APPENDIX 631

“Your third volume ought not to be hindered a moment, and shame is often felt for this intrusion. You are now the standard-bearer of art, and lead a host. Yet, a few words ‘in the person of the intangible’ will be interesting, as Rouen is a city of which you can write as one having authority. It is after your own heart, and although much loved by myself, it is best appreciated by you. Would I could exchange twenty old years for twenty new ones, and, with the eyes you have opened, I would be a real ‘architectural draughtsman,’ without resigning my enthusiasm for the picturesque.

“Formerly, (although I never drew what I did not see,) my sketches were but approaching resemblances, mere indications of grace and beauty. At the eleventh hour I feel that the breadth I then wished to express would have been equally broad, had they possessed a clearer expression of ornamented parts.

“You also kindly add, ‘and about your works,’ in which you must have discovered many faults, and I could point out many more. Happily, I do not thirst for the plaudits of the multitude, nor, in asking for criticism, mean approbation. Your criticism is like the knife of a skillful surgeon, so that, as I am in safe hands, you may cut away without hearing a moan. Leave page 111 as it is,¹ and I never shall be unhappy.

“Why is it that few, besides your honour and your humble servant, have made pilgrimages to the shrines of St. Rouen, St. Nuremberg, St. Venice, St. Rome, and many others? Oh that I could, in the garb of penitence, atone for many transgressions, and before those precious relics make fervent vows to sin no more. Alas! at sixty-five I fear it is now too late.

“Nothing has been said to Mr. Hall,² and nothing shall be said.

“You lost very little at the first meeting of the ‘Graphic.’³

“Pray forgive my troubling you with so long a letter; shall I say, because it is Christmas Day evening, I make merry with my friends? The fatted turkey has been slain, and our table has humbly honoured the festive season, yet without music and dancing.

“Our windows are closed for the death of a dear brother’s wife, released from long suffering.”

¹ [That is, of vol. i. of Modern Painters, in which Ruskin, while praising Prout, referred to his “manifold faults”: see Vol. III. p. 217.]

² [The editor of the Art Journal. Ruskin, it seems, had promised Prout to write the appreciation above referred to.]

³ [A drawing society of the time.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]