xxxiv INTRODUCTION

Thence he returned to Brantwood, and never again left it until the last hour came.

His return to Brantwood was followed by another attack incapacitating him from mental effort. What is the connexion between great wits and madness? I write as a layman, and do not know, and perhaps even the doctors cannot tell us much.¹ But I have been greatly struck, as I think any other close student of Ruskin’s work must be, by one feature of his brain attacks. It is their perfectly sharp and clear definition. The point is an important one; for the question inevitably arises in any review of Ruskin’s life and work, whether the mind was sound or inherently diseased. The mind was original, and therefore at each stage of its development Ruskin’s views seemed insane to the vulgar. His enthusiasm for Turner, his estimate of Venetian Gothic, his political economy were all in turn called mad until they had passed into the accepted thought of the time. The connected study of his work, in relation to environment and circumstances, which it has been a principal object of this edition to facilitate, will, I think, bring the conviction that Ruskin’s mental development was throughout life normal and logical. And what I seek to point out is that the history of his attacks of brain-disease does not invalidate such a conclusion. The attacks resemble nothing so much as storms. It is possible to the discerning and experienced reader to detect the coming of the storm in passages of heightened passion or excitement; the storm bursts; and then it passes away, leaving no trace behind in Ruskin’s resumed work. I have instanced some cases in point in previous Introductions; but the most conclusive is that of Præterita itself. It is of all Ruskin’s books the most uniformly serene in temper. It is marked by many qualities, and among others conspicuously by restraint, by perfect command over all the author’s gifts²-in other words, by sanity. Yet the whole book was written during the calm between successive brain-storms. I remember hearing a lecturer at the Royal Institution select as the most perfect instance of Ruskin’s style the description of the Rhone at Geneva which occurs in the second volume of Præterita.³ He pointed out very justly that the passage was not merely a masterpiece of lyrical prose; but that if we were to

¹ Students of heredity will notice what Ruskin says of his father’s father at the beginning of Præterita (p. 19, § 10). Owing to the condition of his affairs, John Thomas Ruskin’s mind had given way in June 1815: see below, p. lx. n.

² The exceptions are chapter xii. of vol. ii. and chapter iv. of vol. iii., both of which show in places a tendency to ramble. Each chapter was written when the author was on the verge of a break-down.

³ See below, pp. 326-328.

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