Library of Congress, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. Shelf. M4 ] ^ OC n^ Modern English Writers JOHN RUSKIN MODERN ENGLISH WRITERS, MATTHEW ARNOLD .... Professor Saintsbury. R. L. STEVENSON L. Cope Cornford. JOHN RUSKIN Mrs Meynell. TENNYSON Andrew Lang. GEORGE ELIOT Sidney Lee. BROWNING C. H. Herford. FROUDE John Oliver Hobbes. HUXLEY Edward Clodd. THACKERAY Charles Whibi.ey. DICKENS W. E. Henley. *** Other Volumes will be ainiozmccd in due course. WILLIAM BLACKWOOD & SONS, Edinburgh and London. JOHN RUSKIN / MRS MEYNELL SECOND IMPRESSION WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS EDINBURGH AND LONDON M D C C C C All Rights reser-ved a 6 'OO" DEDICATED TO Lieut.-General Sir W. F. BUTLER, K.C.B. "^ British Officer who is singularly of one mind •with me Ofi matters regarding the nation's honour." —PREFACE TO RUSKIN'S "BIBLE OF AMIENS." CONTENTS. CHAP. I. INTRODUCTION .... I II. 'MODERN painters': THE FIRST VOLUME TO III. 'MODERN PAINTERS': THE SECOND VOLUME 38 IV. 'MODERN PAINTERS': THE THIRD AND FOURTH VOLUMES .... 48 ' V. ' MODERN PAINTERS : THE FIFTH VOLUME 67 VI. 'THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE* 82 VII. 'THE STONES OF VENICE* 102 ' VIII. ' PRE-RAPHAELITISM . 122 ' IX. ' LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE AND PAINTING 127 ' X. ' ELEMENTS OF DRAWING * XI. ' THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART 136 XII. 'THE TWO PATHS* 140 XIII. 'UNTO THIS LAST* 152 XIV. 'SESAME AND LILIES* 166 ' XV. ' THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE . 179 ' ' ' Vlll CONTENTS. ' XVI. ' TIME AND TIDE BY WEARE AND TYNE 183 XVII. 'THE QUEEN OF THE AIR 189 XVIII. 'LECTURES ON ART' 194 XIX. 'ARATRA PENTELICI ' 209 XX. 'THE eagle's NEST 214 XXI. 'ARIADNE FLORENTINA ' 227 ' XXII. ' VAL D'aRNO XXIII. 'DEUCALION' 244 XXIV. 'PROSERPINA' 251 — XXV. GUIDE-BOOKS: 'MORNINGS IN FLORENCE* ' ST mark's REST'—'THE BIBLE OF AMIENS 258 XXVI. 'FORS clavigera' 270 XXVII. 'pr^terita' .... CHRONOLOGY ..... 293 INDEX ...... 298 ; JOHN R U S K I N. CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION. John Ruskin's life was not only centred, but limited, by the places where he was born and taught, and by the things he loved. The London suburb and the English lake -side for his homes, Oxford for his place first of study and then of teaching, usually one beaten road by France, Switzerland, and Italy for his annual journeys— these closed the scene of his dwell- ings and travellings. There was a water-colour drawing by his father that interested him when he was a little boy in muslin and a sash (as Northcote painted him, with his own chosen " blue hills " for a background), and this drawing hung over his bed when he died the evenings of his last days were passed in the chair wherein he preached in play a sermon before he could well pronounce it. The nursery lessons and the house- A 2 JOHN RUSKIN. hold ways of the home on Heme Hill partly remained with him, reverend and unquestionable, to his last day. And yet the student of the work done in this quiet life of repetitions is somewhat shaken from the stead- fastness of study by two things—multitude and move- ment. The multitude is in the thoughts of this great and original mind, and the movement is the world's. Ruskin's enormous work has never had steady auditors or spectators : it may be likened to a sidereal sky beheld from an earth upon the wing. Many, innumer- able, are the points that seem to shift and journey, to the shifting eye. Partly it was he himself who altered his readers ; and partly they changed with the long change of a nation ; and partly they altered with suc- cessive and recurrent moods. John Ruskin wrote first for his contemporaries, young men ; fifty years later he wrote for the same readers fifty years older, as well as for their sons. And hardly has a mob of Shakespeare's shown more sudden, unanimous, or clamorous versions and reversions of opinion than those that have ac- claimed and rejected, derided and divided, his work, once to ban and bless, and a second time to bless and ban. Political economy in i860 had but one orthodoxy, " " which was that of Manchester ; scientifically, it held competition in production and in distribution, with the removal (as far as was possible to coherent human society) of all intervention of explicit social legislation, to be favourable to the wealth of nations ; and ethically INTRODUCTION. 