xl INTRODUCTION

imply-it will not be fit to be published.¹ If the man who wrote that could enter into my mind, and see the sort of grasp that those ten years living among stones has given to it! I think they will be a little taken aback at last when they see the way that the short sentences which they call inconsiderate are fallen back upon again and again in this new volume, and form foundation for all manner of unexpected truth,-and when they begin to feel how far I was looking beyond them all, when I wrote them.

The reviewer whose “impertinence” thus angered Ruskin was his friend Coventry Patmore.² The fact was disclosed by Patmore in a letter to Ruskin’s father, explaining that certain passages had been subjected to editorial alteration in a sense unfriendly to Ruskin.³ But Patmore had written another review of the volume in the British Quarterly⁴ praising it as “his most valuable performance,” and this

¹ Edinburgh Review, October 1851, a review of The Seven Lamps and Stones of Venice, vol. i., entitled, “Sources of Expression in Architecture,” vol. 94, pp. 365-403. The particular passage referred to by Ruskin is as follows: “An attentive perusal of ‘The Foundations’ has served to convince us that Mr. Ruskin’s ideas upon this subject require considerable modification; and we venture to hope that the forthcoming part of the work, unless it is already in an advanced stage of preparation, may have its utility increased by the adoption into its system of certain widely practised, but hitherto imperfectly examined architectural principles, which shall be stated, and briefly explained, in the course of the following pages.”

² Ruskin in his early days had sat under Dr. Andrews (see Præterita, i. ch. iv.), whose daughter was Patmore’s first wife. Several letters from Ruskin to Patmore, in addition to those here given, have been printed in Mr. Basil Champney’s Memoirs and Correspondence of Coventry Patmore, 1900; they will be found in a later volume of this edition.

³ This appears from J. J. Ruskin’s reply to Patmore:-

“DENMARK HILL, 15th Oct. 1851.-MY DEAR SIR,-I beg to thank you for your kind letter of 14th inst. I was not aware of the Article in the Edinburgh Review being yours, but I regarded it as a very able and kindly written Essay, and even passed unnoticed the passages you allude to. After such Reviews as Blackwood, one gets used to smaller rubs, and the Editor of the Edinb. would not be true to his place if he did not shake his Spear or Pepper Box over anything made too mild or bland for his taste. I deemed the notice so important from the acquaintance it manifested with the Subject, that I cut it out and sent it by post to my son at Venice, that the might see it before he was farther advanced in his second volume. He seldom entirely reads Critiques on his writings, unless he is told he can get some information from them. I recommended your essay to him as a very desirable one for him to consider well for his own sake. Blackwood’s is useless-merely smart, clever, spiteful and amusing; concocted for a purpose, it purposely mutilates and perverts. I send your Letters to my son, which I am sure he will be much gratified in perusing. I am, my dear sir, yours very truly, JOHN JAMES RUSKIN.”

“C. K. PATMORE, ESQ.”

This letter has been published in Basil Champneys’ Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 285.

⁴ May, 1851; vol. 51, pp. 476-496.

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