And, indeed, we see the insufficiency of such sad extremes even in the
next name among the major poets; we see the Swinburnian parody of
mediævalism, the inverted Catholicism of the decadents, struggling to
get back somehow on its feet. The æsthetic school had, not quite
unjustly, the name of mere dilettanti. But it is fair to say that in the
next of them, a workman and a tradesman, we already feel something of
that return to real issues leading up to the real revolts that broke up
Victorianism at last. In the mere art of words, indeed, William Morris
carried much further than Swinburne or Rossetti the mere imitation of
stiff mediæval ornament. The other mediævalists had their modern
moments; which were (if they had only known it) much more mediæval than
their mediæval moments. Swinburne could write--

"We shall see Buonaparte the bastard
Kick heels with his throat in a rope."

One has an uneasy feeling that William Morris would have written
something like--

"And the kin of the ill king Bonaparte
Hath a high gallows for all his part."

Rossetti could, for once in a way, write poetry about a real woman and
call her "Jenny." One has a disturbed suspicion that Morris would have
called her "Jehanne."

But all that seems at first more archaic and decorative about Morris
really arose from the fact that he was more virile and real than either
Swinburne or Rossetti. It arose from the fact that he really was, what