But I have
never been able wholly to admire the formal and deliberate products
of their minds. Ruskin as an art-critic--how profoundly unfair,
prejudiced, unjust he is! He has made up his mind about the merit
of an artist; he will lay down a principle about accuracy in art,
and to what extent imagination may improve upon vision; and then he
will abuse Claude for modifying a scene, in the same breath, and
for the same reasons, with which he will praise Turner for
exaggerating one. He will use the same stick that he throws for one
dog to fetch, to beat another dog that he dislikes. Of course he
says fine and suggestive things by the way, and he did a great work
in inspiring people to look for beauty, though he misled many
feeble spirits into substituting one convention for another. I
cannot read a page of his formal writings without anger and
disgust. Yet what a beautiful, pathetic, noble spirit he had! The
moment he writes, simply and tenderly, from his own harrowed heart,
he becomes a dear and honoured friend. In Praeterita, in his diaries
and letters, in his familiar and unconsidered utterances, he is
perfectly delightful, conscious of his own waywardness and
whimsicality; but when he lectures and dictates, he is like a man
blowing wild blasts upon a shrill trumpet.
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