INTRODUCTION xxxvii

‘This is a masked battery of seven pieces, which blaze away to the total extinction of the small architectural lights we may boast of, etc., etc.’” (August 5): “I have, at a shameful charge of ten francs, got August magazine and Dickens, quite a prohibition for parcels from England. In British Quarterly,¹ under Æsthetics of Gothic architecture, they take four works, you first ... As a critic they almost rank you with Goethe and Coleridge, and in style with Jeremy Taylor.”²

Reference to the periodicals of the time shows that Miss Tweddale did not exaggerate in saying that The Seven Lamps of Architecture “made a great sensation” in literary circles. Reviews in the daily and weekly press were prompt and numerous, and for the most part long and complimentary.³ Thus the Atlas (June 23, 1849) pronounced the book to be

“a noble and splendid production. Faith, truthfulness and thought are stamped on every line of it. When we condemn, we are forced to admire; and when we consider the entire originality of the treatment of the subject we are tempted to pronounce this one of the most striking productions of the age, as well as what it unquestionably is, the most admirable specimen of artistic poetry.”

John Bull (May 26) was another whole-hearted admirer. After referring to the now acknowledged authorship of Modern Painters, and to the position attained by the first two volumes of that work, the reviewer continued:-

“The knowledge of the works of nature, and of the efforts of art, which he brought to bear upon the subject, and the eloquence with which he unfolded his views and enforced his convictions, in that original and powerful work, have done more to elevate the art of painting in the estimation of thoughtful minds, and to impress artists with a sense of the dignity and responsibility of their vocation, when pursued in a right spirit, than all the academy lectures that were ever delivered, or the technical treatises that ever were compiled. In his new work on ‘the first of the arts,’ the Oxford Graduate ... treats of architecture in a like spirit, and in a broader, freer, and, if anything, a nobler and more impressive manner; for the present work being free from

¹ In the number for August 1849, vol. xix. pp. 46-75. The other books noticed in the same article were: An Analysis of Gothic Architecture, by Raphael and J. Arthur Brandon, 2 vols., 1847; An Attempt to Discriminate the Styles of Architecture in England, by Thomas Rickman, 5th ed., 1848; and The Symbolism of Churches and Church Ornament ... by Rev. J. M. Neale and Rev. B. Webb: Oxford.

² These extracts are reprinted from W. G. Collingwood’s Life, 1900, pp. 112-113. With the last passage cited by J. J. Ruskin, cf. Vol. II. p. 531 (account of MS. Book, No. iv.), where there should be a comma after “Taylor.”

³ In addition to the papers cited in the text, reviews appeared in the Builder (May 19), Morning Herald (May 28), Critic (June 1 and 15), Weekly Chronicle (June 3), Morning Post (June 8), Examiner (June 15), Globe (June 14), Inquirer (July 14), Architect and Building Operative (August 9 and 23).

[Version 0.04: March 2008]