JOHN RUSKIN.
John. Ruskin. By Mrs. Meynell. (W. Blackwood and Sons. 2s. 6d.)—This, the latest of the series on "Modern English Writers," is not a biography of John Ruskin, but is intended by its author "to be principally a handbook of Ruskin." It is affectionate and sympathetic in tone, but yet critical. Its chief fault appears to us to be a certain affectation in style, some of the sentences being most difficult to analyse. As a result, Mrs. Meynell has not made her exposition so clear as might have been the case. Especially is this so with the chapters on "Modern Painters." We doubt whether any one who had not read that work would gather very clearly from Mrs. Meynell exactly what it attempted to set forth. The chapter on "The Stones of Venice" is better, as are those on some of the smaller works, such as "The Two Paths" (containing some very incisive criticism), "Sesame and Lilies," "The Queen of the Air," "The Eagle's Nest," Sze. Mrs. Meynell hardly does justice to "The Crown of Wild Olive," and she might have said more of "Fors Clavigera." She has treated too slenderly the social and economic ideas of Ruskin, which are now looming up into greater proportions than his purely art criticism, though she sees very clearly what havoc they made in the accepted economic creed of forty years ago. It is curious to think now of Thackeray refusing to publish the latter part of "Unto This Last" in the Cornhill. We should hardly consider this little work a final or comprehensive verdict on Ruskin, but as a friendly and at the same time intelligent study of Ruskin's leading ideas we can give it a genuine, if some- what qualified, welcome.
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