or allowed for the range of work I've had to do, and which really has been dreadfully costly and painful to me, compelling me to leave things just at the point when one's work on them has become secure and delightsome, to attack them on another rough side. It is a most painful manner of life, and I never got any credit for it before. But the more I see, the more I feel the necessity of seeing all round, however hastily. I am entirely grateful for the review and the understanding of me; and I needed some help just now-for I'm at once single-handed and dead-or worse-hearted, and as nearly beaten as I've been in my life. Always therefore I shall be, for the encouragement at a heavy time, Very gratefully yours, J. RUSKIN. [From "The Globe," October 29, 1874.] AN OXFORD PROTEST. The Slade Professor has tried for five years to please everybody in Oxford by lecturing at any time that might be conveniently subordinate to other dates of study in the University. He finds he has pleased nobody, and must for the future at least make his hour known and consistent. He cannot alter it this term because people sometimes come from a distance and have settled their plans by the hours announced in the Gazette, but for many reasons he thinks it right to change the place, and will hereafter lecture in the theatre of the museum. On Friday the 30th he will not begin till half-past twelve to allow settling time. Afterwards, all his lectures will be at twelve in this and future terms. He feels that if he cannot be granted so much as twelve hours of serious audience in working time 2 1 Mr. Ruskin had recently changed the hour of his lectures from two to twelve, and the latter hour clashing with other lectures, some complaints had been made. This "protest" was then issued on the morning of October 29 and reprinted in the Globe of the same day. 2 Instead of in the drawing schools at the Taylor Gallery. during the whole Oxford year, he need not in future prepare public lectures at which his pupils need not much regret their non-attendance. [From "The Standard," August 28, 1877. Reprinted in the "Notes and Correspondence" to "Fors Clavigera," Letter lxxxi., September, 1877, vol. iv., p. 104.] MR. RUSKIN AND MR. LOWE. To the Editor of "The Standard." SIR: My attention has been directed to an article in your columns of the 22d inst., referring to a supposed correspondence between Mr. Lowe and me.' Permit me to state that the letter in question is not Mr. Lowe's. The general value of your article as a review of my work and methods of writing will, I trust, rather be enhanced than diminished by the correction, due to Mr. Lowe, of this original error; and the more, that your critic in the course of his review expresses his not unjustifiable conviction that no correspondence between Mr. Lowe and me is possible on any intellectual subject whatever. I am, Sir, your obedient servant, BRANTWOOD, CONISTON, LANCASHIRE, JOHN RUSKIN. August 24. [From the List of "Mr. Shepherd's Publications" printed at the end of his "The Bibli ography of Dickens," 1880.] THE BIBLIOGRAPHY OF RUSKIN. I. BRANTWOOD, CONISTON, DEAR SIR: So far from being distasteful to me, your perfect reckoning up of me not only flatters my vanity extremely, but 1 The article in question stated that a number of Fors Clavigera had been sent to Mr. Lowe, and commented on by him in a letter to Mr. Ruskin. The last words of the article, alluded to above, were as follows: "The world will be made no wiser by any controversy between Mr. Ruskin and Mr. Lowe, for it would be impossible to reduce their figures or facts to a common denominator." will be in the highest degree useful to myself. But you know so much more about me than I now remember about any thing, that I can't find a single thing to correct or add-glanc ing through at least. I will not say that you have wasted your time; but I may at least regret the quantity of trouble the book must have given you, and am, therefore, somewhat ashamedly, but very gratefully yours, R. H. SHEPHERD, ESQ. J. RUSKIN. II. BRANTWOOD, CONISTON, DEAR MR. SHEPHERD: I am very deeply grateful to you, as I am in all duty bound, for this very curious record of myself. It will be of extreme value to me in filling up what gaps I can in this patched coverlid of my life before it is draped over my coffin-if it may be. I am especially glad to have note of the letters to newspapers, but most chiefly to have the good news of so earnest and patient a friend. Ever gratefully yours, J. RUSKIN. [From the "First Annual Report" of the "Ruskin Society" (of the Rose), Manchester, 1880.] THE SOCIETY OF THE ROSE.1 "No, indeed, I don't want to discourage the plan you have so kindly and earnestly formed, but I could not easily