INTRODUCTION xli

pleased the author, as will be seen from the letters¹ he sent on the subject to Patmore:²-

DEAR PATMORE,-Best thanks for your most kind review-rather too much influence of friendship in it, I fear, but I think it will do you credit also-in several ways: the summary you have given of the historical views in the first chapter is magnificent, I should like to substitute it in the book itself.

I am surprised at your not having noticed one thing, of which I am very conceited, and which I should have thought would have interested you, the account of the nature of the Cusp.³ Whether it be stated for the first time, I know not-but I know I found it out for myself-and lived “pavoneggiando” for a month afterwards.

Kind regards to Mrs. Patmore,

Ever faithfully and gratefully yours,

J. RUSKIN.

I will show fight-entre nous, against your Early English capitals, but I daresay your objection on p. 484 is just; I hope it is so. I like your pp. 488 and 489 exceedingly.⁴

MY DEAR PATMORE,-Many thanks for your kind note, just received. I was on the point of writing to you to ask if your review editors gave you a copy of the book-they ought, unquestionably-

¹ Previously published by Basil Champneys, ibid., pp. 286-287.

² The reviewer’s point, as suggested by the title of his article, was that many details, for which other explanations have been given, should be classed as “means of architectural expression”; that much decoration is neither arbitrary ornament (as the Renaissance school treated it) nor the ultimate expression (as Ruskin often suggests) of a merely constructive perfection.

³ See below, p. 167.

⁴ The “summary” of the first chapter is in the British Quarterly Review, pp. 478-480. The defence of Early English capitals against Ruskin’s strictures (ch. ix. § 9, 10) is in the Edinburgh (p. 394). The “objection on p. 484” is to Ruskin’s proposition that our delight in noble architecture arises largely from conscious reference to the intelligence and imagination of the architect (see below, p. 64). The Reviewer says that this is not his own experience, and continues: “We are persuaded that such reference, had it existed, must have materially lessened the emotion. With respect to Greek architecture, we fully allow that human mind, exquisitely balanced in beauty and power, is everywhere present to our consciousness. Its result upon our feelings, whatever may have been the intent of the builder, is man preaching himself; while the result of Gothic architecture, though Mr. Ruskin denies altogether that the Gothic architects were ‘heavenly-minded,’ is near giving proclamation to ‘the glory of God.’” On pp. 488-9, Patmore denounces “the trick” of the architectural “craft” in palming off dull and ugly buildings on the ground that their patrons if they were learned would perceive their beauties, and reinforces Ruskin’s appeal to people to use their instinctive judgment (see below, p. 62). He introduces, too, a reference to the Pre-Raphaelites. Once let sincerity of judgment be allowed its way, and “the tea-board designs of certain popular artists, in an annual exhibition, will no longer form the foci of hypocritical crowds of admirers, while the faithful labours of a Holman Hunt, or of a Millais, are passed with sneers or laughter, which are insults to nature rather than to these her truest reporters.”

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