Part 11 (2/2)
[119] Ruskin proceeds to discuss Scott as he has discussed Homer
The chapter on Turner that follows here is an alood illustration of Ruskin's ideas
THE TWO BOYHOODS
VOLUME V, PART 9, CHAPTER 9
Born half-way between the e of Castelfranco--of the Brave Castle:--Stout George they called hiione[120]
Have you ever thought what a world his eyes opened on--fair, searching eyes of youth? What a world of hty life, from those mountain roots to the shore;--of loveliest life, when he went down, yet so young, to the marble city--and became himself as a fiery heart to it?
A city of olden city, paved with elowed, overlaid with gold, or bossed with jasper Beneath, the unsullied sea drew in deep breathing, to and fro, its eddies of green wave
Deep-hearted, majestic, terrible as the sea,--the men of Venice moved in sway of power and war; pure as her pillars of alabaster, stood her mothers and hts; the low bronzed glearily under their blood-red mantle-folds Fearless, faithful, patient, impenetrable, implacable,--every word a fate--sate her senate In hope and honour, lulled by flowing of wave around their isles of sacred sand, each with his naraved at his side, lay her dead A wonderful piece of world Rather, itself a world It lay along the face of the waters, no larger, as its captains saw it fro, than a bar of sunset that could not pass away; but for its power, itin the expanse of heaven, and this a great planet, whose orient edge widened through ether A world frohts were banished, with all the common and poor elements of life No foulness, nor tumult, in those tremulous streets, that filled, or fell, beneath thesilence No alls could rise above thee, nor straw-built shed Only the strength as of rock, and the finished setting of stones most precious And around the of stainless waters, proudly pure; as not the flower, so neither the thorn nor the thistle, could grow in the glancing fields Ethereal strength of Alps, dreah procession beyond the Torcellan shore; blue islands of Paduan hills, poised in the golden west Above, free winds and fiery clouds ranging at their will;--brightness out of the north, and bal clear in the li sea
Such was Giorgione's school--such titian's home
Near the south-west corner of Covent Garden, a square brick pit or well is formed by a close-set block of houses, to the back s of which it adht Access to the bottoh a low archway and an iron gate; and if you stand long enough under the archway to accustom your eyes to the darkness you ave quiet access to a respectable barber's shop, of which the front , looking into Maiden Lane, is still extant, filled, in this year (1860), with a row of bottles, connected, in some defunct hbourhood, it is said, eighty years ago than now--never certainly a cheerful one--wherein a boy being born on St George's day, 1775, began soon after to take interest in the world of Covent Garden, and put to service such spectacles of life as it afforded
No knights to be seen there, nor, I iine, eous, depending much on incumbency of hat and feather, and short waists; the s;--ih when Reynolds will do his best for it; but not suggestive of ht to a boy
”Bello ovile dov' io dors beautiful, besides men and wos; deep furrowed cabbage-leaves at the greengrocer's; es in wheelbarrows round the corner; and Thames' shore within three lorious; the best, however, that England, it seeift: who, such as they are, loves theets them The short waists rounds had always a succulent cluster or two of greengrocery at the corners Enchanted oranges gleao to pieces in order to scatter chests of them on the waves[122] That mist of early sunbeams in the London dawn crosses, many and many a time, the clearness of Italian air; and by Thas of red sail, dearer to us than Lucerne lake or Venetian lagoon,--by Thames' shore ill die
With such circumstance round him in youth, let us note what necessary effects followed upon the boy I assuione's sensibility (and ione's, if that be possible) to colour and form I tell you farther, and this fact you may receive trustfully, that his sensibility to human affection and distress was no less keen than even his sense for natural beauty--heart-sight deep as eyesight
Consequently, he attaches hi that bears an ily it is,--has it anything about it like Maiden Lane, or like Thames' shore? If so, it shall be painted for their sake Hence, to the very close of life, Turner could endure ugliness which no one else, of the same sensibility, would have borne with for an instant Dead brick walls, blank square s, old clothes,fishy and reat attraction for hies, patched sails, and every possible condition of fog
