INTRODUCTION xxxv

“November 28.-I find that as to printing any of the volume till it is finished, it will be impossible, for almost everything I read gives me some little notes to add, and there are perpetual gaps left which cannot be filled up till the book nears the close. So I must just send you a detached bit here and there as it comes into form. ... I enjoy my life in Venice exceedingly, now that I am not working hard; but the sad little that I do every day vexes me sometimes. Still, I believe it on the whole to be more profitable, and that I shall think and write better by just working as I find it pleasant, and resting thoroughly each day, mixing other subjects with my architecture.”

Among these other subjects was a study of the ways and forms of Venetian fish:-

“October 8.-I have very pleasant recreation, refreshing after my stoney work, in studying the fish or rather aquatic inhabitants of the lagoons, of anomalous and indescribable characters, represented mainly by the cuttlefish, with whom I have a species of sympathy on account of his pen and ink; and the sea-horse,¹ whom I like much better than a land horse, chiefly because having no legs, there is no chance of his coming down on his knees. It is a pity he is so small, for he is very beautiful in the water, with his crest erect and a fin on his back, invisible in the dried specimens, with which he propels himself like a screw steamer, revolving it with a velocity like the whirr of an insect’s wing. There are also little green long-nosed beasts of the same family, which I like for being six-sided, like a quartz crystal; and besides, we are great friends with the crabs under the windows, whom I believe to be fellows of infinite jest, as well as ingenuity. In fact they back out of any awkward position with a dexterity which her Majesty’s ministers might envy. A crab on shore can only be considered a good fellow at a pinch; but a crab in the water is a very different sort of person. I had no idea of their rapidity of motion.

“The book is going on very nicely, and I think will be very interesting.

“November 9.-... The fish appear quite infinite in variety, but the most beautiful of them are the nondescripts-things like the sea-horses, neither fish nor flesh, and the cuttlefish. I think the cuttlefish was intended to be a lesson to painters; first, to teach them that the best of all colours were, as Tintoret said, black and white,² or rather brown and white; and secondly, to show them what lovely colours might be put into grey: I never saw anything except an opal so beautiful as the living cuttlefish.”

¹ See the engraving in Vol. IV., opposite p. 154.

² Compare Modern Painters, vol. iii. ch. xvi. § 42.

[Version 0.04: March 2008]