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Arrows of the Chace, vol. 2/2 / being a collection of scattered letters published chiefly in the daily newspapers 1840-1880 cover

Arrows of the Chace, vol. 2/2 / being a collection of scattered letters published chiefly in the daily newspapers 1840-1880

Chapter 152: FOOTNOTES:
By John Ruskin
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About This Book

A collected set of public letters offers sustained commentary on political, economic, and cultural questions of the era. Subjects include foreign policy, war, and imperial unrest, as well as economic issues such as currency, supply and demand, wages, strikes, and the nature of wealth and property. Other pieces discuss infrastructure and industry, domestic service and housing, education, art and literary criticism, dress and women's work, and proposals for social and institutional reform. The epistolary form combines moral argument, practical policy suggestions, and cultural observation addressed to newspapers, public figures, and civic audiences.

[From "The Asiatic," May 23, 1871.]
"THE QUEEN OF THE AIR."

To the Editor of "The Asiatic."

Sir: I am obliged and flattered by the tone of your article on my "Queen of the Air" in your last number, but not at all by the substance of it; and it so much misinterprets my attempt in that book that I will ask your leave to correct it in main points.[157] The "Queen of the Air" was written to show, not what could be fancied, but what was felt and meant, in the myth of Athena. Every British sailor knows, that Neptune is the god of the sea. He does not know that Athena is the goddess of the air; I doubt if many of our school-boys know it—I doubt even if many of our school-masters know it; and I believe the evidence of it given in the "Queen of the Air" to be the first clear and connected approximate proof of it which has yet been rendered by scientific mythology, properly so called.

You say, "I have not attempted to explain all mythology."

I wonder what you would have said of me if I had? I only know a little piece of it here and there, just as I know a crag of alp or a bend of river; and even what I know could not be put into a small octavo volume. Nevertheless, I should have had another such out by this time on the Apolline Myths, and, perhaps, one on the Earth-Gods, but for my Oxford work; and shall at all events have a little more to say on the matter than I have yet said—and much need there is—when all that has yet been done by "scientific" mythology ends in the assertion made by your reviewer, that "mythology is useful mainly as a storehouse for poets, and for literary men in want of some simile or metaphor to produce a striking effect."

I am, Sir, your faithful servant,
John Ruskin.

May 18, 1871.

FOOTNOTES:

[157] The article was entitled "Aryan Mythology: Second Notice," the first notice having been a review of Mr. Gladstone's "Juventus Mundi," and of some other mythological works. (See the Asiatic, April 25 and May 16, 1871.) The nature of the praise and criticism of the article may be gathered from this letter.