John Ruskin: Letters from the Continent 1858 ed. by John Hayman (review)

HUMANITIES 427 one. I think that the editor might have indicated more precisely what proportion of variant readings he chose to include, and might perhaps have exercised more consistency in that choice. He always informs the reader generally about revisions, but a reader might well infer too much from these remarks. In notes to The Statue of the Bust, the change in line 203 from 'the subtle artisan!' to 'as the crafty sculptor can' is omitted, while seemingly smaller changes are included. Similarly with Caliban upon Setebos. The manuscript in the Pierpont Morgan Library shows that there were some seventy-five verbal revisions. Of these, some forty are changes more important than an alteration of verb form, order of words, or, for example, 'which' to 'that: Pettigrew lists twenty-two, but not Browning's change from 'willing' to 'choosing' (line 103); and, although other changes from third person to first person are given, two in line 126 are omitted. In the last paragraph, the change from 'There, see!' to 'What, what?' (line 284) is noted, but not the change from 'See!' to 'Ha!' (line 287) or 'See!' to 'La!' (line 292). Of course, this is not a variorum edition and readers doing serious textual work wiIl go elsewhere, and of course space is limited. But I think a stronger effort should have been made to prevent the reader from assuming too much from the sample of variant readings. But this is a minor question in an achievement of this magnitude. We do now have that long-desired inexpensive, virtually complete poetry. It has been edited with great diligence and thought. Nothing of this quality has been available before at such a price, and the reader of Browning's poetry can feel only gratitude toward the two editors, together with sorrow over John Pettigrew'S untimely death. In its good sense and integrity, this edition is a fitting tribute to his memory. (ELEANOR COOK) John Hayman, editor. John Ruskin: Letters from the Continent 1858 University of Toronto Press. xxviii, 207, illus. $20.00 In Ruskin's fortieth year the ashes of his unconsummated marriage were cold (since annulment six years before); the fifth volume of Modern Painters was projected; his religious beliefs were changing; his father was concerned about his 'deep thinking' on dangerous topics; and he was exhausted by cataloguing 'the nineteen thousand pieces' of Turner drawings given to the nation. Ruskin needed to renew his physical and spiritual strength, and set out in May to visit 'Turnerian landscapes' on the Rhine, in Switzerland, and in Italy. From Turin, obsessed with copying details of Veronese's Solomon and the Queen of Sheba for seven weeks, he wrote in late August: 'I am in good writing humour now, having got back my usual spring of mind & body: The 121 letters in this travel diary, all addressed to 'my dearest Father' 428 LEITERS IN CANADA 1982 with one exception to his mother (and nine others in an appendix), are mostly in the Beinecke Library at Yale, although John Hayman's editorial interest is thrown much wider, as he adds efficient and instructive notes, making particularly helpful connections with Turner drawings and paintings . A valuable introduction 'places' these letters in Ruskin's development . The book is handsomely designed by William Rueter. A familiar Ruskin emerges, charmed with natural beauty and awed by the sublime, but irascible, impatient, prejudiced, parading his wellknown contemptus mundi ('My natural temper has been for some years back one of gradually increasing disgust & contempt for most things and most people; and nothing increases the disease in me faster than reading any portion of a debate in the Commons'). Particular objects of attack are 'sheer filth' and dirt generally, noisy nightingales, the 'unreflective shallowness, and total want of habitual self-command' of the Italians, women (who will 'do anything, either in love or hate'), monks (of one drawing a study from Guercino: 'It was pleasant to see a man in a brown hood, and with a rope about his waist, doing anything'), Gladstone ('an Eminent Speaker of Bad English, - a peculiar master of clumsy verbiage'), Roman Catholics, Protestants, and Blood-Sport enthusiasts ('I note death of Queensbury. I'm always rather...