Page:Studies of a Biographer 3.djvu/102

 early passion to that which prompted the famous ode. Heaven lies about us in our infancy, if we happen to be Wordsworths or Ruskins, and till he had grown to manhood its indulgence gave him a pleasure infinitely greater than he had since found in anything. This enthusiasm, however psychologists may explain it, not only gave charm to Ruskin's early writings, but gave the substance of the æsthetic doctrine to which, as he observes rather ruefully, people would pay no attention. He set out with the intention of systematically expounding a theory of the beautiful. Unfortunately, he had one infirmity fatal to such an attempt. He was incapable of arranging his thoughts in orderly symmetrical pigeon-holes: his mind was essentially discursive: he could see things more vividly than any one, and could argue acutely and ingeniously; but he had never the patience to consider how his thoughts should be co-ordinated and wrought into consistent unity. The Modern Painters, we know, could never be really completed at all, because he was attracted by all manner of irrelevant and collateral issues. In later years his incapacity for consecutive writing becomes bewildering. You can never tell in reading a lecture whether the next paragraph will