In a
letter of March 10, 1829,
Ruskin refers to completing a
red book,
MS III,
by gathering together several poems: “I am putting in the
shipwreck altogether
and
the adventures of an ant &c” (
Burd, ed., Ruskin Family Letters, 192; see
“The Shipwreck” and
“The Adventures of an Ant: A Tale”, and see
“The Monastery” nos. 38 and 49, and see note to no. 46).
In
MS III, several poems, including these lines, are dated
9 March 1829, the day before
Ruskinʼs promise to
John James.
The poems, in the sequential order they appear in
MS III (not necessarily reflecting order of composition), are
“Of rocks first and of caverns now I sing”,
“The Ship” [1828–29],
“Sonnet to the Sun”,
“The Adventures of an Ant: A Tale”,
“On the Appearance of a Sudden Cloud of Yellow Fog Covering Everything with Darkness”,
“A Fragment” (“The summit of skiddaw was gilt by the sun”),
“The Shipwreck”,
“A Fragment” (“The world that in its orbit flies”),
“Another” (“Far towards Chelsea”),
“Another” (“On the noble Ben Lomond arose the bright sun”),
“Another” (“Thy winding rivers Scotland and thy rocks”),
“A Psalm” (“I will extol thee O my Lord”)
(nos. 47, 28, 48–51, 38, 52–55, 39).
Throughout the group,
Ruskin distributed “
March 9th 1829,” “
March 1829,” or just “
9th 1829.”
This flurry of fair‐copying must have been instigated by
Margaretʼs complaint to
John James on
March 4:
“If you think of writing
John would you impress on him the propriety of not beginning too eagerly and becoming careless towards the end of his works as he calls them I think in a letter from you it would have great weight”. On
March 10,
John James complied with the remark to
John, “You have been at your Works with great Spirit & they commence so well that the end rather disappoints that is if they get to an end” (
letter to John James, 4 March 1829;
letter to John Ruskin, 10 March 1829 [
Burd, ed., Ruskin Family Letters, 187, 192]).
Ruskin appears to have outmaneuvered his mother and forestalled criticism, however, by already completing
MS III on
March 9; or, at least, he created the fiction of having done so, by gathering together poems written at widely different times, composing some new ones, and peppering the little anthology with the
March 9 date. He then tried to turn the issue into a joke in a
letter of March 10: “I believe my discourse has a conclusion, and a beginning too,” though his manner may not be analyzable in “the learned terms of Rhetoric” (
Burd, ed., Ruskin Family Letters, 193).
The copying date of
March 9 is to some extent a fiction designed to forestall, on paper if not in actuality, his fatherʼs censure of
March 10. The later poems in this group, at least, could have been composed and copied no earlier than
March 13 (see no. 53
“Another” (“Far towards Chelsea”)). Still,
Ruskin was able to compose and copy very rapidly. As he remarks in his fatherʼs
1829 birthday letter, “the last year of my life was the happiest . . . because I have had more to do than I could do without all possible cramming and ramming and wishing days were longer and sheets of paper broader” (
Burd, ed., Ruskin Family Letters, 200). Archly, he rounded out the section with a series of “fragments”,
“A Fragment” (“The summit of skiddaw was gilt by the sun”),
“A Fragment” (“The world that in its orbit flies”),
“Another” (“Far towards Chelsea”),
“Another” (“On the noble Ben Lomond arose the bright sun”),
“Another” (“Thy winding rivers Scotland and thy rocks”)(nos. 51–55), some new and some abstracted from older poems. When the
March 9 group of smaller poems were entered,
Ruskin followed with the resumption of
“The Monastery” (see no. 46
“The Monastery”).
For some of these poems, earlier composition dates can be established. The remainder are arranged here, under
9 March 1829, for want of a better evidence.
“Of rocks first and of carverns now I sing”, the first in the group, presents a special problem. Its subject is “
Matlockʼs rocks . . . white as snow,” but
Ruskinʼs opportunity to explore the mines and caverns around
Matlock appears not to have come until
summer 1830 (
A Tour to the Lakes in Cumberland, 32–33, 51–56). If he did visit
Derbyshire before the
1830 tour, this poem is the sole manuscript evidence. In
Praeterita,
Ruskin associates
Matlock with
1829; but the autobiographyʼs dates are not reliable (see
A Tour to the Lakes in Cumberland, 67 n. 33), and
Ruskin might well have derived that date from
“Of rocks first and of caverns now I sing”.
More likely,
“Of rocks first and of caverns now I sing” reflects
Ruskinʼs preparation for his
1830 geological pursuits with research in some guidebook, illustration, or description. As
Michael Brooks mentions, although not in connection with no.
“Of rocks first and of caverns now I sing”,
Maria Edgeworthʼs
Harry and Lucy pay a geological visit to
Matlock, which might have absorbed
Ruskin (“Love and Possession in a Victorian Household: The Example of the Ruskins,” in
The Victorian Family: Structure and Stress, ed. Anthony S. Wohl [New York: St. Martinʼs, 1978], pp. 91–92). Likewise, in
“Mineralogical Notes” Ruskin drew on a literary source for geology, and possibly at about the same time he composed
“Of rocks first and of caverns now I sing” (
“Mineralogical Notes” unfortunately presents dating enigmas of its own).
The alternative is to date
“Of rocks first and of caverns now I sing” as
summer 1830 or after, when
Ruskin is known to have visited
Matlock. Physical evidence shows this to be possible, since the lines are positioned at the beginning of the
9 March 1829 group, following a blank page, and therefore could have been inserted later. (The lines also wrap around a drawing of a mountain landscape and castle, but that only tells us that the drawing probably predates the poem.) Still, the notation “
9th 1829” is clearly applied to
“Of rocks first and of caverns now I sing”, and by
1830 Ruskin would no longer have any reason to falsify the date his little anthology.