Transcribed from the 1906 J. Thomson edition , ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
BEING CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE OXFORD AND CAMBRIDGE MAGAZINE,1856
By WILLIAM MORRIS
LONDON: Published by J. THOMSON at 10,
CRAVEN GARDENS, WIMBLEDON, S. W.
MCMVI
p. iInthe tales . . . the world is one of pure romance. Mediævalcustoms, mediæval buildings, the mediæval Catholic religion,the general social framework of the thirteenth or fourteenth century,are assumed throughout, but it would be idle to attempt to place themin any known age or country. . . Their author in later years thought,or seemed to think, lightly of them, calling them crude (as they are)and very young (as they are). But they are nevertheless comparablein quality to Keats’s ‘Endymion’ as rich in imagination,as irregularly gorgeous in language, as full in every vein and fibreof the sweet juices and ferment of the spring.—J.W. Mackail
p. iiInhis last year at Oxford, Morris established, assuming the entire financialresponsibility, the ‘Oxford and Cambridge Magazine,’ writtenalmost entirely by himself and his college friends, but also numberingRossetti among its contributors. Like most college ventures, itscareer was short, ending with its twelfth issue in December, 1856. In this magazine Morris first found his strength as a writer, and thoughhis subsequent literary achievements made him indifferent to this earlierwork, its virility and wealth of romantic imagination justify its rescuefrom oblivion.
The article on Amiens, intended originally as the first of a series,is included in this volume as an illustration of Morris’s powerto clothe things actual with the glamour of Romance.
I was the master-mason of a church that was built more than six hundredyears ago; it is now two hundred years since that church vanished fromthe face of the earth; it was destroyed utterly,—no fragment ofit was left; not even the great pillars that bore up the tower at thecross, where the choir used to join the nave. No one knows noweven where it stood, only in this very autumn-tide, if you knew theplace, you would see the heaps made by the earth-covered ruins heavingthe yellow corn into glorious waves, so that the place where my churchused to be is as beautiful now as when it stood in all its splendour. I do not remember very much about the land where my church was; I havequite forgotten the name of it, but I know it was very beautiful, andeven now, while I am thinking of it, comes a flood of old memories,and I almost seem to see it again,—that old beautiful land! onlydimly do I see it in spring and summer and winter, but I see it in autumn-tideclearly now; yes, clearer, clearer, oh! so bright and glorious! yetit was beautiful too in spring, when the brown earth began to grow green:beautiful in summer, when the p. 2bluesky looked so much bluer, if you could hem a piece of it in betweenthe new white carving; beautiful in the solemn starry nights, so solemnthat it almost reached agony—the awe and joy one had in theirgreat beauty. But of all these beautiful times, I remember thewhole only of autumn-tide; the others come in bits to me; I can thinkonly of parts of them, but all of autumn; and of all days and nightsin autumn, I remember one more particularly. That autumn day thechurch was nearly finished and the monks, for whom we were buildingthe church, and the people, who lived in the town hard by, crowded roundus oftentimes to wat