[2] [If that be so, booksellers are of no use in the world, and ought to be abolished. Am I to give my buyers unnecessary trouble that booksellers may live?] [↑]
FORS CLAVIGERA.
LETTER XXII.
Brantwood,
19th September, 1872.
My Friends,—
I am to-day to begin explaining to you the meaning of my own books, which, some people will tell you, is an egotistical and impertinent thing for an author to do. My own view of the matter is, that it is generally more egotistical and impertinent to explain the meaning of other people’s books,—which, nevertheless, at this day in England, many young and inexperienced persons are paid for pretending to do. What intents I have had, myself, therefore, in this ‘Fors Clavigera,’ and some other lately published writings, I will take on me to tell you, without more preamble.
And first, for their little vignette stamp of roses on title-page. It is copied from the clearest bit of the pattern of the petticoat of Spring, where it is drawn tight over her thigh, in Sandro Botticelli’s picture of her, at Florence. I drew it on the wood myself, and Mr. Burgess cut it; and it is on all my title-pages, because whatever I now write is meant to help in founding the society called of ‘Monte Rosa;’—see page sixth of the seventeenth of these letters. Such reference hereafter, observe, is only thus printed, (XVII. 6).
And I copied this vignette from Sandro Botticelli, for two reasons: first, that no man has ever yet drawn, and none is likely to draw for many a day, roses as well as Sandro has drawn them; secondly, because he was the only painter of Italy who thoroughly felt and understood Dante; and the only one also who understood the thoughts of Heathens and Christians equally, and could in a measure paint both Aphrodite and the Madonna. So that he is, on the whole, the most universal of painters; and, take him all in all, the greatest Florentine workman: and I wish you to know with Dante’s opinions, his, also, on all subjects of importance to you, of which Florentines could judge.
And of his life, it is proper for you immediately to know thus much: or at least, that so much was current gossip about it in Vasari’s time,—that, when he was a boy, he obstinately refused to learn either to read, write, or sum; (and I heartily wish all boys would and could do the same, till they were at least as old as the illiterate Alfred,) whereupon his father, “disturbed by these eccentric habits of his son, turned him over in despair to a gossip of his, called Botticello, who was a goldsmith.”