Let us look at the advantages of the delay. They were manifold. A man should do something else besides prophesy. He should win his position, take his rank among men, in some walk of life, before he is quite qualified to tell others how to order their steps. He has a degree to take in something besides homiletics. It was from the pulpit of a great literary reputation that the author of _Modern Painters_ opened his mouth to preach. That reputation he was content utterly to throw away; to tread on it, step upon it as upon a ladder, that from the top of it he might be heard when he spoke the words the Spirit taught him. That was the great renunciation of his literary life. What a refusal of a call it would have been had he hugged his reputation, been careful of his influence, that last temptation of noble minds. It is politicians who do that, not prophets. But these know the glorious liberty into which they come.
No doubt any other professional career would have ended with a message. What an explosion might have occurred in the Church had his mother’s wish been fulfilled, and he become a clergyman, with a Bishop to look after him. As it was, his father’s art tastes and preoccupation with pictures and with picturesque scenery, and the boy’s own early skill both as writer and draughtsman, led him, after an attempt at poetry, to become by profession a writer on Art. There he had the opportunity of elaborating his mighty implement, that superb, facile, plastic instrument of music and voice of thunder, his inimitable style. It is that which ensures the preservation of his work. Noble style is the antiseptic which preserves from decay the written words of men. Books without style are not read long.
In classifying the books in our libraries, under what head shall we place the seventy volumes of John Ruskin? There is much temptation to fall back helplessly upon the heading “Miscellaneous”; for he wrote on Art, including Sculpture, Engraving, Architecture and Heraldry; on Economics, History and constructive Politics; on Botany, Meteorology, Ornithology, Geology, and Mineralogy; he wrote Guide-books, Poems, Autobiography, Literary Criticism; he treated Theology, Ethics, Education, Music and Mythology; he brought out regularly for seven years a monthly periodical _de omnibus rebus et quibusdam aliis_; he edited Biography, German stories and translations from the Greek and the Italian: he wrote Dialogue and Fairy Tale.