154 Review of Rickman's Architecture in England. 



school, at college, and in after life, was well employed, and his industry 

 was honorably rewarded. 



In his poetry, tried even by the scale of the present day, there is little 

 that is coarse or indelicate, and nothing lascivious, which, considering the 

 age upon the threshhold of which he lived, is no ordinary distinction. 



Those who have attempted to modernize Herbert, have failed. His 

 quaintness is peculiar, and his conceits are incorporated into the structure 

 of his verse. He is like the buildings of his day; their lofty gables and 

 grotesque porches are not perhaps in strict accordance with the rules either 

 of Grecian or Gothic taste ; but they have nevertheless a charm of their 

 own, and will bear neither alteration nor improvement. 



And here we must conclude, having drawn out this article to a far greater 

 length than we had intended ; but we were unwilling to let slip the oppor- 

 tunity which the appearance of this volume afforded us, of drawing, according 

 to our limited sphere, some portion of attention to an old and admirable writer. 



/4n Attempt to Discriminate the Styles of Architecture in England, from 



the Conquest to the Reformation, ^c. By Thos. Rickman, F. A. S. 



Architect. 8vo. pp. 339, 1835. Fourth Edition. 



With the general drift of this volume, we shall assume that our readers, 

 during the progress of its three previous editions, have become acquainted. 

 No writer before Mr. Rickman has ever applied himself with such signal 

 success to the discrimination of the styles of Gothic architecture, or defined 

 the terms employed in his descriptions with equal accuracy. 



Considerable, and in some respects well-founded, objections have been 

 raised against the employment of the terms Decorated and Perpendicular, 

 as descriptive of the two later styles of architecture prevalent in England 

 between the reigns of Edward II. and Henry VIII. j and certainly any one 

 who looks at such towers as that of St. Stephen's, in Bristol, will be quite 

 as much struck by its horizontal as by its perpendicular lines ; but these 

 terms seem to have been adopted rather to mark the contrast between the 

 later and the preceding style, an object which they certainly fulfil. Be- 

 sides which no one has hitherto succeeded in substituting for them others 

 less exceptionable, or defined with an accuracy at all to compare with that 

 of Mr. Rickman, who has shewn that architecture is as susceptible of the 

 advantages of a copious and well-defined nomenclature, as any natural 

 science. Those only can duly appreciate the value of a book like this, 

 who remember the thick darkness which overspread arcliitectural topo- 

 graphy during the last century, in those days when the speculations of 

 King passed for authority. 



The present edition, besides a new set of plates, contains two new and 

 interesting sections, the one upon " such buildings as may be presumed to 

 have been erected in England before the Norman conquest," and the other 

 " upon the architecture of a part of France." 



