354 PRÆTERITA-II

Christ came to judgment in St. James’s Street, the people couldn’t see him from Piccadilly,-had been dealt with by me before now; but there is one fact, and no question at all, concerning the Judgment, which was only at this time beginning to dawn on me, that men had been curiously judging themselves by always calling the day they expected, “Dies Iræ,” instead of “Dies Amoris.”

120. Meantime, my own first business was evidently to read what these Pisans had said of it, and take some record of the sayings; for at that time the old-fashioned ravages were going on, honestly and innocently. Nobody cared for the old plaster, and nobody pretended to. When any dignitary of Pisa was to be buried, they peeled off some Benozzo Gozzoli, or whatever else was in the way, and put up a nice new tablet to the new defunct;¹ but what was left was still all Benozzo, (or repainting of old time, not last year’s restoration). I cajoled the Abbé Rosini into letting me put up a scaffold level with the frescoes;² set steadily to work with what faculty in outline I had; and being by this time practised in delicate curves, by having drawn trees and grass rightly, got far better results than I had hoped, and had an extremely happy fortnight of it! For as the triumph of Death was no new thought to me, the life of hermits was no temptation; but the stories of Abraham, Job, and St. Ranieri, well told, were like three new-Scott’s novels, I was going to say, and will say, for I don’t see my way to anything nearer the fact, and the work on them was pure delight. I got an outline of Abraham’s parting with the last of the three angels;³ of the sacrifice of Job; of the three beggars, and a fiend or two, out of the Triumph of Death; and of the conversion of St. Ranieri, for which I greatly pitied him.

For he is playing, evidently with happiest skill, on a

¹ [See for Ruskin’s account of this, Modern Painters, vol. ii. (Vol. IV. p. 38).]

² [For further notice of the Abbé, see Vol. IV. p. 351.]

³ [This study (now No. 25 in the Standard Series at Oxford, Vol. XXI. p. 23) is reproduced on Plate 10 in Vol. IV. (p. 316); for further account of these studies, see Vol. IV. pp. 350, 351.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]