"What is it all about?" Mr. Carlyle murmured across the table to Tennyson.
"Don't know," replied the Maker. "Didn't think he had it in him."
Could these two great men be jealous of Mr. Ruskin's fame?
"Your remarks, Mr. Ruskin," said the host, "sound very pretty. But I should like to have them before me in black and white, so I could tackle them quietly for an hour. Then I'd tell you what I think. I was reading, last week, all your works."
"All my works in a week!" cried Ruskin. "Sir, my works require loving thought and lingering tender care. You must get up early in the morning with them, you must watch the drapery of the clouds at sunrise when you read them, you must take them into the fields at spring-time and mark, as you meditate on the words of the printed page, the young leaflets breathing low in the sunshine. Then, as the thoughts grow and glow in the pure ether of your mind—hock, if you please—you will rise above the things of the earth, your wings will expand, you will care for nothing of the mean and practical—I will take a little more duckling—your faculties will be woven into a cunning subordination with the wondrous works of Nature, and all will be beautiful alike, from a blade of grass to a South American forest."
"There are very good forests in the Sierra Nevada," said Mr. Beck, who had just understood the last words; "we needn't go to South America for forests, I guess."
"That, Mr. Beck, is what you will get from a study of my works. But a week—a week, Mr. Beck!"
He shook his head with a whole library of reproach.
"My time was limited, Mr. Ruskin, and I hope to go through your books with more study, now I have had the pleasure of meeting you. What I was going to say was, that I am sorry not to be able to talk with you gentlemen on the subjects you like best, because things have got mixed, and I find I can't rightly remember who wrote what."
"Thank goodness!" murmured Mr. Tennyson, under his breath.