omisso, publico privatoque deformem luctu lauream non accepturum.' For my taste, Livy has overdone his F's a little at first, and in the very finest and most pathetic things, so studied an arrangement of words would be destructive, but this is very fine. When a sentence is so full of matter, the sound of the words may be fitly enjoyed; but if you get into the habit of liking the mere ring of words with no meaning, it is like living on chalk sugar-plums, and spoils the mind's digestion as they do the stomach's."

"ALTDORF, November 25.- ... I find Horace and I are marvellously of a mind just now in all particulars. . . . I don't know anything so magnificent in its way as Horace's calm and temperate, yet resolute, sadness. What weak nonsense the modern talk about death is, compared to his

"Quum semel occideris et de te splendida Minos

Fecerit arbitria

Non, Torquate, genus, non te facundia, non te
Restituet Pietas.'1

Grand word that of eternal judgment-clear to all men-splendida arbitria-as of the sun. 'There is nothing hid that shall not be

"ALTDORF, November 28, 1861.- . . . I was out in slippers and without greatcoat this morning before breakfast, watching the soft clouds among the snowy peaks, and breathing softer air. I leave the place because it is not bracing enough! It is now (12) raining; always softly, like our April rain. The trees have nearly lost their leaves here, however; a few still glow among the pines. Horace says they shed their leaves in honour of the Faun-'Spargit agrestes tibi silva frondes'-it is a sweet winter song in which that line comes." 3

"LUCERNE, December 20.- It is strange how the value of the writings of the ancients is practically lost to us because we only read the easy bits, and never the stern deductions. Every one has on his lips the 'Pallida Mors æquo pulsat pede pauperum tabernas Regumque turres.' But how many of our rich, or great, remember or obey the following line-'O beate Sesti, Vitæ summa brevis spem nos vetat inchoare longam.' """4

His reading of the classics during this autumn at Lucerne, as

3 Odes, iii. 18, 14 (hence the title of Ruskin's selections from Modern Painters— Frondes Agrestes).

4 Horace: Odes, i. 4, 13-15.

afterwards at Mornex, was very minute and careful. "As I read my Greek or Latin book," he explained (October 30), "I simply draw a firm ruled ink line down beside the text; wherever that line extends, the book is mastered for ever, or if a word or passage is not, it is written out in my note-book as a difficulty, and can be referred to in a moment. I don't care how little is done every day, but it is pleasant to see the lines advancing, and to feel that 'this at least has been read."" Ruskin read his authors in this way, not only for their subject-matter, but also for their use of language. The study of words had great fascination for him, and it is one of the conspicuous features in his next book, Munera Pulveris. In one of the notes added to those essays ten years later, he refers to "the interest I found in the careful study of the leading words in noble languages (§ 100 n.). His note-books and diaries, belonging to this period, are full of this study. He had a series of note-books-for "Latin Verbs," "Latin Nouns," "Greek Verbs," "Greek Nouns," "Myths," "Natural History," "Geography," "Topics" (Price, Commerce, Production, Government, Poverty, Luxury, etc.), "Grammar," and so forth; and in these he entered up passages, notes, and queries from the authors he was studying especially Xenophon, Plato, Homer, Livy, and Horace. With similar thoroughness-though with less pertinacity, it would seem-he attacked in German Studer's Geologie der Schweiz and Goethe's Faust.

The studies in the classics were in large measure addressed directly to his intention of resuming and completing his essays on Political Economy. For the present, however, he had no immediate thought of publication. He wished to establish his principles firmly on the foundations laid by wise men of old, and he was as yet undecided with regard to the form into which his work should be cast. discussed such points with his father, who, we may surmise, devoutly hoped by this time that his son would return to subjects and styles more likely to conduce to immediate fame:

He

"LUCERNE, November 5.—I fully intend finishing Political Economy, but otherwise than as I began it. I have first to read Xenophon's Economist and Plato's Republic carefully, and to master the economy of Athens. I could not now write in the emotional way I did then. I am so disquieted by none of the clergymen coming forward to help me anywhere that I shall quote no more Bible for them. I am not going to cast more pearls before swine. I will do the work sternly and unanswerably, in shortest possible language. I think the insolence of these Saturday Review scamps in talking to Smith as if they would 'let' me do this or that passes all I d

XVII.

ever met; and I'm not going to 'let' them have any more fine 'language' to call me a mad governess' for. They shall have such language as is fit for them, and for the public."

"LUCERNE, November 15.— . . . There is plenty time to talk over probable style of Political Economy. I do not allow reviewers to disturb me; but I cannot write when I have no audience. Those papers on Political Economy fairly tried 80,000 British public with my best work; they couldn't taste it; and I can give them no more. I could as soon be eloquent in a room full of logs and brickbats. Perhaps before I write any more I may in some way again change, but I believe the temper in which I wrote those papers to be past, and as utterly and for ever as that in which I wrote the 2nd vol. of Modern Painters. There is also little use and much harm in quoting Bible now; it puts religious people in a rage to have anything they don't like hammered into them with a text, and the active men of the world merely think you a hypocrite or a fool. But, as I said, there's plenty of time to talk over these things."

But "Fors" willed it otherwise. Towards the end of 1861, Froude, who was then editor of Fraser's Magazine, and who through Carlyle had become a friend also of Ruskin, wrote to the latter "saying that he believed there was something in my theories, and would risk the admission of what I chose to write on this dangerous subject." Ruskin felt that the opportunity should not be lost, and the next year saw the resumption of his economical work. He decided to republish, in collected form, the essays from the Cornhill Magazine, in order that they might be accessible in connexion with the sequel to them which he had now begun to plan for Fraser's.

