[73] “I have great hope that they may become the foundation of a more earnest and able school of art than we have seen for centuries.”—“Modern Painters,” vol. i. p. 415, note.
[74] Of the two pictures described in this and the following letter, “The Light of the World” is well known from the engraving of it by W. H. Simmons. It was originally purchased by Mr. Thomas Combe, of Oxford, whose widow has recently presented it to Keble College, where it now hangs, in the library. The subject of the second picture, which is less well known, and which has never been engraved, sufficiently appears from the letter describing it.
[75] Mr. Dearle informs me that this picture was bought from the walls of the Academy by a prize-holder in the Art Union of London. He adds that the purchaser resided in either America or Australia, and that the picture is now, therefore, presumably in one or other of those countries.
[76] Shenstone: Elegy xxvi. The subject of the poem is that of the picture described here. The girl speaks—
“If through the garden’s flowery tribes I stray,
Where bloom the jasmines that could once allure,
Hope not,” etc.
The prize of the Liverpool Academy was awarded in 1858 to Millais’s “Blind Girl.” Popular feeling, however, favored another picture, the “Waiting for the Verdict” of A. Solomon, and a good deal of discussion arose as to whether the prize had been rightly awarded. As one of the judges, and as a member of the Academy, Mr. Alfred Hunt addressed a letter on the matter to Mr. Ruskin, the main portion of whose reply was sent by him to the Liverpool Albion and is now reprinted here. Mr. Solomon’s picture had been exhibited in the Royal Academy of 1857 (No. 562), and is mentioned in Mr. Ruskin’s Notes to the pictures of that year (p. 32).
[77] The defence was made in a second notice (March 6, 1858) of the Exhibition of the Royal Scottish Academy, then open to the public. The picture of Mr. Waller Paton (now R.S.A.) alluded to here was entitled “Wild Water, Inveruglass” (161); he also exhibited one of “Arrochar Road, Tarbet” (314). The platitudes of the Scotsman against the pre-Raphaelites were contained in its second notice of the Exhibition (February 20, 1858).
[78] There must be some error here, as it is the true dreams that come through the horn gate, while the fruitless ones pass through the gate of ivory. The allusion is to Homer (Odyssey, xix. 562).
[79] In illustration of the old Scottish ballad of “Burd Helen,” who, fearing her lover’s desertion, followed him, dressed as a foot-page, through flood, if not through fire—
“Lord John he rode, Burd Helen ran,
The live-lang sumer’s day,
Until they cam’ to Clyde’s Water,
Was filled frae bank to brae.
“ ‘See’st thou yon water, Helen,’ quoth he,
‘That flows frae bank to brim?’
‘I trust to God, Lord John,’ she said,
‘You ne’er will see me swim.’ ”