458 APPENDIX, 13

[Appendices 13, 14, and 15 are added in this Edition.]

APPENDIX, 13

LETTERS ON “THE STONES OF VENICE”¹

From The Pall Mall Gazette, March 16, 1872.

MR. RUSKIN’S INFLUENCE: A DEFENCE

To the Editor of “The Pall Mall Gazette”

SIR,-I receive many letters just now requesting me to take notice of the new theory respecting Turner’s work put forward by Dr. Liebreich in his recent lecture at the Royal Institution.² Will you permit me to observe in your columns, once for all, that I have no time for the contradiction of the various foolish opinions and assertions which from time to time are put forward respecting Turner or his pictures? All that is necessary for any person generally interested in the arts to know about Turner was clearly stated in Modern Painters twenty years ago, and I do not mean to state it again, nor to contradict any contradictions of it. Dr. Liebreich is an ingenious and zealous scientific person. The public may derive much benefit from consulting him on the subject of spectacles-not on that of art.

As I am under the necessity of writing to you at any rate, may I say further that I wish your critic of Mr. Eastlake’s book³ on the Gothic revival

¹ [The first part of the first letter here given deals with another subject, but the rest of it and the whole of the second letter are closely connected with a topic discussed in the Introduction (above, p. lvi.); they are for this reason printed in this place. The letters were reprinted in Arrows of the Chace, 1880, vol. i. pp. 229-233. The headings here given are taken from that book. In The Pall Mall Gazette they were “Mr. Ruskin’s Criticism” and “The Influence of Mr. Ruskin’s Criticism.”]

² [On Friday, March 8, 1872, entitled “Turner and Mulready-On the Effect of certain Faults of Vision on Painting, with especial reference to their Works.” The argument of the lecturer, and distinguished oculist, was that the change of style in the pictures of Turner was due to a change in his eyes which developed itself during the last twenty years of his life. (See Proceedings of the Royal Institution, 1872, vol. vi. p. 450.)]

³ [See above, p. liv. The Pall Mall reviewer was “disposed to say that Mr. Ruskin’s direct and immediate influences had almost always been in the wrong; and his more indirect influences as often in the right.” It is upon these words that Ruskin comments here, and to this comment the critic replied in a letter which appeared in The Pall Mall Gazette of the 20th inst. The main portion of his reply was as follows: “The direct influences, then, which I had principally in my mind were those which had resulted in a preference for Venetian over English Gothic, in the underrating of expressional character in architecture, and the overrating of sculptured ornament, especially of a naturalistic and imitative character, and more generally in an exclusiveness which limited the due influence of some, as I think, noble styles of architecture. By the indirect influences I meant the habit of looking at questions of architectural art in the light of imaginative ideas; the recognition of the vital importance of such questions even in their least important details; and generally an enthusiasm and activity which could have resulted from no less a force than Mr. Ruskin’s wonderously suggestive genius.” To this explanation Ruskin replied

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