232 TREES IN NATURE, MYTH & ART 



at length on his faults and bringing in his 

 merits as little more than justification for a 

 recommendation to mercy. He defends this 

 treatment of Constable on the ground that the 

 painter's biographer, Leslie, had "suffered his 

 personal regard for Constable so far to prevail 

 over his judgment as to bring him forward as 

 a great artist, comparable in some kind with 

 Turner". So Ruskin, eager to maintain the 

 unrivalled pre-eminence of Turner, says all he 

 can in depreciation of Constable. This is not 

 quite the best way in which to arrive at a well- 

 balanced critical judgment ; and we find Ruskin 

 saying of an engraving in Modern Painters : 

 '' The next example is an aspen of Constable's, 

 on the left in the frontispiece to Mr. Leslie's 

 life of him. Here we have arrived at the point 

 of total worthlessness, the tree being as flat as 

 the old purist one, but, besides, wholly false in 

 ramification, idle, and undefined in every re- 

 spect ; it being, however just possible still to 

 discern what the tree is meant for, and there- 

 fore the type of the worst modernism not being 

 completely established." 



Unless we may assume that Ruskin has here 

 taken an unrepresentative example of Con- 



