DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.61217#0029
‘MODERN PAINTERS’—FIRST VOLUME. 17
sea.” In the chapter, soon following, “ On Ideals of
Power,” is to be especially noted the just thought:—
“It is falsely said of great men that they waste their
lofty powers on unworthy objects. The object . . .
cannot be unworthy of the power which it brings into
exertion, because nothing can be accomplished by a
greater power which can be accomplished by a less,
any more than bodily strength can be exerted where
there is nothing to resist it. . . . Be it remembered,
then, Power is never wasted.”
(Ruskin, at this time and ever after, used “ which”
where “that” would be both more correct and less
inelegant. He probably had the habit from him who
did more than any other to disorganise the English
language—that is, Gibbon.)
The chapter on “ Imitation ” is in part addressed to
the correction of a half-educated pleasure, since then
generally relinquished even by the half-educated, and
even in the case of popular pictures. Amid much
that is less valuable, the reader finds this obvious
but excellent distinction :—
“ A marble figure does not look like what it is not:
it looks like marble, and like the form of a man. It
does not look like a man, which it is not, but like the
form of a man, which it is. . . . The chalk outline of
the bough of a tree on paper is not an imitation; it
looks like chalk and paper—not like wood, and that
which it suggests to the mind is not properly said to be
like the form of a bough, it is the form of a bough.”
The contrast is, of course, with work in colour, and
it is finely made, with the conclusion, for all the arts
B
sea.” In the chapter, soon following, “ On Ideals of
Power,” is to be especially noted the just thought:—
“It is falsely said of great men that they waste their
lofty powers on unworthy objects. The object . . .
cannot be unworthy of the power which it brings into
exertion, because nothing can be accomplished by a
greater power which can be accomplished by a less,
any more than bodily strength can be exerted where
there is nothing to resist it. . . . Be it remembered,
then, Power is never wasted.”
(Ruskin, at this time and ever after, used “ which”
where “that” would be both more correct and less
inelegant. He probably had the habit from him who
did more than any other to disorganise the English
language—that is, Gibbon.)
The chapter on “ Imitation ” is in part addressed to
the correction of a half-educated pleasure, since then
generally relinquished even by the half-educated, and
even in the case of popular pictures. Amid much
that is less valuable, the reader finds this obvious
but excellent distinction :—
“ A marble figure does not look like what it is not:
it looks like marble, and like the form of a man. It
does not look like a man, which it is not, but like the
form of a man, which it is. . . . The chalk outline of
the bough of a tree on paper is not an imitation; it
looks like chalk and paper—not like wood, and that
which it suggests to the mind is not properly said to be
like the form of a bough, it is the form of a bough.”
The contrast is, of course, with work in colour, and
it is finely made, with the conclusion, for all the arts
B