[Illustration: WILLIAM MORRIS & WALTER CRANE.
A PAGE FROM "THE GLITTERING PLAIN." (KELMSCOTT PRESS, 1894.)]
Books, however, which may be called monumental in the national and general sense, have been printed at the Kelmscott press, such as Shakespeare's "Poems," More's "Utopia"; and Mr. Morris's _magnum opus_, the folio Chaucer, enriched by the designs of Burne-Jones, has recently been completed.[8]
[8] Completed, indeed, it might almost be said, with the life of the craftsman. It is sad to have to record, while these pages were passing through the press, our master printer--one of the greatest Englishmen of our time--is no more.
In Mr. Morris's ornaments and initials, nearly always admirably harmonious in their quantities with the character and mass of the type, we may perhaps trace mixed influences in design. In the rich black and white scroll and floral borders surrounding the title and first pages, we seem to see the love of close-filling and interlacement characteristic of Celtic and Byzantine work, with a touch of the feeling of the practical textile designer, which comes out again in the up-and-down, detached bold page ornaments, though here combined with suggestions from early English illuminated MS.
These influences, however, only add to the distinctive character and richness of the effect, and no attempt is made to get beyond the simple conditions of bold black and white designs for the woodcut and the press.
Mr. Morris adopts the useful canon in printing that the true page is what the open book displays--what is generally termed a double page. He considers them practically as two columns of type, necessarily separate owing to the construction of the book, but together as it lies open, forming a page of type, only divided by the narrow margin where the leaves are inserted in the back of the covers. We thus get the _recto_ and the _verso_ pages or columns, each with their distinctive proportions of margin, as they turn to the right or the left from the centre of the book--the narrowest margins being naturally inwards and at the top, the broadest those outwards and at the foot, which latter should be deepest of all. It may be called _the handle_ of the book, and there is reason in the broad margin, though also gracious to the eye, since the hand may hold the book without covering any of the type.