a wonderfully beautiful girl. He was now fully launched on his career. In 1861, in company with a few other artists, among them Rossetti, he established a firm for the purpose of engaging in decoration, carving as applied to architecture, stained glass, metal work and figure and pattern painting. It was not a prosperous concern financially, and after a few years Morris was obliged to take the whole thing under his own management. The final result was the establishment of the Kelmscott Press and manufactory, which came to have a world-wide reputation.

It was in 1867 that his first great poem, "The Life and Death of Jason," was published, and Morris at once became one of the popular poets, contesting the palm even with Tennyson. There was a refinement and charm in the poem, combined with romanticism, movement and incident, that hit the popular as well as the cultivated taste of the day. After this came his still greater poem, “The Earthly Paradise," which by many critics was said to place him on a level with Tennyson and Browning. Certainly it established his reputation as a very great poet. His third book, "The House of the Wolfings," a mixture of prose and verse, appeared in 1889 and still further increased his reputation. Of his other

works "The News From Nowhere" is probably the best known, written by him after he became interested in socialism. It was not much more than a theoretical interest after all, but it had a tendency to make many people look askance at Morris and wonder if he was quite right in his mind, and it probably took away something from his popularity, but this did not bother him in the least. He joined the Social Democratic Federation in 1883, but left it two years later, unable to work with the doctrinaire followers of Karl Marx. After all he had but little in common with the promotion of socialistic theories, though he strove hard to get in touch with humanity, not an easy thing for him to do. It was his natural state to be out of touch with many of the people about him.

Mr. Mackall compares him in many of his peculiarities with Dr. Johnson. Mr. Morris was large in person, slovenly in his personal appearance, loving paradox and full of the spirit of contradiction. Like Johnson, he prided himself on being a very polite man, and was capable of the most amazing and almost supernatural rudeness both to men and women. Unlike Johnson, he could use the vocabulary of a sea captain when things did not go exactly to suit him.

But he was a many-sided and very great man, who in his lifetime did a marvelous amount of work. In fact he wore himself out by hard work and died in 1896 in his sixty-third year.

EDWARD FITZGERALD,

TRANSLATOR OF OMAR KHAYYAM.

(1809-1883.)

HITHERTO "The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam has not been for the multitude, but rather, like Browning's poems, the special cult of a select few. Clubs and coteries are formed for the study of the "Quatrains," which FitzGerald has so exquisitely dressed in English that that language seems to be their native garb. But it is evident that the admiration and appreciation of this superb poem is growing. Omar is now joined with Keats and Shelley and Wordsworth and ever so many other British worthies in the Golden Treasury Series, which is very good company-far better than at one time was thought possible. It is forty years since "The Rubaiyat" quatrains were translated from the Persian and given to the English-speaking world by Edward FitzGerald. Had he translated them into Choctaw his book could not have met with a colder

reception. It was neither noticed by the reviews nor sold by the booksellers. It excited no interest, and even " Old Fitz's "Old Fitz's" warmest friends,

men like Thackeray and Tennyson, could find but few words of compliment. Copies of that edition are now worth their weight in gold, and not readily obtainable at that.

Nevertheless FitzGerald still had confidence that his poem would find its way, and published editions of it in 1868, 1872, 1878 and 1879; but he died a few years later, in 1883, without having received much appreciation from the world. It was not until about 1884, with the publication of an American edition of "The Rubaiyat," illustrated by drawings of Elihu Vedder, that the poem began to attract attention. From that day it has grown in favor, until now we see it in an edition that may justly be termed popular.

The beauty and grace of FitzGerald's translation of Omar's poem are so striking that it always has been a question whether after all it is not an original poem by the Englishman. There are those who think that FitzGerald, and not Omar the Tentmaker, should be the name most prominent on the title-page, and that it is altogether improbable that a man could have lived nine hundred years ago in the far-off Vale of Cashmere, and under the