JOHN

JOHN RUSKIN.

PY JOSEPH FORSTER.

PART I.

OHN RUSKIN is the son of a London merchant, and was born in the year 1819. He thus writes of himself: "Who am I, that I should challenge you," the squires of England, "do you ask? My mother was a sailor's daughter, and, please you, one of my aunts was a baker's wife-the other a tanner's, and I don't know much more about my family, except that there used to be a greengrocer of the name in a small shop near the Crystal Palace. Something of my early and vulgar life, if it interests you, I will tell in next Fors'; in this one it is indeed my business, poor gipsy herald as I am, to bring you such a challenge, though you should hunt and hang me for it."

Mr. Ruskin's father came over the border in search of fortune. "He came up to London, was a clerk in a merchant's office for nine years without a holiday, then began business on his own account, paid his father's debts, and married his exemplary Croydon cousin.”

"My father began business as a wine merchant, with no capital, and a considerable amount of debts bequeathed him by my grandfather. He accepted the bequest, and paid them all before he began to lay by anything for himself, for which his best friends called him a fool; and I, without expressing anything as to his wisdom, which I knew in such matters to be at least equal to mine, have written on the granite slab over his grave that he was 'an entirely honest merchant.' As days went on, he was able to take a house in Hunter Street, Brunswick Square, No. 54 (the windows of it, fortunately for me, commanded a view of a marvellous iron post, out of which the water-carts were filled through beautiful little trap-door pipes like boa-constrictors, and never weary of contemplating that mystery, and the delicious dripping consequent); and as years went on, he could command a post-chaise and pair for two months in the summer, by help of which, with my mother and me, he went the round of his country customers (who liked to see the principal of the house his own traveller); so that at a jog-trot pace, and through the panoramic opening of the four windows of a post-chaise, made more panoramic still to me because my seat was a little bracket

in front, I saw all the high-roads and most of the cross ones of England, Wales, and a great part of lowland Scotland, as far as Perth, where every other year we spent the whole summer."

This is how the boy learnt to love art, which, as he so finely said, "is a translation of nature." "It happened also, what was the real cause of the bias of my after life, that my father had a rare love of pictures. I use the word advisedly, having never met with another instance of so innate a faculty for the discernment of true art up to the point possible without actual practice. Accordingly, wherever there was a gallery to be seen, we stopped at the nearest town for the night; and in reverentest manner I thus saw nearly all the noblemen's houses in England, not, indeed, myself at that age caring for pictures, but much for castles and ruins, feeling more and more, as I grew older, the healthy delight of uncovetous admiration, and perceiving, as soon as I could perceive any political truth at all, that it was probably much happier to live in a small house and have Warwick Castle to be astonished at; but that, at all events, it would not make Brunswick Square in the least more pleasantly habitable to pull Warwick Castle down. And to this day, though I have kind invitations enough to visit America, I could not, even for a couple of months, live in a country so miserable as to possess no castles."

From Hunter Street Mr. Ruskin's father removed to Herne Hill, and from there to a larger house at Denmark Hill.

Before I deal with the great and original teachings of John Ruskin, I think I ought to give a slight sketch of his life. He was born in London in 1819, and educated at Christ Church, Oxford, where he gained the Newdigate prize for poetry ("Salsette and Elephanta") in 1839. When a youth he studied under Copley Fielding and Harding, and soon became enamoured of Turner's glorious works, then but little appreciated.

Turner's splendid "Antwerp" was first sold for £300. It sold the other day at 6,500 guineas. Ruskin's advocacy of the claims of Turner to the admiration of the world began by a letter he wrote in his defence to Blackwood's Magazine. This developed into the first volume of "Modern Painters," which was a great success, and was also bitterly attacked. He resided some time in Italy, and published the remaining volumes of "Modern Painters," between 1846 and 1860. He had previously written the "Seven Lamps of Architecture" (1849), and the "Stones of Venice" (1851 and 1853). He was appointed Rede Lecturer at Cambridge (1867), and Slade Professor of Fine Art at Oxford (1872), but he retired from this position in 1878 in consequence of illness. He again accepted the chair in 1883, and finally vacated it in 1885, owing to the action of the University on the question of vivisection. Besides publishing a great many miscellaneous works, including "Notes on the Construction of Sheepfolds," which a simple-minded farmer bought for practical instruction on the subject, and was

very disappointed and bewildered by its contents, he gave to the world "Political Economy in Art," "Two Paths," "Unto this Last," "Sesame and Lilies," "Ethics of the Dust," "Queen of the Air," "Crown of Wild Olive," and " Ariadne Florentina." In 1871 he commenced his priceless series of letters entitled "Fors Clavigera," which he explained meant "Deed, Patience, and Love."

These beautiful letters deal in a strikingly original and exquisitely beautiful way with nearly every subject interesting to people of thought, culture and refinement. This publication, consisting of ninety-six numbers, was finally closed in December, 1884. Mr. Ruskin is now engaged on his autobiography, to the publication of which the civilized world looks forward with eager interest.

I will now endeavour to deal with some of the salient characteristics of Mr. Ruskin's teaching. To understand Ruskin it is, I think, necessary to understand Wordsworth. The same loving study and reverent worship of nature animated both writers. Ruskin is simply saturated with Wordsworth. The difference between them is one of temper. One was calm, philosophical, withdrawn from the cantankerous controversies of politics and the little details of daily life. John Ruskin, with a chivalrous disregard of the wear and tear consequent upon mingling in the dusty daily fray, breaks out here with a letter, and there with a lecture dealing directly with the topic of the hour. He is constantly tapped by the foolishest people. There is, I must admit, a decided note of feminity in his genius; a want of manly strength and repose; a quality in which Wordsworth was nearly as great as Goethe. The voice is piercing sweet, but it is a falsetto now and then ; a head and not a chest voice; and reminds me occasionally of the unnatural soprani of Handel's time. Mr. Ruskin appears to me now and then to lose his balance, his common sense. I do not consider that he is a safe teacher to ordinary men and women; but to those who can weigh, measure and discriminate between his opinions, and as a noble and chivalrous denouncer of the infinite vulgarity and stupid greed of the age, his teachings are of unspeakable value.

