They did not like the look of Wordsworth at all; Southey they adored.

The dominant note of the tour is, however, an ecstatic delight in the mountain scenery; on Skiddaw and Helvellyn all the gamut of admiration is lavished.
On returning home, John began Greek under Dr.Andrews, and was soon versifying Anacreontics in his notebooks.

He began to read Byron for himself, with what result we shall see before long; but the most important new departure was the attempt to copy Cruikshank's etchings to Grimm's fairy tales, his real beginning at art.

From this practice he learnt the value of the pure, clean line that expresses form.

It is a good instance of the authority of these early years over Ruskin's whole life and teaching that in his "Elements of Drawing" he advised young artists to begin with Cruikshank, as he began, and that he wrote appreciatively both of the stories and the etchings so many decades afterwards in the preface to a reprint by J.C.