CHAPTER IX

THE FEASTS OF THE VANDALS¹

164. THE reader of “to-day” who has been accustomed to hear me spoken of by the artists of to-day as a super-annuated enthusiast, and by the philosophers of to-day as a delirious visionary, will scarcely believe with what serious interest the appearance of the second volume of Modern Painters was looked for, by more people than my father and mother,-by people even belonging to the shrewdest literary circles, and highest artistic schools, of the time.

165. In the literary world, attention was first directed to the book by Sydney Smith,² in the hearing of my severest and chiefly antagonist master, the Rev. Thomas Dale, who with candid kindness sent the following note of the matter to my father:-

“You will not be uninterested to hear that Mr. Sydney Smith (no mean authority in such cases) spoke in the highest terms of your son’s work, on a public occasion, and in presence of several distinguished literary characters. He said it was a work of transcendent talent, presented the most original views, and the most elegant and powerful language, and would work a complete revolution in the world of taste. He did not know, when he said this, how much I was interested in the author.”

166. My father was greatly set up by this note, though the form of British prudence which never specifies occasion or person, for fear of getting itself into a scrape, is provokingly illustrated by its imperfect testimony. But it

¹ [The first title was “Symposia Andalusica.”]

² [A letter by Ruskin on Sydney Smith, promised at Vol. III. p. xl. for this place, has more conveniently been included in Arrows of the Chace: Vol. XXXIV. p. 564. See the General Index for the numerous references to Sydney Smith in Ruskin’s books.]

395

[Version 0.04: March 2008]