thirteen children. Of these, you need not mind the names of ten; but the odd three are important to you-Sheba, Ophir, and Havilah. You have perhaps heard of these before; and assuredly, if you go on reading Fors, you will hear of them again.1

And these thirteen children of Joktan, you see, had their dwelling "from Mesha, as thou goest unto Sephar, a mount of the East." I don't know anything about Mesha and Sephar, yet; but I may in the meantime, learn the sentence, and recollect that these people are fixed somewhere, at any rate, because they are to be Masters of Gold, which is fixed in Eastern, or Western, mountains; but that the children of the other brother, Peleg, can go wherever they like, and often where they shouldn't,—for "in his days was the earth divided." Recollect also that the children of both brothers, or, in brief, the great Indian gold-possessing race, and the sacred race of prophets and kings of the higher spiritual world, are in the 21st verse of this chapter called "all the children of EBER." If you learn so much as this well, it's enough for this month: but I may as well at once give you the forms you have to learn for the other

The seventh verse is to be noted as giving the goldmasters of Africa, under two of the same names as those

1 [Havilah is mentioned again in the next Letter, p. 521.]

2 Genesis x. 30.]

3 [The geographical position of "Mesha" and "Sephar" has never been identified with certainty, though it is supposed that they must have been situated somewhere in the south-western portion of the Arabian peninsula. The latest investigations of the subject are those of Eduard Glaser in his Skizze der Geschichte und Geographie Arabiens, 1890, vol. ii. pp. 336, 420, 437.]

[For the land of Ophir as the land of gold, see 1 Kings ix. 28, etc., and Job xxii. 24. On the very vexed question of the locality of Ophir, see the long list of authorities cited in Hastings's Dictionary of the Bible, 1900, vol. iii. p. 628.] [See Genesis x. 6, 8, 15.]

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of Asia, but must not be learned for fear of confusion.' The form above given must be amplified and commented on variously, but is best learned first in its simplicity.

I leave this blunt-stalked and flat-headed letter T, also, in its simplicity, and we will take up the needful detail in next Fors.2

13. Together with which (all the sheets being now printed, and only my editorial preface wanting) I doubt not will be published the first volume of the classical series of books which I purpose editing for St. George's library;3 -Xenophon's Economist, namely, done into English for us by two of my Oxford pupils; this volume, I hope, soon to be followed by Gotthelf's Ulric the Farm Servant, either in French or English, as the Second Fors, faithfully observant of copyright and other dues, may decide; meantime, our first historical work, relating the chief decision of Atropos respecting the fate of England after the Conquest, is being written for me by a friend, and Fellow of my college of Corpus Christi, whose help I accept, in St. George's name, all the more joyfully, because he is our head gardener, no less than our master-historian."

1

[The descendants of both Ham (Africa) and Shem (Asia) including a Havilah and a Sheba: see Genesis x. 7, 28, 29. For the descendants of Japheth, see Genesis x. 2-4.]

2 [Letter 62, § 12 (p. 522).]

[See above, p. 20.]

[This translation, by W. G. Collingwood and A. D. O. Wedderburn, forming volume i. of Bibliotheca Pastorum, was issued in July 1876: see now Vol. XXXI. Ulric, issued in 1888, was not included in Bibliotheca Pastorum.]

[Patience see Letter 15, § 14 n. (Vol. XXVII. p. 270).]

[Mr. Cuthbert Shields, whose projected work was not however, published: see

Val d'Arno, § 94 (Vol. XXIII. p. 57 n.]

14. And for the standard theological writings which are ultimately to be the foundation of this body of secular literature, I have chosen seven authors, whose lives and works, so far as the one can be traced or the other certified, shall be, with the best help I can obtain from the good scholars of Oxford, prepared one by one in perfect editions for the St. George's schools. These seven books will contain, in as many volumes as may be needful, the lives and writings of the men who have taught the purest theological truth hitherto known to the Jews, Greeks, Latins, Italians, and English; namely, Moses, David, Hesiod, Virgil, Dante, Chaucer, and, for seventh, summing the whole with vision of judgment, St. John the Divine.2

The Hesiod I purpose, if my life is spared, to translate myself (into prose), and to give in complete form. Of Virgil I shall only take the two first Georgics, and the sixth book of the Eneid, but with the Douglas translation; adding the two first books of Livy, for completion of the image of Roman life. Of Chaucer, I take the authentic poems, except the Canterbury Tales; together with, be