or decorously promote it myself, could I? But I fully proposed to write you a letter to be read at the first meeting, guarding you especially against an 'ism,' or a possibility of giving occasion for one; and I am exceedingly glad to receive your present letter. Mine was not written because it gave me trouble to think of it, and I can't take trouble now. But 1 This letter was written early in 1879 to the Secretary po tem. of the Ruskin Society of Manchester, in reply to a request for Mr. Ruskin's views upon the formation of such a Society. without thinking, I can at once assure you that the taking of the name of St. George would give me endless trouble, and cause all manner of mistakes, and perhaps even legal difficulties. We must not have that, please. “But I think you might with grace and truth take the name of the Society of the Rose-meaning the English wild roseand that the object of the society would be to promote such English learning and life as can abide where it grows. You see it is the heraldic sign on my books, so that you might still keep pretty close to me. Supposing this were thought too far-fetched or sentimental by the promoters of the society, I think the 'More' Society would be a good name, following out the teaching of the Utopia as it is taken up in 'Fors.' I can't write more to-day, but I dare say something else may come into my head, and I'll write again, or you can send me more names for choice." [From "The Autographic Mirror," December 23 and 30, 1865,] LETTER TO W. H. HARRISON.1 DEAR MR. HARRISON: The plate I send is unluckily merely outlined in its principal griffin (it is just being finished), but it may render your six nights' work a little more amusing. I don't want it back. 1 A facsimile of this letter, from a collection of autographs in the possession of Mr. T. F. Dillon Croker, appeared in the above-named issue of the Autographic Mirror. The subject of the letter will be made clearer by the following passages from Mr. Ruskin's reminiscence of Mr. William Henry Harrison, published in the University Magazine of April, 1878, under the title of " My First Editor."-"1st February, 1878. In seven days more I shall be fifty-nine; which (practically) is all the same as sixty; but being asked by the wife of my dear old friend, W. H. Harrison, to say a few words of our old relations together, I find myself, in spite of all these years, a boy again-partly in the mere thought of, and renewed sympathy with, the cheerful heart of my old literary mas ter, and partly in instinctive terror lest, wherever he is in celestial circles, he should catch me writing bad grammar, or putting wrong stops, and should set the table turning, or the like. Not a book of Never mind putting "see to quotations," as I always do And, in the second revise, don't look to all my alterations to tick them off, but merely read straight through the new proof to see if any mistake strikes you. This will be more useful to me than the other. Most truly yours, with a thousand thanks, J. RUSKIN [From the "Journal of Dramatic Reform," November, 1880.] DRAMATIC REFORM.1 I. MY DEAR SIR: Yes, I began writing something—a year ago, is it?-on your subject, but have lost it, and am now utterly too busy to touch so difficult and so important a subject. I shall come on it, some day, necessarily. Meantime, the one thing I have to say mainly is that the idea of making money by a theatre, and making it educational at the same time, is utterly to be got out of people's heads. You don't make money out of a Ship of the Line, nor should you out of a Church, nor should you out of a College, nor should you out of a Theatre. Pay your Ship's officers, your Church officers, your College tutors, and your Stage tutors, what will honorably maintain them. Let there be no starring on the Stage boards, more than on the deck, but the Broadside well delivered. mine, for good thirty years, but went, every word of it, under his careful eyes twice over-often also the last revises left to his tender mercy altogether on condition he wouldn't bother me any more."-The book to which the letter refers may be the Stones of Venice, and the plate sent the third (Noble and Ignoble Grotesque), in the last volume of that work; and if this be so, the letter was probably written from Herne Hill about 1852-3. This and the following letter were both addressed to Mr. John Stuart Bogg, the Secretary of the Dramatic Reform Association of Manchester. The first was a reply to a request that Mr. Ruskin would, in accordance with an old promise, write something on the subject of the Drama for the Society's journal; and the second was added by its author on hear ing that it was the wish of the Society to publish the first. |