3. My first acquaintance with Mr. Scott was at the house of a gentleman whose interior walls he was decorating with historic frescos, and whose patronage I (rightly or wrongly) imagined at that time to be of importance to him. I was then more good-natured and less conscientious than I am now, and my host and hostess attached weight to my opinions. I said all the good I truly could of the frescos, and no harm; painted a corn-cockle on the walls myself, in reverent subordination to them; got out of the house as soon afterwards as I could, and never since sought Mr. Scott's acquaintance further (though, to my regret, he was once photographed in the same plate with Mr. Rosetti and me). Mr. Scott is an honest man, and naturally thinks me a hypocrite and turncoat as well as a fool.
4. The honestest man in writing a review is apt sometimes to give obscure statements of facts which ought to have been clearly stated to make the review entirely fair. Permit me to state in very few words those which I think the review in question does not clearly represent. My "Elements of Drawing" were out of print, and sometimes asked for; I wished to rewrite them, but had no time, and knew that my friend and pupil, Mr. Tyrrwhitt, was better acquainted than I myself with some processes of water-color sketching, and was perfectly acquainted with and heartily acceptant of the principles which I have taught to be essential in all art. I knew he could write, and I therefore asked him to write, a book of his own to take the place of the "Elements," and authorized him to make arrangements with my former publisher for my wood-blocks, mostly drawn on the wood by myself.
The book is his own, not mine, else it would have been published as mine, not his. I have not read it all, and do not answer for it all. But when I wrote the "Elements" I believed conscientiously that book of mine to be the best then attainable by the public on the subject of elementary drawing. I think Mr. Tyrrwhitt's a better book, know it to be a more interesting one, and believe it to be, in like manner, the best now attainable by the British public on elementary practice of art.
I am, Sir, your faithful servant,
John Ruskin.
Brantwood, Jan. 10.
FOOTNOTES:
[151] Of this review nothing need be said beyond what is stated in this letter. The full title of the book which it so harshly treated is "Our Sketching Club. Letters and Studies on Landscape Art." By the Rev. R. St. John Tyrrwhitt, M.A. With an authorized reproduction of the lessons and woodcuts in Professor Ruskin's "Elements of Drawing." Macmillan, 1874. The "letters and notes" refer especially to one signed "K" in the Gazette of January 1, and another signed "A Young Author" in that of January 4. The principal complaint of both these letters was that reviewers seldom master, and sometimes do not even read the books they criticise.
[From "The Pall Mall Gazette," January 19, 1875.]
THE POSITION OF CRITICS.
To the Editor of "The Pall Mall Gazette."
Sir: I see you are writing of criticism;[152] some of your readers may, perhaps, be interested in hearing the notions of a man who has dabbled in it a good many years. I believe, in a word, that criticism is as impertinent in the world as it is in a drawing-room. In a kindly and well-bred company, if anybody tries to please them, they try to be pleased; if anybody tries to astonish them, they have the courtesy to be astonished; if people become tiresome, they ask somebody else to play, or sing, or what not, but they don't criticise. For the rest, a bad critic is probably the most mischievous person in the world (Swift's Goddess of Criticism in the "Tale of a Tub" seems what need be represented on that subject[153]), and a good one the most helpless and unhappy: the more he knows, the less he is trusted, and it is too likely he may become morose in his unacknowledged power. A good executant, in any art, gives pleasure to multitudes, and breathes an atmosphere of praise, but a strong critic is every man's adversary—men feel that he knows their foibles, and cannot conceive that he knows more. His praise, to be acceptable, must be always unqualified; his equity is an offence instead of a virtue; and the art of correction, which he has learned so laboriously, only fills his hearers with disgust.