[From "The Pall Mall Gazette," January 11, 1875.]
A MISTAKEN REVIEW.[151]
To the Editor of "The Pall Mall Gazette."
Sir: The excellent letters and notes which have recently appeared in your columns on the subject of reviewing lead me to think that you will give me space for the statement of one or two things which I believe it is right the public should know respecting the review which appeared in the Examiner of the 2d of this month (but which I did not see till yesterday), by Mr. W. B. Scott, of Mr. St. J. Tyrrwhitt's "Letters on Landscape Art."
1. Mr. Scott is one of the rather numerous class of artists of whose works I have never taken any public notice, and who attribute my silence to my inherent stupidity of disposition.
2. Mr. Scott is also one of the more limited and peculiarly unfortunate class of artists who suppose themselves to have great native genius, dislike being told to learn perspective, and prefer the first volume of "Modern Painters," which praises many third-rate painters, and teaches none, to the following volumes, which praise none but good painters, and sometimes admit the weakness of advising bad ones.
3. My first acquaintance with Mr. Scott was at the house of a gentleman whose interior walls he was decorating with historic frescos, and whose patronage I (rightly or wrongly) imagined at that time to be of importance to him. I was then more good-natured and less conscientious than I am now, and my host and hostess attached weight to my opinions. I said all the good I truly could of the frescos, and no harm; painted a corn-cockle on the walls myself, in reverent subordination to them; got out of the house as soon afterwards as I could, and never since sought Mr. Scott's acquaintance further (though, to my regret, he was once photographed in the same plate with Mr. Rosetti and me). Mr. Scott is an honest man, and naturally thinks me a hypocrite and turncoat as well as a fool.
4. The honestest man in writing a review is apt sometimes to give obscure statements of facts which ought to have been clearly stated to make the review entirely fair. Permit me to state in very few words those which I think the review in question does not clearly represent. My "Elements of Drawing" were out of print, and sometimes asked for; I wished to rewrite them, but had no time, and knew that my friend and pupil, Mr. Tyrrwhitt, was better acquainted than I myself with some processes of water-color sketching, and was perfectly acquainted with and heartily acceptant of the principles which I have taught to be essential in all art. I knew he could write, and I therefore asked him to write, a book of his own to take the place of the "Elements," and authorized him to make arrangements with my former publisher for my wood-blocks, mostly drawn on the wood by myself.
The book is his own, not mine, else it would have been published as mine, not his. I have not read it all, and do not answer for it all. But when I wrote the "Elements" I believed conscientiously that book of mine to be the best then attainable by the public on the subject of elementary drawing. I think Mr. Tyrrwhitt's a better book, know it to be a more interesting one, and believe it to be, in like manner, the best now attainable by the British public on elementary practice of art.
I am, Sir, your faithful servant,
John Ruskin.
Brantwood, Jan. 10.
FOOTNOTES:
[151] Of this review nothing need be said beyond what is stated in this letter. The full title of the book which it so harshly treated is "Our Sketching Club. Letters and Studies on Landscape Art." By the Rev. R. St. John Tyrrwhitt, M.A. With an authorized reproduction of the lessons and woodcuts in Professor Ruskin's "Elements of Drawing." Macmillan, 1874. The "letters and notes" refer especially to one signed "K" in the Gazette of January 1, and another signed "A Young Author" in that of January 4. The principal complaint of both these letters was that reviewers seldom master, and sometimes do not even read the books they criticise.