So he withdrew his most popular books—"Modern Painters" and the rest—from circulation, though he was persuaded by the publisher to reprint "Modern Painters" and "Stones of Venice" once more—"positively for the last time," as they said the plates would give no more good impressions. He had his later writings printed in a rather expensive style; at first through Smith & Elder, after two years by Messrs. Watson & Hazell (later Hazell, Watson & Viney, Ltd.), and the method of publication is illustrated in the history of "Sesame and Lilies," the first volume of these "collected works." It was issued by Smith & Elder, May, 1871, at 7s., to the trade only, leaving the retailer to fix the price to the public. In September, 1872, the work was also supplied by Mr. George Allen, and the price raised to 9s.6d., (carriage paid) to trade and public alike, with the idea that an extra shilling, or nearly ten per cent., might be added by the bookseller for his trouble in ordering the work. If he did not add the commission, that was his own affair; though with postage of order and payment, when only one or two copies at a time were asked for, this did not leave much margin. So it was doubled, by the simple expedient of doubling the price!—or, to be accurate, raising it to 18s. (carriage paid) for 20s. over the counter. It was freely prophesied by business men that this would not do: however, at the end of fifteen years the sixth edition of this work in this form was being sold, in spite of the fact that, five years before, a smaller reprint of the same book had been brought out at 5s., and was then in its fourth edition of 3,000 copies each.
Compared with the enormous sale of sensational novels and school books, this is no great matter; but for a didactic work, offered to the public without advertisement, and in the face of the almost universal opposition of the book-selling trade, it means not only that, as an author, Ruskin had made a secure reputation, but also that he deserved the curious tribute once paid him by the journal of a big modern shop (Compton House, Liverpool) as a "great tradesman."
CHAPTER III
OXFORD TEACHING (1872-1875)
Early in 1872, after bringing out "Munera Pulveris," the essays he had written ten years before for Fraser on economy; after getting those street-sweepers to work near the British Museum where he was making studies of animals and Greek sculpture; and after once more addressing the Woolwich cadets, this time[25] on the Bird of Calm (the mythology of the Halcyon), Professor Ruskin went to Oxford to give a course of ten lectures[26] on the Relation of Natural Science to Art, afterwards published under the title of "The Eagle's Nest." He wrote to Professor Norton:
"I am, as usual, unusually busy. When I get fairly into my lecture work at Oxford I always find the lecture would come better some other way, just before it is given, and so work from hand to mouth. I am always unhappy, and see no good in saying so. But I am settling to my work here—recklessly—to do my best with it: feeling quite sure that it is talking at hazard for what chance good may come. But I attend regularly in the schools as mere drawing-master, and the men begin to come in one by one, about fifteen or twenty already; several worth having as pupils in any way, being of temper to make good growth of."
Why was he always unhappy? It was not that Mr. W.B. Scott criticised "Ruskin's influence" in that March; or that by Easter he had to say farewell to his old home on Denmark Hill, and settle "for good" at Brantwood. Nor that he could go abroad again for a long summer in Italy with Mr. and Mrs. Severn and the Hilliards and Mr. Albert Goodwin. They started about the middle of April, and on the journey out he wrote, beside his "Fors" which always went on, a preface to the Rev. R. St. John Tyrwhitt's "Christian Art and Symbolism." He drew the Apse at Pisa, half-amused and half-worried by the little ragamuffin who varied the tedium of watching his work by doing horizontal-bar tricks on the railings of the Cathedral green. Then to Lucca, where, to show his friends something of Italian landscape, he took them for rambles through the olive farms and chestnut woods, among which Miss Hilliard lost her jewelled cross. Greatly to Ruskin's delight, as a firm believer in Italian peasant-virtue, it was found and returned without hint of reward.