[102] My old friend Blackwood complains bitterly, in his last number, of my having given this illustration at one of my late lectures, saying, that I "have a disagreeable knack of finding out the joints in my opponent's armor," and that "I never fight for love." I never do. I fight for truth, earnestly, and in no wise for jest; and against all lies, earnestly, and in no wise for love. They complain that "a noble adversary is not in Mr. Ruskin's way." No; a noble adversary never was, never will be. With all that is noble I have been, and shall be, in perpetual peace, with all that is ignoble and false everlastingly at war. And as for these Scotch bourgeois gentilshommes with their "Tu n'as pas la patience que je pare," let them look to their fence. But truly, if they will tell me where Claude's strong points are, I will strike there, and be thankful.
[103] His first drawing master was, I believe, that Mr. Lowe, whose daughters, now aged and poor, have, it seems to me, some claim on public regard, being connected distantly with the memory of Johnson, and closely with that of Turner.
[104] Charlemagne and St. Louis.
APPENDIX.
I. Claude's Tree-drawing.
The reader may not improbably hear it said, by persons who are incapable of maintaining an honest argument, and therefore incapable of understanding or believing the honesty of an adversary, that I have caricatured, or unfairly chosen, the examples I give of the masters I depreciate. It is evident, in the first place, that I could not, if I were even cunningly disposed, adopt a worse policy than in so doing; for the discovery of caricature or falsity in my representations, would not only invalidate the immediate statement, but the whole book; and invalidate it in the most fatal way, by showing that all I had ever said about "truth" was hypocrisy, and that in my own affairs I expected to prevail by help of lies. Nevertheless it necessarily happens, that in endeavors to facsimile any work whatsoever, bad or good, some changes are induced from the exact aspect of the original. These changes are, of course, sometimes harmful, sometimes advantageous; the bad thing generally gains; the good thing always loses: so that I am continually tormented by finding, in my plates of contrasts, the virtue and vice I exactly wanted to talk about, eliminated from both examples. In some cases, however, the bad thing will lose also, and then I must either cancel the plate, or increase the cost of the work by preparing another (at a similar risk), or run the chance of incurring the charge of dishonest representation. I desire, therefore, very earnestly, and once for all, to have it understood that whatever I say in the text, bearing on questions of comparison, refers always to the original works; and that, if the reader has it in his power, I would far rather he should look at those works than at my plates of them; I only give the plates for his immediate help and convenience: and I mention this, with respect to my plate of Claude's ramification, because, if I have such a thing as a prejudice at all, (and, although I do not myself think I have, people certainly say so,) it is against Claude; and I might, therefore, be sooner suspected of some malice in this plate than in others. But I simply gave the original engravings from the Liber Veritatis to Mr. Le Keux, earnestly requesting that the portions selected might be faithfully copied; and I think he is much to be thanked for so carefully and successfully accomplishing the task. The figures are from the following plates:—
| No. | 1. | Part of the central tree in | No. | 134. | of the Liber Veritatis. |
| 2. | From the largest tree | " | 158. | ||
| 3. | Bushes at root of tree | " | 134. | ||
| 4. | Tree on the left | " | 183. | ||
| 5. | Tree on the left | " | 95. | ||
| 6. | Tree on the left | " | 72. | ||
| 7. | Principal tree | " | 92. | ||
| 8. | Tree on the right | " | 32. |
If, in fact, any change be effected in the examples in this plate, it is for the better; for, thus detached, they all look like small boughs, in which the faults are of little consequence; in the original works they are seen to be intended for large trunks of trees, and the errors are therefore pronounced on a much larger scale.
The plate of mediæval rocks (10.) has been executed with much less attention in transcript, because the points there to be illustrated were quite indisputable, and the instances were needed merely to show the kind of thing spoken of, not the skill of particular masters. The example from Leonardo was, however, somewhat carefully treated. Mr. Cuff copied it accurately from the only engraving of the picture which I believe exists, and with which, therefore, I suppose the world is generally content. That engraving, however, in no respect seems to me to give the look of the light behind Leonardo's rocks; so I afterwards darkened the rocks, and put some light into the sky and lily; and the effect is certainly more like that of the picture than it is in the same portion of the old engraving.