I. THE GRANDE CHARTREUSE 487

On which Maurice, with startled and flashing eyes, burst into partly scornful, partly alarmed, denunciation of Deborah the prophetess, as a mere blazing Amazon; and of her Song as a merely rhythmic storm of battle-rage, no more to be listened to with edification or faith than the Norman’s sword-song at the battle of Hastings.¹

Whereupon there remained nothing for me,-to whom the Song of Deborah was as sacred as the Magnificat,-but total collapse in sorrow and astonishment; the eyes of all the class being also bent on me in amazed reprobation of my benighted views, and unchristian sentiments. And I got away how I could, but never went back.²

That being the first time in my life that I had fairly met the lifted head of Earnest and Religious Infidelity-in a man neither vain nor ambitious, but instinctively and innocently trusting his own amiable feelings as the final interpreters of all the possible feelings of men and angels, all the songs of the prophets, and all the ways of God.

15. It followed, of course, logically and necessarily, that

¹ [“In front rode the minstrel Taillefer, tossing his sword in the air and catching it again while he chaunted the song of Roland” (J. R. Green).]

² [On the appearance of this chapter of Præterita, Ruskin received a joint letter from Mr. J. M. Ludlow and Mr. Thomas Hughes (June 18, 1888), who were “both present on the occasion” and who dissented from Ruskin’s recollection of it. “We would observe,” they wrote, “that Mr. Maurice’s views on the subject of Jael and Sisera are fully set forth in the eighteenth discourse of his book on the Old Testament, a work which is substantially a reflex of the Bible-readings in question. You will find in this, as according to our distinct recollection there was not at the Bible-reading you refer to, no contemptuous reference to the ‘Dark Biblical Ages, still less any ‘partly scornful and partly alarmed denunciation’ of Deborah, but simply the assertion that whilst ‘a brave, noble woman,’ she is not to be installed ‘as a teacher of ethics.’ Mr. Maurice seldom began the discussion unless by a few remarks. He certainly did not do otherwise on the occasion referred to, and the terms ‘discoursed with passionate indignation,’ ‘at the close of the instruction’ by no means answer to the facts as we recollect them. Your own part in the discussion, we also distinctly recollect, was not confined to a mere question, but was a vehement and somewhat lengthy outpouring in praise of Jael. The ‘startled and flashing eyes’ were not those of Mr. Maurice, whose self-possessed demeanour on the occasion is still before our eyes, but your own, and struck forcibly another of our number, now with God.

“You consider Mr. Maurice to have been puzzle-headed. We, who knew him a good deal more intimately than yourself, used to find him while he lived the greatest solver of puzzles, and that not by direct explanation, but by the true Socratic method of enabling others to see clearly what was in their own mind.”

Ruskin placed this letter among other documents apparently intended for use in Dilecta.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]