Selections From the Works of John Ruskin

A critical fancy may even discover in the construction of his finest descriptions a method not unlike that of a painter at work upon his canvas. He blocks them out in large masses, then sketches and colors rapidly for general effects, treating detail at first more or less vaguely and collectively, but passing in the end to the elaboration of detail in the concrete, touching the whole with an imaginative gleam that lends a momentary semblance of life to the thing described, after the manner of the "pathetic fallacy." Thus it is in the famous description of St. Mark's:[11 - See p. 162.] we are given first the largest general impression, the "long, low pyramid of coloured light," which the artist proceeds to "hollow beneath into five great vaulted porches," whence he leads the eye slowly upwards amidst a mass of bewildering detail—"a confusion of delight"—from which there slowly emerge those concrete details with which the author particularly wishes to impress us, "the breasts of the Greek horses blazing in their breadth of golden strength and St. Mark's lion lifted on a blue field covered with stars." In lesser compass we are shown the environs of Venice,[12 - See p. 139.] the general impression of the "long, low, sad-coloured line," being presently broken by the enumeration of unanalyzed detail, "tufted irregularly with brushwood and willows," and passing to concrete detail in the hills of Arqua, "a dark cluster of purple pyramids." In the still more miniature description of the original site of Venice[13 - See p. 147.] we have the same method:

"The black desert of their shore lies in its nakedness beneath the night, pathless, comfortless, infirm, lost in dark languor and fearful silence, except where the salt runlets plash into the tideless pools and the sea-birds flit from their margins with a questioning cry."

His love of color

Equally characteristic of the painter is the ever-present use of color. It is interesting merely to count the number and variety of colors used in the descriptions. It will serve at least to call the reader's attention to the felicitous choice of words used in describing the opalescence of St. Mark's or the skillful combination of the colors characteristic of the great Venetians in such a sentence as, "the low bronzed gleaming of sea-rusted armor shot angrily under their blood-red mantle-folds"[14 - See p. 121.]—a glimpse of a Giorgione.

His love of prose rhythm

He is even more attentive to the ear than to the eye. He loves the sentence of stately rhythms and long-drawn harmonies, and he omits no poetic device that can heighten the charm of sound,—alliteration, as in the famous description of the streets of Venice,

"Far as the eye could reach, still the soft moving of stainless waters proudly pure; as not the flower, so neither the thorn nor the thistle could grow in those glancing fields";[15 - See p. 122.]

the balanced close for some long period,

"to write her history on the white scrolls of the sea-surges and to word it in their thunder, and to gather and give forth, in the world-wide pulsation, the glory of the West and of the East, from the burning heart of her Fortitude and splendour";[16 - See p. 149.]

and the tendency, almost a mannerism, to add to the music of his own rhythm, the deep organ-notes of Biblical text and paraphrase. But if we wish to see how aptly Ruskin's style responds to the tone of his subject, we need but remark the rich liquid sentence descriptive of Giorgione's home,

"brightness out of the north and balm from the south, and the stars of evening and morning clear in the limitless light of arched heaven and circling sea,"[17 - See p. 122.]

which he has set over against the harsh explosiveness of

"Near the south-west corner of Covent Garden, a square brick pit or wall is formed by a close-set block of house to the back windows of which it admits a few rays of light—"

the birthplace of Turner.

His beauty of style often distracts from the thought

But none knew better than Ruskin that a style so stiff with ornament was likely to produce all manner of faults. In overloading his sentences with jewelry he frequently obscures the sense; his beauties often degenerate into mere prettiness; his sweetness cloys. His free indulgence of the emotions, often at the expense of the intellect, leads to a riotous extravagance of superlative. But, above all, his richness distracts attention from matter to manner. In the case of an author so profoundly in earnest, this could not but be unfortunate; nothing enraged him more than to have people look upon the beauties of his style rather than ponder the substance of his book. In a passage of complacent self-scourging he says:

"For I have had what, in many respects, I boldly call the misfortune, to set my words sometimes prettily together; not without a foolish vanity in the poor knack that I had of doing so, until I was heavily punished for this pride by finding that many people thought of the words only, and cared nothing for their meaning. Happily, therefore, the power of using such language—if indeed it ever were mine—is passing away from me; and whatever I am now able to say at all I find myself forced to say with great plainness."[18 - The Mystery of Life.]