3 it held that if only the world would leave opposing egoisms absolutely free, and would give self-interest the opportunity of perfection, a violent, hostile, mechanical equity and justice would come to pass. Only let men resolve never to relax or cede for the sake of forbearance or compassion, and the Manchester system would be found to work for good. In i860 it was much in favour of this doctrine that itself and all its workings were alike unbeautiful to mind and eye. Men might regret the vanishing beauty of the world, but they were convinced that it was the ugly thing that was "useful," and that, as it did not attract, it would not deceive. Before the closing of the century all men changed their mind. But when Ruskin warned them that scientifically their " orthodox " economy made for an intolerable poverty, that ethically it aimed at making men less human, and that practically it could never, while n:an was no less than man, have the entire and universal freedom of action upon which its hope of ultimate justice depended ; when he recommended a more organic and less mechanical equity — he was hooted to silence. Ruskin first commended the rejoining together of art and handicraft, put asunder in the decline of the " Re- " naissance ; and for this too he was generally derided, because men were sure that the ugly thing was the useful and the comfortable. John Ruskin would show them that it was neither of these, but they would have it that he was showing them merely that it was ugly. 4 JOHN RUSKIN. That is, he was accused of teaching sentimentality in pubUc economy and in art, whereas his teaching dealt with human character and ultimate utility. But the moving world has rejected his teaching more violently after fifty years, in two things more momentous than the rest : it has gone further in that enquiry as to the origin of the ideas of moral good and evil against which Ruskin warned it in the words of Carlyle ; and it has multiplied its luxuries. By these two actions it has effectually rejected the teaching of Ruskin. " The moving world " : assuredly this great thinker gave years of thought to the discovery of moral causes for the enormous losses of mankind, and did not suffi- ciently confess the obscure motive power of change. Byzantine architecture was overcome by Gothic, not only because Gothic was strongly north - western, but because it was new ; Gothic was supplanted by the Renaissance, not only because Gothic was enfeebled, but because the Renaissance was new. He saw the beauty of the hour with eyes and heart so full of felicity that he cried, " Stay, thou art so fair ! " It never stayed, passing by the law — but how shall we dare to call that a law whereof we know not the cause, the end, or the sanctions ? Let us rather, ignorant yet vigilant, call it the custom—of the universe. John Ruskin himself has told us his life in exquisite detail. He underwent in childhood a strict discipline, common in those times, had no toys, was " whipped," was compelled to a self-denial that he perceived his INTRODUCTION. 5 elders did not practise upon themselves. It was the asceticism of the day, reserved for the innocent. Charles Dickens did more than any man to make the elderly ashamed of it. Ruskin's mother kept the training of the child in her own hands, and subjected him and herself to a hardly credible humiliation by the reading aloud, in alternate verses, of the whole Bible, Levitical Law and all, beginning again at Genesis when the Apocalypse was finished. She was her husband's senior, and, like him, of the Evangelical sect. She dedicated this her only child " to the Lord " before his birth, and when his genius appeared hoped he would be a bishop. He obeyed her, tended and served her, till at ninety years old she died. John Ruskin's father was a Scottish wine-merchant, well educated and liberally interested in the arts. He married his first cousin, daughter of an inn-keeper at Croydon, prospered greatly in trade by his partnership with Telford and Domecq, and rose in the world. His sister was married to a tanner at Perth ; his wife's sister to a baker at Croydon. His son, born at 54 Hunter Street, Brunswick Square, on February 8, i8ig, took his first little journeys on his visits to these aunts. The child remembered the street home, but it was in his Heme Hill home and in the Heme Hill garden that he became possessed of the antiquities of childhood. The boy learnt, in his companionship with his father and mother, to love Scott, Rogers, and Byron, and he remained nobly docile to the admirations of his dear 6 JOHN RUSKIN. elders. Otherwise, one should have needed to quote some phrase of his own to define the feebleness of the Italy, the cold corruption of heart of Don Juan, the inventory of nature's beauties versified by Scott. Rus- kin was impulsive : sometimes he loved a thing first seen more than he was to love it later ; but generally he loved the customs of his sweet childhood. He read with a tutor — a nonconformist minister, Dr Andrews, the father of the lady who became Coventry Patmore's first wife ; matriculated at Christ Church, Oxford, in 1836, where he won the Newdigate prize {Sa/se//e and Elephanta the subject) in 1839; became Honorary Student of Christ Church and Honorary Fellow of Corpus Christi, and Slade Professor (Chair of Fine Arts founded by Felix Slade) in 1870, to be three times re-elected.