Page:Dictionary of National Biography. Sup. Vol III (1901).djvu/323

 Magazine' (1837-8). After a tour in Switzerland and Italy in 1835 Ruskin had returned with his parents in 1837 to one of the haunts of his boyhood, the Lake country. The contrast between the cottages of Westmoreland and of Italy struck him as typical of that between the countries themselves, and during the autumn following he wrote on 'The Poetry of Architecture ; or, the Architecture of the Nations of Europe considered in its Association with National Scenery and National Character.' These papers, written at the age of eighteen, lay down a line of study which Ruskin afterwards pursued in 'Seven Lamps' and 'Stones of Venice.' They show how securely he had now found his literary medium. They contain, as he said fifty years later, ' sentences nearly as well put together as any I have done since.' The nom de plume Kata Phusin adopted for these and some other contributions to the same magazine was expressive of the temper in which he was presently to discourse in 'Modern Painters.' 'Accuse me not of arrogance, If having walked with Nature,' &c., was the motto of the later work.

As early as in 1836 (when he was seventeen) Ruskin had produced the germ which grew into his principal book. To the Academy's exhibition of that year Turner had sent three pictures characteristic of his later manner 'Juliet and her Nurse,' 'Rome from Mount Aventine,' and 'Mercury and Argus.' They were fiercely attacked in ' Blackwood,' and young Ruskin, roused thereby 'to height of black anger, in which I have remained pretty nearly ever since,' wrote an answer. Ruskin's father sent the article to Turner. The old man thanked his youthful champion for his 'zeal, trouble, and kindness,' but sent the manuscript, not to 'Blackwood,' which he did not consider worth powder and shot, but to the purchaser of 'Juliet,' Mr. Munro of Novar. A copy of the article was found among Ruskin's papers after his death. The work laid aside when Ruskin went up to Oxford was resumed when he had taken his degree. In 1840 he had been introduced to Turner. In 1841 he had paid his first visit to Venice. In 1842 he was greatly impressed by Turner's Swiss sketches. To an incident in May of that year Ruskin attributes his 'call.' 'One day,' he says, 'on the road to Norwood I noticed a bit of ivy round a thorn stem, which seemed even to my critical judgment not ill "composed;" I proceeded to make a light-and-shade pencil study of it in my grey-paper pocket-book, carefully as if had been a bit of sculpture, liking it more and more as I drew. When it was done I saw that I had virtually lost all my time since I was twelve years old, because no one had ever told me to draw what was really there!' Later in the year he travelled in France and Switzerland, and on his return he set to work on the first volume of 'Modern Painters.' The title was suggested by the publishers (Messrs. Smith, Elder, & Co.) in lieu of 'Turner and the Ancients.' The scope of the book is indicated by the author's sub-title (afterwards suppressed) : 'Their superiority in the Art of Landscape Painting to all the Ancient Masters proved by Examples of the True, the Beautiful, and the Intellectual, from the Works of Modern Artists, especially from those of J. M. W. Turner, Esq., R.A.' The volume was published in April 1843 anonymously by 'A Graduate of Oxford.' Ruskin's father feared that the treatise would lose in authority if its author's youth were disclosed : he was then twenty-four. The success of the book was immediate. A second edition was called for in the following year. In all seven editions of the first volume in separate form were published; that of 1851 was the first to bear the author's name. The volume, originating in a defence of Turner's later manner, had grown into a treatise on the principles of art, declaring that art means something more than pleasing arrangement of lines and colours ; that it can, and therefore ought to, convey ideas as being a kind of language; that the best painter is he who conveys the most and highest ideas of truth, of beauty, and of imagination ; and then, by way of example, that Turner's work was full of interesting truths, while the Dutch and French-Italian landscapists were very limited in their view of the varied facts of nature. The latter part of his theme led the author to make a close study of mountains, clouds, and sea, and to enrich his pages with passages of glorious description. The closeness of his reasoning, the wealth of illustrative reference, the tone of authority, the audacious criticism of established reputations, and the beauty of the word-painting made a great and lasting impression. Wordsworth pronounced the author a brilliant writer, and placed ' Modern Painters' in his lending library at Rydal Mount (, ii. 334). Tennyson saw it lying on Rogers's table, and longed very much to read it at his leisure (Life, i. 223). Ruskin had been taken to see Rogers some years before. He appeared occasionally at the poet's breakfasts, and corresponded with him from Venice. Sir Henry Taylor wrote to Mr. Aubrey de Vere begging him to read ' a