No. VII. (in the possession of Mrs. Arthur Severn).

Ruled note-book, greenish marbled paper boards, half-bound in dark blue leather; 10 by 8½ inches: pp. 1-115 occupied by the "Iteriad," and six more by an unfinished poem on "Athens." The whole is written in a fair "copperplate" hand, with flourished Gothic titles. The book, being reversed, contains pp. 23 of Mr. Ruskin's writings copied in a female hand, perhaps Mary Richardson's, beginning with "The Rhine" and "Chamouni" from the tour of 1833; also part of "Mont Blanc" and the "Rhyming Letter to Richard Fall?" (end of Oct. 1836).† It contains also an essay which I make no doubt is the long-lost *Reply to the Criticism on Turner in Blackwood's Magazine*, "of which," its author said in 1886, "I wish I could now find any fragment" (Præt. I. xii. p. 400). It bears date Oct. 1. 1836, and is highly interesting as the germ, both in subject and style, of "Modern Painters." I am happy in the permission to print this and other early unpublished prose writings in a companion volume to these Poems.

+. His father's copy of The Stories" at The Exchange of
Helena", formerly in one thin copy book have now
been used in this book.