Scott's novels
and Byron's _Childe Harold_ formed much of his reading at a time when
most boys are content with the stories of Ballantyne or Mayne Reid.
The range of his mental activity until he entered Oxford at eighteen
was very wide. He was interested in mineralogy, meteorology,
mathematics, drawing and painting. What probably expanded his mind
more than all else was the education of travel. His father spent about
half his time journeying through England and the Continent in an
old-fashioned chaise and John always shared in these expeditions. At
Oxford he competed for the Newdigate prize in poetry, and after being
twice defeated won the coveted honor. He never gained any high
scholarship, but he received valuable training in writing.
There is no space here to chronicle more than a few of his many
activities after leaving college. He first came into prominence by his
passionate defense of the painter Turner against the art critics, and
his study of Turner led him to adopt art criticism as his life work.
At twenty-three years of age, when most youths are puzzled about their
vocation, Ruskin had completed the first volume of _Modern Painters_,
the publication of which gave him fame and made him a social lion in
London. Other volumes of this great work followed swiftly and caused a
great commotion in the world of art and letters because of the radical
views of the author and the remarkable qualities of his style.
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