INTRODUCTION xxxv

the pressure had once more begun to tell on Ruskin, and he had started, with his parents, for a holiday on the Continent. They left Folkestone on April 18, (from which place Ruskin sent his last revises of the book to W. H. Harrison,¹) travelled by the railway to Paris, and thence by their usual route to Dijon on the way to Geneva and Chamouni. The work had for a while to go with them, for the plates were not yet finished-as we learn from an entry in Ruskin’s diary:-

“Slept at Sens (April 25), Thursday Mont Bard, Friday Dijon. All these evenings I was working at my last plate of Giotto. ... At Dijon I had some difficulty in getting wax and nitric acid, had to flatter a poor engraver, and persuade a queer chemist, who could hardly put the fraction ^1/5 into ounces.”²

The task of seeing the last revise through the press had been entrusted, as usual, to W. H. Harrison. The following letter to him from J. J. Ruskin, shows the gratitude of father and son for his unfailing help, and describes the enthusiasm with which the family party received their copy of the book:-

(VEVAY, 22nd May 1849.)-Your revision is invaluable and should be coupled with Ballantyne’s press. In fact, if a perfect book be the object, it must be sought for at Spottiswoode’s press with the Harrison Revise, and fortunate are they who can get the latter. We discover no error from beginning to end, save one naming plate 9 for 10, and in one small figure on a plate, both unimportant (both my son’s fault).³ Messrs. Smith and Co. have got up the book in a very liberal and handsome manner-good paper, type and cover. It is in fact a most creditable affair to all concerned-author included, for though I am not likely to be an impartial judge, I must say there is as much contained in the 200 pages as I have at any time met with. The critics may be in any humour they choose. I am satisfied, and they cannot much disturb or alter my opinion. I beg in my son’s name and in Mrs. R.’s and my own, to render you our warmest thanks for your kind assistance, which was of more value almost to my son than could easily be imagined, as the labour of much revision to him seems more

¹ See the letter in Appendix i., p. 275.

² “Revisiting the Hôtel de la Cloche at Dijon in later years, Mr. Ruskin showed me the room where he had ‘bitten’ the last plate in his wash-hand basin, as a careless makeshift for the regular etcher’s bath” (W. G. Collingwood’s Life of Ruskin, 1900, p. 111). “I finished my plate of the Tower of Giotto,” Ruskin elsewhere says, “for the Seven Lamps in the old inn at Sens, which Dickens has described in his wholly matchless way in the last chapter of Mrs. Lirriper’s Lodgings” (Proserpina, ii. ch. iv., “Giulietta”).

³ These mistakes, with a few others, were corrected in a slip of “Errata” in later copies of the book (see Bibliographical Note, p. li.).

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