His picturesque extravagance of style

But Ruskin's decision to speak with "great plainness" by no means made the people of England attend to what he said rather than the way he said it. He could be, and in his later work he usually was, strong and clear; but the old picturesqueness and exuberance of passion were with him still. The public discovered that it enjoyed Ruskin's denunciations of machinery much as it had enjoyed his descriptions of mountains, and, without obviously mending its ways, called loudly for more. Lecture-rooms were crowded and editions exhausted by the ladies and gentlemen of England, whose nerves were pleasantly thrilled with a gentle surprise on being told that they had despised literature, art, science, nature, and compassion, and that what they thought upon any subject was "a matter of no serious importance"; that they could not be said to have any thoughts at all—indeed, no right to think.[19 - Sesame and Lilies, "Kings' Treasuries," §§ 25, 31.] The fiercer his anathemas, the greater the applause; the louder he shouted, the better he pleased. Let him split the ears of the groundlings, let him out-Herod Herod,—the judicious might grieve, but all would be excitedly attentive. Their Jeremiah seemed at times like to become a jester,—there was a suggestion of the ludicrous in the sudden passage from birds to Greek coins, to mills, to Walter Scott, to millionaire malefactors,—a suggestion of acrobatic tumbling and somersault; but he always got a hearing. In lecturing to the students of a military academy he had the pleasing audacity to begin:

"Young soldiers, I do not doubt but that many of you came unwillingly to-night, and many of you in merely contemptuous curiosity, to hear what a writer on painting could possibly say, or would venture to say, respecting your great art of war";[20 - The Crown of Wild Olive, "War."]

after which stinging challenge, one has no doubt, any feeling of offense was swallowed up in admiration of the speaker's physical courage.

Influence of Carlyle upon Ruskin

The unity of Ruskin's style

There can be little doubt that this later manner in which Ruskin allowed his Puritan instincts to defeat his aestheticism, and indulged to an alarming degree his gift of vituperation, was profoundly influenced by his "master," Carlyle, who had long since passed into his later and raucous manner. Carlyle's delight in the disciple's diatribes probably encouraged the younger man in a vehemence of invective to which his love of dogmatic assertion already rendered him too prone. At his best, Ruskin, like Carlyle, reminds us of a major prophet; at his worst he shrieks and heats the air. His high indignations lead him into all manner of absurdity and self-contradiction. An amusing instance of this may be given from Sesame and Lilies. In the first lecture, which, it will be recalled, was given in aid of a library fund, we find[21 - "Kings' Treasuries," § 32.] the remark, "We are filthy and foolish enough to thumb one another's books out of circulating libraries." His friends and his enemies, the clergy (who "teach a false gospel for hire") and the scientists, the merchants and the universities, Darwin and Dante, all had their share in the indignant lecturer's indiscriminate abuse. And yet in all the tropical luxuriance of his inconsistency, one can never doubt the man's sincerity. He never wrote for effect. He may dazzle us, but his fire is never pyrotechnical; it always springs from the deep volcanic heart of him. His was a fervor too easily stirred and often ill-directed, but its wild brilliance cannot long be mistaken for the sky-rocket's; it flares madly in all directions, now beautifying, now appalling, the night, the fine ardor of the painter passing into the fierce invective of the prophet. But in the end it is seen that Ruskin's style, like his subject-matter, is a unity,—an emanation from a divine enthusiasm making for "whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are of good report."

