Ruskin's defensiveness in the Preface to the first edition of Modern Painters I, published in the first week of May 1843, set the pattern for what followed. Ruskin 's revision of Modern Painters I and his attempts to prevent further publication of Modern Painters I reflect a deepening embarrassment concerning this product of his early Evangelicalism and his 'too literally sapling and stripling mind' ( Works, 4.344-45). Although the critical reception of Modern Painters I was generally favourable and sometimes rapturous, Ruskin was to agree with some of the Revd Henry Liddell's strictures as early as 12 October 1844, confessing in a letter that he thought that a 'pamphleteering manner' was 'ingrained throughout' the work:
There is a nasty, snappish, impatient, half-familiar, half-claptrap web of young-mannishness everywhere. This was, perhaps, to be expected from the haste in which I wrote. ( Works, 3.668)
By this time his mind was turning to the more elevated and measured Modern Painters II. Nevertheless, this is strikingly harsh self-criticism from the author of a first volume which had been praised to the skies by some of the leading writers and critics of the day for its extraordinarily lyrical prose (See Reviews of Modern Painters I, May 1843-March 1846). Ruskin again defended himself by claiming that the work had been written in haste (see long gestation period of Modern Painters I and Ruskin and religion).