“Next doth bereniceʼs [golden] hair“ (RF T70; MS III)—Ruskinʼs revision of this line as first fair—copied in the manuscript photographed as RF T70—his deletion of “doth” and insertion of the modifier “golden” following “bereniceʼs”—is reflected in the MS III fair copy.

“Then the very pretty swan“ (RF T70; MS III)—Ruskinʼs revision of this line as first fair—copied in the manuscript photographed as RF T70—his deletion of “pretty” and substitution of “fiery”—is reflected in the MS III fair copy.

“after that the telescope (RF T70; MS III)—Ruskinʼs substitution of this line for the original, as first fair—copied in the manuscript photographed as RF T70—“Then the dread medusas head”—is reflected in the MS III fair copy.

“then the very frightened hare (RF T70; MS III)—Ruskinʼs substitution of this line for the original, as first fair—copied in the manuscript photographed as RF T70—“After that doth come the lyre”—is reflected in the MS III fair copy. In MS III, “frightened” is further revised to “timid”.

A possible explanation for Ruskinʼs substitution appears later in the poem, at line 64 as fair‐copied in MS RF T70 (line 62 as fair‐copied in MS III). In the draft, MS IA, Ruskin drafted this later line as “I wish I had not observed the lyre”, which he fair‐copied in MS RF T70. The cause for this expression of regret, one may suppose, is that “lyre” rhymes well with “fire” in the preceding line. Thus, Ruskin meant, he wishes he had not already mentioned that constellation earlier, at line 17, since he had need of it now—and yet, he was in fact is using “lyre” to make up the rhyme anyway. (The surviving MS IA draft is missing the page that would have contained the earlier line, “After that doth come the lyre” [line 17], but there is no reason to suggest that the original draft differed from its fair copy in MS RF T70.) As with other revisions to the RF T70 fair copy, a penciled X (probably by Margaret Ruskin) marks the later line for amendment; and accordingly, in the margin next to line 64, Ruskin substituted in pencil “then the very frightened hare”. The latter substitution is in turn scored through in pencil; and below it Ruskin inserted the text of line 17: “after that doth come the lyre”. In other words, at the cost of his jest, Ruskin moved line 17 to replace line 64, and substituted the hare for the lyre at line 17.

“After that sweet hirundo (MS IA; RF T70; MS III)—Ruskinʼs substitution of this line for the original, as first fair—copied in the manuscript photographed as RF T70—“After that the swallow”—is reflected in the MS III fair copy.

“lynx (MS IA; RF T70; MS III)—As drafted in MS IA, and as originally fair—copied in RF T70, “after that the furious lynx”. Then in RF T70, “After that” is replaced in ink by “then”, and “furious lynx” replaced in pencil by a phrase that is obscure in the photograph but may be “brighteyed lynx”. The latter is overwritten in ink by “keeneyed lynx”, resulting in the phrase that is fair—copied in MS III, “Then the furious keen—eyed lynx”.

“generous leo (MS IA; RF T70; MS III)—Ruskin originally drafted the line in pencil in MS IA as “after that king leo”, substituting in ink “it” for “that”. He incorporated this change into the line as fair—copied in ink in RF T70. Then he revised the latter, “After it king leo”, by substituting in pencil in the margin of RF T70 “that the generous” for “it king”, resulting in “After that the generous leo”, the form in which the line is fair—copied in MS III.

“aires [?] (RF T70)—An illegible word was inserted in ink in the margin, roughly between lines 34 and 35, but deleted using a double strikethrough. It is not certain the hand is Ruskinʼs and might be his fatherʼs. If the word was intended as a revision to the text, there is no variant in the MS III fair copy that is otherwise unaccounted for by a revision in RF T70 and that can be matched with this substitution. A guess is that the letters are wile.

“serpent serpent bearer then“ (MS IA; RF T70; MS III)—Because the serpent and the serpent bearer form a double constellation, each with its own name but typically represented together, the poetic expression presented a challenge to Ruskin. In the MS IA draft, he wrote “serpent” twice and, baffled, deleted the second “serpent”, only to write it again as “serpent bearer”. In the first fair copy, RF T70, he inserted a prominently drawn comma between the adjacently repeated words, and he added an explantory footnote: “Note the serpent and serpent bearer are two different constellations”. In the second fair copy, MS III, he abandoned the comma but retained the footnote, tagged with an asterisk at the end of the line.

“the very longbilled crane“ (MS IA; RF T70; MS III)—Ruskin originally wrote, in the MS IA draft: “then the very pretty crane”, but revised “then” to “next” in this manuscript. He fair‐copied that revised line in RF T70, but scored through “pretty” with pencil and wrote a substitution in the margin, also in pencil: “long billed”—the revision carried to MS III.

“down below“ (RF T70; MS III)—In draft (MS IA) of lines 41–42 (numbered as fair‐copied), “antinous and arrow soon / after it the southern crown”; in first fair copy (RF T70), “soon” deleted and “down” substituted in the margin, and “After it” deleted and “much below [with e overwritten on l]” substituted in margin, and then “far” substituted for “much”; in second fair copy (MS III), the latter substitutions carried over as “down / far below”.

