MS IA Yale (in box labeled Ruskin, John, 1819-1900 / Miscellaneous Manuscripts containing a folder, Early Poems IA, but also containing folders for other items that were probably originally bound in IA, as well as folders unrelated to IA). Dates of contents of original MS IA range from 1827 or 1828 to 1842. Provenance Sotheby’s 1931. In the aftermath of Goodspeed’s fire, MS IA was discovered and delivered to Yale, as explained in a letter of 4 November 1942 from Goodspeed to Chauncey B. Tinker (typed on stationery of Goodspeed’s Book Shop, No. 18 Beacon Street, Boston, Massachusetts, and now included in a folder labeled The Monastery in the box Miscellaneous Manuscripts [see below, Description, and Content, a]). Prof. Chauncey B. Tinker 1293 Davenport College New Haven, Connecticut Dear Prof. Tinker: Yesterday in rummaging about my library I was happy to come upon a folder of Ruskin manuscripts which I knew had escaped destruction, but which I had been unable to locate. I am sending them to you to go with the others. To me they are of particular interest, and they include one piece which, with one possible exception, is I imagine the earliest example known of Ruskin’s handwriting. The one beginning Come on, good horse is particularly interesting for its reference to Glendarg Glen of Scott’s Monastery, which Ruskin mentions in the early chapters of Praeterita. The list which goes with the manuscripts is, of course, in Wedderburn’s hand. The two pieces marked with a G on this list I am keeping myself for the present at least. Yours sincerely, Charles E. Goodspeed [signed] Goodspeed perhaps means that the contents of MS IA escaped total destruction, since several of the items in the collection are charred--items that, according to all descriptions, had always been included in MS IA (see Content, below). Indeed, charring is visible on the very items mentioned in Goodspeed’s letter-- the list . . . in Wedderburn’s hand, and the blank sheets to which The Monastery manuscripts are pasted. Fire damage may account for the loss of the original binding of MS IA (see Description below), as well as for the possible loss of certain items (see Content, a, b, below). The items that, as mentioned in his letter, Goodspeed marked G on Wedderburn’s list (i.e., the poems Papa, what’s time, a figure or a sense and Bosworth Field ) were given to the library in the following year (see YULG 18, no. 2 [October 1943]: 36), and they are now included in the MS IA folder. Another item in Wedderburn’s list, A visit to the Hospice of St. Bernard, is notated in Goodspeed’s hand as sent separately ; this manuscript also is present in the MS IA folder. (Perhaps that notation explains what Goodspeed means in his letter by sending [the remaining MS IA items] to you to go with the others --the others being the Hospice manuscript, as well as the Praeterita manuscript donated in 1941, and other Ruskin manuscripts purchased by Yale from Goodspeed in earlier years; see Introduction, Provenance of the Major Manuscripts, Sotheby’s 1931.) Description MS IA is no longer bound as a thin folio in red cloth, as described by Cook and Wedderburn (Works, 2:530), presumably a binding similar to the red buckram covering other assemblages, such as MS XB. Its loss is not significant in itself, since, as Wedderburn remarks on the still extant title page, MS IA had been bound since the publication of the Poems in 1891 (i.e., PJR), and neither the binding nor the selection and ordering of contents were governed by any noticeable rationale. MS IA must still have been covered with red cloth when Goodspeed acquired it, since his Cat. mentions the contents as mounted and bound in a small folio cloth volume. This description matches that in Sotheby Cat. 1931, item II of lot 27 (p. 6), as bound in cloth. In his 4 November 1942 letter to Tinker, Goodspeed refers to a folder of Ruskin manuscripts, not a volume, suggesting that the dealer was responsible for disassembling the collection, although he does not indicate whether the binding was removed before or after the fire. Certainly, the items of MS IA were loose when delivered to the library as (or among) 31 sheets of poems (YULG 17, no. 3 [January 1943]: 59), and Goodspeed could not have retained two poems and sent another separately, unless he had first removed the binding. The larger items, whose edges perhaps would have been more exposed to the heat, have been encased in clear plastic to protect the seared paper. The title page, which Goodspeed attributes to Wedderburn, reads as follows: Ruskin MS. / Early Poems. / IA / This has been bound since the publication of the Poems in 1891 / and maybe [sic] added to the list of MS. given there, as IA. / See The Library Edition II.530. This sheet, as well as the Contents, measures approximately 17.5 X 30 cm., which points to the approximate size of the small folio volume described in Goodspeed’s Cat., although these sheets appear to have been trimmed after they were charred at the edges. The remarks about binding on the title page may have been added later, but the date of the red cloth binding must in any case have been nearly contemporaneous with the preparation of the Library Edition. In the second volume (1903) of the Library Edition, the remarks about binding MS IA resemble those on the title page of IA and narrow the date further to between 1900 and 1903: this volume has been bound up since Ruskin’s death [1900], and is thus an addition to the list in the Poems, 1891 (Works, 2:530). The title page is followed by Wedderburn’s table of contents, which should be compared against the contents of the bound volume as described in Goodspeed, Cat., since Wedderburn’s list is inadequate and confusing. (The following transcription reproduces the original’s erratic punctuation. The titles and numbers, which are written in ink, have been checked off in pencil, perhaps by Goodspeed, whose notations mentioned above are also in pencil. Likewise attributable to Goodspeed may be a penciled gloss (2 items) entered next to Calais. ) Contents. Sheets Very early MSS. Come on, good horse &c. 1-3. Papa, what’s time, a figure or a sense. 