Chapter XV: Part 15

Ruskin followed the "Modern Painters" in due time with his "Seven Lamps of Architecture" and his "Stones of Venice." They were masterpieces of eloquent description and rhetoric. No such vivid writing had been seen for many a day, and no such zeal and earnestness. The wealth of gorgeous imagery was dazzling; the declamation imparted to it the eloquence of an earlier day, and the lofty thought and moral purpose were peculiarly the author's own. The books exerted a remarkable influence. He has written much since, but he has never reached the height he attained in those earlier books.

As he grew older, he grew dogmatic and crotchety in the extreme. He imitated Carlyle in his scoldings, and indeed was much influenced by Carlyle in many ways. He has always been an impracticable theorist, and in these latter years he has put forth a thousand foolish and subversive vagaries. People have not taken him quite seriously for some time. They laugh at his follies, ridicule his philanthropic schemes,--of which he has an infinite number, for he is a man of the kindest heart,--they tell excruciating stories of his colossal self-conceit, and they go home and read his books because no such books can be found written by any other man, search they never so widely. He has always been a wrong-headed man, entirely out of accord with the world around him, and consequently almost sure to be on the wrong side of every practical political question. He and Carlyle had much in common in all this, and it would have been a rich treat to have heard Ruskin proclaiming his political creed, "I am a King's man, and no mob's man;" and to have heard Carlyle answer with denunciations of his millions of fellow-countrymen, "mostly fools."

Ruskin lives in one of the most beautiful of London suburbs,--on Denmark Hill, at the south side of the river, near Dulwich and the exquisite Sydenham slopes, where the Crystal Palace stands. His home is beautiful, filled with wonderful art treasures and numberless books, with many rare and costly editions. He has lectured much at Oxford; and of late years his lectures have been so crowded that tickets had to be procured to attend them. This, when the lectures of the most learned professors of the university are often given to a beggarly array of empty boxes.

He has given away during his lifetime the greater part of his large fortune,--not always wisely, but always in a manner characteristic of the man. He has acted upon the belief that it is wrong to take interest in excess of the principal, and has made the property over to his debtors whenever he has had interest to this extent. He gave seventeen thousand pounds to his poor relations as soon as he came into his fortune; and fifteen thousand pounds more to a cousin, tossing it to him as one would a sugar-plum; fourteen thousand pounds to Sheffield and Oxford; and numberless other gifts to different charities, mostly of an eccentric nature. He retained for himself three hundred and sixty pounds a year, upon which he says "a bachelor gentleman ought to live, or if he cannot, deserves speedily to die." Of course such a royal giver has been besieged during his whole life by an innumerable company of beggars for every conceivable object; but he has always chosen to select for himself his beneficiaries, and has often sent sharp answers to appeals; like the following to the secretary of a Protestant Blind Pension Society: "To my mind, the prefix of 'Protestant' to your society's name indicates far stonier blindness than any it will relieve." And in reply to a letter asking aid in paying off a church debt he replies:--

"I am sorrowfully amused at your appeal to me, of all people in the
world the precisely least likely to give you a farthing. My first
word to all men and boys who care to hear me is, 'Don't get into
debt. Starve, and go to heaven; but don't borrow. Try, first,
begging. I don't mind, if it's really needful, stealing. But don't
buy things you can't pay for.' And of all manner of debtors, pious
people building churches they can't pay for are the most detestable
nonsense to me. Can't you preach and pray behind the hedges, or in
a sandpit, or in a coal-hole, first? And of all manner of churches
thus idiotically built, iron churches are the damnablest to me. And
of all the sects and believers in any ruling spirit--Hindoos,
Turks, Feather Idolaters, and Mumbo Jumbo Log and Fire
Worshippers--who want churches, your modern English Evangelical
sect is the most absurd and objectionable and unendurable to me.
All of which you might very easily have found out from my books.
Any other sort of sect would, before bothering me to write it to
them."

Ruskin is the poet and the high-priest of Nature. To him she reveals her mysteries, and he interprets them to a dull and commonplace world in language as glowing and impassioned as that of the prophets and priests of the olden time. No man, apparently, has seen the sea as Ruskin has seen it,--not even Byron, who wrote so majestic a hymn to it; no man has so seen the mountains, with his very soul transfixed in solemn awe; no one has felt as he the holy stillness of the forest aisles, or so described even the tiny wild flowers of the fields. And he has not only seen their outward glories, but he has interpreted their hidden meanings. He has carried the symbolism of Nature on into the moral world. There is no greater moralist than he. He is stern in his demands for right, and truth, and sincerity in life and in work. This has been the keynote of his teachings throughout life. He hates a falsehood or a sham as much as Browning or Carlyle. He has taught his countrymen many things. No people love Nature better than the English of the present day, and John Ruskin has opened the eyes of many of them to the beauties that lie everywhere about them. Then his long agitation for a better architecture has not been wholly in vain. Though the architects all laughed at him when his lectures were given, many of his ideas slowly made their way, and the new demand for strength and solidity and sincerity in building has been largely due to him.

But much greater than all his art influence has been the weight of his moral teachings. No preacher of the day has preached to such an audience as he, and he has always held men to the best that is in them. Long after his idiosyncrasies shall have been forgotten, and his faults and foibles given over to oblivion, his precepts will remain to influence the life and thought of the coming time.

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Transcriber's note:

The tags in this etext represent decorative breaks between chapters, not Illustrations.

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End of Project Gutenberg's Home Life of Great Authors, by Hattie Tyng Griswold