10 OCTOBER 1896, Page 18

Mr. William Morris, the well-known poet, decorative artist, and Socialist

politician, died at his house in Hammersmith last Saturday. We have given an estimate of his position as a poet elsewhere, and will only say here that English life loses a very picturesque and. characteristic figure, a man of exquisite taste in art, and refinement in the use of words, who had in him the true John Bull element. So bluff and burly an artist seemed a contradiction in terms. Mr. Morris was buried at Kelmscott Church on Tuesday, with a ceremonial that, though quaint and unusual, was yet in perfect good taste. The coffin was placed on a farm-waggon and conveyed thence to the church, which was decorated with flowers, corn, and fruit for the harvest-home service. The hearse was followed by artists and the poor, a cavalcade which the poet would have greatly preferred to any collection of the highly placed.