5. Bosworth Field. 6. Vesuvius; Trafalgar; The Yew. 7-10. Death. 11. My father’s birthday. 1833. 12. Calais &c. (2 items) 13. Lille, The Meuse &c 14. To his father. Birthday ode 1834. 15. Twelve months all rolling round have past 16. Ode to his father 1836. 17. Mont Blanc. 18. Athens 19. A visit to the Hospice of St. Bernard. 20 A Scythian Banquet Song. 24.25. The Broken Chain. (Stanzas 17.26.) 26 Prose translation of the Iliad i. ii 1-127 28 It is unclear what Wedderburn’s column of numbered sheets refers to, or why his enumeration omits 4, 21-23, and 27, since, as will be discussed below, the numbers cannot be reconciled with consistent features of the individual manuscripts. Nor can Wedderburn’s numbers, even subtracting the skipped numbers, be neatly reconciled with Sotheby Cat. 1931, which cites 24 pp. One possibility is that Wedderburn was counting sheets on which items were mounted. The manuscript Come on good horse, mentioned in Goodspeed’s letter to Tinker, is pasted onto a sheet watermarked [(?)]ETOWGOOD FINE, the same watermark that identifies the paper on which The Constellations is mounted (see Content, a and b, below). These papers cannot be proven to have belonged to the original bound MS IA, since Wedderburn’s title page and contents are written on quite different paper, watermarked Judicature Foolscap. However, this style of mounting is common in the older collections of Ruskin manuscripts, as in MS XI where the early small poetry pamphlets are mounted onto larger sheets, which are in turn bound together. Further connecting the mounting sheets for The Monastery and The Constellations with the original MS IA, these papers show evidence of slight charring. It is reasonable to conclude, then, that Wedderburn’s column of numbers refers to mounting sheets but possibly only for the smaller items; in MS XI, for example, larger items were not mounted on sheets but attached directly to binding stubs. Other possible discrepancies arise in comparing Wedderburn’s table of contents with the contents of MS IA as listed in Works, 2:530. The Constellations (no. 21), listed in Works, is omitted from Wedderburn’s table, unless this item is comprised among Very early MSS. (see below, Content ). Wedderburn’s table also fails to mention The Crystal Hunter (no. 188), mentioned in the Works list, unless Wedderburn meant to include this ode under the entry To his father. Birthday ode 1834. Otherwise, the two lists of contents match, the one in Works being ordered according to what Cook and Wedderburn judged (partly erroneously) to be the items’ dates. Somewhat better success may attend comparison of the January 1943 acquisition notice in YULG of 31 sheets of poems with the numbers of sheets presently extant--but only by stretching the definition of sheet. Putting aside Papa whats time and Bosworth Field, which Goodspeed held back, and Hospice, which he sent separately, thirty sheets can be counted, plus one sixteen-page (or eight-sheet) sewn booklet. If it is credible that a cataloger counted the booklet as one sheet, we can refer to at least one benchmark, that the present collection corresponds to what Goodspeed originally sent, when considering the possibility of lost or destroyed items. I think it more likely, however, that the YULG count of thirty-one refers, not to physical sheets, but titles of poems--i.e., the notice ought to have read sheets of 31 poems. One can arrive at that number by counting the individual titles in Goodspeed, Cat., for both MSS IA and X. MS X is recognizable in the YULG notice by the listing of one of its items, a 31 March 1836 verse letter to John James Ruskin (see MS X, Content, e). If one discounts this item as listed separately, as well as the poems Goodspeed held back from MS IA, one can imagine a cataloger at Yale using the Goodspeed Cat. cursorily to check the titles of pieces delivered to Yale. This would still tell us that the present collection largely corresponds to what Goodspeed sent, although it provides no certainty that portions of individual titles-- sheets of The Monastery and The Constellations, items that can be only partially reconciled with the earlier descriptions--may not have been lost or misplaced after, rather than before, the collection arrived at Yale. At some point after acquiring MS IA from Goodspeed, Yale enclosed most of MS IA’s original items in a folder labeled Early Poems IA but sorted a few other items probably from MS IA into other, separate folders labeled The Monastery and Calais (see Content, a and g, below; neither of these separate folders is listed in the Beinecke’s card catalog, unlike Early Poems IA and folders containing other items donated by Goodspeed). All three folders are enclosed in a box labeled Ruskin, John, 1819-1900 / Miscellaneous Manuscripts, along with folders devoted to other manuscripts, which are unrelated to MS IA. Of these manuscripts in the box that are unrelated to MS IA, some were once included in MS X, a volume that was split up like MS IA and donated by Goodspeed in 1942: nos. 109, 203, 215, 256, and the Peace Song, and the Zodiac Song (see part 1, MS X). Other folders contain manuscripts also donated by Goodspeed: The Laws of Fiesole (Goodspeed, Cat., item 95; Sotheby Cat. 1931, item VII of lot 28; YULG 17, no. 3 [January 1943]: 59; fire damaged, and no longer bound in blue cloth ). Review of Lindsay’s Sketches of the Hitory of Christian Art (Goodspeed, Cat., item 85; Sotheby Cat. 1931, item