RUSKIN AS POET.
t was lately rumoured that Mr. Ruskin was about to issue a volume of poems, consisting mainly of pieces already published. The statement was probably the first intimation received by many that the author of ‘Modern Painters’ had ever written anything in the shape of verse. That he has always been, like Sidney, a ‘warbler of poetic prose,’ has lately been emphasized by a magazine-writer; but it is not at all universally known that between the years 1835 and 1845 Mr. Ruskin figured somewhat largely as a poet, in the popular sense of that much abused word. During that time he produced a good deal of verse, in addition to the prize poem which has always been readily accessible by his admirers.
Even if one had not known, it would not have been difficult to have assumed, from the rhythmic character of Mr. Ruskin’s prose, that he had at one time ‘dropped into poetry.’ Such a master of rhetoric could hardly have gone through life without wooing the Muse of Song, however temporarily or unsuccessfully. It would not have been natural for him to have done so. And, indeed, it is probable that no great prose rhetorician has failed to pay the same homage to the charm of verbal melody and cadence. In all the most sonorous prose turned out by English authors there will be found a lilt and a swing which would without difficulty translate themselves into verse. ‘Most wretched men,’ says Shelley, ‘are cradled into poetry by wrong.’ Most literary men have been cradled into it by their irresistible feeling and aptitude for rhythm, together with that general poetic sensibility which is rarely absent from the nature of the literary artist. Certain it is that practice in verse has always been recognised as the best of all preparation for work in prose, and no doubt much of Mr. Ruskin’s success as prose-producer has been owing to his early devotion to the Muse.
He himself tells us, in the course of his tribute to his ‘first editor’ (W. H. Harrison), that
‘A certain capacity for rhythmic cadence (visible enough in all my later writings), and the cheerfulness of a much-protected but not foolishly-indulged childhood, made me early a rhymester.’
And he adds—the tribute was paid in 1878—
‘A shelf of the little cabinet by which I am now writing is loaded with poetical effusions which were the delight of my father and mother, and which I have not got the heart to burn.’
A much fuller account of the poetic stages through which he passed in childhood is given by Mr. Ruskin in his ‘Præterita,’ where he tells us of the six ‘poems’ he brought forth in his seventh year (1826), one of them being on the subject of the steam-engine, and rejoicing in such couplets as:
‘When furious up from mines the water pours,
And clears from rusty moisture all the ores.’