xxxviii INTRODUCTION

day fathers and mothers will desire that their children should be early taught the things that belong to their Peace,¹ and throughout their lives possessed of the Joys that are deepest in the heart and brightest in the memory.”²

Ruskin’s recollection, when a brain-storm passed, of many of the incidents of the tempest, was very vivid, and after his death one of the medical journals published an account of them given in his own words by a friend. This curious piece will be found in the Bibliographical Appendix to this edition. It describes with characteristic vividness the nightmares of the disordered brain, and adds that “while all ugly things assumed fearfully and horribly hideous forms, all beautiful objects appeared ten times more lovely.”³ His Turner drawings, on the bedroom wall, looked in their added splendour “more like pictures of Heaven than of earth.” To like effect with this last observation, I remember Ruskin saying to me that the visions in his illness were mostly of Inferno; “but sometimes visions of Paradise, and one was almost recompensed.”

Whatever may be the true account of these attacks of delirium, the pathos of their recurrence is terribly poignant. A series of extracts has been published from letters which Ruskin wrote during the year of Præterita to his friendly printer, Mr. Jowett, at Aylesbury. No comment is necessary upon the tragedy which may be read between the lines:-

“I’m going crazy with the hares again.”

“May I know what the illness has been; perhaps it may give me some courage to bear nine weeks of this helplessness myself; if only it will then pass away.”

“I am getting slowly better, but must never put so many irons in the fire that will all stir it, any more.”

“I am ... quaking about earth in general, and don’t feel as if it was any good to describe mountains more.”

“The spring, which I look forward to more than all the rest of the year, makes me, when it comes, more sad than autumn.”

“I am so very glad about your finding that the last [chapter of Præterita⁴] is liked-having an uneasy feeling now, about whatever I write, that people will suspect apoplexy in it. I know the thoughts are as they used to be, but the power of expression may partly fail

¹ Luke xix. 42.

² A further passage from this autobiographical Preface is printed below, pp. 628-629.

³ Compare the letter to Professor Norton, of 15th March, 1883 (Vol. XXXVII.).

⁴ Chap. x. of vol. ii.

[Version 0.04: March 2008]