VII of lot 27; YULG 17, no. 3 [January 1943]: 59; fire damaged, and no longer bound in the red cloth, of which a fragment is kept in the folder). Listed along with this manuscript in YULG is Lord Lindsay’s Christian Art, printed ‘reading copy,’ 1847, with manuscript corrections, a volume now cataloged separately. . . .? Undated math problem (not listed in Goodspeed, Cat., but notated on its folder as a gift of Goodspeed in 1942, and listed in YULG 17, no. 3 [January 1943]: 59; fire damaged). Lecture V of The Art of England, corrected proofs (neither listed in Goodspeed, Cat., nor notated on its folder as a gift of Goodspeed, but charred and mounted on rice-paper stubs like other survivors of his fire; not mentioned in YULG, unless included among other Ruskiniana donated by Goodspeed in 1944 [YULG 19, no. 2 (October 1944): 34]; not specifically listed in the Sotheby’s catalogs, unless it was included in Sotheby Cat. 1931, p. 7, lot 30, Oxford Lectures ). Roadside Songs of Tuscany, a folder included in the box, although not acquired from Goodspeed but from ?. Goodspeed did donate a Ruskin letter to Francesca Alexander, Brantwood, 23 March 1886 (YULG 19, no. 2 [October 1944]: 34). Map of Scandinavia, drawn by Ruskin and dated 18 September 1830, included in the box, although not acquired from Goodspeed but from ?. When I follow tradition in referring to MS IA, it is to be understood that I intend the items as originally bound together under this designation and that these items can presently be found in Yale’s box Miscellaneous Manuscripts --if not in the particular folder labeled Early Poems IA. Content Possible discrepancies exist between the items as presently disposed in the folder MS IA or elsewhere in the box Miscellaneous Manuscripts and their description in earlier accounts. The discrepancies, if they represent actual losses and not merely confusions arising from inadequate descriptions, might well be blamed on destruction by Goodspeed’s fire; however, with the exception of one, rather slender piece of evidence (see [b] below), documentation is too scanty to confirm if, when, or how the losses occurred. If Goodspeed disassembled MS IA prior to the fire, it is even possible that he had already misplaced an item or two or sold them separately, their present whereabouts unknown. a) In the folder Early Poems IA, draft for portion of The Monastery, no. 46, single torn sheet, 12 × 20 cm; 34 lines in ink beginning come on good horse and let us see, from the third book of the poem, lines 26-59, as fair- copied in MS III (with minor variants and deleted lines). On verso, 12 lines in very rough pencil draft of two passages from the third book of the poem as fair-copied in MS III: martin took his task a[s(?)] guide / [(?)]d all the women did in him confide, which are interesting variants of lines 86-87 of fair copy; and, following a horizontal line, draft of lines 14-25 of the fair copy. On the verso, portions of the pencil draft were lost with tears at the edges, which is not the case with the ink script on the other side, Ruskin writing around the tears. Thus, the ink copy must have been written after the pencil (the lines are sequential, except for lines 86-87), and therefore, I believe, Ruskin was fair-copying in MS III as he drafted. This is one of several indications that The Monastery draft, far from offering the earliest example known of Ruskin’s handwriting, was composed in 1829 like its fair copy. This manuscript must have been the first item in MS IA when bound since Wedderburn heads his table of contents Very early MSS. ‘Come on, good horse’ &c. Goodspeed’s Cat. also lists it as the first item (79.A.1) and quotes from the manuscript extensively. Goodspeed describes the manuscript as consisting of 2 pp., and, if he means two sides of one sheet, then this item fully matches his description. As already mentioned ( Description, above) Ruskin’s sheet is mounted onto a slightly larger sheet watermarked [(?)]ETOWGOOD FINE, which I assume to have been cut from the bound MS IA. The mounting sheet, but not the manuscript itself, shows slight evidence of charring. The Yale box Miscellaneous Manuscripts holds another folder labeled The Monastery, containing a 12.5 × 20-cm sheet written in pencil, 34 lines in pencil from the second book of the poem as fair-copied in MS III, lines 29- 63, beginning now must we leave poor martin there and continuing to bottom of its verso, you are under my protection then I say goodbye. These lines together with those on the MS IA sheet thus add up to the Library Edition’s listing of The Monastery versified, 80 lines in the original MS IA (Works, 2:530). The Library Edition dates these 80 lines as 1827, but the two manuscripts suggest no reason for dating their drafts from books II or III much earlier than their 1829 fair copy in MS III, since the manuscripts are similar in paper, size, and pencil handwriting. Moreover, Ruskin appears not to have used longhand earlier than 1828 (see no. 21; see also no. 46 for further remarks on the dating of The Monastery ). The pencil draft in the separate folder must have formed part of the second item in MS IA when bound, since Goodspeed’s Cat. lists in second place (item 79.A.2, following the ink manuscript of The Monastery ) 4 pp. in pencil [of] a metrical transcription from Scott's Monastery. But if by 4 pp. Goodspeed means the rectos and versos of two sheets, and if his item 79.A.2 truly consisted entirely of The Monastery, then one sheet is presently missing. Goodspeed left other evidence that he knew of a another sheet. The pencil draft, like the ink draft in the MS IA folder, is mounted on a slightly larger, charred sheet (watermark showing only a seated Brittania in an oval surmounted by a crown). On this sheet, Goodspeed wrote below the manuscript, This (with the previous pp.) is a rhymed version of passages from chapter II of The Monastery (first edition), vol. 1, 182[(?)] / CEG 19[(?)] (my emphasis; part of the note lost with trimmed, burnt edges of the mounting sheet). Since Goodspeed apparently counted pages or rectos and versos of sheets, Goodspeed’s pp. might have referred only to the ink manuscript ( come on good horse ), which remains extant, and not to that manuscript plus another unknown one; but, if so, he would have erred in identifying both the ink manuscript and the pencil draft as versifying chapter two of Scott’s novel, for the ink manuscript is taken from chapter three. The problem is not clarified by comparing Goodspeed’s records with Wedderburn’s. Wedderburn’s table of contents included with MS IA lists three sheets of Very early MSS., starting with come on good horse --this entry certainly referring to the first, ink manuscript of The Monastery but also to two other unnamed items, whether he means manuscript sheets (recto and verso) or sheets used to mount manuscripts. Wedderburn’s other two items may have been Goodspeed’s two sheets ( 4 pp. ) of pencil manuscript of The Monastery, again pointing to a presently missing second sheet. But, again, the Library Edition specifies 80 lines, which are presently accountable in two manuscripts. (Goodspeed’s Cat. fails to mention the total number of lines in either his 2 pp. or his 4 pp. manuscripts, just as, annoyingly, the Library Edition fails to mention the number of sheets.) Thus, in summary, inconclusive evidence points to a missing sheet of Monastery draft--Wedderburn’s third sheet, or Goodspeed’s two more pages. To identify that missing sheet, we might look to manuscript, not of The Monastery, but of The Constellations, b below. This item, however, raises problems of its own. b) Also in the Yale folder labeled The Monastery is a 12.5 × 20-cm folded sheet, written on all four sides in pencil, beginning Orpheus and bootes now. This is partial draft of The Constellations, no. 21, which survives in other copies. This manuscript is pasted onto a sheet that, like the mounting for the ink Monastery manuscript, is watermarked [(?)]ETOWGOOD FINE and is slightly charred. The Library Edition mentions The Constellations as having been bound in MS IA following The Monastery (Works, 2:530), and one might suspect that here is the third item in Wedderburn’s table of contents as well as Goodspeed’s additional Monastery manuscript, which he misidentified; and, indeed, this draft of The Constellations does physically resemble the pencil draft of The Monastery. But this solution founders, since, first, the folded sheet comprises four pages, not Goodspeed’s two; second, Goodspeed does separately itemize The Constellations as following both the ink and the pencil Monastery manuscripts (Cat., item 79.A.3). Compounding the mystery, Goodspeed describes a 6 pp. manuscript, not a four-page folded sheet, suggesting that a single sheet (i.e., 2 pp. ) is presently missing from this poem, as well. Wedderburn’s table of contents included with MS IA fails to list The Constellations altogether, unless he included it among the three items of Very Early MSS. ; that is, Wedderburn’s 1-3 may correspond to Goodspeed’s item 79.A.1-3 if Wedderburn counted the ink manuscript of The Monastery as one item, the pencil manuscript as a second, and The Constellations as a third. In both Wedderburn’s table of contents and Goodspeed’s Cat., these items are followed by Papa whats time. But, as already explained, Goodspeed’s page count cannot be reconciled with the extant manuscripts. Moreover, why does Wedderburn’s table of contents list Papa whats time as a fifth item, skipping over a fourth enumeration? Could Wedderburn’s 1-3 have referred only to the individual sheets of The Monastery, including the now missing sheet, while the skipped fourth item in his list was The Constellations ? Owing to the sketchiness of Wedderburn’s manner of describing the contents of MS IA, one returns to Goodspeed’s Cat. as the more accurate description when MS IA was still bound, and this description clearly indicates a sheet of The Constellations that, like a sheet of the The Monastery, cannot presently be accounted for. In Viljoen’s transcription of The Constellations (from the MS III version) among her papers at the Morgan Library, she points to the line Orpheus and bootes new [sic] and remarks, Here begins version in Goodspeed ms. ; that is, the MS IA version begins at line 27 of the complete poem as fair-copied in MS III--and the manuscript does appear fragmentary--and carries through to the end. Viljoen’s gloss suggests that a sheet (perhaps containing draft of the opening 26 lines) may have been unavailable to her, as well as to us (HGVP, box F.X), which may tend to confirm that nothing has been lost or misplaced at least since MS IA arrived at Yale (see Description above; Viljoen’s transcription is undated, but she had been steadily transcribing Ruskin material since the late 1920s and probably examined the Goodspeed collection not long after it came to Yale in 1942). As discussed in the note to no. 21, Lancaster holds two photographs (one of the front and one of the back) of another manuscript of The Constellations different from the extant Yale manuscript, a photograph that was made in the course of compiling the Library Edition. The existence or location of the original of this manuscript is unknown, but it was clearly intermediate between the MS IA draft and the MS III fair copy: it showed a printed fair copy of the MS IA draft version, with longhand revisions that were carried into the MS III version. The lost intermediate fair copy tends to support the probable loss of Constellations material from MS IA, since the photograph shows orpheus and bootes now