You will find these tolerations and affections guiding or sustaining him to the last hour of his life; the notablest of all such endurances being that of dirt No Venetian ever draws anything foul; but Turner devoted picture after picture to the illustration of effects of dinginess, smoke, soot, dust, and dusty texture; old sides of boats, weedy roadside vegetation, dunghills, straw-yards, and all the soilings and stains of every common labour
And more than this, he not only could endure, but enjoyed and looked for _litter_, like Covent Garden wreck after the market His pictures are often full of it, frorounds differ fro about in theetation, in ideal work, is confused; and he delights in shi+ngle, debris, and heaps of fallen stones The last words he ever spoke to entle exultation about his St Gothard: ”that _litter_ of stones which I endeavoured to represent”
The second great result of this Covent Garden training was understanding of and regard for the poor, whom the Venetians, , despised; whom, contrarily, Turner loved, and ht of them, but an infallible one, as he prowled about the end of his lane, watching night effects in the wintry streets; nor sight of the poor alone, but of the poor in direct relations with the rich He knew, in good and evil, what both classes thought of, and how they dith, each other
Reynolds and Gainsborough, bred in country villages, learned there the country boy's reverential theory of ”the squire,” and kept it They painted the squire and the squire's lady as centres of the movements of the universe, to the end of their lives But Turner perceived the younger squire in other aspects about his lane, occurring proure, or one of two, against theof city co over Thas--highly interesting these last; one of his father's best friends, who a fishives us a friendly turn of , Calais poissardes, and many other of our choicest subjects in after life; all this being connected with that e on one side;--and, on the other, with these h upon us, at Covent Garden here, with strange compression, and crush us into narrow Hand Court
”That e”--better for the boy than wood of pine, or grove ofthe, so only that hethe shi+ps, and round and round the shi+ps, and with the shi+ps, and by the shi+ps, and under the shi+ps, staring, and clas he can see in all the world, except the sky; but these, when the sun is on their sails, filling or falling, endlessly disordered by sway of tide and stress of anchorage, beautiful unspeakably; which shi+ps also are inhabited by glorious creatures--red-faced sailors, with pipes, appearing over the gunwales, true knights, over their castle parapets--the s in the whole co before we can draw shi+ps, we, nevertheless, coax all current stories out of the wounded sailors, do our best at present to show Nelson's funeral streaar shall have its tribute of ly, is accoht, for its death; twice, with all our ht, for its victory; thrice, in pensive farewell to the old Tes[123]
Now this fond co with sailors must have divided his time, it appears tofor incidental excursions to Chelsea on one side, and Greenwich on the other), which ti li a kind of ”Poor-Jack” life on the river
In some respects, no life could be better for a lad But it was not calculated to e, nor for up his first scraps of vigorous English chiefly at Deptford and in the markets, and his first ideas of fee and the barrow,--another boy ar” But the original ar, but as nearly as possible a co capricious ardness, and intense openness to every fine pleasure of sense, and hot defiance of forenerosity, and desire of justice and truth--this kind of arity, even fond of it in some forh; the curious result, in its co to most people wholly incomprehensible It was as if a cable had been woven of blood-crimson silk, and then tarred on the outside People handled it, and the tar cah the black, underneath, at the places where it had been strained Was it ochre?--said the world--or red lead?
Schooled thus in eneral , we have finally to inquire concerning the most important point of all We have seen the principal differences between this boy and Giorgione, as respects sight of the beautiful, understanding of poverty, of commerce, and of order of battle; then follows another cause of difference in our training--not slight,--the aspect of religion, nahbourhood of Covent Garden I say the aspect; for that was all the lad could judge by Disposed, for the most part, to learn chiefly by his eyes, in this specialHis father had taught hi, we hear of none; of parish pastoral teaching, the reader uess how much