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CHAPTER I BIRTH AND CHILDHOOD ON the publication of the first volume of illodeern Painters, Sydney Smith, the acknowledged oracle of the Edinbnrgh Review and of cultured society, is reported to have declared that it was a work of transcendent talent, presented the most original views, and the most elegant and powerful language, and would work a complete revolution in the world of taste Prcetzritn And so it was. The writer of the Victorian era who poured forth the greatest mass of literature upon the greatest variety i f subjects, about whom most was written in his own lifetime in Europe and in America, who in the English-speaking world left the most direct and most visible imprint of his tastes and thoughtswas John Ruskin. For fifty years continuously he wrote, lectured, and talked about Mountains, Rivers, and Lakes about Cathedrals and Landscapes about Geology about Minerals, Architecture, Painting, Sculp ture, Music, Drawing, Political Economy, Education, Poetry, Literature, History, Mythology, Socialidm, Theology, blorals. . The author of more than eighty distinct works upon so miscellaneous a field, of masses of poetry, lectures, letters as well as substantial treatises, was of necessity rather a stimulus than an authority-an rather than a master. As one of his foreign admirers has said-the readers of Ruskin are charmed, inspired, more than convinced. He is a moralist, an evangelist - not a philosopher orama sciorice-3fit the tnion A a. 7-of m r v e l l u s l ientcy clo p dicst tu dies of t m aenthusiasm as to all things moral and social, combined io farm one o fn i i s o n a l i t i e s of the nineteenth century. The man himself issued a mass of biographical matter, full ofnalvet6, candour, and charm. And as many biographies of him already exist, together with scores of studies of his work and influence both in English. and in various European languages, it might be thought that no need remained for any fresh biography of any kind. But the extant materials for a biography are so voluminous, so dispersive, and often so much entangled with other matter, that it is believed there is still room for a plain volume such as this, which would condense the story in accessible form and denote his place in English literature. And the directors of this series could not venture to omit a Man of Letters who was one of the greatest masters of prose in English literature, and one of the dominant influences of the Victorian epoch. I have been asked to undertake the task, which with real hesitation I accept...

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