Note 44 — Chapter IX

For Claudian—the play produced by Wilson Barrett, who acted the title-rôle—Ruskin had a prodigious and rather unaccountable admiration. To one of the present writers, he said during the run of the piece: ‘I admired it so much that I went to see it three times out of pure enjoyment of it, although as a rule I cannot sit out a tragic play. It is not only that it is the most beautifully mounted piece I ever saw, but it is that every feeling that is expressed in the play, and every law of morality that is taught in it, is entirely right.’