APPENDIX 623

decorated mouldings, I used only such rude and confused lines as I had learned to imitate from Prout, and left their places blank in my sketches, to be filled up “out of my head” at home. But richness, the aspect of much work on the building, was essential to my pleasure. I hated Greek buildings, firstly because I had never seen a real one, but only the imitations of them in London; and partly in the real and constant love of labour and life which to this day makes me rejoice in a foreground of flowers and a forest of pines. Various association and some dawning sense of the structure of Gothic made me on the whole prefer it to Renaissance, but it mattered not early or late, northern or southern, the Gothic of Rouen or Milan was all one to me-and the Castle of Heidelberg as good as the Certosa of Pavia.

I was now thoroughly dextrous and quick with my pencil in getting as much as I wanted of a building or street in Prout’s manner-entirely master of perspective, and had great sense of position, and composition, in a subject. The crowd behind me in the street were always interested, and satisfied,¹-artists, however cognizant of the faults, were usually astonished by my decision and rapidity, and a certain number of the drawings made on the spot at this period are good enough to be extremely useful as copies for the younger drawing pupils at Oxford.² My enjoyment in this ready power was very great, my industry indefatigable, and the pride and hope with which I beheld the arrival, the week before we started, of my square-folio sketch book of smooth grey paper, with long ruler and square fitted into its purple binding-unspeakable.

1837

[This passage in the MS. follows i. § 241 of the text (p. 216).]

I have already said³ that the pencil drawings from nature of the year 1835 were really meritorious and of value. But their technical virtue was an acicular precision of sharp black line ending with a dot which, now at eighteen, I began to feel were inconsistent with repose and consistency of flow in contour, and very slowly began to quit my bars and dots, and draw curves where they were necessary, with a gentler and greyer line.

The drawings of Bolton Choir, Brougham Castle, Newark Castle, and Lichfield Cathedral, executed this year [1837], show the style of this transitional period at its best, those of Roslyn Chapel, Stirling gate and church,- given away I believe,-and Edinburgh in the following one, and of St. Michael’s Mount in 1839,⁴ are all inferior, the bad method becoming more and more mannered, and my Oxford work-and foolish poetry,-with general disorganization of temper, taking all healthy spirit, cheerfulness, and sense out of the already mannered and narrow design. In this state of things,

¹ [See above, ii. § 123 (p. 356).]

² [The reference may be to such drawings of 1840-1841 as Nos. 64, 65, and 88 in the Reference Series: Vol. XXI. pp. 31, 34.]

³ [See above; and p. 214.]

⁴ [“Bolton” was shown in 1878: see Vol. XIII. p. 506 (24 c); “Newark” also, there dated 1838 (24 d); and “Lichfield” (24 b). “Roslyn Chapel” is in Mr. Wedderburn’s collection. The two of “Stirling” were shown in 1878 (24 h and i). “St. Michael’s Mount” was shown at the Ruskin Exhibition at Coniston in 1900.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]