John Ruskin : on himself and things in general.

  • John Ruskin
Date:
1893
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: John Ruskin : on himself and things in general. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    r3 to my ‘Mother-Law’ of Protestantism anyhow!—and now—what is there left?” You will find what was left, as, in much darkness and sorrow of heart I gathered it, variously taught in my books, written between 1858 and 1874. It is all sound and good, as far as it goes : whereas all that went before was so mixed with Protestant egotism and insolence, that, as you have probably heard, I won’t republish, in their first form, any of those former books. The St. George’s creed includes Turks, Jews, infidels and heretics; and I am myself much of a Turk, more of a Jew; alas, most of all,—an infidel; but not an atom of a heretic : Catholic, I, of the Catholics ; holding only for sure God’s order to His scattered Israel. I am beginning, for the first time in my life, to admit some notion into my head that I am a great man. God knows at how little rate I value the little that is in me ; but the maintaining myself now quietly against the con¬ tradiction of everyone of my best friends, rising as it does into more harmonious murmur of opposition at every new act to which I find myself compelled by compassion and justice, requires more than ordinary firmness : and the absolute fact that, being entirely at one in my views of Nature and life with every great classic author, I am yet alone in the midst of a modern crowd which rejects them all, is something to plume myself upon,—sorrowfully enough : but haughtily also. When it took a twelve-months’ hard work to make a single volume legible, men considered a little the differ¬ ence between one book and another; but now, when not only anybody can get themselves made legible through any quantity of volumes, in a week, but the doing so becomes a means of living to them, and they can fill their stomachs with the foolish foam of their lips, the universal pestilence of falsehood fills the mind of the world as cicadas do olive-leaves, and the first necessity for our mental government is to extricate from among the insectile noise, the few books and words that are Divine. And this has been my main work from my youth up,— not caring to speak my own words, but to discern, whether in painting or scripture, what is eternally good and vital,
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