the publishers (Messrs. Smith, Elder & Co.) had "accepted the book on J. J. Ruskin's terms (so his wife wrote), for they had already reported it as called for by the public."1 Modern Painters was beginning also to attract attention in America, where its readers were destined to be more numerous even than in Great Britain. The first volume, it will be remembered, was going into a third edition, and the author was becoming a literary celebrity. He records in his diary with some pride that in 1844 he was invited to the Private View at the Academy-not then so accessible as now, and was there honoured by the company of Rogers :

May 2, 1844.-A memorable day; my first private view of the Royal Academy. I stayed to the very last, and shall scarcely forget the dreamlike sensation of finding myself with Rogers the poet-not a soul beside ourselves in the great rooms of the Academy.

Rogers made the tour of the pictures with him, and he records some of his dry remarks. The identity of the "Graduate" was by this time an open secret in many literary circles, and some of Ruskin's drawings which had been exhibited added to his reputation. "It happened to us within the last few weeks," wrote one of the reviewers, " to be a guest at a meeting of the Graphic Society, where some drawings from the pencil of the gentleman to whom the authorship of this work is ascribed were exhibited, and on that occasion a member of the Royal Academy, after examining one of the subjects with much attention, exclaimed in our hearing-The man who can draw like that may write anything he pleases upon art.'"3

The second volume, therefore, could count on a respectful hearing, and favourable reviews were not long in making their appearance. "The press notices," says Ruskin, were "either cautious or complimentary,-none, to the best of my memory, contemptuous." Some exception must be made here, as we shall see, but the general tone of the reviewers was certainly favourable. Many of the Quarterly Reviews-then more numerous and influential than now-took the occasion of the nearly simultaneous appearance of volume ii. and a third edition of volume i. to notice the two together. The second volume was especially praised. Thus the Foreign Quarterly Review (July 1846, pp. 380-416), in a notice with long extracts of the two volumes, remarked that in the latter the author 'speaks in a tone of maturer judgment, and greater modesty; is less

66

1 W. G. Collingwood's Life of John Ruskin, 1900, p. 105.

2 The third edition of the first volume was reprinted at New York in 1847; for a review of it, see North American Review, No. 138 (January 1848).

3 Church of England Quarterly Review, July 1846, p. 205.

4 Præterita, ii. ch. x. § 192.

Below, pp. xlii.-xliii.

bent upon making out a case for a client, than on extracting the principles of art." The review was critical in many respects, but "we are prepared emphatically to declare," said the writer in conclusion, "that his work is the most valuable contribution towards a proper view of painting, its purpose and means, that has come within our knowledge." The North British Review (February 1847, pp. 401–430) wrote:

"This is a very extraordinary and a very delightful book, full of truth and goodness, of power and beauty. If genius may be considered (and it is as serviceable a definition as is current) that power by which one man produces, for the use or the pleasure of his fellow-men, something at once new and true, then have we here its unmistakable and inestimable handiwork. . . . The book gave us wings, opened new doors into heaven, brought the country into the town, made the invisible seen, the distance near."

...

Another quarterly of the time, The Ecclesiastic (April 1847, pp. 212-222), after praising the style of the second volume-"formed," as the reviewer rightly surmised, "chiefly upon that of Hooker "—said :—

"This book, though clever and brilliant, is not only so: and it will survive many born with it and before it. It will live long; and more than this, it will bear fruit, and its influence will make itself seen. It has one feature which is rare in the present day it is, as we have said, a work of enthusiasm: we have in it the heart, as well as the head of the author. . . . The writer's love and devotion are not wasted. They will find their reward in kindling kindred flames in others, and securing a rich tribute of homage and sympathy, which nothing else receives besides true and original genius."

The Church of England Quarterly1 (July 1846, vol. xx. pp. 205–214), in recalling and justifying its high praise of the first volume, found in the second "a more elevated tone :

"The poetry of the first volume had more of the dash and sparkle, but without the power, of the mountain cataract; the poetry of the second has the solemn depth and volume of the broad and vast river. . . . Without reference to the age or position of the author, it is one of the most marvellous productions of modern times; but when we consider the fact, very generally understood, that the writer is a very young man, and in circumstances which render the ordinary rewards and stimulants of authorship valueless, we know not which more to admire, the vigour, purity, and ripeness of thought, which

1 Other favourable reviews appeared in the British Quarterly Review (May 1847, pp. 469-486), and the Prospective Review (May 1847, pp. 213-225). In the Western Miscellany: a Journal of Literature, Science, Antiquities, and Art for the West of England, a series of four expository articles with highly appreciative comments (by George Wightwick) was devoted to the two volumes (1849, pp. 11-19, 35-43, 67–75, 99-107).

have combined to produce such a work; or the noble, generous, and fearless devotion of those high powers to prove that art is only to be valued as it shall contribute to the glory of Him who is the source of all power, harmony, and beauty."

The weekly and daily press was also on the whole favourable. Thus the English Gentleman (May 2, 1846), after similarly remarking on the growing impression made by the first volume, declared the second to rise "infinitely higher," and to be "all thought from beginning to end":—

"Indeed we question if any but a high order of mind will embrace the full grandeur of its design, or follow the masterly analysis by which the propositions are elucidated. . . . The more one reads the book the more it fascinates. The style of diction, the analysis, the clearness of perception, and the steady momentum of thought, remind one of Bacon: the bursts of Christian eloquence, with which, by a strange, yet harmonious connection, the argument is here and there illustrated and enforced, savour of Jeremy Taylor; but the high and lofty tone, the deep enthusiasm, the association of religion with art on principles intelligible to this age, these are the author's own; and together with the fund of deep observation and practical knowledge which the book displays, they render it one of the most original and remarkable productions of what, till the author's views prevail, must still be called æsthetic criticism.”

The Britannia, too, which had been very complimentary to the first volume1 found "additional force" in the second (June 6, 1843). The Weekly Chronicle (May 16, 1846), while refusing to surrender Gaspar Poussin, or even "the ruffian Salvator" to the slaughter, commended the volume "to all true lovers of the beautiful"::

"The writer," said the reviewer, "is a painter, as well as a poet; he knows the details as well as the generalities of his subject, and no man can read him without gaining ideas. . . . It is a real delight in this age of commercialism and utilitarianism to meet with a man who can talk of nature with the love he does, and who can defend so chivalrously the spiritual against the material,the imponderable beauties of creation against those gross realities which everywhere so much prevail."

The second volume did not, however, escape some contempt and abuse. The Athenæum (July 25, 1846, No. 978, pp. 765–767) represented that the author had been converted by its former strictures from his Turner mania a point to which Ruskin replied in the third edition of the first volume,2 and returned to the charge with a copious vocabulary of abuse against his new production. "Flowers of Billingsgate," "brick-bats,"

1 See Vol. III. p. xxxvii.

2 See Vol. III. p. 630.

"Kennel-water," "eructations of idle wind," were among the critical amenities which it bestowed upon the Graduate, with whom, however, it parted on a note of mingled praise and blame. "Never," said the reviewer, "did we see such acuteness and confusedness of mind-such power and impotence-such trains of error and of truest deductionsuch pure taste and perverted judgment—such high and low feeling for art—we must add, such an elevated and vulgarian spirit of criticism— evinced in any treatise pretending to legislate upon Esthetics." Another review, barely less unfavourable, appeared in the Daily News (June 22, 1846), which found in the volume "child's play and fiddlefaddle,” “subserviency of thoughts to words," and "high-sounding and somewhat lengthy and involved periods." The writer acknowledged that "the volume is evidently the work of a man of no ordinary talent and elevation of sentiment"; but he made a somewhat unlucky shot in adding that the Graduate "must first learn to see with his own eyes; at present he sees pictures and everything else through the medium of books.” 1

