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Ruskin's remark points directly to the new world-conception which must be striven for to-day the conception in which death is recognized as a secondary form of existence preceded by life; in which levity is given its rightful place as a force polar to gravity; and in which, because life is bound up with levity as death is with gravity, levity is recognized as being of more ancient rank than gravity.
Now I am strongly of Ruskin's opinion that the duty of the artist is to make himself fit for the best society, and then to abstain from it. Very fortunately I have no sort of taste for these things, beyond the simple human satisfaction in enjoying consideration. That is natural and inevitable. But I don't value it unduly, and I dislike its penalties more than I love its rewards.
In the "Ridley" action the honesty of the opinion was admitted, and the question arose whether the opinion was fair in form. In the famous Whistler v. Ruskin cause there was no doubt about the critic's honesty fancy doubting Ruskin's honesty!
And Ruskin's other mind is still in the comical Tennysonian stage about war, dwelling with awe on swords and shields, glory, honour, patriotism, courage, spurs, pennants, and tearful but resolute ladies who wave their handkerchiefs in the intervals of sobbing over their "loved ones." He calls war "noble play." He scorns cricket.
So far as I remember, Ruskin's quarrel with Poussin is that to his picture of the Flood he has given a prevailing air of sobriety and gloom, whereas it is notorious that an abundance of rain causes all green things to flourish and the rocks to shine like agate.
He was Ruskin's chief secretary at Brantwood from Jan., 1876 to 1882, when the death of his father, and ill-health, led him to resign the post, which was then filled by Miss Sara D. Anderson. A Brantwood dinner is always ample; there is no asceticism about the place; nor is there any affectation of "intensity" or of conversational cleverness.
An English spinster retailing paradoxes culled to-day from Ruskin's handbooks; an American citizen describing his jaunt in a gondola from the railway station; a German shopkeeper descanting in one breath on Baur's Bock and the beauties of the Marcusplatz; an intelligent æsthete bent on working into clearness his own views of Carpaccio's genius: all these in turn, or all together, must be suffered gladly through well-nigh two long hours.
Some one has said that no man can appreciate the beautiful who has not a keen sense of humor. For the beautiful is the harmonious, and the laughable is the absence of fit adjustment. Mr. Ruskin disproves the maxim. But let no hasty soul imagine that John Ruskin's opinions on practical themes are not useful.
The story of The Nürnberg Stove, by Ouida, is a good example of the latter kind; Ruskin's King of the Golden River will serve as an illustration of the former. The problem in one case is chiefly one of elimination; in the other it is also in a large degree one of rearrangement. In both cases I have purposely chosen extreme instances, as furnishing plainer illustration.
Although some of Ruskin's verse was good, he finally had the penetration to see that it ranked decidedly below the greatest, and he later laid down the dictum: "with second-rate poetry in quality no one ought to be allowed to trouble mankind."
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