The original text reads:
Accuse me not
Of arrogance, unknown Wanderer as I am,
If, having walked with Nature threescore years,
And offered, far as frailty would allow,
My heart a daily sacrifice to Truth,
I now affirm of Nature and of Truth,
Whom I have served, that their DIVINITY
Revolts, offended at the ways of men
Swayed by such motives, to such ends employed;
Philosophers, who, though the human soul
Be of a thousand faculties composed,
And twice ten thousand interests, do yet prize
This soul, and the transcendent universe,
No more than as a mirror that reflects
To proud Self-love her own intelligence;
That one, poor, finite object, in the abyss
Of infinite Being, twinkling restlessly!
( Wordsworth, Poetical Works, V, p. 140)
This quotation from The Excursion, in Ruskin 's slightly abbreviated form, appears on the title page of each of the five volumes of Modern Painters.
Ruskin had begun Modern Painters specifically as an attack on art critics who labelled Turner 's paintings as 'untrue' to nature; apparently Ruskin felt that he needed to appropriate Wordsworth 's self-defence as a poet to justify his own credentials as a reliable guide to what was 'true' in nature and in art.