INTRODUCTION xxv

other buildings,¹ speedily threw him back on his own resources; he must take nothing, he perceived, for granted or at second-hand. During this winter of 1849-1850, therefore, and similarly two years later, he devoted himself to close study of all the remaining edifices of the city. The “Venetian Index” (Vol. XI.) covers a great deal of ground, and the book itself bears emphatic evidence to the minuteness of his study; but the results that he garnered for publication, the conclusions at which he ultimately arrived, convey but a faint idea of his preparatory studies. Elsewhere referring to The Stones of Venice and his work upon the spot, he says,² “six hundred quarto pages of notes for it, fairly and closely written, now useless. Drawings as many-of a sort; useless too.” This is an under-estimate, and it may be interesting to give an account, from an inspection of the materials still extant, of his method of work.

The greater part of each day, so long as light availed, seems to have been spent out of doors, in measuring and examining the buildings, or in making drawings. He carried with him little square note-books, of a size easily pocketable, in which he entered measurements, contours of mouldings, and the like, with occasionally slight notes of colour. A large number of these books, evidently those in which he made his first notes for The Stones of Venice, are preserved at Brantwood. In the evening Ruskin entered up his memoranda and impressions in larger note-books. These are the “quarto pages” mentioned above, and are referred to in this edition as “the diary.” In them, all important measurements were entered; distinctive or remarkable features of each building examined during the day were fully noted; and suggestions or impressions were written out. He avoided foregone conclusions. He often notes such and such an observation as provisional, requiring further examination or subsequent comparison with other buildings.³ As the work progressed, cross-references were supplied, and at the end, each volume of the Venetian diary was fully indexed. Ruskin, when he came to write the ultimate treatise, spoke by the book.⁴

These written materials represent, however, but half of his preliminary

¹ See Preface below, p. 3.

² Præterita, iii. ch. i. § 10

³ For an instance of “a conclusion” altered on further study, see below, p. 292.

⁴ A passage in T. A. Trollope’s Autobiography gives the evidence of one who followed in Ruskin’s footsteps: “I spent several mornings in carefully hunting out all the specimens of Byzantine architecture which Ruskin registers as still existing in Venice, and can testify to the absolute exactitude of his topographical and architectural statements. I carefully examined also the examples which he cites as indications of subtle design on the part of the old architects in cases where abnormality and carelessness might be suspected. His facts and measurements I found invariably correct, but am disposed to think that he lets his hobby somewhat run away with him in the imputation of far-fetched and subtle design” (What I Remember, vol. iii. p. 217).

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