as line 27, proving that draft of the first 26 lines must once have existed. Could the photograph show the lost IA manuscript itself? The photograph reveals what looks like a binding behind the perimeter of the manuscript. If this was the red-cloth, thin folio of the early descriptions of MS IA, the photograph must significantly have reduced its actual size (as compared, for example, with the paper for Wedderburn’s table of contents, which is larger). Even if the photograph reduced the original, however, it still fails to resolve the mystery. Instead of the presumably missing two pages, or unfolded single sheet, of The Constellations, the photograph shows a folded sheet (i.e., 4 pages, although the manuscript itself is unnumbered), with the poem fair-copied on 1r-v and revisions scrawled on 2r-v. The sheet appears to have been laid open flat against some sort of backing and photographed, first, from the front (showing pp. 4 and 1) and, second, from the back (showing pp. 2 and 3). Photographed in this manner, front and back, the manuscript cannot have been bound permanently along its fold. If the manuscript had been bound, the photograph would show, first on the left, the back page of an unrelated manuscript, and then on the right, the first page of The Constellations, followed by the inside spread of the poem. That this is not the case is proved by a revised line of the poem, which was begun on p. 3, being finished on p. 4, the page to the left of p. 1 in the photograph. Of course, the folded sheet shown in the photograph could have been bound afterward in MS IA. In that case, in order for Goodspeed to arrive at the six pages mentioned in his Cat., he would have to have counted, along with the four-page draft extant in MS IA, only the two pages of fair copy on the folded sheet in the photograph, ignoring the revisions on pp. 3-4. This seems to me improbable, since, while Goodspeed might have ignored blank pages (see, e.g., c below), he would not have discounted draft revision. c) A copy of Papa whats time a figure or a sense (no. 4, as reprinted and described in RFL, 150-51) is a 12.5 × 20-cm folded sheet. It is listed as following The Constellations in Goodspeed, Cat., item 79.A.4, and in Works, 2:530; and the title occurs following the first entry, Very Early MSS., in Wedderburn’s table of contents. Goodspeed describes 2 pp. in pencil, rather than the expected four pages, presumably because p. 1v is blank, and 2v holds only the superscription described in RFL, 150 (headnote). The manuscript is undamaged by fire and lies loose in the Yale folder Early Poems IA. d) All descriptions (Goodspeed, Cat., item 79.B; Works, 2:530; Wedderburn’s table of contents for MS IA) place Bosworth Field (no. 69) following c above. The 19 × 11.5-cm fair copy is undamaged by fire and lies loose in the Yale folder Early Poems IA. Like c above, the manuscript is a presentation copy, a folded sheet with ink fair copy on the facing inside spread. Both blank outer pages are used for addresses: on one, For my Papa / from J. Ruskin / 1 January 1830 / Age 10¾ years ; on the other, For my Papa and, in John James’s hand, Aged 10¾ years / 1 Jany 1830. Accordingly, in their dated list for MS IA (Works, 2:530), Cook and Wedderburn correctly ascribe the poem to late 1829--that is, composition in late 1829 for New Year’s presentation. e) Goodspeed, Cat., item 79.C, cites Poems--Vesuvius, Trafalgar, The Yew and Death--a similar MS. to the foregoing [i.e., ‘Bosworth Field,’ d above]. 8 pp. ‘For [sic] my Papa February 8th 1830.’--‘by J. Ruskin aged 11 years this day 8 Feby 1830.’ Goodspeed has associated the four poems (8 pp. total) with a cover sheet for an unnamed presentation poem, inscribed by Ruskin To my Papa / February 8th 1830, and annotated by his father by J. Ruskin aged 11 years / this day / 8 Feby 1830. This cover sheet, like the four sheets (8 pp.) containing the poems, lies loose (and undamaged by fire) in the Yale folder Early Poems IA. Almost certainly, only Vesuvius, Trafalgar, and The Yew (nos. 70-72) belong with the cover sheet, while Death (no. 73) should be separated from the group. Vesuvius, Trafalgar, and The Yew are fair-copied successively on both sides of three 20.5 × 12.5-cm sheets identical to the cover sheet. When the folds and torn edges are matched up, the cover proves to have followed the last poem, The Yew, with the address on the outside. This physical evidence is confirmed independently by the February 1830 dates ascribed to Vesuvius and Trafalgar, nos. 70-71, by Ruskin himself in their MS V copies. The fourth poem, Death (no. 73) probably does not belong to this group, since it is copied on a separate sheet of a slightly different size (19.75 × 12.5 cm), different watermark ( J WHA[(?)] / TURKE[(?)] / 18[(?)] as compared to HOLDSWORTH / & / PHILLIPS used for the other three poems), and unmatching horizontal folds. This copy of Death should be dated, rather, by its MS V copy, which Ruskin assigned to March 1830. It is true, however, that the lettering style for this presentation copy is very similar to that for the other three poems, as well as for Bosworth Field, d above. The early editors, as so often, contribute only obfuscation. In Works, 2:530, the editors group together Bosworth Field, Vesuvius, Trafalgar, and The Yew under 1829, and they assign Death alone to 1830, apparently pairing Death with the cover sheet. This would be the least probable grouping. The 1 January 1830 (composed 1829) Bosworth Field manuscript has nothing to do, physically, with the other manuscripts, and the other poems are independently ascribable to 1830, not 1829. Wedderburn’s table of contents for MS IA does properly distinguish between Bosworth Field, Death, and the trio Vesuvius, Trafalgar, and The Yew as three separate items. His sketchy