Part 1 (1/2)

Selections From the Works of John Ruskin

by John Ruskin

PREFACE

Inselections, I have tried to avoid the appearance of such a voluant Extracts_

Wherever practicable, entire chapters or lectures are given, or at least passages of sufficient length to insure a correct notion of the general complexion of Ruskin's work The text is in all cases that of the first editions, unless these were later revised by Ruskin hi and punctuation are preserved, but a fewthe various extracts For siraphs is dispensed with

I have aimed not to iven, with the exception of one or two very long and somewhat irrelevant notes froive the dates of every painter or to explain every geographical reference On the other hand, the sources of most of the quotations are indicated In the preparation of these notes, the nificent library edition of Messrs Cook and Wedderburn has inevitably been of considerable assistance; but all their references have been verified, many errors have been corrected, andI wish to express ue, Dr

Lucius H Holt, without whose assistance this volume would never have appeared He wrote a nu the short prefaces to the various selections, and prepared the manuscript for the printer

CBT

_September, 1908_

INTRODUCTION

[Sidenote: Two conflicting tendencies in Ruskin]

It is distinctive of the nineteenth century that in its passion for criticising everything in heaven and earth it by no means spared to criticise itself Alike in Carlyle's fulainst its insincerity, in Arnold's nice ridicule of Philistinis e which is perhaps only proof of its idealistic trend For the various ills of society, each of these men had his panacea What Carlyle had found in hero-worshi+p and Arnold in hellenic culture, Ruskin sought in the study of art; and it is of the last iarded his or e For there existed in hi love of the beautiful, a rigorous Puritanis any tendency toward a mere cult of the aesthetic It is with the interaction of these two forces that any study of the life and writings of Ruskin should be primarily concerned

I

THE LIFE OF RUSKIN

[Sidenote: Ancestry]

It is easy to trace in the life of Ruskin these two forces tending respectively toward the love of beauty and toward the conteinning He inherited froht fearlessness which has always characterized the race His stern uarded her gift with unreuided caution The child was early taught to find most of his entertainment within himself, and when he did not, he hipped He had no playmates and few toys His chief story-book was the Bible, which he read many times from cover to cover at his mother's knee

His father, the ”perfectly honest wine-merchant,” seems to have been the one to foster the boy's aesthetic sense; he was in the habit of reading aloud to his little faenuine appreciation of Scott, Pope, and Hoe of five It was his father, also, to whom he owed his early acquaintance with the finest landscape, for the boy was his companion in yearly business trips about Britain, and later visited, in his parents' coium, western Germany, and the Alps

[Sidenote: Early education]

All this of course developed the child's precocity He was early suffered and even encouraged to compose verses;[2] by ten he had written a play, which has unfortunately been preserved The hot-house rearing which his parents believed in, and his facility in teaching hi a in till he was fifteen, and lasted less than two years, and was broken by illness But the chief effect of the sheltered life and advanced education to which he was subjected was to endow him with depth at the expense of breadth, and to deprive hiar, but certainly healthy, contact with his kind, which, one must believe, would have checked a certain disposition in himatic vehemence ”The bridle and blinkers were never taken off me,” he writes[3]

[Sidenote: Student at Oxford]

[Sidenote: Traveling in Europe]