Her own life was by choice, and as far as her position would admit, one of almost austere simplicity and homeliness; and her subjects were proud of a royalty which involved none of the mischiefs of caprice or ostentation, but set an example alike of motherly sympathy and of queenly dignity.
The critic has also to remember the historical value of Morris's literary influence, following upon the prim domesticities of early Victorian verse, and breaking in upon Tennyson's least happy phase of natural homeliness.
The people flocked to hear him, attracted by the force and homeliness of his language, the grotesqueness of his humour, and the impartial severity with which he lashed the follies of all classes of society and of the court in particular.
The note of Renaissance work in Germany was still Gothic. This we feel in the penetrative earnestness of Darer, in the homeliness of Hans Sachs, in the grotesque humour of Eulenspiegel and the Narrenschiff, the sombre pregnancy of the Faust legend, the almost stolid mastery of Holbein.