xlvi INTRODUCTION

said another, in taking leave of the completed work, “is a solemn book; the production of an earnest, religious, progressive, and informed mind. The author of this essay has condensed into it a poetic apprehension, the fruit of awe of God and delight in nature, a knowledge, love, and just estimate of art, a holding fast to fact and repudiation of hearsay, an historic breadth, and a fearless challenge of existing social problems, whose union we know not where to find paralleled.”¹ The volumes appeased old enemies and made new friends. “I was surprised,” wrote Ruskin to his father (August 1, 1853), “by the Athenaoeum, which I think is intended for a most favourable review; nay, I think it is their idea of eulogium. They clearly want to make peace, and the objections are so ridiculous that I believe the very idlest reader can see their quality.” That journal, which had hitherto been very hostile,² devoted a very long notice to the second volume of The Stones of Venice, parting with it as a “fanciful, eloquent, suggestive, prejudiced, and inconclusive book”-a book “to be cavilled at” but to be “read and quoted.”³ The Times, which had not hitherto noticed any of Ruskin’s books, and which indeed in those days allotted very little space to literature, now gave marked and unusual prominence to The Stones of Venice. Two long reviews were devoted to the second volume, and another of yet greater length to the third. It recognised in the author “a contemporary of Tennyson and Turner, and one of the consolations of an age which, unheroic in action and perplexed in faith, has fed its sentiment on the poetical aspects of nature and of history.”⁴ Ruskin was much pleased with the prominence given to his book in the leading journal, though on particular points many objections were taken to his views. “I am much pleased,” he writes to his father (October 2), “with critique in Times. It is by a man who has really read the book, and thought over it-incomparably the best critique I ever had.”

What, we may now pass to consider, was Ruskin’s purpose in the Venetian work which had detained his time and thoughts for three years, to the interruption of Modern Painters? What were its leading ideas? and what its influence on the art and thought of the time? Ruskin

¹ Spectator, October 8, 1853. “One of the best and most intelligent critiques I have had,” writes Ruskin to his father (Oct. 21). This was a review of vol. iii.; vol. ii. had been noticed on July 23.

² See Vol. III. p. xlii.; Vol. IV. p. xlii.; Vol. VIII. p. xxxix.

³ No. 1343, pp. 879-881, July 23, 1853. The review of the third volume (No. 1356, pp. 1249-1250, October 22) was less friendly, but the notices of Tintoret’s pictures were highly praised.

⁴ The reviews in the Times appeared on September 24, October 1, and November 12. The passage quoted above is from the second notice.

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