Selections from Modern Painters

The five volumes of Modern Painters appeared at various intervals between 1843 and 1860, from the time Ruskin was twenty-four until he was forty. The first volume was published in May, 1843; the second, in April, 1846; the third, January 15, 1856; the fourth, April 14, 1856; the last, in June, 1860. As his knowledge of his subject broadened and deepened, we find the later volumes differing greatly in viewpoint and style from the earlier; but, as stated in the preface to the last volume, "in the main aim and principle of the book there is no variation, from its first syllable to its last." Ruskin himself maintained that the most important influence upon his thought in preparation for his work in Modern Painters was not from his "love of art, but of mountains and seas"; and all the power of judgment he had obtained in art, he ascribed to his "steady habit of always looking for the subject principally, and for the art only as the means of expressing it." The first volume was published as the work of "a graduate of Oxford," Ruskin "fearing that I might not obtain fair hearing if the reader knew my youth." The author's proud father did not allow the secret to be kept long. The title Ruskin originally chose for the volume was Turner and the Ancients. To this Smith, Elder & Co., his publishers, objected, and the substitution of Modern Painters was their suggestion The following is the title-page of the first volume in the original edition:

MODERN PAINTERS:

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

By a Graduate of Oxford

(Quotation from Wordsworth)

London: Smith, Elder & Co., 65 Cornhill

1843

THE EARTH-VEIL

VOLUME V, CHAPTER I

"To dress it and to keep it."[22 - Genesis ii, 15; iii 24.]

That, then, was to be our work. Alas! what work have we set ourselves upon instead! How have we ravaged the garden instead of kept it—feeding our war-horses with its flowers, and splintering its trees into spear-shafts!

"And at the East a flaming sword."[23 - Genesis ii, 15; iii 24.]

Is its flame quenchless? and are those gates that keep the way indeed passable no more? or is it not rather that we no more desire to enter? For what can we conceive of that first Eden which we might not yet win back, if we chose? It was a place full of flowers, we say. Well: the flowers are always striving to grow wherever we suffer them; and the fairer, the closer. There may, indeed, have been a Fall of Flowers, as a Fall of Man; but assuredly creatures such as we are can now fancy nothing lovelier than roses and lilies, which would grow for us side by side, leaf overlapping leaf, till the Earth was white and red with them, if we cared to have it so. And Paradise was full of pleasant shades and fruitful avenues. Well: what hinders us from covering as much of the world as we like with pleasant shade, and pure blossom, and goodly fruit? Who forbids its valleys to be covered over with corn till they laugh and sing? Who prevents its dark forests, ghostly and uninhabitable, from being changed into infinite orchards, wreathing the hills with frail-floreted snow, far away to the half-lighted horizon of April, and flushing the face of all the autumnal earth with glow of clustered food? But Paradise was a place of peace, we say, and all the animals were gentle servants to us. Well: the world would yet be a place of peace if we were all peacemakers, and gentle service should we have of its creatures if we gave them gentle mastery. But so long as we make sport of slaying bird and beast, so long as we choose to contend rather with our fellows than with our faults, and make battlefield of our meadows instead of pasture—so long, truly, the Flaming Sword will still turn every way, and the gates of Eden remain barred close enough, till we have sheathed the sharper flame of our own passions, and broken down the closer gates of our own hearts.

I have been led to see and feel this more and more, as I consider the service which the flowers and trees, which man was at first appointed to keep, were intended to render to him in return for his care; and the services they still render to him, as far as he allows their influence, or fulfils his own task towards them. For what infinite wonderfulness there is in this vegetation, considered, as indeed it is, as the means by which the earth becomes the companion of man—his friend and his teacher! In the conditions which we have traced in its rocks, there could only be seen preparation for his existence;—the characters which enable him to live on it safely, and to work with it easily—in all these it has been inanimate and passive; but vegetation is to it as an imperfect soul, given to meet the soul of man. The earth in its depths must remain dead and cold, incapable except of slow crystalline change; but at its surface, which human beings look upon and deal with, it ministers to them through a veil of strange intermediate being: which breathes, but has no voice; moves, but cannot leave its appointed place; passes through life without consciousness, to death without bitterness; wears the beauty of youth, without its passion; and declines to the weakness of age, without its regret.

