Fors Clavigera (Volume 6 of 8): $b Letters to the workmen and labourers of Great Britain — John Shaqi
Fors Clavigera (Volume 6 of 8): $b Letters to the workmen and labourers of Great BritainRuskin, John
General
Fors Clavigera (Volume 6 of 8): $b 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
Together with which, (all the sheets being now printed, and only my
editorial preface wanting,) I doubt not will be published the first
volume of the classical series of books which I purpose editing for St.
George’s library;—Xenophon’s Economist, namely, done into English for
us by two of my Oxford pupils; this volume, I hope, soon to be followed
by Gotthelf’s Ulric the Farm-servant, either in French or English, as
the Second Fors, faithfully observant of copyright and other dues, may
decide; meantime, our first historical work, relating the chief
decision of Atropos respecting the fate of England after the Conquest,
is being written for me by a friend, and Fellow of my college of Corpus
Christi, whose help I accept, in St. George’s name,—all the more
joyfully, because he is our head gardener, no less than our
master-historian.
And for the standard theological writings which are ultimately to be
the foundation of this body of secular literature, I have chosen seven
authors, whose lives and works, so far as the one can be traced or the
other certified, shall be, with the best help I can obtain from the
good scholars of Oxford, prepared one by one in perfect editions for
the St. George’s schools. These seven books will contain, in as many
volumes as may be needful, the lives and writings of the men who have
taught the purest theological truth hitherto known to the Jews, Greeks,
Latins, Italians, and English; namely, Moses, David, Hesiod, Virgil,
Dante, Chaucer, and, for seventh, summing the whole with vision of
judgment, St. John the Divine.
The Hesiod I purpose, if my life is spared, to translate myself (into
prose), and to give in complete form. Of Virgil I shall only take the
two first Georgics, and the sixth book of the Æneid, but with the
Douglas translation; [9] adding the two first books of Livy, for
completion of the image of Roman life. Of Chaucer, I take the authentic
poems, except the Canterbury Tales; together with, be they authentic or
not, the Dream, and the fragment of the translation of the Romance of
the Rose, adding some French chivalrous literature of the same date. I
shall so order this work, that, in such measure as it may be possible
to me, it shall be in a constantly progressive relation to the granted
years of my life. The plan of it I give now, and will explain in full
detail, that my scholars may carry it out, if I cannot.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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