[19]
The fiercer his anathemas, the greater the applause; the louder he
shouted, the better he pleased. Let him split the ears of the
groundlings, let him out-Herod Herod,--the judicious might grieve, but
all would be excitedly attentive. Their Jeremiah seemed at times like
to become a jester,--there was a suggestion of the ludicrous in the
sudden passage from birds to Greek coins, to mills, to Walter Scott,
to millionaire malefactors,--a suggestion of acrobatic tumbling and
somersault; but he always got a hearing. In lecturing to the students
of a military academy he had the pleasing audacity to begin:
"Young soldiers, I do not doubt but that many of you came
unwillingly to-night, and many of you in merely contemptuous
curiosity, to hear what a writer on painting could possibly say,
or would venture to say, respecting your great art of war";[20]
after which stinging challenge, one has no doubt, any feeling of
offense was swallowed up in admiration of the speaker's physical
courage.
[Sidenote: Influence of Carlyle upon Ruskin.]
[Sidenote: The unity of Ruskin's style.]
There can be little doubt that this later manner in which Ruskin
allowed his Puritan instincts to defeat his aestheticism, and indulged
to an alarming degree his gift of vituperation, was profoundly
influenced by his "master," Carlyle, who had long since passed into
his later and raucous manner.
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