JOHN RUSKIN.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR."' recurrence to the review of Mr. Frederic Harrison's book on John Ruskin in the Spectator of October 25th induces me to offer you some further comments.. The remark that "personal unhappiness—it is clear enough—lay behind all the work of the second half of hi literary days," gives apparently the personal judgment ol gag xavieweii. But we are told by
Mr. Harrison that John Ruskin's own parents "neither understood nor sympathised with his second career." Now surely these two views are rather conflicting; for who should " understand " his "personal unhappiness" so well as the father and mother with whom he was living in such close and "beautiful" intercourse? Your reviewer proceeds to enunciate that "the man to whom the hearth is an altar must, if he be a poet, be torn with divine discontent at tight of the miseries of the outer world." I venture to believe that in that passage may be found an adequate explanation of Ruskin's " turning from art to social problems," without any dreary searchings and probings amongst his "personal unhappinesses," his "love disappointments," and
his " despondencies." These are not "the miseries of the outer world." Divine discontent at sight of the latter may,
I imagine, pretty well explain the whole matter of the "turning" and the "second career,"—and from that discon- tent to a perception that "all human work" depends "for its beauty on the happy life of the workman" is surely but a short step. I think, then, that Ruskin's divine discontent at the miseries of the outer world as perceived by him was great enough to account for his "spiritual and mental agonies" without our having need to speculate any further. A good many dates are mentioned ; and apparently we are to take " 1860 " as the year when Ruskin began "the work of the second half of his literary days." A letter of his may here serve perhaps to show us what he was feeling at a precise date ( May 15th, 1867) about the "outer world," and in so far may perhaps have for us some enlightenment as to the "turning" [Copy.] "Denmark Hill, B., 15th May, '67.
My dearI was very glad of your letter in all ways. Do you know I think the end of it will be that any of us who have got hearts sound enough must verily and in deed draw together, and initiate a true and wholesome way of life, in defiance of the world, and with laws which we will vow to obey, and endeavour to make others, by our example, accept. I think it must come to this, but accidents of my own life have prevented me, until lately, from being able to give to such a plan any practical hope,—but now, I might, with some help, be led on to its organiza- tion.—Would you join it, and vow to keep justice and judgment, and the peace of God on this earth ?—Ever affectly. yours, (Signed) J. Ruston."
[N.B.—In a later letter (May, 21st, 1867) he explains :—"You know, I do not in the least propose any onslaught on public opinion or custom in any violent way, but only the observance of certain laws which may be seen to be exemplary in their working," &c,] If I might add a further line or two in closing, I would say that it has always seemed to me that, with regard to Ruskin's "trumpet-call to painters to go humbly to Nature, rejecting nothing, selecting nothing, scorning nothing,"
he"hampered" himself—as your reviewer rightly puts it—" in the application of his views to the work of others." How can one, for instance, reject nothing, and select nothing, and yet become or remain a master of composition in painting ? And how can a painting be great without composition? In his own 'superb prose-pictures" he surely ran directly counter to this very advice? He was a master of prose-picture composition —the pictures being first informed by "noble emotion "—and when the work of the painters efficiently disregarded the said trumpet-call (as Turner's work especially did), no one rejoiced more greatly in the fair results than did the "superb prose. painter." Finally, we are told that Mr. Harrison publicly and privately associated the doctrines of John Ruskin with those of Auguste Comte, and that he does so in the book under review with unnecessary frequency. It has always seemed to me that Ruskin's literary "anticipators "—if he had any—
were Emerson and Thoreau, but especially Thoreau.—I am, Sir, &c., ONE WHO KNEW AND LOVED HIM.
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