In claiming to eschew the pretensions of critical language Ruskin was employing a rhetorical strategy used by earlier writers on art. In Reynolds's Discourses he expresses his determination to 'be intelligible' to his readers by avoiding the 'mysterious and incomprehensible language' in which, he claims, the arts had formerly been 'enveloped' ( Reynolds, Discourses, p. 118). More recently - July 1840 - William Thackeray, writing in Fraser's Magazine, claimed that he would reform art criticism by writing 'in a simple, natural way', as opposed to other 'picture-critics' of the press who draw their critical terms from the 'Painters' Cant Dictionary' ( Thackeray, Essays, Reviews, p. 139).