I

LETTERS ON “THE SEVEN LAMPS

OF ARCHITECTURE”

1. TO W. H. HARRISON¹

FOLKESTONE, Saturday [April 18, 1849].

DEAR MR. HARRISON,-I now return you the whole of the sheets-carefully compared in every part: but there are one or two matters which will I am sorry to say cause you more trouble than I had the slightest intention-elastic as my conscience is-of inflicting upon you. I shall not again so miscalculate my powers of revision as to leave all-at the last-upon my kind friend’s shoulders, as I have done now, though after so often feeling the advantage of your assistance in the detection of errors, I feel I shall hardly be able to trust anything to the press that has not passed through your hands.

To begin at the beginning, I have added a footnote to the Preface and titles for list of Plates. You will find the places of the Plates which I could not fix marked on the slips.

2ndly, I enclose a proof of a new page, 51, of which I tried to cancel the first copy. Would you kindly compare p. 52 with the last revise thereof and make it correspond. I have looked over the new p. 51; it is all right.

3rd. In slips E. and G.² note that braccias should be braccia, the Italian plural, unless there is some difference in the words for the arm and the measure; and I have altered Sixths into Palmi, only I am not quite sure whether the four-inch measure is the Palmo-perhaps Mr. Williams can tell you this at once, or furnish you with some book of Italian measures. The inches ought also-if there is any difference between Italian and English inches-to be specified as Italian. Please notice this particularly-arranging the names above the measures as you and Mr. Williams think best, remembering that there go six of the [Palmi?] to the 24-inch braccio.

4th. Please don’t put Note 1, Note 2, but only 1 and 2, etc. Then, Note 6³

¹ [For W. H. Harrison, see Vol. I. p. xlviii.; and in this volume, p. xxvii. above. The present letter is here given as an example of many of the kind, referring to the various books, and editions of books, which Harrison saw through the press for Ruskin. The “Mr. Williams” referred to was for many years employed as a literary assistant in the firm of Smith, Elder & Co. It was to him that Charlotte Brontë addressed the letter cited at Vol. IV. p. xxxix., and above, p. xxxvi.]

² [See ch. v. § 9, p. 201.]

³ [Note * on p. 66.]

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[Version 0.04: March 2008]