If you are old enough, you may remember those rather tedious essays by Ruskin on "The Art of Criticism" - or was it vice-versa? - that had to be studied and carefully analysed by candidates for the Leaving Cert. But John Ruskin, while eccentric, was not in real life the crashing bore that some of his essays might suggest. He was one of the most voluminous and polemical writers of the 19th century, and lived in a constant maelstrom of controversy generated by his own outspoken views on English art.
Ruskin was born in 1819. During the middle years of the century, he was something of an enfant terrible, championing on the one hand the somewhat unconventional style of Turner, while repeatedly denouncing James McNeill Whistler in terms so outrageous that the latter sued successfully for libel. And Ruskin himself was not immune from ridicule: he coined the term "pathetic fallacy" to describe the trick of ascribing human feelings and emotions to inanimate or inferior elements in nature, a concept epitomised by a contemporary wit as:
Ecstatic birds, whose thoughts no bard can measure;
Blossoms that breathe, and twigs that pant with pleasure.
Ruskin was also a keen amateur meteorologist, and he was quick to defend and praise the object of his interest. For example, in 1838 he wrote enthusiastically: "We zealously come forward to deprecate the apathy with which it (meteorology) has long been regarded, to dissipate the prejudices which that apathy alone could have engendered, and to vindicate its claims to an honourable and equal position among the proud thrones of its sister sciences." And on another occasion he writes: "While the geologist yearns for the mountain, the botanist for the field, and the mathematician for the study, the meteorologist is a spirit of a higher order than any and rejoices in the kingdom of the air."
John Ruskin died 100 years ago today, on January 20th, 1900, and with obvious gratitude the celestial powers have decreed that his centenary should be celebrated in a fitting way: they have organised a total eclipse of the moon in the early hours of tomorrow morning. Shortly before 2 a.m., if skies are clear and you have had the patience to stay up for the event, you will see the eastern side of the full moon begin to darken as our natural satellite begins to enter the shadow cast by earth. Two hours later the display will culminate in the almost complete darkness of a total eclipse - and then, given time, the moon will gradually recover.