Despite the critical note of the allusion to the writer in Modern Painters I, Ruskin later regarded Marmontel with considerable respect and sympathy. Although the French writer has been described as 'the spoilt child of the Ancien Regime' (see France, The New Oxford Companion to Literature in French, p.501), Ruskin identified with a number of his ideas. In the preface to his 1871 edition of Sesame and Lilies, Ruskin described Marmontel as one of the 'persons in past history [with whom] I have most sympathy' perceiving a particular kinship between their 'constant natural temper, and thoughts of things and of people' ( Works, 18.48). Ruskin engages with Marmontel's ideas more comprehensively in Fors Clavigera, where, in Letter 14 (February 1872), he introduces the writer's background and defends his literary significance:
He was a French gentleman of the old school; not noble, nor, in French sense, even "gentilhomme"; but a peasant's son, who made his way into Parisian society by gentleness, wit, and a dainty and candid literary power. He became one of the humblest, yet honestest, placed scholars at the court of Louis XV., and wrote pretty, yet wise, sentimental stories, in finished French, which I must render as I can in broken English; but, however rudely translated, the sayings and thoughts in them deserve your extreme attention, for in their fine tremulous way, like the blossoming heads of grass in May, they are perfect. ( Works, 27.250-1)