In a review entitled, 'Ruskin's Lectures on Art', Stopford A. Brooke wrote:
There are few men of our time who have been more largely praised or more bitterly attacked than Mr. Ruskin. There are none who have deserved more praise or more resolutely challenged attack. He has been so lavish in his approbation of certain artists and schools of art, that he has raised against them a cloud of opponents. He has been so unsparing in blame of certain others, so curiously inventive of terms of reproach, so audacious in his tilting against received opinions, and so felicitous sometimes in his hits, that he has forced into combination against him a number of determined foes. Of all men he should be the last to object to criticism, for his own sword seldom seeks the scabbard (p. 423)