the circumstances

John Ruskin to Coventry Patmore

Oxford, 18th Nov. [1854.]

Dear Patmore,

I only got your note yesterday afternoon, owing to my absence from London for the moment. What you tell and show me of the notices of the Angel is only consistent with what I have long observed of press criticism. No thoroughly good thing can be praised or felt at once.

You need be under no apprehension as to the ultimate success of your poem. I don't think you will even need much patience. It has purpose and plain meaning in every line, it is fit for its age--and for all ages, and it will get its place. Its only retarding element is the strong resemblance to the handling of Tennyson, but this will not tell against it ultimately any more than Bonifazio's resemblance to Titian ought to make us cast Bonifazio out of our galleries.

The circumstances of my own life unhappily render it impossible for me to venture to write a critique on it for any publication but whatever my private influence can do shall be done.

Believe me, with regards to Mrs. Patmore,

Faithfully and respectfully yours,
J. Ruskin.

[link to: Effie Gray, Mrs. Ruskin.]

[Picture of John Ruskin above right, by John Everett Millais]

-from Memoirs and Correspondence of Coventry Patmore By Basil Champneys (London: George Bell and Sons, 1900) p. 278-279.

Ruskin Refuses

Matt. P. Fraser, Esq.
President of the Conservative Club

Concerning the Lord Rectorship of Glasgow University


Brantwood, Coniston, Lancashire, 10th June, 1880.

My Dear Sir: I am greatly flattered by your letter, but there are two reasons why I can't stand--the first, that though I believe myself the stanchest Conservative in the British Islands, I hold some opinions, and must soon clearly utter them, concerning both lands and rents, which I fear the Conservative Club would be very far from sanctioning, and think Mr. Bright himself had been their safer choice. The second, that I am not in the least disposed myself to stand in any contest where it is possible that Mr. Bright might beat me.

Are there really no Scottish gentlemen of birth and learning from whom you could choose a Rector worthier than Mr. Bright? and better able than any Southron to rectify what might be oblique, or hold straight what wasn't yet so, in a Scottish University?

Might I ask the favor of the transmission of a copy of this letter to the Independent Club? It will save me the difficulty of repetition in other terms.--And believe me, my dear sir, always the club's and your faithful servant,

J. Ruskin

-from The Complete Works of John Ruskin (London: The Chesterfield Society, n.d.) vol. xxiii, p. 195 of Arrows of the Chase: Being a Collection of Scattered Letters.