The Works of John Ruskin (Volume 10) - Paperback

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: to interfere for long or seriously with the steady prosecution of his work. He did not, however, work quite so hard as during his former winter in Venice. Then he was collecting materials, which he hoped would have sufficed for the whole book; now he was writing?supplementing his former materials and correcting and revising, but in the main writing, and the writing, he found, could not be hurried or done with a wearied pen. He gives his father an account of a normal day: ? " Venice, September 26.?I rise at half-past six: am dressed by seven ?take a little bit of bread and read till nine. Then we have breakfast punctually: very orderly served?a little marmalade with a silver leafage spoon on a coloured tile at one corner of the table; butter very fresh, in ice; fresh grapes and figs, which I never touch, on one side; peaches on the other, also for ornament chiefly?I never take them; a little hot dish which the cook is bound to funiish every morning, a roast beccafico or other little tiny kickshaw; before Effie, white bread and coffee. Then I read Pope or play myself till ten, when we have prayers; and Effie reads to me and I draw till eleven. Then I write till one, when we have lunch; then I go out and sketch or take notes till three, then row for an hour and a half; come in and dress for dinner at five, play myself till seven; sometimes out on the water again in an idle way; tea at seven, write or draw till nine, and get ready for bed." In the days thus spent from September 1851 to June 1852 Ruskin wrote the greater part of the second and third volumes of The Stones of Venice. He wrote in full zest and enthusiasm. " My head and heart,11 he says (Feb. 4), "are altogether in my book.11 This, however, was but a first draft, and often contained only the descriptive passages fo...