RUSKIN'S WORK.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 657, 6 November 1909, Page 9

RUSKIN'S WORK.

The "Pall Mall Magezme" contains an articlo of exceptional interest by Mr. E. T. Cook, who has jnst completed the editing-of tho Library Edition of Ruskm's works, and who tells tho . story of this great undertaking. t i"I Jhave bean for many years living, as it were, behind the scenes of this pageant of style,'* writes Mr. Cook-"a pageant, I may remark in passing, which is as fnll of variety as of snlendour. I,have been poring o\ei Kus- ' tofmanuinpts, and admitted, through his -diaries, note-books, and letters, to all the secrete of Jus literary workshop What, I may V* asked afo tho „ecrets? I suppose the toes? answer%ould be to say that, there are none You may analyse a style into its comKntiarts as systematically as you like, you n?ay |trie,Jabel, and collate as diligently as yotf can, and you wiL be, little nearer in the end,.than,in the beginning, to tho secret of a Kreat writer's charm and power. The essential features are those which are underwed and in- , communicable The stylo is tho man. .'There were two daily tasks, I find, which 1 Rusltn seldom omitted. Ho rosepvith the> sun, - and before breakfast;,ho made notes of a few , verses of tho Bible-diwussmg with himself the precine force and meting or every word, cv Actly as ho tolls us in 'Sesame, to do with all •our ..enous reading, and then he to* tow ,his Plato and translated a passngo from tho ' "Republic' or the 'Laws "If tho notes in'the Library Edition do no 'thing else, they will, at anyrate, have lmDrested upon students of RusVin the constant f use he made of the Bible It colounl alike his thought and his stylo, and is ingrained in the '-texture of almost every piece ho ever wrote ■ How beautifully clear, how instantly impres '> siv > he.can be' Hm style is no,v pellucid and simple-as in 'Prac'enta/ the simplicity, betas , combined with the"most exquisite art in c6n ' veyinß each ' shade and 'nuance of meaning. T And now it is grandly sonorous, fitting its 'thought and passion to the exactly corresponding language, m which every word is right and contributes something to the ( effect of tho """What was the secret of his stylo' Here, again, I cannot tell you. 'The *ind bUroeth where it listeth, and thou hearest tho sound thereof, buUcanst not tell whence jUcometh and whither it goeths so that is WHW the ' trtuld not enable a man toTrivaWhiiS 'style, uu v less he also were bom of the spirit. But Rns'kin himself would have said, I think, what he reported Turner as saying, 'I know of no genius but the genius 'of hard work. The search for the right word, for tho fitting sentence, was often long, and paragraphs and chapters were written ojer and over again bo fore they satisfied him." To show Euskin's labour,in building up a pointed and impressive sentence, Mr. Cook quotes the attempts which ended in the following sentence: 'TVho that has once read it can ever forget the opening words of the 'Stones of Venice?'" asks Mr. Cook. " 'Since first the dominion of men was as eerted over the ocean, three thrones, of mark beyond all others, ha\o been set upon its saflds the thrones of Tyre, Venice, and England. Of the First of these great powers only the memory remains; of ilhe Second, the ruin, the Third, which inherits their greatness, if ,it forget their example, may be led through prouder eminence to less pitied destruction "My conviction is that Euskin's fame as a writor upon art, and upon all tho subjects which he associated'■with it, will endure and l grow. The ground of my conviction is that ' his wilting enforces, in incomparable language, two principles "Those principle l ! are two, or, rather, there are two aspects, of one and tho same underlying principle. The first is that truth and smcc-ity ate the touchstones by which every work of art must be tried, and the second is that tho ultimate test of excellonco in any work is the spirit of which it is the expression—of which spirit ( every work gnes dence alike in its design and in its execution."