PREFACE

THE readers of Præterita must by this time have seen that the limits of its design do not allow the insertion of any but cardinal correspondence. They will, of course, also know that during a life like mine, I must have received many letters of general interest, while those of my best-regarded friends are often much more valuable than my own sayings. Of these I will choose what I think should not be lost, which, with a few excerpts of books referred to, I can arrange at odd times for the illustration of Præterita, while yet the subscribers to that work need not buy the supplemental one unless they like. But, for the convenience of those who wish to have both, their form and type will be the same.

The letters will not be arranged chronologically, but as they happen, at any time, to bear on the incidents related in the main text. Thus I begin with some of comparatively recent date, from my very dear friend Robert Leslie, George Leslie’s brother, of extreme importance in illustration of points in the character of Turner to which I have myself too slightly referred. The pretty scene first related in them, however, took place before I had heard Turner’s name. The too brief notes of autobiography left by the quietly skilful and modest painter, the “father who was staying at Lord Egremont’s,” C. R. Leslie, contain the truest and best-written sketches of the leading men of his time that, so far as I know, exist in domestic literature.

J. RUSKIN.

BRANTWOOD, 26th June, 1886.

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[Version 0.04: March 2008]