sentences:  The range and quantity of Ruskin's writing, and its complex, allusive and associative method of expression, cause certain difficulties.In 1898, John A. Hobson observed that in attempting to summarise Ruskin's thought, and by extracting passages from across his work, "the spell of his eloquence is broken".Clive Wilmer has written, further, that, "The anthologising of short purple passages, removed from their intended contexts [... is] something which Ruskin himself detested and which has bedevilled his reputation from the start."