He kept a prose journal, chiefly of geology and scenery, as well as a versified description, written in a metre imitated from “Don Juan,” but more elaborate, and somewhat of a tour de force in rhyming.  But that poetical journal was dropped after he had carried it through France, across the Jura, and to Chamouni.  The drawing crowded it out, and for the first time he found himself as ready with his pencil as he had been with his pen.

His route is marked by the drawings of that year, from Chamouni to the St. Bernard and Aosta, back to the Oberland and up the St. Gothard; then back again to Lucerne and round by the Stelvio to Venice and Verona, and finally through the Tyrol and Germany homewards.  The ascent of the St. Bernard was told in a dramatic sketch of great humour and power of characterization, and a letter to Richard Fall records the night on the Rigi, when he saw the splendid sequence of storm, sunset, moonlight, and daybreak, which forms the subject of one of the most impressive passages of “Modern Painters.”

It happened that Pringle had a plate of Salzburg which he wanted to print in order to make up the volume of “Friendship’s Offering” for the next Christmas.  He seems to have asked John Ruskin to furnish a copy of verses for the picture, and at Salzburg, accordingly, a bit of rhymed description was written and re-written, and sent home to the editor.  Early in December the Ruskins returned, and at Christmas there came to Herne Hill a gorgeous gilt morocco volume, “To John Ruskin, from the Publishers.”  On opening it there were his “Andernach” and “St. Goar,” and his “Salzburg” opposite a beautifully-engraved plate, all hills, towers, boats, and figures moving picturesquely under the sunset, in Turner’s manner more or less, “Engraved by E. Goodall from a drawing by W. Purser.”  It was almost like being Mr. Rogers himself.

CHAPTER V

THE GERM OF “MODERN PAINTERS” (1836)

He was now close upon seventeen, and it was time to think seriously of his future.  His father went to Oxford early in the year to consult the authorities about matriculation.  Meantime they sent him to Mr. Dale for some private lessons, and for the lectures on logic, English literature, and translation, which were given on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays at King’s College, London.  John enjoyed his new circumstances heartily.  From voluminous letters, it is evident that he was in high spirits and in pleasant company.  He was a thorough boy among boys—­Matson, Willoughby, Tom Dale and the rest.  He joined in their pranks, and contributed to their amusement with his ready good-humour and unflagging drollery.

Mr. Dale told him there was plenty of time before October, and no fear about his passing, if he worked hard.  He found the work easy, except epigram-writing, which he thought “excessively stupid and laborious,” but helped himself out, when scholarship failed, with native wit.  Some of his exercises remain, not very brilliant Latinity; some he saucily evaded, thus: