INTRODUCTION xlix

The lecture at Edinburgh followed in 1853. In the following year’s Academy Hunt exhibited one of his greatest works, “The Light of the World.” Ruskin had for some time been his friend, and had taken a lively interest in this picture, for which, during its inception, he had suggested the title of “The Watchman.”¹ On its completion Hunt had started on a journey to the East, and Ruskin came forward as interpreter of a work which, he felt, needed for its right understanding thought as deep and serious as had gone to its production.

In the letter to the Times, as first written, Ruskin had included also some commendatory notices of other pictures by C. R. Leslie, R.A., and J. W. Inchbold respectively. The letter, however, was not inserted; and Ruskin, supposing that its length was the objection, withdrew it and substituted a shorter one, as printed below (pp. 328-332), dealing with Hunt’s picture only.² In a further letter (pp. 333-335), published three weeks later, he discussed Hunt’s other picture of the year, “The Awakening Conscience.” And in later years, he returned to a general consideration of Hunt’s work, with particular reference to “The Triumph of the Innocents.”³

In considering Ruskin’s relations with the Pre-Raphaelites we must remember further that though he had not directly inspired them, yet their practice and their theories were in accord with his teaching, and were in some sort the outcome of a general tendency to which his writings had contributed. We have seen already how Holman Hunt, during his student days at the Academy, had come across the first volumes of Modern Painters, and “felt that it was written expressly for him” (Vol. III. p. xli.). In the spring of 1851 Ruskin was revising that volume for a fifth edition, and, as he read, he came upon a passage which he felt had been written, though he knew it not, expressly for the whole Pre-Raphaelite school. It was the famous passage-often quoted and oftener misquoted⁴-about the young artist “going to nature in all singleness of heart ... rejecting nothing, selecting nothing, and scorning nothing.” As he studied the works of the young Pre-Raphaelites, he saw that they had carried out this advice to the letter, and, for their reward, had been assailed with the most scurrilous abuse. He was, therefore, doubly called upon to defend them-for their sake and for his own. This work he set himself in the piece which follows the

¹ William Holman Hunt, by F. W. Farrar, Art Annual publication, p. 10.

² Ruskin stated these facts in the Supplement to Academy Notes, 1855.

³ The Art of England, Lecture i.

⁴ See Vol. III. p. 624 n.

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