G. W. Wall.
From Oxoniensis.
Dear Mr. Malleson,—Many thanks for the pamphlet. You ask me to send you any remarks I may have to make on the Letters, and I gather from your note at the beginning of the Letters as they now stand, that you intend making use of any remarks sent you that may commend themselves to your judgment. I am not vain enough to think mine of any special value. I will, however, write you my feelings about them, encouraged to do so by your statement in the note to the pamphlet, that the use made of remarks sent you will be anonymous, if it is so desired.
First, as regards the general tone of the Letters. You tell me that the majority of the comments you have received have been hostile—people not taking their medicine without making wry faces. I am only surprised at the gentleness of the Letters, and I believe that if anyone will take the trouble to put down for himself on paper the sum of their contents, he will find it as difficult to gainsay as for careless readers it is easy to cavil at. On the other hand, the "hostile spirit" is readily provoked by the way in which some of the teaching of the Letters is put. Passages like the sixth paragraph in [Letter X.] appear an objectionable joke to some—perhaps to most—people; they do not see that it is really a serious jest, so put for brevity's sake, and that Ruskin might have put the same note to it as he has put to a passage in the "Crown of Wild Olive," p. 85, 8vo ed.: "Quite serious all this, though it reads like jest." I remember once asking Ruskin if his apparent joking in some Oxford lectures was not likely to lessen his influence, and he at once said to me, "Remember that most of my apparent jokes are serious, ghastly jests." I think he would be less often misunderstood, if this were more often understood.
Your own preface marks the two main points in the spirit of the Letters. They are sternly practical, and at the same time their standard is one of an ideal perfection. People don't see that because the goal cannot be reached, the road towards it can still be trodden, and therefore they apply to the road an epithet which applies only to the goal. In this respect Ruskin's teaching might be mottoed with George Herbert's—
"Who aimeth at the sky
Shoots higher much than he that means a tree."
In fact, Ruskin's teaching, like that of the Bible, is not unpractical, but unpractised.
I will now take the Letters in detail. The first four of them are merely introductory to the main matter of the eleven. In these first five two questions are asked—
1. What is a clergyman of the Church of England? And to this the suggested answer is (whom does it offend?), "A teacher of the Gospel of Christ to all nations."
2. What is the teaching of the Gospel he is to teach? What is that teaching, clearly and simply put?