During Ruskin's absence on the Continent in 1861, Messrs. Smith, Elder & Co. published a volume of Selections from the Writings of John Ruskin. It was prefaced by the following "Advertisement":—

"The Publishers beg to state that this volume has originated in suggestions, from numerous quarters, that a book of the kind would be acceptable to a large circle of readers, to whom, from various and obvious causes, the principal works whence it is derived are not easily accessible.

"The Publishers think it right to add that Mr. Ruskin, though tacitly consenting to this publication, has taken no part in making the selections, and is in no way responsible for the appearance of the volume.”

1 See above, p. xxviii.

2 Preface to Munera Pulveris, § 20; see below, p. 143.

The volume originated in the suggestion of Mr. Smith Williams, and he, with W. H. Harrison, was responsible for its preparation. Ruskin refers occasionally to the volume in letters to his father, and these sufficiently show his attitude to the affair:

"BONNEVILLE, September 28.-I think page 220, vol. 4th, a very valuable passage if it can be got in.1 You and Mr. Smith must settle about what I am to have. Harrison and Williams have done all the work, but, as you say, I ought to have compensation for the loss of sale of the other volumes. But I have no idea what it should be."

"LUCERNE, October 22.-I had late last night your letter containing... nice little preface to extracts: nothing can possibly be better."

66 LUCERNE, November 9. Don't send the book of extracts to anybody, that you can help. Above all-don't send it here. It is a form of mince-pie which I have no fancy for. My crest is all very well as long as it means Pork, but I don't love being made into sausages."

“LUCERNE, December 5.—I have your nice and kind letter of 1st December, enclosing Carlyle's, most interesting and kind also (herewith returned). As he says the extracts are right, I have not a word more to say against them. It is the books which must be wrong."

The following note from Ruskin's father to his friend Mr. John Simon is also worth giving:

"DENMARK HILL, 11th November, 1861.

"You saw what Mr. Harrison calls our volume, and I don't wonder that you do not like it. The sweets are brought together in cloying abundance, and the descriptions thickened into monotony. It is rather a vulgar shop affair, with a too handsome, very questionable, likeness. Mr. Williams is, however, pleased with his work, and the House has called for such a book for years. They had prepared a puffing preface which I have cut down to nonentity, the only escape. The best of the book seems to be the delight it gives Mr. Harrison, who talks as if he were the Beaumont and my Son the Fletcher of these volumes, although so

1 The passage in Modern Painters describing the results upon mountain form "obtained by the slightest direction in the infant streamlets" as a "type of the formation of human characters by habit" (Vol. VI. p. 220). But it was not got in. It is, however, § 35 in the First Series of Selections issued in 1893.

2 It was a boar's head: see Præterita, ii. ch. viii. §§ 160, 161.

faithful is he in all his readings and revisings that I never saw (and I have watched closely) a single word of my Son's text taken out and another substituted."

The volume, which first appeared in November 1861, enjoyed considerable popularity, and was frequently re-issued during following years. It assisted not a little to spread the author's fame; yet not in the way he desired. The dissemination of these "elegant extracts,” with their "sweets brought together in cloying abundance" helped to encourage the idea, which Ruskin greatly resented1-especially in these years when he was concentrating himself upon economical discussionthat he was a fine writer, a pretty "word painter," and nothing more.2

3

"MUNERA PULVERIS" (1862, 1863)

Ruskin reached home on the last day of 1861, and for the next four months he was at home. Among other work, he went again through the Turner sketches at the National Gallery, removing the mildew 3 and adding a good many identifications. He also prepared Unto this Last for publication, and wrote the preface for it. This was dated May 10, 1862, and leaving his friend, Mr. John Simon, to make final arrangements for the publication of the book, he started in the middle of May for Switzerland and Italy. His companions on this occasion were Burne-Jones and his wife. "He did everything," writes Lady Burne-Jones, "en prince, and had invited us as his guests for the whole time, but again in his courtesy agreed to ease our mind by promising to accept the studies that Edward should make while in Italy, and all was arranged and done by him as kindly and thoughtfully as if we had indeed been really his children,' as he called us." Burne-Jones had made Ruskin's acquaintance in 1856, when he was living with William Morris in Red Lion Square. "Just come back from being with our hero four hours," wrote the young artist after his first visit; "so happy we've been: he is so kind to us, calls us his

1 See, for instance, Sesame and Lilies, § 97 (Vol. XVIII. p. 146).

2 Reviews of the volume of Selections appeared in the Literary Gazette, January 18, 1862, and in the Eclectic Review, March 1864, vol. 6, N.S., pp. 262-276. Further bibliographical particulars will be found in a later volume of this edition. 3 See Vol. XIII. p. xliv.

The itinerary was as follows: Boulogne (May 15), Paris (May 16), Dijon (May 20), Bâle (May 21), Lucerne (May 22), Fluelen (May 27), Hospenthal (May 29), Bellinzona (May 30), Lugano (May 31), Milan (June 1), Parma (June 7), Milan (June 10), Baveno (August 3), Geneva (August 6), Mornex (August 16), Bonneville (September 23), St. Martin (September 25), Mornex (September 26), Geneva (November 7), Paris (November 8).