146 



HARDWICKE'S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



These extracts will show the sort of ethical botany 

 which Mr. Ruskin proposes. It will very likely 

 appear to many to be more eccentric than useful, 

 more fanciful than practical, yet it seems to me to 

 be a sound principle that there should be a corres- 

 pondence between the word and the thing, the nature, 

 the essence of anything, and the word which labels 

 it and fixes it in the storehouse of our language and 

 literature. 



The literature of flowers is very extensive, and the 

 highest ranges of poetry are adorned with flowers 

 and floral emblems ; it is fit, therefore, that every 

 grace of language and idea should group round the 

 bright tribes, "the stars which in earth's firmament 

 do shine." 



" Proserpina" has clearly been a labour of love; 

 the pathetic affectionateness of Mr. Ruskin's nature, 

 always more or less apparent in his works, and 

 singularly, though naturally, allied with a noble scorn, 

 is very evident in this book. In my opinion there 

 are few writers whose individuality creeps over and 

 possesses one as does Mr. Ruskin's, once having 

 surrendered oneself to its mastership. There are 

 fourteen chapters in this first volume of "Proser- 

 pina," and the titles of some of them are typical of 

 Mr. Ruskin's fondness for Biblical illustrations and 

 allusions — as "The Parable of Joash," "The 

 Parable of Jotham " ; in other chapters he deals 

 with "The Root," "The Leaf," "The Flower," 

 " The Genealogy," etc. Throughout the book there 

 is that peculiar fastidiousness and delicacy in 

 the choice of words and the application of them, 

 which always marks every line of Mr. Ruskin's 

 writings ; also a special fondness for the ancient and 

 most picturesque verbal forms. It is a favourite way 

 with him to draw up suddenly in alarm at his own 

 ignorance, a fashion of dealing with his readers that 

 awakens sympathy and stimulates curiosity. For 

 instance, in the first chapter, entitled " Moss," and 

 dated from Denmark Hill, November 3, 1868, he 

 opens thus : 



"It is mortifying enough to write — but I think 

 thus much ought to be written — concerning myself as 

 the author of ' Modern Painters.' In three months 

 I shall be fifty years old ; and I don't at this hour — 

 ten o'clock in the morning of the 268th day of my 

 forty-ninth year — know what moss is." 



And again in the twelfth chapter, " Cora and 

 Kronos " : 



" We describe a plant as small or great ; and think 

 we have given account enough of its nature and 

 being. But the chief question for the plant as for 

 the human creature is the number of its days ; for to 

 the tree as to its master, the words are for ever true, 

 ' As thy day is, so shall thy strength be.' 



"I am astonished truly, more and more, at the 

 apathy and stupidity which have prevented me 

 hitherto from learning the most simple facts at the 

 base of this question ! Here is this myrtille bush in 



my hand — its cluster of fifteen or twenty delicate 

 green branches knitting themselves downwards into 

 the stubborn brown of a stem on which my knife 

 makes little impression. I have not the slightest 

 idea how old it is, still less how old it might one day 

 have been if I had not gathered it ; and less than the 

 least what hinders it from becoming as old as it 

 likes ! What doom is there over these bright green 

 sprays that they may never win to any height or 

 space of verdure, nor persist beyond their narrow 

 scope of years ? 



"And the more I think the more I bewilder my- 

 self ; for these bushes, which are pruned and clipped 

 by the deathless gardener into these lowly thickets of 

 bloom, do not strew the ground with fallen branches 

 and faded clippings in any wise — it is the pining 

 umbrage of the patriarchal trees that tinges the ground 

 and betrays the foot beneath them — but, under the 



heather and the Alpine rose Well, what is 



under them then ? I never saw nor thought of 

 looking — will look presently under my own bosquets 

 and beds of lingering heather-blossom : beds indeed 

 they were only a month since, a foot deep in flowers, 

 and close in tufted cushions, and the mountain air 

 that floated over them rich in honey like a draught 

 of metheglin." 



"Proserpina" is a book calculated to drive mad 

 any exact, methodical person imbued with reverence 

 for traditional scientific manners and customs. Its 

 vagarious incursions into all sorts of regions, fairy- 

 land or cloudland, its deft references to moralities, 

 and its melodious outbursts of rhythmic prose, would 

 certainly anger any such methodist. Mr. Ruskin is 

 often represented as a half-insane rhetorician, posing 

 as a critical Jupiter, and wielding theatrical thunders. 

 Any such picture of him is as false as it is foolish. 

 Where any core of truth is to be found, where any 

 "false-seeming shewes " are to be dispersed, he is 

 always ready to take you by the arm, as it were, and 

 unlock the cabinets of his golden counsels. This 

 book, disconnected, informal, of doubtful doctrine 

 (as many will say), has a charm and vigour about it 

 which will ensure for it a warm reception wherever 

 such a reception would be valued or valuable. Mr. 

 Ruskin avows that it is compounded of fragments, 

 and warns his readers " that while his other books 

 endeavour and claim, so far as they reach, to give 

 trustworthy knowledge of their subjects, this one 

 only shows how much knowledge may be obtained, 

 and that it is little more than a history of efforts and 

 plans." 



He is most careful to point out that the book is 

 one of studies, not of statements, and that it will be 

 nothing but process, and that, from first to last, he 

 does not mean to assert anything positively in it. 

 To the folk who can feed on nothing but fixed 

 dogmas, doctrines, and definitions — these will be 

 hard sayings, but to more fluent natures, this absence 

 of rigidity, this ebb and flow, will betoken a true 



