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
Goodspeedʼs 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
Ruskinʼs 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.
Goodspeedʼs
Catalogue. 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)
Ruskinʼs 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 Editionʼs listing of
The Monastery versified, 80 lines in the original
MS IA (
Ruskin,
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
Goodspeedʼs
Catalogue. lists in second place (item 79.A.2, following the ink manuscript of
The Monastery ) 4 pp. in pencil [of] a metrical transcription from
Scottʼs
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,
Goodspeedʼs 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
Scottʼs novel, for the ink manuscript is taken from chapter three.
The problem is not clarified by comparing
Goodspeedʼs records with
Wedderburnʼs.
Wedderburnʼs 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.
Wedderburnʼs other two items may have been
Goodspeedʼs 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. (
Goodspeedʼs
Catalogue 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—
Wedderburnʼs third sheet, or
Goodspeedʼs 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 (
Ruskin,
Works, 2:530), and one might suspect that here is the third item in
Wedderburnʼs table of contents as well as
Goodspeedʼs 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
Goodspeedʼs 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.
Wedderburnʼs 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,
Wedderburnʼs 1–3 may correspond to
Goodspeedʼs 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
Wedderburnʼs table of contents and
Goodspeedʼs
Catalogue, these items are followed by
“Papa whats time”. But, as already explained,
Goodspeedʼs page count cannot be reconciled with the extant manuscripts. Moreover, why does
Wedderburnʼs table of contents list
Papa whats time as a fifth item, skipping over a fourth enumeration? Could
Wedderburnʼs 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
Wedderburnʼs manner of describing the contents of
MS IA, one returns to
Goodspeedʼs
Catalogue 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
Viljoenʼs 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.
Viljoenʼs 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;
Viljoenʼs 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
Wedderburnʼs 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
Catalogue, 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 <a href="/notes/bibliography#RFL" target="_self">
Burd, ed.,
Ruskin Family Letters</a>, 150–51) is a 12.5 × 20–cm folded sheet. It is listed as following
The Constellations in
Goodspeed,
Catalogue, item 79.A.4, and in
Ruskin,
Works, 2:530; and the title occurs following the first entry, Very Early MSS., in
Wedderburnʼs 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 <a href="/notes/bibliography#RFL" target="_self">
Burd, ed.,
Ruskin Family Letters</a>, 150 (headnote). The manuscript is undamaged by fire and lies loose in the Yale folder
Early Poems IA.
d) All descriptions (
Goodspeed,
Catalogue, item 79.B;
Ruskin,
Works, 2:530;
Wedderburnʼs 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 Jamesʼs hand, Aged 10¾ years /
1 Jany 1830”. Accordingly, in their dated list for
MS IA (
Ruskin,
Works, 2:530), Cook and
Wedderburn correctly ascribe the poem to late
1829—that is, composition in late
1829 for
New Yearʼs presentation.
e)
Goodspeed,
Catalogue, item 79.C, cites Poems—
Vesuvius,
Trafalgar,
The Yew and
Death—a similar MS. to the foregoing [i.e.,
Bosworth Field,ʼ 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
Ruskin,
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.
Wedderburnʼs 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,
Catalogue, item 79.D;
Ruskin,
Works, 2:530;
Wedderburnʼs table of contents for
MS IA) list My Fatherʼs 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 183. The sheets, burned on the left and right edges, are enclosed in plastic.
Burd ascribes his printing of the poem (<a href="/notes/bibliography#RFL" target="_self">
Burd, ed.,
Ruskin Family Letters</a>, 277–78) to RMS I (i.e.,
MS XI), but I have been unable to locate a copy of the poem either in that volumeʼs 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 Jamesʼs 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 Jamesʼs hand from line 25 to 42, and in
Ruskinʼs hand from line 43 to 51 [i.e.,
Ruskinʼs 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
Ruskinʼs hand.
As noted, this sheet is largely in
John Jamesʼs hand. It must therefore be
Goodspeed,
Catalogue, item 79.E,
Calais. (MS., 2 pp., 4to, in the hand of
Ruskinʼs 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
Ruskinʼs hand. It must be
Goodspeed,
Catalogue, 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 in his table of contents, while the first sheet must be represented by one of the items in the entry
Calais (2 items). As I remarked above ( Description ), however, the penciled gloss (2 items) appears to be
Goodspeedʼs.
