Footnote 1, Chapter 8, of the author's Ruskin's Poetic Argument: The Design of the Major Works, which Cornell University Press published in 1985. It appears in the Victorian web with the kind permission of the author, who of course retains copyright.
Ruskin's footnote on Dickens in Unto This Last reads, in part: "Allowing for his manner of telling them, the things he tells us are always true.... But let us not lose the use of Dickens's wit and insight, because he chooses to speak in a circle of stage fire. He is entirely right in his main drift and purpose in every book he has written; and all of them, but especially Hard Times, should be studied with close and earnest care by persons interested in social questions" (XVII, 31).
Last modified December 2000