description does not mention the 8 February 1830 cover sheet, much less whether it might still have been physically attached to the trio of poems at this time. It is possible, however, that his cryptic 7-10 for Vesuvius, Trafalgar, and The Yew included the cover sheet to make a total of four sheets. f) All descriptions (Goodspeed, Cat., item 79.D; Works, 2:530; Wedderburn’s table of contents for MS IA) list My Father’s Birthday for 1833 ( The month of May, the month of May, no. 178), which is in the Yale folder Early Poems IA. Goodspeed describes the manuscript as 1½ pp., 4to --i.e., two 20 × 25-cm sheets, one of them taken up by the poem on its recto and its verso, and the other devoted only to the address To my Father / 10th May 1833. The sheets, burned on the left and right edges, are enclosed in plastic. Burd ascribes his printing of the poem (RFL 277-78) to RMS I (i.e., MS XI), but I have been unable to locate a copy of the poem either in that volume’s table of contents or in the volume itself. I would assume, therefore, that Burd has confused MS XI with MS IA, except that his printing shows a few slight variants from the MS IA copy. These may be errors or carry-overs from the Library Edition printing. g) The parts of Account of a Tour on the Continent, no. 180, as they were described in earlier accounts of MS IA, all appear to be extant, either in the folder Early Poems IA or elsewhere in the box Miscellaneous Manuscripts. In the folder IA are two sheets (20.2 × 25.2 cm) containing copies (perhaps draft or semifinal copy) of the first five poems (without their prose sections) of no. 180, in the order those poems appear in the fair copy, MS IX. Ruskin numbered the lines of these poems sequentially--that is, without starting his numbering anew with each poem--showing that he had established their order for the fair copy in MS IX. The first of these two sheets contains the following: Calais (poem only, lines numbered by Ruskin 1-24, complete as fair- copied in MS IX; copy in John James’s hand). Cassel (poem only, untitled in manuscript, lines numbered by Ruskin 25-51, i.e., lines 1-27 as fair-copied in MS IX; copy in John James’s hand from line 25 to 42, and in Ruskin’s hand from line 43 to 51 [i.e., Ruskin’s hand starts with the ecclesiastical procession, While far beneath in long array, etc.). A key for a code, nearly every letter of the alphabet represented by a code symbol (not employed in any known manuscript; see no. 99), at bottom of recto and in Ruskin’s hand. As noted, this sheet is largely in John James’s hand. It must therefore be Goodspeed, Cat., item 79.E, Calais. (MS., 2 pp., 4to, in the hand of Ruskin’s father), although the dealer is incorrect to ascribe the copy to John James entirely. By 4to, Goodspeed means the large size of the sheet. Although only slightly darkened by fire on one edge, the sheet is enclosed in plastic. The second sheet of this manuscript resumes Cassel and includes three more poems: Cassel (poem only, lines numbered by Ruskin 52-62, i.e., lines 28-38 as fair-copied in MS IX). Lille (poem only, lines numbered by Ruskin 63-112, i.e., complete as fair-copied in MS IX). Brussels (poem only, lines numbered by Ruskin 113-73, i.e., complete as fair-copied in MS IX). The Meuse (poem only, written sideways in the margin, front side of the sheet, i.e., the side with Cassel and part of Lille ; complete as fair-copied in MS IX). This second sheet is entirely in Ruskin’s hand. It must be Goodspeed, Cat., item 79.G, from which he quotes eight lines of the poem Lille, and which he describes identically to item 79.E above as 2 pp., 4to. This sheet is more seriously damaged than its mate and is enclosed in plastic. This second sheet is what Wedderburn lists as Lille, The Meuse &c in his table of contents, while the first sheet must be represented by one of the items in the entry Calais &c (2 items). As I remarked above ( Description ), however, the penciled gloss (2 items) appears to be Goodspeed’s. In a separate folder in the Yale box and labeled Calais, more material from no. 180 is fair-copied on a folded sheet, 12.6 × 20.2 cm. This is Goodspeed, Cat., item 79.F ( Prose and verse--Calais, Passing the Alps, Milan Cathedral, Andernacht and St. Goar--4 pp. ), and presumably the second of the (2 items), according to the notation next to Calais in Wedderburn’s table of contents. (Wedderburn’s description Calais &c. could fit either of the two sheets starting with Calais, prose or verse, with the &c. standing for the other poems on the respective sheets. His ascription of the single digit 13 to the item(s) is as obscure as his other enumerations.) This small folded sheet escaped fire damage, as did other manuscripts of its size in IA. Ruskin numbered lines of poetry on this manuscript, as well. It consists of the following: Calais (prose only, complete as fair-copied in MS IX). Passing the Alps (poem; lines numbered by Ruskin 324-59; a unique copy of this poem, neither fair-copied in MS IX nor drafted in MS VIII). Milan Cathedral (poem; lines numbered by Ruskin 360-77; a unique copy, neither fair-copied in MS IX nor drafted in MS VIII). Andernacht (poem; lines numbered by Ruskin 378-403; complete as fair- copied in MS IX and printed Works, 2:354 n.