It has been the fashion to talk as though Mr. Ruskin had _discovered_ Turner. Nothing can be further from the fact. Turner had been an exhibitor for more than fifty years when Mr. Ruskin commenced to write about his pictures. He had reached the _Rock Limpet_ stage of his career. He could then produce little beyond frantic whirls of colour, and there was a not unnatural tendency to smile at these achievements in the galleries, and the Hanging Committee were often puzzled to know whether they had or not hung the pictures upside down. All that Mr. Ruskin could do, and he did it superbly, was to bring people to think less of what Turner then was, and more of what he had been. It is all very well to denounce severely those who smiled at, or the critics who said they could not comprehend, the later Turners. It is presumable that pictures are sent to exhibitions to be applauded or condemned, as the world may judge. Mr. Thackeray may be rated for his confession, in a magazine article of the day, that he did not understand the _Rock Limpet_, though he added a kindly longing 'for the old day, before Mr. Turner had lighted on the "Fallacies," and could see like other people.'[25] But was Mr. Ruskin in any better plight? Was _he_ any nearer the painter's meaning? Hear his own story:-- 'He (Turner) tried hard one day, for a quarter of an hour, to make me guess what he was doing in the picture of "Napoleon" before it had been exhibited, giving me hint after hint in a rough way. But I could not guess, and he wouldn't tell me!' It is hard after this to censure so amiable a jester as the late Mr. a'Beckett, for burlesquing the strange picture called 'Hurrah for the whaler _Erebus_--another fish!' in the words proposed to be substituted--'Hallo, there--the oil and vinegar--another lobster salad!'[26] [25] 'What can I say of the Napoleon of Mr. Turner? called (with frightful satire) "The Exile and the _Rock Limpet_." He stands in the midst of a scarlet tornado looking at least forty feet high. "Ah!" says the mysterious poet from whom Mr. Turner loves to quote-- "Ah! thy tent-formed shell is like The soldier's nightly bivouac, alone Amidst a sea of blood....... ......_but you can join your comrades!_" FALLACIES OF HOPE. 'These remarkable lines entirely explain the meaning of the picture; another piece is described by lines from the same poem, in a metre more regular-- "The midnight torch gleamed o'er the steamer's side, And _merit's corse_ was yielded to the tide." (This was the burial of Wilkie at sea: now in the National Gallery.)