FROUDE HOPES RUSKIN WILL STILL JOIN HIM IN IRELAND FROUDE (James Anthony, 1818-1894, Historian)

Autograph Letter Signed to John RUSKIN (1819-1900, the Writer and Critic), written from Derreen, the 5th Marquess of Lansdowne's seat in Co: Kerry, asking if it is still possible for him "to come to us ... for here too you could draw as well as in France ... within a mile of us are 10 or 12 subterranean villages ... and chambers radiating and into which you creep & find yourself in a habitable cell ... what were the people that lived in them? ... and did the mountains look to them as they look to us ... did the sunsets that crimson the peaks seem beautiful to them - or do our own eyes make the beauty as they make the arch of the rainbow? I wish your eyes could see it all & make some enduring memory of it", Ruskin's letter "is extremely interesting for I see that you are hardening yourself and it is hard metals that cut deep - are you going into Parliament? ... if that body is to continue, a recollection will revive there that there is a difference between right & wrong, between truth & falsehood ... and you may perhaps be the instrument", they are staying "till November ... so there is a long locus poenitentiae [room for change of heart] ... if you think better of your resolution", and ending "As to the value of your work, past & to come - we value least that which we do best ... one of the most perplexing paradoxes of our condition", 4 sides 8vo, Derreen, Kenmare, 16th August no year but 1869 or light mark (?cancellation on being answered) on side 1 touching one or two letters without loss, light trace of transparent guard in blank inner edges, light shadows and two small pen trials on side 4, otherwise good

Froude had first visited Ireland in 1840, and knew Ireland better than many of his contemporaries.. He took Derreen in 1869 and 1870 and there began his The English in Ireland in the Eighteenth Century, which was ultra-unionist but unsparing of criticism of English rule.

Item Date:  1870

Stock No:  56318      £225

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