23
The references to this and the five passages following are (1) Burns, “The Twa Dogs;” (2) Milton, “Paradise Lost,” vi. 79; (3) Burns, “Death and Doctor Hornbook;” (4) Byron, “Hebrew Melodies,” “Oh! snatched away in beauty’s bloom;” (5) Campbell; and (6) Shelley, “Prometheus Unbound,” Act ii. sc. 1.
24
It will be felt at once that the more serious and higher passages generally suffer most. But Stanfield, little as it may be thought, suffers grievously in the Academy, just as the fine passage from Campbell is ruined by its position between the perfect tenderness of Byron and Shelley. The more vulgar a picture is, the better it bears the Academy.
25
“Although it is in verse that the most consummate skill in composition is to be looked for, and all the artifices of language displayed, yet it is in verse only that we throw off the yoke of the world, and are, as it were, privileged to utter our deepest and holiest feelings. Poetry in this respect may be called the salt of the earth. We express in it, and receive in it, sentiments for which, were it not for this permitted medium, the usages of the world would neither allow utterance nor acceptance.”—
26
“This Turner, of whom you have known so little while he was living among you, will one day take his place beside Shakespeare and Verulam, in the annals of the light of England.
“Yes: beside Shakespeare and Verulam, a third star in that central constellation, round which, in the astronomy of intellect, all other stars make their circuit. By Shakespeare, humanity was unsealed to you; by Verulam the
27
We have not sufficiently expressed our concurrence in the opinion of her friend, that Turner’s modern works are his greatest. His early ones are nothing but amplifications of what others have done, or hard studies of every-day truth. His later works no one but himself could have conceived: they are the result of the most exalted imagination, acting with the knowledge acquired by
28
Wordsworth. “Poems of Sentiment and Reflection.” ii. “The Tables Turned” (1798), being the companion poem to that quoted
29
This work related to University co-operation with schemes for middle-class education, and included letters from various authorities, amongst others one from Mr. Hullah on Music. The present letter was addressed to the Rev. F. Temple (now Bishop of Exeter), and was written in reply to a statement of certain points in debate between him and Mr. (now Sir Thomas) Acland. In forwarding it to his opponent, Mr. Temple wrote as follows: “The liberal arts are supreme over their sciences. Instead of the rules being despotic, the great artist usually proves his greatness by rightly setting aside rules; and the great critic is he who, while he knows the rule, can appreciate the ‘law within the law’ which overrides the rule. In no other way does Ruskin so fully show his greatness in criticism as in that fine inconsistency for which he has been so often attacked by men who do not see the real consistency that lies beneath.”
30
In the following year Mr. Ruskin wrote a paper for the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science, on “Education in Art” (Transactions, 1858, pp. 311-316), now reprinted in the eleventh volume of Mr. Ruskin’s works, “A Joy for Ever,” p. 185. To this paper the reader of the present letter is referred.
31
“Giotto passed the first ten years of his life, a shepherd-boy, among these hills (of Fiésole); was found by Cimabue, near his native village, drawing one of his sheep upon a smooth stone; was yielded up by his father, ‘a simple person, a laborer of the earth,’ to the guardianship of the painter, who, by his own work, had already made the streets of Florence ring with joy; attended him to Florence, and became his disciple.”—“Giotto and his Works in Padua,” by John Ruskin, 1854, p. 12.
32
This letter was, it appears, originally addressed to an artist, Mr. Williams (of Southampton), and was then printed, some years later, in the number of
33
Some words are necessary to explain this and the following letter. In the autumn of 1846 a correspondence was opened in the columns of
34
The “violent attack” alludes to a letter of “Verax,” in
35
“The Crucifixion, or Adoration of the Cross,” in the church of San Marco. An engraving of this picture may be found in Mrs. Jameson’s “History of our Lord,” vol. i. p. 189.
36
No. 46 in the National Gallery.
37
“Landscape, with Cattle and Figures—Evening” (No. 53). Since the bequest of the somewhat higher “large Dort” in 1876 (No. 961), it has ceased to be “the large Cuyp.”
38
No. 35 in the National Gallery. This and the two pictures already mentioned were the typical instances of “spoilt pictures,” quoted by “Verax.”
39
“Modern Painters,” vol. i. p. 146.
40
“Philip IV. of Spain, hunting the Wild Boar” (No. 197), purchased in 1846.
41
On this and other collateral subjects the reader is referred to the next letter; to Mr. Ruskin’s evidence before the National Gallery Commission in 1857; and to the Appendix to his Notes on the Turner Gallery at Marlborough House, 1856-7. It is hardly necessary to state that a very large number of the national pictures, especially the Turners, are now preserved under glass. Of the other strictures here pronounced, some are no longer deserved; and it may well be remembered that at the time this letter was written the National Gallery had been founded less than five-and-twenty years.
42
“Lot and his Daughters Leaving Sodom” (No. 193), bequeathed to the gallery in 1844, and “Susannah and the Elders” (No. 196), purchased in the same year.
43
The