n to try iron and
dieting under Dr. Jephson, who, if he was called a quack, was a sensible
one, and successful in subduing for several years to come the more
serious phases of the disease. The patient was not cured; he suffered
from time to time from his chest, and still more from a weakness of the
spine, which during all the period of his early manhood gave him
trouble, and finished by bending his tall and lithe figure into
something that, were it not for his face, would be deformity. In 1847 he
was again at Leamington under Jephson, in consequence of a relapse into
the consumptive symptoms, after which we hear no more of it. He outgrew
the tendency, as so many do. But nevertheless the alarm had been
justifiable, and the malady had left traces which, in one way and
another, haunted him ever after; for one of the worst effects of
illness is to be marked down as an invalid.

At Leamington, then, in September, 1841, he was finding a new life under
the doctor's dieting, and new aims in life, which were eventually to
resolder for a while the broken chain. Among the Scotch friends of the
Ruskins there was a family at Perth whose daughter came to visit at
Herne Hill--the Effie Gray whom afterwards he married. She challenged
the melancholy John, engrossed in his drawing and geology, to write a
fairytale, as the least likely task for him to fulfil. Upon which he
produced, at a couple of sittings, "The King of the Golden River," a
pretty medley of Grimm's grotesque and Dickens' kindliness and the true
Ruskinian ecstasy of the Alps.

CHAPTER X

THE GRADUATE OF OXFORD (1841-1842)

Ready for work again, and in reasonable health of mind and body, John
Ruskin sat down in his little study at Herne Hill in November, 1841,
with his private tutor, Osborne Gordon. There was eighteen months'
leeway to make up, and the dates of ancient history, the details of
schematized Aristotelianism, soon slip out of mind when one is sketching
in Italy. But he was more serious now about his work, and aware of his
deficiencies. To be useful in the world, is it not necessary first to
understand all possible Greek constructions? So said the voice of
Oxford; but our undergraduate was saved, both now and afterwards, from
this vain ambition. "I think it would hardly be worth your while," said
Gordon.

He could not now go in for honours, for the lost year had superannuated
him. So in April he went up for a pass. In those times, when a pass-man
s