--i.e., not the main copytext used for Works, 2:353-54, which is from a later revision of Andernacht ). St. Goar (poem; lines numbered by Ruskin 404-29; complete as fair- copied in MS IX and printed Works, 2:359 n. 1--i.e., not the main copytext used for Works, 2:359-60, which is from a later revision of St. Goar ). This copy of selected prose and verse--like the two sheets containing the poems Calais, Cassel, Lille, Brussels, and The Meuse --probably dates from relatively early in Ruskin’s project, no. 180, since Andernacht and St. Goar were later revised, perhaps sometime in 1835, for publication in Friendship’s Offering (see note to no. 180). h) Goodspeed, Cat. (item 79.H) and Works (2:530) list Ruskin’s 1834 birthday address to his father, no. 192, together with The Crystal Hunter, no. 188. Wedderburn’s table of contents for MS IA is more ambiguous, but he probably means to include both poems under the entry To his father. Birthday ode 1834 since, in the presentation copy itself, The Crystal Hunter begins on the verso of the prefatory address My Dearest Father. (In MS VIII, however, no. 192 is headed differently as The Address and drafted separately from no. 188.) Goodspeed cites 3 pp. for this manuscript, an error that seems unaccountable except as a confusion with j below, which is fair-copied on the same size paper. The 1834 poem is fair-copied on four 25 × 20-cm sheets (i.e., 8 pp.), badly charred on the top and bottom edges and sealed in plastic, and contained in the Yale folder Early Poems IA. The sheets are written on seven sides and numbered 1-7 by Ruskin, with the final page left blank except for To my Father. On p. 7, there is a notation, almost obliterated by the burnt edge, [Johns(?)] poetry / May 1834. This birthday poem marks a departure from Ruskin’s earlier method of fashioning presentation copies, which was to fold a single sheet sideways to form a small (approximately 12 × 20-cm) pamphlet. Here, two columns of text are written on a full sheet broadside, and two more on the verso broadside. The text on the verso is written upside-down to the text on the front, so that, when the sheet is flipped over, the text still appears right-side-up. These more spacious presentations become the rule after the mid-1830s. i) Twelve months all rolling round have past, no. 164, is listed in all descriptions: Wedderburn’s table of contents for MS IA; Goodspeed, Cat., item 79.I (as another birthday poem to his father, 4 pp., undated ); and Works, 2:530. The poem is untitled and undated but listed as 1831 in the Library Edition. Like other items of its size in MS IA, it was unaffected by fire. When this manuscript is compared against Ruskin’s ode for his father’s birthday of 1831, bound in MS XI (see Content, g), the two manuscripts can be seen to match in every particular: they are both 20 × 12.3-cm folded sheets of light blue-green paper, display the same copperplate hand (Ruskin’s fancy scripts can vary, but the capital letters in these two manuscripts are clearly imitated from the same source), and even match up in their horizontal folds. Obviously, when the MS XI manuscript declares at the bottom of 1v that I here do beg to give you an ensample, the reader is meant to look for the ensample at the top of the folded insert--i.e., what is now the MS IA manuscript--which begins Twelve months all rolling round have past. In his printing of the MS XI ode, Burd breaks off with I here do beg to give you an ensample but remarks in a note that the draft in MS VIII extends beyond this line, adding fifty-four lines to illustrate both the comic and ‘flowery’ styles of poetry and that these additional lines begin Twelve months all rolling round have past (RFL 256). The fair copy of those lines (albeit with revisions from the MS VIII version) became separated from the fair copy of the poem’s opening. For the relation between Ruskin’s birthday odes to his father for 1831 and 1832, and for prior confusion over dating of these odes, see nos. 118a and 164. j) All descriptions (Goodspeed, Cat., item 79.J; Works, 2:530; Wedderburn’s table of contents for MS IA) list Ruskin’s 1836 birthday poem for his father, Congratu-- (no. 231). Goodspeed describes this manuscript as 3 pp., 4to. --correctly, if he was counting sides of sheets, as usual. The text is written on three sides of two 20 × 25-cm sheets, with the fourth given to the address To my Father / May 10th 1836. Like h above and unlike birthday presentation poems of earlier years, Congratu-- is written out using the full sides of sheets, not half-pages pamphlet style--only here, the text is written top to bottom, not broadside as in h. With their left and right edges charred, the sheets are enclosed in plastic and contained in the folder Early Poems IA. k) All descriptions (Goodspeed, Cat., item 79.K; Works, 2:530; Wedderburn’s table of contents for MS IA) list Mont Blanc. This 19.7 × 13.2- cm sheet, written on both sides, is correctly noted in all accounts as a transcription in Margaret Ruskin’s hand. Although the Library Edition declares this the only complete copy (Works, 2:468), the manuscript can only be deemed longer than the MS VII version, not necessarily complete, since the writing extends top to bottom on both sides of this torn half-sheet. For speculation about the poem’s dating, see Undatable Pieces, B. The manuscript is not damaged by fire and lies in the folder Early Poems IA. l) All descriptions (Goodspeed, Cat., item 79.L; Works, 2:530; Wedderburn’s table of contents for MS IA) list Athens (no. 135), a 19.7 × 12.2-cm folded sheet. None of the descriptions mentions the handwriting, however, which appears to be Margaret Ruskin’s. The title and one correction are in pencil (possibly Ruskin’s own hand), the stanzas in ink (Margaret’s hand?). The copy contains only seven unnumbered stanzas of this much longer, although unfinished, poem; but, since the manuscript is written on only three sides, it may represent all that had been composed at the time of its transcription. If so, Goodspeed (Cat., item 79.L) and Cook and Wedderburn (Works, 2:530) are correct to attribute this manuscript to 1831, while the entire poem should be dated 1831-32, as Cook and Wedderburn correctly note (Works, 2:537). For complete information on dating, see no. 135. This manuscript is undamaged and lies loose in the folder Early Poems IA. m) All