366 PRÆTERITA-II

4000 ft. for sleeping level, varying to 6000 or 7000 ft. in the day’s walks, was really not good for me, but quickened pulse and sickened stomach, and saddened one’s notions alike of clouds, stones, and pastoral life.

The second, that my Florentine studies had not taught me how to draw clouds or stones any better; that the stream under my window was no more imitable than the Rhone itself, and that any single boulder in it would take all the month, or it might be, six weeks, to paint the least to my mind.

The third, that Alpine geology was in these high centres of it as yet wholly inscrutable to me.

The fourth, that I was not, as I used to suppose, born for solitude, like Dr. Zimmermann,¹ and that the whole south side of Monte Rosa did not contain as much real and comfortable entertainment for me as the Market Street of Croydon. Nor do I believe I could have stayed out my month at Macugnaga with any consistency, but that I had brought with me a pocket volume of Shakespeare, and set myself for the first time to read, seriously, Coriolanus, and Julius Cœsar.

134. I see that in the earlier passages of this too dimly explicit narrative, no notice is taken of the uses of Shakespeare at Herne Hill, other than that he used to lie upon the table;² nor can I the least trace his influence on my own mind or work, except as a part of the great reality and infinity of the world itself, and its gradually unfolding history and law. To my father, and to Richard Gray, the characters of Shakespearian comedy were all familiar personal friends; my mother’s refusal to expose herself to theatric temptation began in her having fallen in love, for some weeks, when she was a girl, with Henry the Fifth at the Battle of Agincourt; nor can I remember in my own

¹ [Johann Georg, Ritter von Zimmermann (1728-1795), Swiss philosophical writer and physician; author of Ueber die Einsamkeit.]

² [The reference must be to p. 143 (line 1); but Ruskin here forgets an earlier statement (p. 61) that as a child he “heard all the Shakespeare comedies and historical plays again and again.”]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]