IV. ST. MARK’S 87

and around the other, the Apostles; Christ the centre of both: and upon the walls, again and again repeated, the gaunt figure of the Baptist, in every circumstance of his life and death; and the streams of the Jordan running down between their cloven rocks; the axe laid to the root of a fruitless tree that springs up on their shore. “Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit shall be hewn down, and cast into the fire.”¹ Yes, verily: to be baptized with fire,

upon a great deal that I had never read, and more that I had never noticed or understood; but I am most struck with his dextrous use of language-he is the very master of Verbiage in its best sense, just as Paul Veronese is a master of costume. It is true that dress does not make a man, neither do words make a thought; but as Veronese and Tintoret bring highest dignity out of, or rather put it into, furs, tissues and brocades, so Milton puts a play of colour into his wordy tissue which is as majestic as most men’s ideas. For instance, in order to exalt the idea of the dignity of Satan, he exhausts the terms of monarchy. First

‘The uplifted spear

Of their great Sultan waving to direct.’

Then presently

‘Who first, who last...

At their great Emperor’s call.’

Then presently

‘Thus far these beyond...

Their dread Commander. He above the rest.’

Then again

‘In order came the grand Infernal Peers,

’Midst came their mighty Paramount.’

And just before

‘Thus saying, rose

The Monarch, and prevented all reply’

-while ‘Prince’ and ‘Archangel’ are used in general. All this is nothing more than magnificent state of words; but it is very grand of its kind. There needs an essay on noble and ignoble verbiage; there is exactly the difference between them that there is between. Titian’s velvet or Vandyck’s point lace, and Chalon’s. What a delicious sound of splintering of lances there is in the single line

‘Jousted in Aspramount or Montalban,’

dying away into pensiveness as he goes on,

‘When Charlemain with all his peerage fell

By Fontarabia.’

Tennyson is a great master in this kind of verbiage, also, but more finedrawn and affected. I must manage to put a little more of it into the pages enclosed, or they will hardly go down.”

The references are to Paradise Lost, i. 348, 378, 587; ii. 508, 467; i. 582, 586. See note on p. 112, below, for a further quotation from Milton; and for another reference to that poet’s magnificent verbiage, see below, p. 430; for Ruskin’s numerous studies of Milton, see General Index. John James Chalon (1778-1854), R. A., published Sketches from Parisian Manners, which contained many studies of costume.]

¹ [Matthew iii. 10.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]