descriptions (Goodspeed, Cat., item 79.M; Works, 2:530; Wedderburn’s table of contents for MS IA) list A Visit to the Hospice of St. Bernard (no. 209). The manuscript consists of 12 sheets, 19.5 × 25 cm, watermarked 1834, with the pages numbered 1-24 by a hand other than Ruskin’s. The text is neatly disposed on hand-ruled lines. This fair copy, as the Library Edition remarks, goes no further than the opening of Scene 5 (Works, 1:505 n. 1); specifically, p. 24 ends with the phrase torrent of the Drance, whose dark waters have worn. Since this phrase extends to the bottom right corner, further fair copy could have existed, although the extant draft in MS VIII continues only through some portion of scene 6. The sheets of the fair copy are charred on the left and right edges, and encased in plastic. The ink is badly faded, especially from p. 8 to the end. The sheets are contained in the folder Early Poems IA. n) All descriptions (Goodspeed, Cat., item 79.N; Works, 2:530; Wedderburn’s table of contents for MS IA) list A Scythian Banquet Song (no. 259). Goodspeed’s description of 4 pp. must be revised to take account of fire damage. Of the 4 pp. --or two 19.5 × 25-cm sheets (one watermarked 1837) written on both sides, now in the folder Early Poems IA --one sheet has been separated at its fold into two 19.5 × 12.5-cm sheets, so that the manuscript is now encased in a total of three plastic sleeves. The manuscript suffered especially intrusive charring, costing some lines at the top and bottom of the sheets, which have been trimmed in places. The manuscript holds only the first 16 stanzas of the 27-stanza poem, presented in the manner of h above--the stanzas written in two columns broadside and continued in the same style on the verso. All four sides of the original sheets are filled, suggesting that this fair copy could have once continued onto further sheets, but Goodspeed’s 4 pp. indicates that only these two sheets were included in the bound MS IA. Wedderburn, in his table of contents, enumerates the manuscript as 24.25., as if it consisted of two sheets, but his meaning is obscure, since he does not so designate other manuscripts consisting of multiple sheets. The Library Edition fails to clarify whether the MS IA copy, as the editors knew it, was complete (Works, 2:57 n.). The manuscript is early enough to record a change in title, A Scythian Banquet Song, and the headnote differs from the published version: The taste of the Scythians in household furniture if we may trust to Herodotus was somewhat peculiar: their drinking cups for instance, being generally the skulls of their enemies (cf. Works, 2:57). A few minor changes in wording (e.g., silence, and breeze, in the final lines of stanzas 1 and 7, respectively) are accounted for in the published text. Otherwise, the manuscript is neatly written, perhaps too neat to be the original draft that, as appears from letters to W. H. Harrison, was composed in a single day, before March 1838 (Works, 2:57 n. 1). Note that, in another letter to Harrison of 1 August 1838, Ruskin still entitles the poem a Drinking Song (Works, 2:69), so the MS IA copy--or at least the revisions on this copy--may date from after that time. o) All descriptions (Goodspeed, Cat., item 79.O; Works, 2:530; Wedderburn’s table of contents for MS IA) list The Broken Chain, no. 245a. This is a 21 × 13.5-cm, 16-page sewn booklet, with pp. 2-10 numbered by the original hand and with pp. 11-16 left blank and uncut. This fair copy, which is in John James’s hand, contains only stanzas 17-26 of part V; however, nothing has been lost from MS IA, since Wedderburn’s table of contents specifies Stanzas 17.26, and both Works (2:530) and Goodspeed, Cat. concur. The manuscript is undamaged by fire and lies loose in the folder Early Poems IA. p) The 1832 prose translation of the Iliad, misdated as 1842 by Cook and Wedderburn (Works, 2:530; see no. 160a), is contained in the MS IA folder. This is a fair copy on six 31.5 × 19-cm sheets; each sheet was folded once vertically, so the sheets could be assembled as a quire, forming a booklet with 16 × 19-cm pages, each page holding two vertical columns of text. The paper is hand-ruled and the text obsessively neat, resembling (except in its double-column format) the Sermon Books, MSS IIA-E. In its present condition, the quire has been separated into individual sheets, each sheet laid flat and enclosed in clear plastic, owing to fire damage. Thus, each sheet consists of four pages. Since neither the pages nor the sheets are numbered, the following list conjecturally orders them. The pages are identified by their first and last words: Sheet 1 (p. 1, Now tell through Argos far ; p. 2, from her through hecatombs un ; pp. 23-24, blank). Sheet 2 (p. 3, paid through dark ; p. 4, eyed through me that ; pp. 21-22, blank). Sheet 3 (p. 5, the value through much more ; p. 6, than thee through the dark- ; pp. 19-20, blank). Sheet 4 (p. 7, eyed through orator of ; p. 8, whom through not me ; p. 17, ed words through of ten [end of fair copy, column left incomplete, with 127 (i.e., line 129) in pencil and in Wedderburn’s hand added at end]; p. 18, blank). Sheet 5 (p. 9, and I will through left to me ; p. 10, to turn through Greeks took ; p. 15, the Greeks through and spoke ; p. 16, Hear me through with wing ). Sheet 6 (p. 11, to Chryses through with the ; p. 12, hecatomb through ascen- ; p. 13, ded soon through of the Greeks ; p. 14, Then answered through ships of ). None of the manuscript is missing, since Wedderburn’s table of contents and Works 2:50 specify the translation as extending only to book 2, line 127. Goodspeed (Cat., item 79.P) describes 16 pp., double column, an odd way of counting since he includes only the full double-column pages, omitting p. 17 with its single incomplete column.