Burne-Jones Masterpieces in Colour Series

The association between the two undergraduates quickly became one of the closest intimacy. They had mentally much in common, and in them both was a strain of enthusiasm and poetic fantasy which was an inheritance from a Celtic ancestry—they were both Welshmen by descent—and by which their whole attitude to modern existence was determined. Morris had, perhaps, the more vehement personality and the greater share of the fighting instinct, while Burne-Jones was more of a dreamer and readier to occupy himself with abstract fancies; but these small differences of temperament made their friendship the more mutually valuable, and helped appreciably to increase the influence which the one had on the other. At any rate, these days at Oxford saw the beginning of a kind of mental partnership which gave ultimately to the world a great artist and a brilliant leader of a wide art movement which has since done much to alter the whole spirit of domestic decoration in this country.