And in this mystery of intermediate being, entirely subordinate to us, with which we can deal as we choose, having just the greater power as we have the less responsibility for our treatment of the unsuffering creature, most of the pleasures which we need from the external world are gathered, and most of the lessons we need are written, all kinds of precious grace and teaching being united in this link between the Earth and Man; wonderful in universal adaptation to his need, desire, and discipline; God's daily preparation of the earth for him, with beautiful means of life. First, a carpet to make it soft for him; then, a coloured fantasy of embroidery thereon; then, tall spreading of foliage to shade him from sun heat, and shade also the fallen rain; that it may not dry quickly back into the clouds, but stay to nourish the springs among the moss. Stout wood to bear this leafage: easily to be cut, yet tough and light, to make houses for him, or instruments (lance-shaft, or plough-handle, according to his temper); useless, it had been, if harder; useless, if less fibrous; useless, if less elastic. Winter comes, and the shade of leafage falls away, to let the sun warm the earth; the strong boughs remain, breaking the strength of winter winds. The seeds which are to prolong the race, innumerable according to the need, are made beautiful and palatable, varied into infinitude of appeal to the fancy of man, or provision for his service: cold juice, or glowing spice, or balm, or incense, softening oil, preserving resin, medicine of styptic, febrifuge, or lulling charm: and all these presented in forms of endless change. Fragility or force, softness and strength, in all degrees and aspects; unerring uprightness, as of temple pillars, or unguided wandering of feeble tendrils on the ground; mighty resistances of rigid arm and limb to the storms of ages, or wavings to and fro with faintest pulse of summer streamlet. Roots cleaving the strength of rock, or binding the transience of the sand; crests basking in sunshine of the desert, or hiding by dripping spring and lightless cave; foliage far tossing in entangled fields beneath every wave of ocean—clothing, with variegated, everlasting films, the peaks of the trackless mountains, or ministering at cottage doors to every gentlest passion and simplest joy of humanity.

Being thus prepared for us in all ways, and made beautiful, and good for food, and for building, and for instruments in our hands, this race of plants, deserving boundless affection and admiration from us, becomes, in proportion to their obtaining it, a nearly perfect test of our being in right temper of mind and way of life; so that no one can be far wrong in either who loves the trees enough, and every one is assuredly wrong in both who does not love them, if his life has brought them in his way. It is clearly possible to do without them, for the great companionship of the sea and sky are all that sailors need; and many a noble heart has been taught the best it had to learn between dark stone walls. Still if human life be cast among trees at all, the love borne to them is a sure test of its purity. And it is a sorrowful proof of the mistaken ways of the world that the "country," in the simple sense of a place of fields and trees, has hitherto been the source of reproach to its inhabitants, and that the words "countryman, rustic, clown, paysan, villager," still signify a rude and untaught person, as opposed to the words "townsman" and "citizen". We accept this usage of words, or the evil which it signifies, somewhat too quietly; as if it were quite necessary and natural that country-people should be rude, and townspeople gentle. Whereas I believe that the result of each mode of life may, in some stages of the world's progress, be the exact reverse; and that another use of words may be forced upon us by a new aspect of facts, so that we may find ourselves saying: "Such and such a person is very gentle and kind—he is quite rustic; and such and such another person is very rude and ill-taught—he is quite urbane."

At all events, cities have hitherto gained the better part of their good report through our evil ways of going on in the world generally; chiefly and eminently through our bad habit of fighting with each other. No field, in the Middle Ages, being safe from devastation, and every country lane yielding easier passage to the marauders, peacefully-minded men necessarily congregated in cities, and walled themselves in, making as few cross-country roads as possible: while the men who sowed and reaped the harvests of Europe were only the servants or slaves of the barons. The disdain of all agricultural pursuits by the nobility, and of all plain facts by the monks, kept educated Europe in a state of mind over which natural phenomena could have no power; body and intellect being lost in the practice of war without purpose, and the meditation of words without meaning. Men learned the dexterity with sword and syllogism, which they mistook for education, within cloister and tilt-yard; and looked on all the broad space of the world of God mainly as a place for exercise of horses, or for growth of food.