about modern paintings: and of Burne-Jones' paintings I had only seen one or two photographic reproductions, and knew really nothing about his style or principles of art. As it happened, the only one of his pictures in the New Gallery which I had particularly noticed was his 'Sea Nymph'—a picture which, I think, exceeds any other of his works in its challenging unconventionality. The sea is depicted in quite an archaic fashion—as a child might do, by mere curved interlacing bands of green colour, without any attempt to represent the actual form of water or wave. So I said in a blundering kind of way that I had observed this picture, but hardly knew what to say about it. It seemed to me as if the artist was trying to imitate some very early style of art rather than nature itself.
Then the heavens burst open, and lightning and thunder fell upon me. Hardly had I completed my sentence than Morris was on his feet, storming words upon me that shook the room. His eyes flamed as with actual fire, his shaggy mane rose like a burning crest, his whiskers and moustache bristled out like pine-needles.
I was seated on the edge of the bed, and was too astounded at first to comprehend what he said, or what had aroused his extraordinary passion. But I soon realised that I had been guilty of a mortal offence in what I had said about Burne-Jones' picture, though whether the offence lay wholly, or chiefly, in my seeming disparagement of Burne-Jones, or, as is quite likely, in the display of what he conceived to be my own and the popular ignorance about art, I do not to this day know.
He poured forth an amazing torrent of invective against the whole age. 'Art forsooth!' he cried, 'where the hell is it? Where the hell are the people who know or care a damn about it? This infernal civilisation has no capacity to understand either nature or art. People have no eyes to see, no ears to hear. The only thing they understand is how to enslave their fellows or be enslaved by them
