My dear Malleson,—I'm nearly beside myself with a sudden rush of work on my return from abroad, and resumption of Oxford duties, and I simply cannot yet think over the business of the letters, the rather that I certainly never would re-publish most of those clergymen's letters at all.
My own were a gift to you, and I am quite ready to print them if you like, and let you have half profits, the St. George's Guild having the other. But that could not be for some time yet.
Ever affectionately yours,
J. Ruskin.
EPILOGUE BY MR. RUSKIN
Brantwood, Coniston, June 1880.
My dear Malleson,—I have glanced at the proofs you send; and can do no more than glance, even if it seemed to me desirable that I should do more,—which, after said glance, it does in no wise. Let me remind you of what it is absolutely necessary that the readers of the book should clearly understand—that I wrote these Letters at your request, to be read and discussed at the meeting of a private society of clergymen. I declined then to be present at the discussion, and I decline still. You afterwards asked leave to print the Letters, to which I replied that they were yours, for whatever use you saw good to make of them: afterwards your plans expanded, while my own notion remained precisely what it had been—that the discussion should have been private, and kept within the limits of the society, and that its conclusions, if any, should have been announced in a few pages of clear print, for the parishioners' exclusive reading.