THE WOOD BEYOND THE WORLD.*

MANY truths have been lighted up and shown to the world by the torch-light of allegory. Macaulay says that the Pilgrim's Progress is the only work of its kind which possesses a strong human interest, and that other allegories

only amuse the fancy, and that even in Spenser's "Faery Queen" the allegory is pursued beyond the bounds of tediousness. " We become sick of cardinal virtues and deadly sins, and long for the society of plain men and women." It was the shadowy author of the Visions Concerning Piers Plowman, who saw the world as it were " a fair field full of folk," wherein some were working and wandering, setting, sowing, and ploughing "full hard," while others wasted in gluttony and vice the goods that the workers had stored together. In those old visions, as two centuries later in " The Faery Queen," we find virtues and vices personified in human forms, and labelled " Fals.semblant " and " Lady Meed," so that we may have no doubt of their true characters.

The writers of allegories in modern days are more reticent ;

we are not even given a key whereby to unlock the painted doors, we are merely invited to enter, and we must find out for ourselves the parentage and lineage of the heroes and heroines. There are probably many people who read an allegory as they read a fairy-tale, without seeking for hidden meanings, and, read in such simple fashion, The Wood Beyond the World is a delightful tale of adventure

set in a mediaeval setting, wherein a youth called Golden Walter leaves his home and sallies forth to strange lands, trusting to his good sword and ready wit to win his way

through whatsoever may befall him. At the outset of his voyage he sees a vision :- " So Walter stood idly watching the said ship, and as he looked, lo ! folk passing him toward the gangway. These were three ; first came a dwarf, dark-brown of hue and hideous, with long arms and ears exceeding great, and dog-teeth that stuck out like the fangs of a wild beast. He was clad in a rich coat of yellow silk, and bore in his hand a crooked bow, and was girt with a broad sax. After him came a maiden, young by seeming of scarce twenty summers ; fair of face as a flower ; grey-eyed, brown-haired, with lips full and red, slim and gentle of body. Simple was her array, of a short and strait green gown, so • The Wood Beyond the World. By William Morris. London: Lawman and But en. that on her right ankle was clear to see an iron ring. Last of the three was a lady, tall and stately, so radiant of visage and glorious of raiment, that it were hard to say what like she was ; for scarce might the eye gaze steadily upon her exceeding beauty ; yet must every son of Adam who found himself anigh her, lift up his eyes again after he had dropped them and look again on her, and yet again, and yet again."

The three disappear in a ship which displays a green banner with the device of a "grim wolf ramping up against a maiden," and Walter determines to seek for them. He and his comrades sail on in their good ship until they come to an unknown shore—happily not so inhospitable a shore as the seekers for the Earthly Paradise fared upon— and here Walter espies a cleft in the rocky boundary, and, leaving his friends, pursues his way in search of the creatures of his vision. He at last encounters the hideous Dwarf; then the Maid with the iron anklet, with whom he enters into a

compact of friendship ; and lastly, the fascinating Lady, who welcomes him to the Golden House. There is a beautiful description of the house :-

" So an hour before sunset he saw something white and gay gleaming through the boles of the oak-trees, and presently there was clear before him a most goodly house budded of white imrble, carved all about with knots and imagery, and the carven folk were all painted of their lively colours, whether it were their raiment or their flesh, and the housings wherein they stood all done with gold and fair hues. Gay were the windows of the house ; and there was a pillared porch before the great door, with images betwixt the pillars both of men and beasts : and when Walter looked up to the roof of the house, he saw that it gleamed and shone ; for all the tiles were of yellow metal, which he deemed to be of very gold."

How Walter kills a lion, and is beguiled by the beautiful Lady, frees the Maid, and escapes with her, and the tragic end

of the King's Son, the Lady, and the Dwarf, is told in a delightfully poetical fashion. The description of the Lady in the magic wood and bower of pleasance, reminds us of Vivien :—

" A robe

Of samite without price, that more exprest Than hid her, clung about her lissome limbs, In colour like the satin shining palm Or sallows in the windy gleams of March."

