Varia Lectiones.-There are a few variations in the text between the two editions of On the Old Road; and in the present edition, a few misprints, which escaped notice in On the Old Road, have been corrected. For misprints which have hitherto appeared in "My First Editor," see below, p. 92. In "Lord Lindsay's Christian Art," at the end of § 8 (as now sectioned, Vol. XII. p. 178), "Progression by Antagonism" was in ed. 1 misprinted "Progression of Antagonism." The present § 63 began in ed. 1 at "A noble passage this," instead of (in ed. 2) "None of Orcagna's pupils" (Vol. XII. p. 233). In "Eastlake's History of Oil-Painting," in § 37 (as now sectioned, Vol. XII. p. 300), "" "mena in the quotation from Dante was misprinted "meno" in ed. 1. In "Pre-Raphaelitism," ed. 1 gave a note at the end of § 50 (as now sectioned, Vol. XII. p. 383), "Vide Modern Painters, Part II. Sect. III. Chap. IV. § 14." The reference was corrected to § 13 in ed. 2. In this edition, it is incorporated in an earlier note (p. 382). For other variations, see the Bibliographical Note (ibid., p. 338). For a correction in "The Three Colours," see below, p. 146. In "The Crystal Palace," § 1 (as now sectioned, Vol. XII. p. 417), line 3, "Vevay was misprinted "Veway" in ed. 1. See also the Biblio graphical Note (ibid., p. 416). In "The Study of Architecture," § 7 (as now sectioned, Vol. XIX. p. 26), line 7, "or" was misprinted "on" in ed. 1; and in § 11, line 16 (ibid., p. 31), "granite" was misprinted "granlte" in ed. 1. See also the Bibliographical Note (ibid., p. 18). In The Cestus of Aglaia, at the beginning, the reference to the lines of Homer was not given in ed. 1; in § 11 (as now sectioned, Vol. XIX. p. 63), line 10, "Titian" was misprinted "Titan" in ed. 1; in the note to ch. iii. (ibid., p. 82), ed. 1 had "This chapter was read," ed. 2 "A small portion of this ; § 61 (ibid., p. 109), ed. 1 gave the reference to Proverbs as "xix." instead of "xx." For a misprint in ed. 1 at the beginning of "A Museum or Picture Gallery," see below, p. 246. For misprints, etc., in "The Cavalli Monuments," see Vol. XXIV. p. 126. In "The Science of Meteorology," § 57 (now Vol. I. § 2, line 6, p. 208), ed. 1 misprinted "science for "silence." For "varia" in Fiction, Fair and Foul, see below, p. 264. In "Fairy Stories," § 130 (now Vol. XIX. p. 238, § 7, line 3), ed. 1 misprinted "striking" for "sterling." For "variæ " in "The Lord's Prayer and the Church," see below, p. 188.] [Bibliographical Note.-This paper was written as a preface to a series of "Notes and Reminiscences" from the pen of the late Mr. W. H. Harrison, commenced in the Dublin University Magazine of May 1878. William Henry Harrison's "Notes and Reminiscences appeared in the numbers of the Magazine for May to December (N.S., vol. i. pp. 537– 547, 698-712; vol. ii. pp. 56–67, 221-234, 309–323, 433–451, 613–618, 705-736). They contain occasional mention of Ruskin, and include (p. 223) one of his poems-namely, "Christ Church, Oxford "-without the second stanza in the text, which, however, is added in a footnote as having been written "at a later date": see Vol. II. p. 25 n. Ruskin's Preface was separately printed in that magazine in the preceding month (N.S., vol. i. pp. 385-391), but owing to Ruskin's illness at the time, he was unable to see it through the press. The paper was reprinted in On the Old Road, §§ 1-15; 1885, vol. i. pp. 3-18; and again in the second edition of that work, 1899, vol. i. pp. 3-18. In On the Old Road, in § 3, line 45, "those" was misprinted "their"; in § 4, line 4, "discovered" was not italicised (as it is in Ruskin's copy); in § 10, third line from the end, "passage' was misprinted " powers; in § 13 (line 3 of p. 102) "Tobias" has hitherto been "Tobit." These corrections, and some of punctuation, are now made for the first time.] MY FIRST EDITOR AN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL REMINISCENCE 1st February, 1878. 1. In seven days more I shall be fifty-nine;-which (practically) is all the same as sixty; but, being asked by the wife of my dear old friend, W. H. Harrison,' to say a few words of our old relations together, I find myself, in spite of all these years, a boy again,-partly in the mere thought of, and renewed sympathy with, the cheerful heart of my old literary master, and partly in instinctive terror lest, wherever he is in celestial circles, he should catch me writing bad grammar, or putting wrong stops, and should set the table turning, or the like. For he was inexorable in such matters, and many a sentence in Modern Painters, which I had thought quite beautifully turned out after a forenoon's work on it, had to be turned outside-in, after all, and cut into the smallest pieces and sewn up again, because he had found out there wasn't a nominative in it, or a genitive, or a conjunction, or something else indispensable to a sentence's decent existence and position in life. Not a book of mine, for good thirty years, but went, every word of it, under his careful eyes twice over-often also the last revises left to his tender mercy altogether on condition he wouldn't bother me any more. 2. "For good thirty years": that is to say, from my first verse-writing in Friendship's Offering at fifteen,' to 1 [For references to W. H. Harrison, see the Introduction, pp. xxvii.-xxviii.] 2 [Friendship's Offering of 1835 included two poems, signed "J. R.," and entitled PPR "Saltzburg" and "Fragments from a Metrical Journal; Andernacht and St. Goar": see Vol. II. pp. 353, 359.] my last orthodox and conservative compositions at fortyfive.' But when I began to utter radical sentiments, and say things derogatory to the clergy, my old friend got quite restive-absolutely refused sometimes to pass even my most grammatical and punctuated paragraphs, if their contents savoured of heresy or revolution; and at last I was obliged to print all my philanthropy and political economy on the sly. 3. The heaven of the literary world through which Mr. Harrison moved in a widely cometary fashion, circling now round one luminary and now submitting to the attraction of another, not without a serenely erubescent lustre of his own, differed toto cœlo from the celestial state of authorship by whose courses we have now the felicity of being dazzled and directed. Then, the publications of the months being very nearly concluded in the modest browns of Blackwood and Fraser, and the majesty of the quarterlies being above the range of the properly so-called "public" mind, the simple family circle looked forward with chief complacency to their New Year's gift of the Annual;--a delicately printed, lustrously bound, and elaborately illustrated small octavo volume, representing, after its manner, the poetical and artistic inspiration of the age. It is not a little wonderful to me, looking back to those pleasant years and their bestowings, to measure the difficultly imaginable distance between the periodical literature of that day and ours. In a few words, it may be summed by saying that the ancient Annual was written by meekly-minded persons, who felt that they knew nothing about anything, and did not want to know more. Faith in the usually accepted principles of propriety, and confidence in the Funds, the Queen, the English Church, the British Army, and the perennial continuance of England, of her Annuals, and of the creation in general, were necessary then for the eligibility, and important elements in the success, of the winter-blowing author. [And later, for Harrison revised the Lectures on Art (1870): see Vol. XX. p. xlviii.] |