The following passage from Wordsworth's "Excursion " will, I hope, support my opinion of the similarity of Ruskin's teaching to that of Wordsworth:

"How beautiful this dome of sky;

And the vast hills, in fluctuation fixed

At thy command, how awful! Shall the Soul,

Human and rational, report of thee

Even less than these ?-Be mute who will, who can,

Yet I will praise thee with impassioned voice:

My lips, that may forget thee in the crowd,

Cannot forget thee here; where thou hast built,
For thy own glory, in the wilderness!

Me didst thou constitute a priest of thine,
In such a temple as we now behold

Reared for thy presence: therefore, am I bound
To worship, here, and everywhere—as one
Not doomed to ignorance, though forced to tread,
From childhood up, the ways of poverty;
From unreflecting ignorance preserved,
And from debasement rescued.-By thy grace
The particle divine remained unquenched;
And, 'mid the wild weeds of a rugged soil,
Thy bounty caused to flourish deathless flowers,
From paradise transplanted: wintry age
Impends; the frost will gather round my heart;
If the flowers wither, I am worse than dead!
-Come, labour, when the worn-out frame requires
Perpetual Sabbath; come, disease and want;
And sad exclusion through decay of sense;
But leave me unabated trust in thee—
And let thy favor, to the end of life,
Inspire me with ability to seek

Repose and hope among eternal things

Father of heaven and earth! and I am rich,

And will possess my portion in content!

The sublime spirit pervading the above lines, worthy of Milton himself, shines through all John Ruskin's best work.

A little further on the same great poet, scorning self, sings:

"But, above all, the victory is most sure

For him, who, seeking faith by virtue, strives
To yield entire submission to the law

Of conscience-conscience reverenced and obeyed,
As God's most intimate presence in the soul,
And his most perfect image in the world.
Endeavour thus to live; these rules regard;
These helps solicit; and a steadfast seat
Shall then be yours among the happy few
Who dwell on earth, breathe empyreal air,

Sons of the morning.'

yet

John Ruskin has breathed "empyreal air." He is, if ever man was, a son of the morning."

66

A great deal has been said and written about Pre-Raphaelitism, with its manly scorn of conventional cant and shallow pretence in art. Millais, Rossetti, Holman Hunt and Burne Jones put their original and daring ideas in glowing colours before the jaded public, and John Ruskin, in words not less glowing and opalescent, fought their battle as he only can fight.

This band of earnest and devoted men of genius led a revolt against the tea-trays gone wrong of the Royal Academy. They believed that "the open secret of nature" must be studied on the spot; that an artist was not a man who slavishly imitated the method of some successful painter; but one who with devoted love pursued the glow, the glitter, or the sad solemnity of nature with a never-failing energy and perseverance. According to a man's insight into nature and his power to make us feel by his picture what he felt when he looked at and loved the scene por

trayed, is the value of his genius. That is not done by making a worse copy of a bad picture, painted as Doré used to paint from drawings and a fertile imagination.

Reynolds told his pupils to generalize, and not to degrade art by details. But, thank heaven, his practice contradicted his teachings, and in spite of a vicious theory, his pictures proved him a great genius, drawing his inspiration from the bottomless well of nature. This is Mr. Ruskin's own definition of Pre-Raphaelitism: "Pre-Raphaelitism has but one principle, that of absolute uncompromising truth in all that it does, obtained by working everything, down to the most minute detail, from nature, and from nature only; or, where imagination is necessarily trusted to, always endeavouring to conceive a fact as it really was likely to have happened. Every Pre-Raphaelite landscape background is painted, to the last touch, in the open air, from the thing itself. Every Pre-Raphaelite figure, however studied in expression, is a true portrait of some living person. Every minute accessory is painted in the same manner. This is the main Pre-Raphaelite principle."

I don't think any one can doubt that the influence of this teaching has been good. It brought the artist back to the direct study of the all-mother, Nature; and that is always good and wholesome.

"But art is not nature, or it would not be art." And those of us who have seen some of the best pictures of the school, painted with all the glow of youthful enthusiasm, must admit that many of them were hard and unpleasing. Árt must please first, I think, and refine and elevate the mind and heart too. A man may think he has a mission to teach; but he must also prove, if he wishes to be regarded by a busy world, that he can teach in a pleasing, graceful way. Mere scolding at large will not do. That leads me to the exquisite beauty, finish, and grace of John Ruskin's literary style. One would, I think, rather read the melodious scoldings of Ruskin than the praise of most other writers. His very faults are better than their puny literary virtues.

I will now venture to quote a few passages from this great writer and teacher. In speaking of Reynolds, Ruskin writes: "Sir Joshua Reynolds threw himself at the feet of the great masters of Italy, and arose to share their throne.” "He had a strong, unaided, unerring instinct for all that was true, pure, and noble."

In speaking of Turner's "Slave Ship," he wrote: "Its daring conception, ideal in the highest sense of the word, is based on the purest truth, and wrought out with the concentrated knowledge of a life. The whole picture is dedicated to the most sublime of subjects and impressions-the power, majesty, and deathfulness of the open, deep, illimitable sea."

Again, he writes: "Fine Art is that in which the hand, the