3729. John Ruskin to RB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 22, 109–110.
[London]
[ca. 4 February 1856] [1]
Dear Browning
I was truly rejoiced & made better by your letter, & hasten to thank you for it; & chiefly for your quoting your own poetry, which I take very kindly of you thinking it shows all manner of good friendship & happy trust. And I like all you quote very much—only please note you are off on a wrong tack in supposing that I class you among the moderns. I consider you a PreRaphaelite—& include you always in the exceptions I make of that class to all that I say of modernism. Touching Scott and colour—& those matters—I cannot write today—the two things I have mainly at heart being to say that my question about the onion stone [2] was not in querulousness but in simple good faith and ignorance of Italian—that now I know what it means, I highly approve of the whole thing & would not have it otherwise—all these words should be translated—but you would spare your readers trouble—No—you would spare yourself discredit—for most readers won’t take the trouble—if you just put the word at bottom of page—(cipollino)[.] [3]
–Next– I want to know what poor Wordsworth did to be so abused [4] —Burns & Shelley indeed!! [5] they were true men?—& he false?—what do you mean my dear fellow– I always look upon Shelley as a mere sick schoolboy who was always eating too much plumcake. I can’t make out what you find in him– I think one might write Shelley by Shrewsbury clock as easily as– Here goes—for a bit more of Revolt of Islam—
Then I looked up—& lo—from forth the West
The Likeness of an Eagle came, afloat—
Hoary with fire—the Clouds beneath its breast
Boiled back in cloven [6] waves—a narrow throat
Swarthy’s too good for Shelley so I’ve split it
Of blue before it opened—like the throat
Of the Halcyon– All its plumes were edged with ice—
And through the ice even threads of [7] lightning shot—
And through the lightning throbs of Love, Love
Twice—Thrice—
Winnowed by Liberty—in the Abysmal Paradise– [8]
–Except the old gentleman in Nicholas Nickleby—who calls for the bottled thunder—& a corkscrew [9] —I know nothing—positively—so absurd as Shelley—& even the old gentleman has more practical tendencies—one knows, by his sending for the corkscrew, which Shelley never does–
I am always wanting whenever I read a word of him, which I rarely do—to bring him to some practical conclusion– E.G.
It was a little lawny islet—
By anemone & vi’let
Like mosaic-paven.
There, sat a gentleman—flushed & shy
And a girl with a corkscrew curl in her eye
On the grass, between—was a large eel-pie.
And a ham-bone—cleanly shaven.
And the gentleman asked—in accents mild
“Was it quite enough soaked, before it was biled.[”]
And the lady replied—as she pulled a vilet
Off the little lawny islet—
“Did’nt I tell you—Jane would spile it”. [10]
There’s something worth having an island for, in that.
—But please write & tell me what you mean about Wordsworth—for I don’t understand: I am nearly all right again; & getting on with my work– It was nothing but that I had ate too many red herrings– Ever with best love to Mrs Browning
Most affectionately Yours
J Ruskin
P.S. I’ve read the Revolt of Islam four times over—or thereabouts, & never yet made out who revolted—or what it was about, or whether Islam has any thing to do with the Turks[.]
Publication: DeLaura, pp. 330–332.
Manuscript: University of Texas.
1. Approximate date suggested by Ruskin’s hastening “to thank” RB for letter 3726.
2. Cf. “The Tomb at St. Praxed’s” (1845).
3. Literally, “small onion.” Ruskin did in fact “put the word at bottom of page” in a footnote to his quotation from RB’s poem (see letter 3721, note 6): “Browning does right in translating … ‘cipollino’ into ‘onion-stone.’ Our stupid habit of using foreign words without translation is continually losing us half the force of the foreign language. How many travellers hearing the term ‘cipollino’ recognize the intended sense of a stone splitting into concentric coats, like an onion?” (Modern Painters, IV, 378).
4. As the subject of “The Lost Leader” (1845).
6. Ruskin crossed out “swarthy” and wrote “cloven” above it.
7. Ruskin crossed out “was silken” and wrote “even threads of” above it.
8. In one stanza, Ruskin parodies the first fifteen stanzas of Canto I in Shelley’s The Revolt of Islam (1818).
9. Cf. Charles Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby (1839), chap. 49: “‘Very good,’ said the old gentleman, raising his voice, ‘then bring in the bottled lightning, a clean tumbler, and a corkscrew.’”
10. The first three lines of Ruskin’s poem are taken from the opening of Shelley’s “The Isle” (1824), slightly misquoted.
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