Ruskin in his morbid moments, in later life, turned
fiercely and unjustly against his fond and tender father. He
accused him with an in temperate bitterness of having lavished
everything upon him except the intelligent sympathy of which he
stood in need, and his father's gentle and mournful apologies have
an extraordinary beauty of puzzled and patient dignity about them.
When Ruskin went to Oxford, his mother went to reside there too, to
look after her darling. One might have supposed that this would
have involved Ruskin in ridicule, but he was petted and indulged by
his fellow-undergraduates, who found his charm, his swift wit, his
childlike waywardness, his freakish humour irresistible. Then he
had a serious illness, and his first taste of misery; he was afraid
of death, he hated the constraints of invalid life and the grim
interruption to his boundless energies and plans. Then came his
first great book, and he strode full-fledged into fame. His amazing
attractiveness, his talk, which combined incisiveness and fancy and
humour and fire and gentleness, made him a marked figure from the
first.
Pages:
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125