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to him by Mr. Griffith,¹ at Norwood dinner, June 22nd, 1840. The diary says:-

“Introduced to-day to the man who beyond all doubt is the greatest of the age; greatest in every faculty of the imagination, in every branch of scenic* knowledge; at once the painter and poet of the day, J. M. W. Turner. Everybody had described him to me as coarse, boorish, unintellectual, vulgar. This I knew to be impossible. I found in him a somewhat eccentric, keen-mannered, matter-of-fact, English-minded-gentleman: good-natured evidently, bad-tempered evidently, hating humbug of all sorts, shrewd, perhaps a little selfish, highly intellectual, the powers of the mind not brought out with any delight in their manifestation, or intention of display, but flashing out occasionally in a word or a look.”

Pretty close, that, and full, to be seen at a first glimpse, and set down the same evening.²

67. Curiously, the drawing of Kenilworth was one of those that came out of Mr. Griffith’s folio after dinner; and I believe I must have talked some folly about it, as being “a leading one of the England series”; which would displease Turner greatly. There were few things he hated

* Meaning, I suppose, knowledge of what could rightly be represented or composed as a scene.

¹ [For whom, see above, p. 257.]

² [According to Dean Kitchin (who had the story from Bishop Creighton), Ruskin had previously met Turner at Oxford. The “story was told me,” wrote Creighton, “by old Ryman the printseller. He told me that Ruskin as an undergraduate used to frequent his shop, and sometimes would draw in his parlour from the prints. One day, while he was so engaged, Turner came into the shop on business. Ryman told him there was a young man drawing, and took him into the parlour. He looked over Ruskin’s shoulder, and said, ‘The young man draws very nicely.’ That was the first meeting of the two” (St. George, vol. iv., 1901, p. 29). Mr. Holman Hunt tells the same story, adding that “thus began the personal friendship between the two” (Pre-Raphaelitism and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, 1905, vol. i. p. 323). One would like to accept the tale; but it seems incredible that Ruskin should not have remembered and recorded the incident, if it had really happened.]

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