[Sidenote: Diversity of his writings.]
Ruskin is often described as an author of bewildering variety, whose
mind drifted waywardly from topic to topic--from painting to political
economy, from architecture to agriculture--with a license as
illogical as it was indiscriminating. To this impression, Ruskin
himself sometimes gave currency. He was, for illustration, once
announced to lecture on crystallography, but, as we are informed by
one present,[5] he opened by asserting that he was really about to
lecture on Cistercian architecture; nor did it greatly matter what the
title was; "for," said he, "if I had begun to speak about Cistercian
abbeys, I should have been sure to get on crystals presently; and if
I had begun upon crystals, I should soon have drifted into
architecture." Those who conceive of Ruskin as being thus a kind of
literary Proteus like to point to the year 1860, that of the
publication of his tracts on economics, as witnessing the greatest
and suddenest of his changes, that from reforming art to reforming
society; and it is true that this year affords a simple dividing-line
between Ruskin's earlier work, which is sufficiently described by the
three titles, _Modern Painters, The Seven Lamps of Architecture_, and
_The Stones of Venice_, and his later work, chiefly on social subjects
such as are discussed in _Unto This Last, The Crown of Wild Olive_,
and _Fors Clavigera_. And yet we cannot insist too often on the
essential unity of this work, for, viewed in the large, it betrays one
continuous development. The seeds of _Fors_ are in _The Stones of
Venice_.
[Sidenote: Underlying idea in all his works.]
The governing idea of Ruskin's first published work, _Modern Painters,
Volume I_, was a moral idea. The book was dedicated to the principle
that that art is greatest which deals with the greatest number of
greatest ideas,--those, we learn presently, which reveal divine
truth; the office of the painter, we are told,[6] is the same as that
of the preacher, for "the duty of both is to take for each discourse
one essential truth." As if recalling this argument that the painter
is a preacher, Carlyle described _The Stones of Venice_ as a "sermon
in stones." In the idea that all art, when we have taken due account
of technique and training, springs from a moral character, we find the
unifying principle of Ruskin's strangely diversified work. The very
title _The Seven Lamps of Architecture_, with its chapters headed
"Sacrifice," "Obedience," etc., is a sufficient illustration of
Ruskin's identification of moral principles with aesthetic principles.
A glance at the following pages of this book will show how Ruskin is
for ever halting himself to demand the moral significance of some fair
landscape, gorgeous painting, heaven-aspiring cathedral. In "Mountain
Glory," for example, he refers to the mountains as "kindly in simple
lessons to the workman," and inquires later at what times mankind has
offered worship in these mountain churches; of the English cathedral
he says, "Weigh the influence of those dark towers on all who have
passed through the lonely square at their feet for centuries";[7] of
St. Mark's, "And what effect has this splendour on those who pass
beneath it?"--and it will be noticed on referring to "The Two
Boyhoods," that, in seeking to define the difference between Giorgione
and Turner, the author instinctively has recourse to distinguishing
the _religious_ influences exerted on the two in youth.
[Sidenote: Underlying idea a moral one.]
Now it is clear that a student of the relation of art to life, of work
to the character of the workman and of his nation, may, and in fact
inevitably must, be led in time to attend to the producer rather than
to the product, to the cause rather than to the effect; and if we
grant, with Ruskin, that the sources of art, namely, the national
life, are denied, it will obviously be the part, not only of humanity
but of common sense, for such a student to set about purifying the
social life of the nation. Whether the reformation proposed by Ruskin
be the proper method of attack is not the question we are here
concerned with; our only object at present being to call attention to
the fact that such a lecture as that on "Traffic" in _The Crown of
Wild Olive_ is the logical outgrowth of such a chapter as "Ideas of
Beauty" in the first volume of _Modern Painters_. Between the author
who wrote in 1842, of the necessity of revealing new truths in
painting, "This, if it be an honest work of art, it must have done,
for no man ever yet worked honestly without giving some such help to
his race. God appoints to every one of his creatures a separate
mission, and if they discharge it honourably ... there will assuredly
come of it such burning as, in its appointed mode and measure, shall
shine before men, and be of service constant and holy,"[8] and the
author who wrote, "That country is the richest which nourishes the
greatest number of noble and happy human beings,"[9] or, "The
beginning of art is in getting our country clean, and our people
beautiful,"[10]--between these two, I say, there is no essential
difference. They are not contradictory but consistent.
[Sidenote: Art dependent upon personal and national greatness.]
Amidst the maze of subjects, then, which Ruskin, with kaleidoscopic
suddenness and variety, brings before the astonished gaze of his
readers, let them confidently hold this guiding clue. They will find
that Ruskin's "facts" are often not facts at all; they will discover
that many of Ruskin's choicest theories have been dismissed to the
limbo of exploded hypotheses; but they will seek long before they find
a more eloquent and convincing plea for the proposition that all great
art reposes upon a foundation of personal and national greatness.
Critics of Ruskin will show you that he began _Modern Painters_ while
he was yet ignorant of the classic Italians; that he wrote _The Stones
of Venice_ without realizing the full indebtedness of the Venetian to
the Byzantine architecture; that he proposed to unify the various
religious sects although he had no knowledge of theology; that he
attempted a reconstruction of society though he had had no scientific
training in political economy; but in all this neglect of mere fact
the sympathetic reader will discover that contempt for the letter
of the law which was characteristic of the nineteenth-century
prophet,--of Carlyle, of Arnold, and of Emerson,--and which, if it
be blindness, is that produced by an excess of light.
[5] See Harrison's _Life_, p. 111. Cf. the opening of _The Mystery
of Life_.
[6] Part 2, sec. 1, chap. 4.
[7] See p. 159.
[8] _Modern Painters_, vol. 1, part 2, sec. 1, chap. 7.
[9] _Unto This Last_.
[10] See p. 262.