V - FINAL LECTURES AT OXFORD (1884)

Summary

[Bibliographical Note.—The three lectures reported in this Appendix were delivered at Oxford, in November and December 1884, in lieu of Lectures VI. and VII. in the course entitled The Pleasures of England (see above, p. 413).

They were the last professorial lectures delivered by Ruskin at Oxford.

They were reported (by E. T. Cook) in the Pall Mall Gazette of November 24, December 3, and December 10.

The report of the second lecture—that on “Birds”—was prepared with the help of Ruskin's MS. notes; while that of the third—on “Landscape”—was revised by him before publication.

The reports were reprinted in E. T. Cook's Studies in Ruskin, 1890 (and again in the second edition of that book, 1891), pp. 264–294.]

A LECTURE ON “PATIENCE”

(Reprinted from the “Fall Mall Gazette,” November 24th, 1884)

1. No better proof can be given of Mr. Ruskin's popularity at Oxford than the fact that he played off a practical joke on the five hundred people who crowded the Museum theatre to hear him on Saturday afternoon, and yet aroused no perceptible resentment. They had all come—an hour before the time, too, many of them—to hear the sixth of his appointed course of lectures on the “Pleasures of England”; but he straightway announced that this lecture would be postponed till Monday week, and meanwhile he proposed to read them a little essay on Patience.