The Sun.
London, England, 1860-09-17 00:00:00

LI7TIIATURE.

?Modern Painters. By John Ruskin. Vol. V.
Co:nplcting the Work. Smiih, Eter, and Co.
Finis Coronat opus may now be appended to Mr.
Ruskin's masterpiece. We hardly know whether
to offer the accomplished writer of these volumes,
thereupon; words of condolence or of congratulation.
The labour of their composition has been so
obviously with him a labour of love throughout,
that its completion can hardly in one sense fail to
be a matter of regret, and the final relinquishment
of his self-allotted task a positive deprivation.
With the publication of the first of the five volumes
John Ruskin's career as an art critic was formally
and brilliantly inaugurated. That initial volume
was the startling enunciation of what in Pictorial
Art the anonymous author regarded alone as "Truth"
—it was the deliberate enunicatien also of, what
he deemed in that Art to be all essential as its " First
Principles." Accepting now from his hands the
magnificent volume closing the elaborated series
upon " Modern Painters"—we do so with a still
vivid remembrance of Mr. Ruskin's debut in the
world of letters under the modest noni-de plume of
the Oxford Graduate. Who that read at the time
of its original appearance that first volume upon
"Modern •Painters," by the Oxford Graduate, has
forgotten the novel emotions of admiration excited
by the irresistible sweep of its rushing eloquence,
an eloquence at once exquisitely poetic and won-
drously pictorial. Scattered through that first
volume of Modern Painters were descriptions of the
phenomena of Nature worthy not only of the pen
of Thomson, but of the brush of Tuiner, glimpses of
cloud-land and of dream-land, visions of storm and
sunset, scanning which one almost seemed at times
to be looking upon the reality. Nor in any one
particular has the effect produced proved to be
fleeting, or the applause elicited from the beholder
in the smallest degree exaggerated. We may direct
attention to that first volume of modern Painters
as confidently at this moment as we could have
done at the period of its earliest perusal—satisfied
that the most fastidious and exacting reader may
there find descriptive passages not to be excelled
in eloquence, not to be surpassed as evidences of the
" vision and the faculty divine,' in the whole range
of our glorious literature. Since then, without
losing in eloquence or enthusiasm, John
Ruskin has gained in knowledge, a know-
ledge drawn alike from profounder reflection
and from more extended and more and more
vigilant observation. At the very commence-
ment of his career he at ence made good his claim
to be regarded as one of the most remarkable Art
Critics that had ever appeared in this country. In
that high capacity as an art critic he has by this
time assumed a place of absolute pre-eminence.
Differ from him we may, dissent ftom his opinions
more or less, we every one of us do incontestibly,
yet with all his crotchets, through all his prejudices,
in spite of all his eccentricities, and they are each
of them, without doubt, sufficiently numerous, and
a few amongst them sufficiently extravagant —his
genius as an Art Critic, his skill and capacity as
THE Art Critic of his time, must be recognised by
friend and foe alike as wholly and entirely tine
rivalled.
Already Mr. Ruskin may be referred to as Gib-
bon was referred to by Sheridan—namely, as an
author at once luminous and voluminous. The
number of Mr. Ruskin's works cannot but be consi-
dered remarkable, remembering in regard to the
chief amongst them their singular elaboration.
His " Modern Painters" alone forms, with its Five
Volumes, a very art library—an encylopeedia of
art criticism, invaluable if only as a mere
work of reference. His " Stones of Venice"—in
Three Volumes—has builtup something better than
a cumbrous cairn, it has raised so to speak an endur-
ing pyramid to his reputation : defining .the
" Foundations," relating the " Seastories' " record-
ing the " Fall" of the fair city of the Lagunes,
the bride of the Adriatic. Beyond these
two principal achievements as an art critic,
as THE Art Critic of our time has not
Mr. Ruskin hung up enduringly in the ideal
Temple of Art his " Seven Lamps of Archi-
tecture ?"—a work symbolically so entitled in re-
ference, of course, to the seven all essential and
primordial laws requisite as the guide of the am--
bitious architect. Another book of his comprises
within it the written digest of his spoken " Lec-
tures upon Architecture and Painting." Another
defines "The Two Paths," lying open before every
Artist, viewing each of those paths from the point
of their divergence. Beyond all which, beyond his
ingenious pamphlet metaphoricallyentitled a chapter
" Upon Sheepfolds,"—(purchased once upon a time
with eager curiosity, as we have heard it related,
by an unsophisticated Agriculturist !)—beyond his
series of yearly criticisms upon the Royal Academy
and Water Colour Exhibitions—Mr. Ruskin has
penned three elementary works of peculiar value
and importance to the art student, though two of
them of comparatively minor dimensions ; one re-
lating to the Political Economy of Art, another lay-
ing- down in u succinct code, or book of rules, "The
Elements of Drawing," and another " The Ele-
ments of Perspective. Conspicuous, however, or
rather pre-eminent among all these fourteen or fif-
teen substantial volumes upholding the reputation
of John Ruskin as an Art Critic, the noblest mani-
festation of his extraordinary powers is without a
shadow of doubt the work which has been but just
now completed, (namely, by the issue from the press
of this its fifth and final volume,) the ornate and
elaborate treatise upon " Modern Painters," by the
publication of the first volume of which, as -we
have already remarked, that reputation of his was,
now some fourteen or fifteen years, inaugurated.
Since the revival of art in Europe, no critic has so
perseveringly, as Mr. Ruskin has done through all
these five volumes of Modern Painters, directed the
attention of artists to the one pure and only source
of true art—NatureThroughout
sk!riteawith h
thesereveren-
tial
nquenne
and
thepages'Mr.
earnestness, the fervour and authority, of
oen
almost inspired. His argument from first to
last is that of a lover of Nature and a creature of
God, the one hope, aim,
vainvdidammbartitnioenr,
tohfewpohootro
existence is to realise, in a
holy vision, to—
e Look through Nature up to Nature's God 1"
Having in the four earlier volumes of this elo-
quent treatise upon " Modern Painters" (which
constitutes the Apotheosis, so to speak, of our
glorious and matchless Turner), discoursed--•
(in vol. i.) upon General Principles and upon
Truth---(in vol. ii.) upon: the. Imaginative and
Theoretical Faculties—(in vol. iii.) upon (speaking
vaguely) Many Things—and (in vol. iv.) upon
mountain beauty exclusively : our Att Critic in
this fifth and concluding volume has spoken suc-
cessively of Leaf Beauty—of Cloud Beauty—and
of Ideas of Relation. He has done so, moreover, with
all the freshness and fervour of his early days un-
dimmed and undiminished. In the first of these three
Parts or Divisions of this his crowning volume he
sitveem stageth e ofbr
avneeghe :
a t
lifting i
ng
has an exquisitely dainty chapter or section set
apart for
theveerlyeaf e s s
s,
e
Earth-Veil—closing with the Leaves Mo-
tionless. In discoursing of Cloud Beauty, agaigt
he chaunts in a strain of wondrous melody, turn by
turn, of the Cloud Balancings, of the Cloud Flocks,
firstthebtuhde,
and of the Cloud Chariots—rising at last into $
song of truest poetry, rhythmical throughout,
though throughout under the simple guise of
prose, the rapturous glorification of " The Angel
of the Sea!" The final section of the work
referring to the Ideas of Relation, Mr. Ruskin has
divided into the two closing parts of the whole
Part VIII., " Of Invention Formal," Part IX.,
"Of Invention Spiritual." In the former of these
two final divisions defining in due sequence, The
Law of Help—The Task of the' Least—The Rule
of the Greatest—The Law of Perfectness. In the
second, advancing
symbolically from The Dark
Mirror, armed with the Lance of Pallas, shadowed
by the Wings of the Lion, on through the golden
atmosphere of the TWO Boyhoods, under the /Egi9
of the Nereid's Guard, on to the Hesperia JEgle,
on to the perfected acquisition of Peace 1 The
chapter of this concluding book, or part, of Rus-
kin's Great Prose Poem upon Modern Painters,
which we are fain to regard es, in many respects,
the author's noblest achievement, both as an art
critic and as a philosophic dreamer, of rare and in
t
some particulars wholly unmatched eloquence, is
he penultimate chapter of the work (IX., xi.),
entitled The Hesperia lEgle. Once read,
it will never be forgotten. The music of it haunts
one enduringly. The whole of this last volume has
impressed our mind with a lively sense of the
writer's grasp of knowledge as a master-mytholo-
gist. Not a mere antiquarian, philological
mythologist,likeolddry Jacob Bryant, but a mytho-
logist who views all that wondrous symbolism of
the ancients above all as a Poet and a Philosopher.
There are separate chapters in this volume, more-
over, that will be turned to by the general reader
with the liveliest curiosity, we doubt not (chapters
which will be road by them, we promise each this
before hand, with the reverse of disappointment),
chapters headed respectively and suggestively--
Darer and Salvator—Claude and Poussin—Rubeno
and Cuyp—Wouverinans and Fra Angelico. The
frontispiece, by the way, is the bewitching Ancilla
T) mini or the la=st Angelic
painter Angelico! Ag
a tribute to au old and honoured friend, we observe
in a foot note to the incidental chapter " On Vul-
garity "—a foot note that we must perforce thee
particulalize before closing this general comment
upon " Modern Painters "—we observe here, we
say, with a glow of pleasure we can hardly describe
John Ruskin's mention of "the great, grave "—[and
he adds emphatically in parenthesis]—" (I use the,
words deliberately, and with large meaning), as •
singular genius of George Cruikshank."