and so the timely succession of either ball, flower, or dentil, in architecture: but this, again, going off to a totally different and still lovely idea, the main one in the word aurifrigium—which rooted once in aurifex, went on in Etruscan work, followed in Florence into a much closer connection with frigidus—their style being always in frosted gold (see the dew on a cabbage-leaf or, better, on a gray lichen, in early sunshine)—going back, nobody knows how far, but to the Temple of the Dew of Athens, and gold of Mycenæ, anyhow; and in Etruria to the Deluge, I suppose. Well, then, the notion of the music of morning comes in—with strings of lyre (or frets of Katharine's instrument, whatever it was) and stops of various quills; which gets us into another group beginning with plectrum, going aside again into plico and plight, and Milton's
"Play in the plighted clouds"
(the quills on the fretful porcupine are all thought of, first, in their piped complexity like rushes, before the standing up in ill-temper), and so on into the plight of folded drapery, and round again to our blanket. I think that's enough to sketch out the compass of the word. Of course the real power of it in any place depends on the writer's grasp of it, and use of the facet he wants to cut with.
[From "The Theatre," March, 1880, p. 169.]
"THE MERCHANT OF VENICE."[163]
6th Feb., 1880.
I have no doubt that whatever Mr. Irving has stated that I said, I did say. But in personal address to an artist, to whom one is introduced for the first time, one does not usually say all that may be in one's mind. And if expressions, limited, if not even somewhat exaggerated, by courtesy, be afterwards quoted as a total and carefully-expressed criticism, the general reader will be—or may be easily—much misled. I did and do much admire Mr. Irving's own acting of Shylock. But I entirely dissent (and indignantly as well as entirely) from his general reading and treatment of the play. And I think that a modern audience will invariably be not only wrong, but diametrically and with polar accuracy opposite to the real view of any great author in the moulding of his work. So far as I could in kindness venture, I expressed my feelings to that effect, in a letter which I wrote to Mr. Irving on the day after I saw the play; and I should be sincerely obliged to him, under the existing circumstances, if he would publish the whole of that letter.
FOOTNOTES:
[163] The circumstances connected with the present letter, or rather extract from one, are as follows: After witnessing the performance of "The Merchant of Venice" at the Lyceum Theatre, Mr. Ruskin had some conversation with Mr. Irving on the subject. In the Theatre of January 1880—p. 63—appeared a paragraph which stated that at the interview named Mr. Ruskin had declared Mr. Irving's "Shylock" to be "noble, tender, and true," and it is to that statement that the present letter, which appeared in the March number of the Theatre, relates. With reference to the letter privately addressed to Mr. Irving, the Theatre of April (p. 249) had a note to the effect that Mr. Irving had, for excellent and commendable reasons, preferred it not being made public. For a full statement of Mr. Ruskin's views of "The Merchant of Venice," see "Munera Pulveris," p. 102.