lxx INTRODUCTION

most valuable manuscripts not merely in pencil, but in ink. He cut them to pieces, re-arranged them to his own desire, and of the St. Louis Psalter he dispersed many of the pages. Some were given to his school at Oxford; others found their way to the Bodleian Library; and others were given to his friend, Professor Norton. Some entries in his diary may well cause “a mere collector” to despair:-“Dec. 30, 1853.-Cut out some leaves from large missal.” “Jan. 1, Sunday.-Put two pages of missal in frames.” “Jan. 3-Cut missal up in evening; hard work.” Dean Kitchin relates an anecdote in this connexion: “One day at Brantwood, I was looking through these lovely specimens of monastic skill, and finding the St. Louis missal in complete disorder, I turned to Mr. Ruskin, who was sitting in his wonted chair in his library, and said, ‘This MS. is in an awful state; could you not do something to get the pages right again?’ and he replied, with a sad smile, ‘Oh yes; these old books have in them an evil spirit, which is always throwing them into disorder’-as if it were through envy against anything so beautiful: the fact was that he had played the ‘evil spirit’ with them himself.”¹ But his ripping up of such treasures was at any rate done, as Mr. Collingwood observes,² “not for wanton mischief, or in vulgar carelessness, but to show to his classes at lectures,” or to give to friends of that which he valued most. Other valuables he treated in the same way, and sometimes, it must be admitted, with less praiseworthy reason. If a book would not fit a particular shelf, he had no compunction in sending for a tool and chopping not the shelf, but the book. Several of the books in his library received this summary execution.

The Lectures on Colour and Illumination are of interest in Ruskin’s biography from another point of view than that of illustrating one of his favourite studies. They were among the first-fruits of the resolution recorded in the letter given above to spend himself in some measure on work, done otherwise than by the pen, for the pleasure and instruction of others. The Working Men’s College was one sphere of such work at this time, as we shall see presently under the next head of this Introduction; the Architectural Museum, where these lectures were delivered, was another. The foundation of this Museum in 1851 has been already briefly noted. A principal aim of the institution was to render possible the training of workmen in the arts of their

¹ Ruskin in Oxford and Other Studies, 1904, p. 39 n. The St. Louis Psalter has now passed into the collection of Mr. Henry Yates Thompson. Mrs. Arthur Severn succeeded in replacing all the pages in their proper places.

² Ruskin Relics, 1903, p. 184.

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