This selection from Ruskin’s writings was begun many years ago solely in order that I might re-read passages which had given me particular pleasure. When it was decided that this personal choice should be published as an anthology I felt that, in fairness to Ruskin, I ought to include the expression of certain opinions by which he set great store, however much I disagreed with them; and that his chief interests, or, perhaps I should say, his ruling passions, should be exhibited in his own words, if only by a sentence or two. This raised the difficulty of how much space I should give to the sheer nonsense which occupies a great part of his later works. I had not forgotten that Unto this Last, in many ways his greatest work, was considered nonsense by his contemporaries. But there is a difference, clearly perceptible after a century, between controversial opinions and intellectual chaos; and the few examples which I have included of Ruskin’s mind out of control will I hope convince the reader that I have not'been unduly severe. In spite of my efforts to give a balanced picture of Ruskin’s thought, I know that my first impulse has been to choose passages that are beautifully written. This would have annoyed him because, as he wrote to an earlier anthologist, ‘It is the chief provocation of my life to be called a word painter instead of a thinker.’

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