Part 14 (2/2)
[BE] A manufacturer wrote to me the other day, ”We don't _want_ to make smoke!” Who said they did?--a hired murderer does not want to commit murder, but does it for sufficient motive (Even our shi+powners don't want to drown their sailors; they will only do it for sufficient motive) If the dirty creatures _did_ want to make smoke, there would be h to consuh leaves the rooland they pollute?
[BF] I know no drawing so subtle as Bewick's, since the fifteenth century, except Holbein's and Turner's I have been greatly surprised lately by the exquisite water-color work in sonettes; but he cannot set the line like Turner or Bewick
[BG] Gilbert Gray, bookbinder I have to correct the inaccurate--and very harmfully inaccurate, expression which I used of Bewick, in Love's Meinie (- 3), 'a printer's lad at Newcastle' His first raver, else he could never have been an artist I alad to make this correction, which establishes another link of relation between Bewick and Botticelli; but my error was partly caused by the impression which the above description of his ”most invaluable friend” made on me, when I first read it
Much else that I meant to correct, or promised to explain, in this lecture, must be deferred to the Appendix; the superiority of the Tuscan to the Greek Aphrodite I may perhaps, even at last, leave the reader to ad more important matters of debate on hand But as I , I will here briefly anticipate a statement I mean in the Appendix to enforce, namely, of the extres whose excellence greatly consists in color, as auxiliary to engravings of theiven without hesitation for nearly worthless original drawings by fifth-rate artists, would obtain for thelike a proportion of ten to one, s which can only be represented at all in engraving by entire alteration of their treatment, and abandonly that I have givenupwards of ten years, to train a copyist to perfect fidelity in rendering the work of Turner; and having now succeeded in enabling him to produce facsimiles so close as to look like replicas, facsin with my own na sold for real Turner vignettes, I can obtain no custoed to leave hiinal sketches may possess in the eyes of a public which maintains a nation of copyists in Roreat English art; though there is scarcely one cultivated English gentleman or lady who has not been twenty times in the Vatican, for once that they have been in the National Gallery
NOTES
228 I The following letter, from one of my most faithful readers, corrects an i of the reins n of the fluctuation of heat round the Sun's own chariot:--
”Spring Field, Ambleside, ”February 11, 1875
”Dear Mr Ruskin,--Your fifth lecture on Engraving I have to hand
”Sandro intended those wavy lines ht[BH]
hand, (Plate V) primarily, no doubt, to represent the four ends of the four reins dangling from the Sun's hand The flames and rays are seen to continue to radiate from the platform of the chariot between and beyond these ends of the reins, and over the knee He e that the war these ends of the reins spread out separately and wave, and thereby inclose a form like a flame But I cannot think it
”Believe me, ”Ever yours truly, ”CHAS WM SMITH”
II I meant to keep labyrinthinemost useful by-words from Mr Tyrwhitt had better be read at once:--
”In the il with the Ludus Trojae, or equestrian galand fro for last relic the maze[BI]
called 'Troy Town,' at Troy Farm, near Somerton, Oxfordshi+re, which itself resembles the circular labyrinth on a coin of Cnossus in Fors Clavigera (Letter 23, p 12)
”The connecting quotation fro, aen, V 588, is as follows:
'Ut quondam Creta fertur Labyrinthus in alta Parietibus textuna sequendi Falleret indeprensus et inreia cursu Ias et proelia ludo, Delphinum similes'”
Labyrinth of Ariadne, as cut on the Downs by shepherds froht's Dream,' Act ii, sc 2:
”_Oberon_ The nine-men's morris[BJ] is filled up with reen By lack of tread are undistinguishable”
The following passage, 'Merchant of Venice,' Act iii, sc 2, confuses (to all appearance) the Athenian tribute to Crete, with the story of Hesione: and eneral confusion in the Elizabethan mind about theAlcides, when he did reduce The virgin-tribute paid by howling Troy To the sea monster”[BK]
Theseus is the Attic Hercules, however; and Troy may have been a sort of house of call for mythical monsters, in the view of midland shepherds
FOOTNOTES: