The Ruskin Reader

The following is one of the very earliest of Chesterton's writings to be published. It was an unsigned review he wrote for The Academy in 1895, when he was just 21.

The Ruskin Reader

 June 22, 1895, The Academy

[The Academy, volume 47, p. 523]

The Ruskin Reader: being Passages from "Modern Painters," "The Seven Lamps of Architecture," and the "Stones of Venice." By John Ruskin. (George Allen). Poor Mr. Ruskin has been trotted out again, to do duty this time as a school "Reader." To this end, passages have been selected from his three great works on Art. The editor is Mr. W. G. Collingwood, who, in his somewhat premature Life of Mr. Ruskin, proved he had not to the full that understanding sympathy with his subject which every biographer should possess. The present work suffers from the same deficiency. It is inconceivable that either Mr. Ruskin or anyone appreciating him rightly could have "attempted to give the main lines of Mr. Ruskin's teaching... in a series of extracts from his great early works." The "main lines" of his teaching are to be found, not in his early works, but concentrated in Vain this Last, and more diffused in Time and Tide, and in Fors Clavigera; and this is a truth so strongly insisted on by Mr. Ruskin himself, that the disregard of it by editors, or others who undertake to expound him, is without justification. Truly, it is pathetic that a man of Mr. Ruskin's calibre and achievements, after giving his fortune and his life to the service of others, should in his old age be "exploited" (is not that the appropriate slang term of the hour?) for any purpose whatever, by persons who can give him at the best only a hesitating, condescending and qualified approval; doubting, it would seem, whether his teachings, as a whole, if given to the multitude without their manipulation, would not be baneful. To see him seized and claimed, when he could no longer defend himself, by the Socialists, was sad enough; but the spectacle of Mr. Ruskin modified for the million, and sanctioned by his secretary and his publisher, is shocking. Regarding the book as a volume of selections from Mr. Ruskin's earlier works, and not in the least as representative of his main teachings, we are not disposed to complain of the quality of the selections. To please everybody in such a matter is difficult, if not impossible; and, whether there be sins of omission here or not, it is both pleasant and profitable to reread the eloquent and impressive passages which are given. In a somewhat pretentious and unnecessary Preface, Mr. Collingwood asks "for the impertinence of notes, pardon." If he really thought his notes were impertinent, he should have omitted them. But surely notes appended to a school-reader, so far from being an impertinence, are an unquestionable necessity. The impertinence, if anywhere, arises if the notes are inadequate or incorrect; and for such an impertinence there can be, and should be, no pardon. On these points we offer no opinion. As to adequacy, we merely remark that sundry passages which, to the school boy or girl of the writer's school-days, would have been obscure, are not annotated; but Board schools have arisen since then. On the other point of accuracy we will content ourselves with quoting the note to p. 176, 1.24:

 "Mrs. Gamp in Dickens' 'David Copperfield *; Heep in 'Oliver Twist'; Quilp in 'Nicholas Nickleby'; Chadband in ' Martin Chuzzlewit.'"