Inscribed by the author: “Sir John Lubbock with the writer’s kind regards. April 21st 1890”. Morris was at one time a strong candidate for Poet Laureate, and was second only to Tennyson in sales of verse. Lubbock was a close friend of Charles Darwin. The contributors to the Dictionary of National Biography might be thought to have a responsibility to champion their wards, but Meic Stephens tells it as it is: “George Saintsbury in the The Cambridge History of English Literature (1916) wrote: “‘He had, sometimes, a faculty - which in a satirist, would have been admirable - or writing things which looked like poetry till one began to think of them a little.’ Although Morris had several virtues both as a man and poet, from the obloquy of this harsh judgment posterity has so far resolutely declined to rescue him.” An excellent copy.