XI. CHRIST CHURCH CHOIR 203

resident calamity far greater than I knew, whose malefic influence I recognize in memory only.

Finally, the Dean himself, though venerable to me, from the first, in his evident honesty, self-respect, and real power of a rough kind, was yet in his general aspect too much like the sign of the Red Pig which I afterwards saw set up in pudding raisins, with black currants for eyes, by an imaginative grocer in Chartres fair; and in the total bodily and ghostly presence of him was to me only a rotundly progressive terror, or sternly enthroned and niched Anathema.

There was one tutor, however, out of my sphere, who reached my ideal, but disappointed my hope, then,-as perhaps his own, since;-a man sorrowfully under the dominion of the Greek anagkh-the present Dean.¹ He was, and is, one of the rarest types of nobly-presenced

¹ [Dean Liddell, on reading this chapter of Præterita, wrote to Ruskin as follows:-

“Your ‘Christ Church Choir’ I have read with much interest. It calls back old times and revives the memory of many things.... As for myself, I have to thank you for your kindly expressions. Kindly I call them, though I am sensible that, under the kindliness, lies severe censure. But I think this censure is based upon an over-estimate of my umquhile capacities. To alter your phrase, I conceive you to say that by bowing my neck under some kind of anagkh, I have become a Philistine instead of becoming, as was possible, a true Israelite. Well, I hope I am not an absolute Philistine. But I am sure that I never could, with any success, have attempted a way

‘-qua me quoque possim

Tollere humo, victorque virum volitare per ora.’

This, I suppose, is what you mean.

“None of us, in looking back, but must say with old Samuel Johnson, ‘I have lived a life of which I do not like the review.’ But this is different from imagining that one might have done great things instead of little. Enough of myself.”

To this Ruskin replied:-

“I am very grateful for your letter. What was held back in my reference to you was chiefly my own mortified vanity, at your praising other people’s lectures, and never mine! and sorrow that you kept dictionary making, instead of drawing trees at Madeira in colour.

“I hope what further words may come, in after times, as I go on, will not pain you; though I was very furious about the iron railing through Christ Church meadow.”

(H. L. Thompson’s Memoir of Henry George Liddell, 1899, pp. 81-82.) Liddell, as therein appears, had considerable skill as a draughtsman, and was fond of visiting Madeira. The closing reference in Ruskin’s letter is to the new avenue (1872):

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