lii INTRODUCTION

worthy of Memory.” Ruskin had found already in writing Fors that such scenes “returned soothingly to his memory,”¹ and he now set himself each day to write down a piece of his Past. The book was published in chapters at irregular intervals; and a series of extracts from letters to various friends shows the pleasure and interest which Ruskin took in the work, if sometimes also the strain under which it was done:-

(To KATE GREENAWAY, January 7, 1885.)-“The autobiography won’t be a pretty book at all, but merely an account of the business and general meaning of my life. As I work at it every morning (about half-an-hour only), I have very bitter feelings about the waste of years and years in merely looking at things-all I’ve got to say is: I went there-and saw that. But did nothing. If only I had gone on drawing plants, or clouds, or-.”²

(To GRACE ALLEN, April 22, 1885.)-“I am so sorry you’ve been wasting your time. I don’t want any of the personal bits, but just the three or four connected accounts of childhood-to which for this purpose the Fors containing them may surely be sacrificed and go marked to printer, without bothering you and him with writing and revising. Begin with this bit enclosed,³ and send the three or four numbers that tell about the child life, and nothing more is wanted.

“Tell your father, I think myself this autobiography will be popular. It has become far more interesting than I expected.”

“Tell your father, I think myself this autobiography will be popular. It has become far more interesting than I expected.”

(To KATE GREENAWAY, January 22, 1886.)-“I am so very thankful you like this eighth number so much, for I was afraid it would begin to shock people. I have great pleasure in the thing myself-it is so much easier and simpler to say things face to face like that, than as an author. The ninth has come out very prettily, I think.”

(To KATE GREENAWAY, January 27, 1886.)-“I am so very very glad you like Præterita, for it is, as you say, the ‘natural’ me-only, of course, peeled carefully. It is different from what else I write-because, you know, I seldom have had to describe any but heroic, or evil, characters, and this watercress character is so much easier to do, and credible and tasteable by everybody’s own lips.”

(To KATE GREENAWAY, February 23, 1886.)-“It is lovely of you thinking of illustrating the life-I am greatly set up in the thought of it. But wait a while. I hope it will be all more or less graceful.

¹ Letter 88, § 6 (Vol. XXIX. p. 385).

² No. 62 of the letters from Ruskin in Kate Greenaway, by M. H. Spielmann, 1905, p. 146. See also in Vol. XXXVII. letters to her of “January 4” and “Whit Monday” 1885.

³ The first section of Præterita.

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