Perhaps the scene in the folk-mote of the Bear-people when the Maid claims succession to their queenship, and gives a sign of her power by the revival of her faded flower-chaplets, is the best in the book. " Lo, then ! as she spake, the faded flowers that hung about her gathered life and grew fresh again; the woodbine round her neck and her sleek shoulders knit itself together and embraced her freshly, and cast its scent about her face. The lilies that girded her loins lifted up their heads, and the gold of their tassels fell upon her ; the eye- bright grew clean blue again upon her smock ; the eglantine found its blooms again, and then began to shed the leaves thereof upon her feet ; the meadow-sweet wreathed amongst it made clear the sweetness of her legs, and the mouse-ear studded her raiment as with gems. There she stood amidst of the blossoms, like a great orient pearl against the fret- work of the goldsmiths, and the breeze that came up the valley from behind bore the sweetness of her fragrance all over the man-mote." The whole scene in the Doom-ring, with its circle of rough men, its ancient centre figure, and its tribunal of hewn atone, suggests pagan rites, but the language in which the Maid accuses the Bear-folk of want of faith, is distinctly scriptural. Almost we hear her declaiming " Ye hypocrites ; ye can discern the face of the sky; but can ye not discern the signs of the times P" We read the fairy-tale with a grateful consciousness that Imagination is still alive, and passing us by clad in quaint garments of a bygone fashion, when we spy the serpent in this Eden ; and then we are once more haunted by the shadow of the story with a purpose. It is borne in upon us that the Lady who raises false lions in the path, and allures the King's Son and the Merchant's Son with her honied words and false kisses, is a worse sorceress than Medea or Circe ; she is the Lady Bleed of Lan gland's vision ; she personifies Capital itself, just as the Maid whom she holds captive personifies Labour. Mr. Morris preaches his Socialism in the most seductive and poetical form, and he ends his story in a Utopia where Labour and the Merchant's Son, whom we imagine to be the ideal Englishman, are the sovereign powers, after Aristocracy, in the person of the King's Son, has been made to assume the likeness of the Merchant's Son and then scotched, and Capital with her creature, the bloated aristocrat, has also come to a bad end. Capital

spreads her nets in vain before the Merchant's Son ; she tempts him with pleasure and luxury ; she speaks fairly to Labour before him, but in secret she plots her downfall and ruin, and allows her creature the Dwarf to torment her. The Maid tells Walter of the wisdom she learned of " the old woman [by whom we conclude is meant Nature] perfected betwixt the stripes of her mistress;" and Mr. Morris would have us remember, in the fable of the faded flowers, how it is Labour's doing that the deserts blos- som like the rose, the fields are tilled, and the rivers are com- pelled to water the land, though he fails to tells us how Labour accomplishes all this without the help of Capital, unless we are led to infer that Labour, in claiming the succession to the queenship, claims also to appropriate the accumulations that constitute Capital. It is, of course, unfair to drive an allegory too far home ; but we confess to being a little puzzled by the suggestions of Mr. Morris's Socialism. It is evident that he wishes to portray the downfall of some great power that cannot endure a new state of things, and as she will not accept the emancipation of Labour, or her thrall's alliance with the dominant power, thereby gives herself the death-blow. To our mind, there is a little obscurity about the Dwarf and his place in the fable ; he says himself that he is what the Lady has made him, and we conclude that he personifies the evil result of the ill-used power of Capital, and that he is slain with his own weapon, his power being taken from him by the new popular form of government and placed in the hands of Labour.

The old theory of equality is one to which we gladly sub- scribe, but we cannot forget the everyday fact that in each pan of milk the cream rises to the top, and that intellect and health, and what Mr. William Watson would call the "poorer virtues," such as thrift and foresight and prudence, are not distributed equally among men, and that always there will be spendthrifts and accumulators, those who sow and those who reap, those who are born to rule and those who are born to serve. The story of The Wood beyond the World, taken as a fairy-tale, is poetical and highly imaginative, but if we are compelled to look into its teaching we are reminded of the mirror in which we now see life darkly, and of an ancient mirror in which the faces look somewhat distorted, though the frame is quaintly set and enriched with jewels ; we are delighted when the poet forgets his philosophy, and at no time is his idealism wearisome, nor are we deluged with " cardinal virtues and deadly sins."