"A Bishop by the Altar stood,

A noble Lord of Douglas blood,
With mitre sheen, and rocquet white.
Yet showed his meek and thoughtful eye
But little pride of prelacy;

More pleased that, in a barbarous age,
He gave rude Scotland Virgil's page,
Than that beneath his rule he held
The bishopric of fair Dunkeld." 3

[The scheme, here planned, was in no part carried out. For the importance which Ruskin attached to the works of Hesiod, see Letters 71, § 1 (below, p. 732) 75, § 3 (Vol. XXIX. p. 56), and compare Vol. XVII. p. 564, and Vol. XVIII. p 508; for the first two books of Livy, see Vol. XXII. p. 269.]

2

[For the message of St. John, see Letter 81 (Vol. XXIX. pp. 192–194).] Marmion, canto vi., stanza xi. For another reference to Gavin Douglas (14741522) Bishop of Dunkeld, see Bible of Amiens, ch. iv. § 20. His translation of the Eneid was first published in 1553. Ruskin gave his copy of the book to Whitelands Training College: see Appendix 11, Vol. XXIX. p. 557.]

they authentic or not, the Dream, and the fragment of the translation of the Romance of the Rose, adding some French chivalrous literature of the same date. I shall so order this work, that in such measure as it may be possible to me, it shall be in a constantly progressive relation to the granted years of my life. The plan of it I give now, and will explain in full detail, that my scholars may carry it out, if I cannot.

15. And now let my general readers observe, finally, about all reading,-You must read, for the nourishment of your mind, precisely under the moral laws which regulate your eating for the nourishment of the body. That is to say, you must not eat for the pleasure of eating, nor read for the pleasure of reading. But, if you manage yourself rightly, you will intensely enjoy your dinner, and your book. If you have any sense, you can easily follow out this analogy: I have not time at present to do it for you; only be sure it holds, to the minutest particular, with this difference only, that the vices and virtues of reading are more harmful on the one side and higher on the other, as the soul is more precious than the body. Gluttonous reading is a worse vice than gluttonous eating; filthy and foul reading, a much more loathsome habit than filthy eating. Epicurism in books is much more difficult of attainment than epicurism in meat, but plain and virtuous feeding the most entirely pleasurable.

16. And now, one step of farther thought will enable you to settle a great many questions with one answer.

1 [For another reference to the poem known as Chaucer's Dream, see Vol. XXII. p. 65. Ruskin at one time began translating it "into simple English," with a view to publishing it as "the first of my series of standard literature for young people" see (in a later volume of this edition) his letter of November 17, 1869, to C. E. Norton, and the letter to F. S. Ellis of November 2, 1874. The "French chivalrous literature of the same date," which he proposed to include, would no doubt have been verses from The Book of a Hundred Ballads, for which see Vol. XXIII. p. xxiii., and compare Vol. XXVII. p. 263.]

2 [Chaucer's version, consisting of 7699 verses, proceeds only as far as verse 13,105 of the original (which consists in all of 22,000); and of the 13,105 verses, 5544 are passed over in the translation (see Robert Bell's Poetical Works of Chaucer, 1886, vol. iv. pp. 5, 11).]

As you may neither eat, nor read, for the pleasure of eating or reading, so you may do nothing else for the pleasure of it, but for the use.1 The moral difference between a man and a beast is, that the one acts primarily for use, the other for pleasure. And all acting for pleasure before use, or instead of use, is in one word, "Fornication." That is the accurate meaning of the words "harlotry," or "fornication," as used in the Bible, wherever they occur spoken of nations, and especially in all the passages relating to the great or spiritual Babylon.2

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And the Law of God concerning man is, that if he acts for use that is to say, as God's servant, he shall be rewarded with such pleasure as no heart can conceive nor tongue tell; only it is revealed by the Spirit, as that Holy Ghost of life and health possesses us; but if we act for pleasure instead of use, we shall be punished by such misery as no heart can conceive nor tongue tell; but which can only be revealed by the adverse spirit, whose is the power of death. And that-I assure you-is absolute, inevitable, daily and hourly Fact for us, to the simplicity of which I to-day invite your scholarly and literary attention.

1 [Compare Letter 74, § 7 (Vol. XXIX. p. 35).]

2 [See, e.g., Revelation xvii. 4, 5; and compare below, p. 716.]
[See 1 Corinthians ii. 9, 10.]