IV. UNDER NEW TUTORSHIPS 77

invaluable bit of teaching.¹ He compelled me into a swiftness and facility of hand which I found afterwards extremely useful, though what I have just called the “force,” the strong accuracy of my line, was lost. He cultivated in me,-indeed founded,-the habit of looking for the essential points in the things drawn, so as to abstract them decisively, and he explained to me the meaning and importance of composition, though he himself could not compose.

85. A very happy time followed, for about two years.

I was, of course, far behind Mary in touch-skill of pencil drawing, and it was good for her that this superiority was acknowledged, and due honour done her for the steady pains of her unimpulsive practice and unwearied attention. For, as she did not write poems like me, nor collect spars like me, nor exhibit any prevailing vivacity of mind in any direction, she was gradually sinking into far too subordinate a position to my high-mightiness. But I could make no pretence for some time to rival her in free-hand copying, and my first attempts from nature were not felt by my father to be the least flattering to his vanity.

These were made under the stimulus of a journey to Dover with the forethought of which my mother comforted me through an illness of 1829.² I find my quite first sketch-book, an extremely inconvenient upright small octavo in mottled and flexible cover, the paper pure white, and ribbedly gritty, filled with outlines, irregularly defaced by impulsive efforts at finish, in arbitrary places and corners, of Dover and Tunbridge Castles and the main tower of Canterbury Cathedral. These, with a really good study, supplemented by detached detail, of Battle Abbey, I have set aside for preservation; the really first sketch I ever made from nature being No. 1, of a street in Sevenoaks.

¹ [In the Elements of Drawing, 1857, Ruskin recommended him as a teacher of perspective: see Vol. XV. p. 18 n. For another reminiscence of him, see Ariadne Florentina, § 131 (Vol. XXII. p. 383). See also a letter of June 4, 1884, in Vol. XXXIV. p. 573.]

² [See a passage from the MS. given below, p. 87 n.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]