The adjacent adverbs at the end of line 41 and the beginning of line 42 are problematic, whether read as end‐stopped or as enjambed. End‐stop is the norm throughout this poem; and in RF T70, the placement of Ruskinʼs substitutions for, respectively, “soon” and “After it” can be viewed as two separate actions and not a single connected revision resulting in the elided “down far below”. Considered as end‐stopped lines, the revision of “after it” seems motivated by the disagreement of case between it and the plural referent, the two constellations Antinous and Arrow. In this scenario, however, the substitution of “down” for “soon” is a perplexing choice, as the adverb appears to make no sense. The line might be read as meaning that Antinous and Arrow are “down” from Grus (the Crane) in the line above, which is factually incorrect—Antinous and Arrow are northern constellations, not “down” from the southern constellation Grus—but but this would not be the first time the poem contradicts the map of the sky.

Alternatively, one might speculate that the substitution of “down” for “soon” was occasioned by the substitution of “far below” for “after it”, creating the enjambed “down far below” as a single adverbial modifier. If the adverb phrase applies to Antinuous and Arrow, however, the lines are made factually incorrect, since these constellations lie in the northern hemisphere—far above, not below, “the southern crown” in line 42. If applied to the latter, the enjambed phrase correctly describes the position of Corona Australis (the Southern Crown) but leaves Antinous and Arrow without any modifier at all, adverbial or adjectival. Ruskin may have enjoyed the ambiguity of “down” being pulled two ways—if end‐stoped, toward Antinous and Arrow, although the adverb makes no sense for those constellations; or if enjambed, toward Corona Australis, although the defection of the adverb leaves those constellations stranded.

“Next to it the gods fire altar“ (RF T70; MS III)—In draft (MS IA) of line 44 (numbered as fair‐copied), and in RF T70 as the line was initially fair‐copied, the constellation was named without an epithet: “next to it the altar”. In the margin of RF T70, Ruskin added the epithet “gods fire” in pencil cursive, resulting in the line as fair‐copied in MS III.

“then doth come great euclids square (RF T70; MS III)—Ruskinʼs substitution of this line for the original, as drafted in MS IA and then fair—copied in RF T70—“After it the pump of air”—is reflected in the MS III fair copy.

“doth appear bear” (RF T70; MS III)—In MS IA draft, Ruskin originally composed bear, but in RF T70 he initially ended the line with appear, probably by inadvertently copying the word that ends the line above. The style of crossing out appear is unique in this corrected fair copy, and the pencil cursive of bear resembles the hand of Margaret Ruskin. (While Johnʼs formation of cursive characters at this stage closely resembles that of his mother, this instance shows a mature flow and compression that Ruskinʼs sprawling cursive lacked.) Since RF T70 probably dates from the end of the year when Ruskin first used pen and ink, this manuscript therefore records Margaret proofreading and correcting an early attempt at fair‐copying in ink from a pencil draft.

“that nothing to weigh . . . beautiful milky way the crimes and virtues of men mind mind” (RF T70; MS III)—In MS RF T70, Ruskin deleted all but the first two words of the four lines 57–60, which he had fair‐copied as drafted in MS IA: “The scales that nothing to weigh would bear / But yet contain a thousand more / Farther than that I could not say / More than than the milky way” (with “than” doubled in line 60, probably unintentionally, owing to his eye being caught by “than that” in the line above). The lines were flagged by a diagonal line in the right margin, one supposes because their syntactic inversions obscure their sense. If one rearranges the phrases, the lines do make sense: i.e., “The scales that would bear to weigh nothing / But yet contain a thousand more [stars] / More than the milky way [does] / Farther than that I could not say” (with the caveat that “farther than that” may be correctly positioned as it stands, if Ruskin intended that phrase to modify “thousand more” rather than the entire utterance of the other three lines). While Ruskinʼs figure is clever, playing on the gap between the ineffectual imaginary scales and the immensity of heavenly bodies of which the scales form a part, one can understand a readerʼs objection to the overburdened syntax.

Ruskin drafted the revision (“The scales in which twas vainly said / The crimes and virtues of men were weighed”) on the same inside folded sheet, both at the bottom of the sheet, crossing the fold (1v–2r), and at the top of the folded sheet, to the right of the fold (2r). This revised, substituted couplet is fair‐copied in MS III. The draft revised lines include the repeated admonishment, “mind mind”, which appears to be Ruskinʼs reminder to himself to revise, or finish revising, the couplet, rather than a part of the revised lines themselves.

The revised couplet at the bottom of the sheet (“The scales in which twas vainly said / The crimes and virtues of men were weighed”) are written over top of a pencil draft (1v–2r), which extends onto the back (2v) of the folded sheet. This pencil draft, which necessarily predates the couplet written over top of it, finds no vanity in the pagan justice of the balance, Libra. The pencil text is diffiult to decipher in the photograph, RF T70, but the jist is clear (conjectural readings are bracketed):

While Libra (the Scales) is not typically depicted as literally held in the hand of Virgo (the Virgin)—the constellation Libra is adjacent to the feet of Virgo on one side and to the claws of Scorpio on the other—the two constellations are associated with the idea of justice. Respecting Virgo, “[t]he Greeks feigned the emblem of this sign [Virgo] to be also Astraæ, the goddess ofjustice; and their poets further affirmed her to be Erigone, daughter of Icarius”; and respecting Libra, “[p]opular opinion assigns the Celestial Balance to Astraæ, the goddess ofjustice” (Jamieson, Celestial Atlas, 42, 44; and see the contextual glosses for 1 and for 2 ).

“let history unfold” (RF T70; MS III)—The revision of this line marked in MS RF T70 to substitute “knowledge then” for “history” was not carried out in MS III, which retains the original line.

“Her page of learning” (RF T70; MS III)—Following this noun phrase, which is the object of “unfold” in the line above, Ruskin left a gap of extra space, as if to signify that “let us see” begins a new clause. He retained this extra space in the MS III fair copy.