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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 159: 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 "Transactions of the New Shakspere Society" for 1878-9, pp. 409-12.]
NOTES ON A WORD IN SHAKESPEARE.[161]

"And yon gray lines
 That fret the clouds are messengers of day."

Julius Cæsar, II. i. 103-4.

I.
Brantwood, Coniston, Lancashire.

My dear Furnivall: Of course, in any great writer's word, the question is far less what the word came from, than where it has come to. Fret means all manner of things in that place; primarily, the rippling of clouds—as sea by wind; secondarily, the breaking it asunder for light to come through. It implies a certain degree of vexation—some dissolution—much order, and extreme beauty. I have myself used this word substantively, to express the rippled edge of a wing-feather. In architecture and jewellery it means simply roughening in a decorative manner.[162]

Ever affectionately yours,
J. Ruskin.

FOOTNOTES:

[161] This and the next letter were written in answer to Mr. Furnivall, who, upon being questioned what appearance in the clouds was intended by the word "fret" in the above passage, referred the point to Mr. Ruskin, whose answers were subsequently read at the forty-fifth meeting of the Society, Oct. 11, 1878.

[162] In modern English "chasing" has got confused with it, but it should be separated again.