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,
Catalogue., 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
Wedderburnʼs table of contents. (
Wedderburnʼs description
Calais 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
Ruskin, Works, 2:354 n.—i.e., not the main copytext used for
Ruskin,
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
Ruskin,
Works, 2:359 n. 1—i.e., not the main copytext used for
Ruskin,
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
Ruskinʼs project, no. 180, since
Andernacht and
St. Goar were later revised, perhaps sometime in
1835, for publication in
Friendshipʼs Offering (see note to no. 180).
h)
Goodspeed,
Catalogue, (item 79.H) and
Ruskin,
Works (2:530) list
Ruskinʼs
1834 birthday address to his father, no. 192, together with
The Crystal Hunter, no. 188.
Wedderburnʼs 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
Ruskinʼs 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:
Wedderburnʼs table of contents for
MS IA;
Goodspeed,
Catalogue, item 79.I (as another birthday poem to his father, 4 pp., undated ); and
Ruskin,
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
Ruskinʼs ode for his fatherʼs 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 (
Ruskinʼs 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 (<a href="/notes/bibliography#RFL" target="_self">
Burd, ed.,
Ruskin Family Letters</a>, 256). The fair copy of those lines (albeit with revisions from the
MS VIII version) became separated from the fair copy of the poemʼs opening.
For the relation between
Ruskinʼs 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,
Catalogue, item 79.J;
Ruskin,
Works, 2:530;
Wedderburnʼs table of contents for
MS IA) list
Ruskinʼs
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,
Catalogue, item 79.K;
Ruskin,
Works, 2:530;
Wedderburnʼs 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 Ruskinʼs hand. Although the
Library Edition declares this the only complete copy (
Ruskin,
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 poemʼs dating, see Undatable Pieces, B. The manuscript is not damaged by fire and lies in the folder
Early Poems IA.
l) All descriptions (
Goodspeed,
Catalogue, item 79.L;
Ruskin,
Works, 2:530;
Wedderburnʼs 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 Ruskinʼs. The title and one correction are in pencil (possibly
Ruskinʼs own hand), the stanzas in ink (
Margaretʼs 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 (
Catalogue, item 79.L) and
Cook and
Wedderburn (
Ruskin,
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 (
Ruskin,
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,
Catalogue, item 79.M;
Ruskin,
Works, 2:530;
Wedderburnʼs 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
Ruskinʼs. 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 (
Ruskin,
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,
Catalogue, item 79.N;
Ruskin,
Works, 2:530;
Wedderburnʼs table of contents for
MS IA) list
A Scythian Banquet Song (no. 259).
Goodspeedʼs 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
Goodspeedʼs 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 (
Ruskin,
Works, 2:57 n.).
The manuscript is early enough to record a change in title, #FN01#
A Scythian Banquet #FN02# Song, and the headnote differs from the published version: The taste of the Scythians #FN03# in household furniture if we may trust to Herodotus was somewhat peculiar: their drinking cups for instance, being generally the skulls of their enemies (
Ruskin,
Works, 2:57). A few minor changes in wording #FN04# 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 (
Ruskin,
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,
Catalogue, item 79.O;
Ruskin,
Works, 2:530;
Wedderburnʼs 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 Jamesʼs hand, contains only stanzas 17–26 of part V; however, nothing has been lost from
MS IA, since
Wedderburnʼs table of contents specifies Stanzas 17.26, and both
Works (2:530) and
Goodspeed,
Catalogue, 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 (
Ruskin,
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
Wedderburnʼs 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
Wedderburnʼs table of contents and
Ruskin,
Works, 2:50 specify the translation as extending only to book 2, line 127.
Goodspeed (
Catalogue, 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.
Footnotes:
#FN01#: “Th” crossed out by
Ruskin. “A” used instead.
#FN02#: “Drinking Song” crossed out by
Ruskin. “Banquet” song used instead.
Th A Scythian
Drinking Song Banquet Song
#FN03#: “if we ma”. Crossed out by
Ruskin.
#FN04#: “darkness” crossed out and silence was used in its place; “waves” was crossed out breeze was used in its place.
Body paragraph.