(Miss Brickhill, photographer)
THE GREEK GOSPELS, WITH ANNOTATIONS BY RUSKIN
Some of the remarks merely comment on the grammatical forms, or the contractions, or the style of writing. Where a page is written with a free hand, evidently to the scribe's enjoyment, he notes the fact; and likewise where the scribe found it dull, and penned perfunctorily. That is quite like him, to ask how the man felt at his work! But there are many curious hints of questioning, and then confessions of his doubts about the doubts, that go to one's heart to read. "I have always profound sympathy for Thomas," he scribbles. "Well questioned, Jude!" "This reads like a piece of truth (John xviii. 16). How little one thinks of John's being by, in that scene!" "The hour being unknown, as well as unlooked for (Matt. xxiv. 42), the Lord comes, and the servant does not know that He has—(and has his portion, unknowingly?)." To the cry for Barabbas (Matt. xxvii. 20) he adds, "Remember! it was not the mob's fault, except for acting as a mob"; and to verse 24 (Pilate washing his hands)—"How any popular electionist or yielding governor can read these passages of Matthew and not shrivel!" On the parable of the vine, the earlier note to the verse about the withered branch cast into the fire and burned is—"How useless! and how weak and vain the whole over-fatigued metaphor!" But then—"I do not remember when I wrote this note, but the 'over-fatigued metaphor' comes to me to-day, 8th Nov. 1877, in connection with the καθὼς ἠγάπησε, as the most precious and direct help and life." You remember John xv. 9: "As the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you; continue ye in my love." That word was the help and life he found.
(Miss Brickhill, photographer)
KING HAKON'S BIBLE
He used to read his Latin Bibles too, but most of these were collected rather for their artistic value than otherwise. Of printed bibles there were few in his library; one, a Latin version in three volumes, purple morocco, printed by Fran. Gryphius, 1541, and adorned, as the title puts it, with images suitable no less for their beauty than for their truth, has the cuts resembling Holbein's work in "Icones Historiarum Veteris Testamenti" (Lyons, apud Joannem Frellonium, 1547). But he loved mediæval illumination, and owned too many thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Bibles, Psalters, and Missals to be described in this chapter.
Mention may be made of a few, such as the big fourteenth-century Latin Bible, splendidly written in double columns with stiff Gothic patterns in red and blue, and dainty little decorative initials, each a picture. Some of these he used to set his pupils and assistants to enlarge; and a very difficult job it was to get the curves to Ruskin's mind. If you made them too circular he would expound the spring of the lines until you felt that you had been guilty of all the vices of the vulgarest architect's draughtsman, an awful character in the true Ruskinian's eyes. If you insisted on the "infinite" and hyperbolic sweep of the contour—and you can't magnify a sixpence into a dinner-plate without some parti pris—then you had the lecture on Moderation and Restraint. But Ruskin was always very good-humoured and patient in these lessons; in the end a happy mean was found between Licence and Formality, and such works as the "Noah's Ark"—now, I believe, in the Sheffield museum—were elaborated. Perhaps photography would have been a shorter cut; but it should have been capital training, if one had known what use to make of it.