of his mind upon one subject after another, there is something, we scarcely know how to define it, of the wealthy and cultivated amateur, full of fire and generosity and brilliance, who would give all he possesses of wealth and brilliance to be taken seriously, but who is fated to remain for ever an outsider. As we read these outbursts of rather petulant eloquence, we find ourselves remembering the sheltered and luxurious life, and even when we are very ignorant of the subject, the tremendous arrogance and self confidence seem to result not from knowledge, but from a tossing and splendid impatience of spirit which is not to be broken into the drudgery of learning. We remember how for years after most men are forced to match themselves with the real world “he was living in a world of his own”, to quote Professor Norton again, and losing the chance of gaining that experience with practical life, that self-control, and that development of reason which he more than most men required. If we reflect, too, that from his childhood, when he stood up among the cushions and preached, “People be good,” the passion of his life was to teach and reform, it is easy to understand how terribly and, as it must have seemed sometimes, how futilely “he hurt himself against life and the world”.
But we do him much wrong if we take him merely as a prophet—a proceeding that is rather forced upon one by his followers, and forget to read his books. For if anyone is able to make his readers feel that he is alive, wrong headed, intemperate, interesting, and lovable, that writer is Ruskin. His eagerness about everything in the world is perhaps as valuable as the concentration which in another sphere produced the works of Darwin, or the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. It may be that, if we submitted his works on art to a modern art critic, or his works on economy to a modern economist, we should find that there is very little in them which is accepted by the present generation. Even an unprofessional reader, who picks up Modern Painters attracted very much by the bright patches of eloquence, is fairly startled by some of the statements concerning art and morality which are laid down with the usual air of infallibility and the usual array of polysyllables. Nor is it easy for one reading industriously in the six volumes of Fors Clavigera to find out precisely how it is that we are to save ourselves, though it is plain enough that we are all damned. Nevertheless, though his aesthetics may be wrong and his economics amateurish, you have to reckon with a force which is not to be suppressed by a whole pyramid of faults. That is why perhaps people in his lifetime got into the habit of calling him Master. He was possessed by a spirit of enthusiasm which compels those who are without it either to attack or to applaud; but beneath its influence they cannot remain merely passive. Even now the straight free lashing of Fors Clavigera seems to descend far too often for our comfort upon the skin of our own backs.
It is hard not to regret that so much of his force went into satire and attempts at reformation for which, as he knew well, he was not well-equipped by nature. It is hard too not to wish that he had lived in an age which did not isolate its great men with adulation, but encouraged them to use the best of their powers. As it is, if we want to get unalloyed good from Ruskin, we take down not Modern Painters, or the Stones of Venice, or Sesame and Lilies, but Praeterita. There he has ceased to preach or to teach or to scourge. He is writing for the last time before he enters the prolonged season of death, and his mood is still perfectly clear, more sustained than usual, and unfailingly benignant. Compared with much of his writing, it is extremely simple in style; but the simplicity is the flower of perfect skill. The words lie like a transparent veil upon his meaning. And the passage with which the book ends, though it was written when he could hardly write, is surely more beautiful than those more elaborate and gilded ones which we are apt to cut out and admire:
“Fonte Branda I last saw with Charles Norton under the same arches where Dante saw it. We drank of it together, and walked together that evening in the hills above, where the fireflies among the scented thickets shone fitfully in the still undarkened air. How they shone! moving like fine-broken starlight through the purple leaves. How they shone! through the sunset that faded into thunderous night as I entered Siena three days before, the white edges of the mountainous clouds still lighted from the west, and the openly golden sky calm behind the Gate of Siena’s heart, with its still golden words, Cor magis tibi Sena pandit, and the fireflies everywhere in sky or cloud rising and falling, mixed with the lightning, and more intense than the stars.”
[written ca. 1928]
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