SOURCE: Garnett, Richard. Review of The Defence of Guenevere, by William Morris. In William Morris: The Critical Heritage, edited by Peter Faulkner, pp. 32-7. London: Routledge & Kegan Ltd., 1973.

In the following review, which was originally published in March 1858, Garnett investigates the poetic influences on Morris's The Defence of Guenevere.

It might not be easy to find a more striking example of the indestructibility of anything truly beautiful, than the literary resurrection of King Arthur and his Knights, after so many centuries' entombment in the Avalon of forgetfulness. The Israfel of this revival was Mr. Tennyson, the first peal of whose awakening trumpet sounded some twenty-six years ago in his marvellous ‘Lady of Shalott,’ followed by utterances of no inferior beauty, some made public for our delight, others, it is whispered, as yet withheld from us. But the movement thus inaugurated has taken a direction which Mr. Tennyson cannot...