lvi INTRODUCTION

Præterita to be “one of the most charming examples of the most charming kind of literature. No autobiographer surpasses him in freshness and fulness of memory, nor in the power of giving interest to the apparently commonplace. There is an even remarkable absence of striking incident, but somehow or other the story fascinates.”¹ The freshness and fulness of memory is one of the secrets of the charm of Præterita; the zest which the author imparts to scenes and incidents is another.² “I must tell you,” wrote Jean Ingelow to him (December 21, 1885), “with how much delight I have read a great part of your Præterita. I think the lovely tour in chap. vi. gave me most joy: from page 193³ to the end brought back to me an ecstasy comparable to that when I first saw that excellent beauty in the remoteness of a grander world myself.” A letter from the same friend on one of the earlier chapters may be added:-

“The contentment of the lovely baby with a bunch of keys⁴ was chiefly remarkable in this, that you remember the sensation; no doubt we commoner mortals spent hours in making small observations and sage experiments, but have forgotten them.... But your new chapter appears to introduce one at a bound to genius of a rare kind, which I have often longed to see described. It belongs to the senses as well as to the reason. What child of seven years ever saw how a road went winding up and round a cliff before?⁵ The upper curve where the road goes behind the cliff you could hardly make more correctly now. Surely this is a gift of the eye.”

To other readers Præterita was a revelation, not so much of Ruskin’s gifts, as of the early limitations and struggles against which they had to contend, and of the romance which saddened his later years. The utter sincerity of the book, the frankness of its revelations, is another of its charms; and that may well have come easily to an author who was little given to concealment, and who now, in his old age, had no reason for illusionment or disguise. What may cause surprise, knowing as we do the circumstances in which the book was written, is its serenity of temper and vivacity of tone. “I do not mean this book,”

¹ “John Ruskin,” in the National Review, April 1900, p. 255.

² “I am just finishing the second volume of Præterita,” wrote Manning (April 17, 1887), “with great increase of interest, for I was in Rome with George Richmond in the year or the year before you were there, and your places and pictures in Italy are all known to me. But I am looking forward to your times at Assisi with S. Francis, and elsewhere with B. Angelico; that is, in the World of Christ’s Folk-very beautiful folk, and very unlike the folk now growing up under the influence of the three black R’s-Renaissance, Reformation, and Revolution.”

³ That is, in the first edition; pp. 114-119, below.

⁴ See below, p. 20 (§ 14).

⁵ See the woodcut on p. 54, below.

[Version 0.04: March 2008]