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LETTERS INTENDED FOR “DILECTA”
FROM J. C. LOUDON (1837) TO J. J. RUSKIN1
“(November 30, 1837.)-My wife and myself unite in thanking you for your kindly sending F. O. 1838, and I beg you will also thank your son. Both my wife and myself had recognised ‘Christ Church, Oxford’ in the Athenæum long before we received your letter. It and the other poems are exquisitely beautiful; but not less so in my opinion is an article by your son on the Poetry of Architecture in the December number of the Architectural Magazine, of which number I send you a copy. Your son is certainly the greatest natural genius that ever it has been my fortune to become acquainted with; and I cannot but feel proud to think that, at some future period when both you and I are under the turf, it will be stated in the literary history of your son’s life that the first article of his which was published was in Loudon’s Magazine of Natural History.”
FROM SAMUEL PROUT TO RUSKIN (1848)
“5, DE CRESPIGNY TERRACE, Monday Night.
“MY DEAR SIR,-Please to accept my best thanks for your last kind letter. Such assurances of friendship give me real happiness, and make me feel ambitious of preserving it. I ought to have sooner acknowledged the favour, but have been sadly hindered.
“I was in town on Friday last, to give a promised vote, when the cold bitter N. E. wind harassed my weak lungs, and I have had to bear up under much suffering. But this has, in one form or another, been the tale of past years, from my youth.
“Many persons can talk of health through life-others for many months together; my share has always been measured by days, sometimes only by hours. But, by God’s blessing, I have been favoured with assistance to persevere in living hope, and with a lively temperament.
“Pray do not suffer this kindness of writing for me to intrude on your valuable time; the MS., I believe, will not be required before the end of January.2
1 [Part of this letter has already been printed in Vol. I. p. xxxvii.]
2 [The MS. of Ruskin’s paper on Prout which appeared in the Art Journal of March 1849: see Vol. XII. p. 305.]
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[Version 0.04: March 2008]
