INTRODUCTION lxvii

The third of the lectures-on General Principles of Colour-needs no introduction; it contains doctrines with which we are already familiar in Ruskin’s earlier works, and which we meet again in the third volume of Modern Painters. The first two lectures, which are mainly concerned with the art of Illumination, introduce us to a new interest which first, during the years now under consideration, entered into Ruskin’s artistic ken. He has described in his autobiography “the new worlds” which were opened to him in 1850 or 1851, when he “chanced at a bookseller’s in a back alley on a little fourteenth-century Hours of the Virgin.”¹ The collection and study of illuminated manuscripts henceforth became one of the greatest of his pleasures and the most constant of his pursuits. His work at Venice in 1851-1852, and then his absorption in completing The Stones, left him little time for his new hobby; but in 1853, when the pressure of that book was removed, the acquisition and study of illuminated manuscripts became a principal pre-occupation, filling many pages of his diaries, and often figuring in his letters. Wherever he went he used any opportunities that offered to look at treasures of this kind. He notes in his diaries the points of a MS. Bible in the Library at Edinburgh,² and of a Psalter at Glasgow. He went also, as already briefly mentioned (above, p. xxxvi.), to Hamilton, at the tenth Duke’s invitation, to study the famous collection there. His first glimpse seems to have been disappointing:-

“HAMILTON, Thursday evening [December 22, 1853].-After some meditation I have determined not to stay in Glasgow, which is an awful place, but to go on Saturday to Durham. ... The seeing the Cathedral there has long been an object with me; besides that I may perhaps see St. Cuthbert’s prayer-book.

“I have been all the evening looking over the MSS. with the Duke and another missal admirer, Mr. Sneed, ... nobody but the Duke and Duchess and we two bibliomanists at dinner. House much too stately for my mind, though perfectly warm and comfortable, but five servants waiting on four people are a nuisance.

“The MSS. are of course magnificent, but I would not give my £180 one for any one I have yet seen. There is not one of the time, and out of some thirty books I have examined, there are only three that would have been great temptations to me, even if I had seen them in a bookseller’s shop. He seems to take good care of them, which rejoices me. I am promised great things for to-morrow morning.”

¹ Præterita, iii. ch. i. §§ 18, 19.

² See also some passages in the Lectures on Architecture and Painting, §§ 121 n., 122, 123 n.

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