272 THE FIRST MORRIS merits he made for this purpose that we may find, I think, the clinching proof of his illusion and our first real clue to its character. The alterations, happily for us, failed to reach the printer ; ^ but some of them were recently discovered, and these have now been reproduced, by Miss May Morris, among her discreet and charming Editorial Notes to the comely new Complete Edition. 2 One set, typical of all, may be submitted here. They relate to " The Chapel in Lyoness." Of the verses below, those on the left give Sir Galahad's speech as it was originally written (and as it still appears in the current editions) ; those on the right are the stanzas into which Morris, seventeen years later, no longer at the mercy of mere instincts, carefully re-cut them : — So I went a little space So I went a little space From out the chapel, bathed From out the chapel, bathed my face my face In the stream that runs apace Amid the stream that runs By the churchyard wall. apace By the churchyard wall. ^ It was accident again, it seems, that intervened and saved us. And it is worth noticing, too, that even the shivering abruptness of that opening "But " was produced by an involuntary breakage. Morris himself meant the book to begin, quite smoothly and con- ventionally, with — That summer morning out in the green field Along the Itchen, sat King Arthur's knight — an introduction as tranquil as "Once upon a time." But this opening was somehow snapped off (Miss Morris recently found it among the litter of her father's workshop) and it was the second page of the MS. that became the first in the printed book. ^ The Collected Works of William Morris ; with Introductions by his daughter, May Morris. In xxiv vols. (Longmans.)
