it pleasant to compare these passages of the Alexandrine and of the London poets.  As a brick out of the vast palace of “Jason” we may select the song of the Nereid to Hylas—­Mr. Morris is always happy with his Nymphs and Nereids:—­

      “I know a little garden-close
   Set thick with lily and with rose,
   Where I would wander if I might
   From dewy dawn to dewy night,
   And have one with me wandering. 
      And though within it no birds sing,
   And though no pillared house is there,
   And though the apple boughs are bare
   Of fruit and blossom, would to God,
   Her feet upon the green grass trod,
   And I beheld them as before. 
      There comes a murmur from the shore,
   And in the place two fair streams are,
   Drawn from the purple hills afar,
   Drawn down unto the restless sea;
   The hills whose flowers ne’er fed the bee,
   The shore no ship has ever seen,
   Still beaten by the billows green,
   Whose murmur comes unceasingly
   Unto the place for which I cry. 
      For which I cry both day and night,
   For which I let slip all delight,
   That maketh me both deaf and blind,
   Careless to win, unskilled to find,
   And quick to lose what all men seek. 
      Yet tottering as I am, and weak,
   Still have I left a little breath
   To seek within the jaws of death
   An entrance to that happy place,
   To seek the unforgotten face
   Once seen, once kissed, once rest from me
   Anigh the murmuring of the sea.”

“Jason” is, practically, a very long tale from the “Earthly Paradise,” as the “Earthly Paradise” is an immense treasure of shorter tales in the manner of “Jason.”  Mr. Morris reverted for an hour to his fourteenth century, a period when London was “clean.”  This is a poetic license; many a plague found mediaeval London abominably dirty!  A Celt himself, no doubt, with the Celt’s proverbial way of being impossibilium cupitor, Mr. Morris was in full sympathy with his Breton Squire, who, in the reign of Edward III., sets forth to seek the Earthly Paradise, and the land where Death never comes.  Much more dramatic, I venture to think, than any passage of “Jason,” is that where the dreamy seekers of dreamland, Breton and Northman, encounter the stout King Edward III., whose kingdom is of this world.  Action and fantasy are met, and the wanderers explain the nature of their quest.  One of them speaks of death in many a form, and of the flight from death:—­