Fors Clavigera (Volume 5 of 8): Letters to the workmen and labourers of Great BritainRuskin, John
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Fors Clavigera (Volume 5 of 8): Letters to the workmen and labourers of Great Britain
Ruskin, John
Aesthetics; Conduct of life; Great Britain -- Social conditions -- 19th century; Social problems; Working class -- Great Britain
The workmen who have leisure to enter on this course of study will
also, I believe, have leisure to walk to Walkley. The museum has been
set there, not by me, but by the second Fors, (Lachesis,) on the top of
a high and steep hill,—with only my most admiring concurrence in her
apparent intention that the approach to it may be at once symbolically
instructive, and practically sanitary.
NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE.
I. The following communication was sent to me on a post-card, without
the writer’s name; but it is worth notice:—
“‘Ut et corda nostra mandatis tuis dedita.’ If some manuscript Breviary
has omitted ‘dedita,’ it must be by a slip of the pen. The sense surely
is this: that while there is either war or only an evil and deceitful
peace within, self-surrender to the Divine commandments above and
freedom from terror of foes around are alike impossible.
“In the English Prayer-book ‘set’ has the same meaning as in Psalm
lxxviii. ver. 9 (sic: the writer means ver. 8); and the context shows
the ‘rest and quietness’ desired, to be rest and quietness of spirit.”
The ‘context’ cannot show anything of the sort, for the sentence is an
entirely independent one: and the MS. I use is not a Breviary, but the
most perfect Psalter and full service, including all the hymns quoted
by Dante, that I have seen in English thirteenth-century writing. The
omission of the word ‘dedita’ makes not the smallest difference to the
point at issue—which is not the mistranslation of a word, but the
breaking of a clause. The mistranslation nevertheless exists also;
precisely because, in the English Prayer-book, ‘set’ has the same
meaning as in Psalm lxxviii.; where the Latin word is ‘direxit,’ not
‘dedit’; and where discipline is meant, not surrender.
I must reserve my comments on the two most important letters next
following, for large type and more leisure.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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