SOME BOOKS OF THE WEEK.
[Notice in this column does not necessarily preclude subsequent rrrisio.1 The last two volumes have now been published of The Collected Works of William Morris (Longmans and Co., 212 12s. net the set of 24 vols.). The twenty-third volume contains a collect ion of Morris's Socialist lectures and essays, while in the twenty-fourth are a number of verse fragments that have never before been published. Among the latter the most considerable is perhaps the unfinished "Scenes from the Fall of Troy," an early poem in dramatic form. Each of the two volumes before us is prefaced with one of those delightful introductions by Miss May Morris which give such a special charm to this edition. The last of them deals mainly with Morris's collection of manuscripts and early printed books, and with the Kelmscott Press, and we may add that the volume contains a reduced facsimile of a page from the famous Chaucer, printed on the Kelmscott Press paper. We cannot here comment upon the newly published poems, but we may content ourselves with quoting the lines written for the tapestry of a bed at Kelmscott, which fall most appropriately on the last page of the last volume of this collected edition :-
" I am old and have seen
Many things that have been, Both grief and peace, And wane and increase, No tale I tell Of ill or well, But this I say,
Night treadeth on day,
And for worst and best Right good is rest"
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