III. L’ESTERELLE 533

of other children’s letters. There is no precocity in it. Any girl of real power, well taught, would feel and write, in all sincerity, just as this Rose does, of pictures, statues, flowers, and hills. But the quite singular character of the letter is its sympathy. There is not a sentence in which the child is thinking of herself. She knows exactly what I am feeling, and thinks only of that, without a shadow of vanity, or of impulsive egoism. Her one thought always is, “Can I help him, or give him any joy?” the consciousness of her own power being so habitual and frank that it is used as simply, as (? when) she first gave me her hand, her subsequent knowledge of me being deeper than a child’s only in its religious anxiety that I should believe as she believed. And in the year 1860 the “new epoch of life,” above spoken of,¹ began for me in this wise, that my father and mother could travel with me no more, but Rose, in heart, was with me always, and all I did was for her sake.

BRIEG, SIMPLON, 20th September.-As much for her sake, that is to say, as of old, for theirs, and more distinctly also in the choice and tenour of it, beginning with Unto this Last, composed at Chamouni in walks to and fro under the wood of the Arveron. I recollect an American-not friend, but then intimate companion²-asking me who Rosie-posie was,-the words sometimes being said aloud unconsciously.

Then in 1860, I could not bear being so far away from her, when she was at her home in Ireland, so, having it also in my mind to write some day the analysis of sea-waves which had baffled me in Modern Painters,³ I stayed at Boulogne⁴ instead of going on to the Alps, taking a little bedroom and parlour under the sandhills north of the pier, and set myself to watch sea and sky, Rose writing to me every week punctually, and Emily sometimes interlining a word or two, leaning over her shoulder. I taught myself to write what writing is possible to me in answer to these letters, but learned much more than that in the days when there were no waves to be looked at, except the little ones on the sands, which were if anything more puzzling than the great ones.

I had given up learning Greek by Gordon’s, I finally think, quite wise advice,⁵ and Latin, because I hated Lucretius,⁶ and was teased by Tacitus. But now, when Rose began to ask me questions about her Greek Testament, and the thoughts I had first expressed in Unto this Last could receive support from Homer and Xenophon and Horace, it was needful for such purpose at least to make what verbal knowledge I had, sound.

I took the bit in my teeth, sent for my Plato to Boulogne, with Xenophon’s Economist, and Horace, and read sometimes not more than a line a day of each, but that as perfectly as grammar and dictionary would do it. Gradually I gained real scholarship in pure plain Greek and in lyric Latin. I cannot translate a Greek chorus, nor do I know the force of the words used by Plato and Horace in every other writer; but I know what Plato and Horace mean themselves by them, and feel in meaning,

¹ [See p. 485 and n.]

² [The late W. J. Stillmann: see Vol. XVII. p. xxi.]

³ [See the Preface to the 5th volume, Vol. VII. p. 7.]

⁴ [For Ruskin’s sojourn there, see Vol. XVII. pp. xxxvi., xxxvii.]

⁵ [See above, p. 252.]

⁶ [Compare below, p. 613.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]