The volume which was thus received is in style, no less than in contents, different from its predecessor. The manner at which Ruskin aimed in the second volume is described in the letter to Liddell of October 1844. He sought to eschew "the pamphleteer manner," and to attain a more "serious, quiet, earnest and simple manner." "The calmer tone of the second volume . . . resulted," he afterwards said, "from the simple fact that the first was written in great haste and indignation, for a special purpose and time;-the second, after I had got engaged, almost unawares, in inquiries which could not be hastily nor indignantly pursued." He was now dealing with arguments of high philosophy, and he sought elevation and dignity of language. In theory he was opposed to any tricks of style which departed from simplicity; he explains his point of view in a letter here printed in an Appendix.* In practice, however, he fell into some mannerisms—afterwards exposed unmercifully by himself.5 He had been sent to Hooker by his old tutor, Osborne Gordon," and imitation led him into affectations,-“in the notion," as he elsewhere says, "of returning as far as I could to what I

1 Ruskin's father refers to this review in a letter to W. H. Harrison (Genoa, July 14, 1846): "I see C. Dickens's paper has a shot at M. P., vol. 2. There are heavier shots than this likely to come. The Utilitarians and Jesters must have a kick at their opponent at any rate." Dickens had by this time resigned the editorship to John Forster.

2 See Vol. III. p. 668.

3 Stones of Venice, vol. i. Appendix 11.

* See Appendix iii,, p. 390.

See, e.g., notes on pp. 50, 93, 94, 111.

• Præterita, ii. ch. x. § 184.

thought the better style of old English literature."1 The second volume contains throughout high thought wedded to stately language; it includes many purple passages which are favourites in books of selections; and it sustains, hardly with a break, a note of dignity. But probably Ruskin's own verdict is likely to stand: the style of the second volume is too selfconscious; it was an experiment rather than a development; "it was not,” he says, "my proper style."2

In subject-matter this volume of Modern Painters, though marred by some faults-by no one more mercilessly exposed than by the author himself in his notes to the revised edition of 1883-occupies a central place in Ruskin's system. It sets forth the spiritual as opposed to the sensual theory of art. It expresses what he elsewhere calls "the first and foundational law respecting human contemplation of the natural phenomena under whose influence we exist, that they can only be seen with their properly belonging joy, and interpreted up to the measure of proper human intelligence, where they are accepted as the work and the gift of a Living Spirit greater than our own."3 The book, as he states,* had two objects. First, to "explain the nature of that quality of beauty which I now saw to exist through all the happy conditions of living organism”—to explain its nature, and to explain also the theoretic faculty of Admiration by which it may be apprehended. And, secondly, to explain the school of Angelico at Florence, and of Tintoret at Venice. Its effect in this latter respect, which alone can be measured with any precision, was sure and speedy. It turned the taste of the age to the primitives. The acquisition for the National Gallery of many early Italian pictures-a policy which Ruskin advocated strenuously in a letter to the Times in 18476—is an illustration of this conversion of taste and interest. The foundation and work of the Arundel Society are another. Of this Society, established in 1849 and dissolved in 1897, Ruskin was from the first a member of the Council, other members being his friends Liddell, Newton, and Oldfield. The original prospectus of the Society, after referring to the importance of meeting a revived interest in art by suitable instruction, remarks-as if in echo of passages of this volume-that "the materials for such instruction are abundant, but scattered, little accessible, and, in some instances, passing away. Of the frescoes of Giotto, Orcagna, Ghirlandajo, much which has never been delineated, nor even properly described, is rapidly perishing."

1 Sesame and Lilies, 1871, preface, § 1.

2 Love's Meinie, § 130.

3 Deucalion, ii. ch. ii. ("Revision") § 2.

4 Præterita, ii. ch. x. § 183.

5 Cf. The Art of England, § 38.

See Arrows of the Chace, 1880, i. 62-66 (reprinted in a later volume of this edition). 1 See Præterita, ii. ch. viii.