xxxviii INTRODUCTION

The Stones of Venice marks in this matter the beginning of a transition to the style of Ruskin’s middle period.

In one or two other respects this volume may be noticed as significant of later studies and characteristics. Ruskin was perhaps neither fitted by genius nor equipped by his education for close historical research; but he was fond of taking bird’s-eye views. The sketch of Venetian history in the opening chapter of this volume is the first of many outlines of the kind, some of which he roughed out in his printed works, while others were only planned. The Notes on Frederick the Great at the end of The Crown of Wild Olive, Val D’Arno, The Bible of Amiens, the extensive scheme for the work (Our Fathers have Told Us) of which that was intended to be a part, and the sweeping, if somewhat loosely-knit, survey in The Pleasures of England will occur to his readers as examples. Ruskin, it has been well remarked, “thought in Encyclopædias, comprising Man and Nature in one library.”¹ Already in this volume of The Stones of Venice we see his thoughts and interests and literary activity branching out in all directions. The number of the Appendices (25), into many of which he threw his notes and thoughts on extraneous subjects, is significant. One sees his mood in a passage in the Preface. A day does not pass, he says, “without causing me to feel more bitterly the impossibility of carrying out to the extent which I should desire, the separate studies which general criticism continually forces me to undertake.” His friendship with Newton directed him towards Greek art (Appendix 21), and here we may see the beginning of the studies afterwards developed in Aratra Pentelici, The Queen of the Air, and various scattered lectures. His thoughts on Church questions, suggested by the connection between Romanism and Christian art, overflow into a separate pamphlet-The Construction of Sheepfolds; while into another Appendix (14) he flings a classification “of the mind and body of man in the sciences and arts.”

The first volume of The Stones of Venice sold, as we have said, very slowly. The Examples of Venetian Architecture moved more slowly still. The original price of this volume (Two Guineas) was against its popular sale; but the expense of both works, meanwhile, had been very heavy,² and Ruskin’s father-who was his son’s literary agent, and also had to meet any debts-permitted himself (as we may surmise

¹ Frederic Harrison’s John Ruskin, p. 158.

² Mr. William Rossetti states, on the authority of a conversation in 1866 with Howell (at one time Ruskin’s secretary), that The Stones of Venice cost its author £12,000 (Rossetti Papers, 1903, p. 195). If that figure be correct, it no doubt included the outlay upon The Examples of Venetian Architecture. Perhaps, too, it included the cost of Ruskin’s sojourns at Venice.

[Version 0.04: March 2008]