A comparatively late dating for the Allen manuscript would help to explain why it contains the draft Synopsis of Contents, which Ruskin perhaps drew up as late as January 1843, when he felt that his 'stuff' was 'getting a little into shape at last' ( D, 241; see period of composition of Modern Painters I). He probably added this list of Contents after completing most of the drafts in the notebook. (The fact that blotting from the first side on which he drafts the Synopsis, fol. 2v, is laid over the draft text on the facing fol. 3r proves that it was certainly written after the draft of the unpublished chapter 'Of Truth of Light'.) The sequence of chapters in the draft is quite close to that of the Synopsis of Contents in the first edition (1843), but for differences see the notes in this edition to the Allen manuscript ( Allen 1v).