1000 



PUGIN, AUGUSTIN WELBY NORTHMORE. 



ruLcr, LUIGI. 



some home-truths, aroused not a little professional feeling ' Con- 

 trasts; or a parallel between the Noble Edifices of the 14th and 15th 

 centuries, and similar buildings of the present decay of Taste;' a 

 second and improved edition of it was published in 1841. 



Mr. Pugin had by this time joined the Roman Catholic Church, 

 to the service of which he Henceforth devoted his best energies. 

 Having received a handsome bequest from an aunt, Mrs. Welby, he 

 built himself a fanciful residence in the neighbourhood of Salisbury, 

 and removed there, resolved to study and evolve the principles of the 

 ecclesiastical architecture of the middle ages. Having found in the 

 Earl of Shrewsbury a warm patron, Mr. Pugin soon obtained oppor- 

 tunities of exerting his ability ; and during the few years that he 

 lived to practise Ids profession he was called upon to erect a larger 

 number of Roman Catholic churches, chapels, convents, and schools, 

 than has probably fallen to the lot of any Englishman since the 

 Reformation. The following list, we believe, includes his chief works 

 (we are indebted for it, and many of the other facts contained in this 

 notice, to a memoir of Pugin by his friend Mr. Talbot Bury, which 

 appeared in the 'Builder' shortly after Pugin's death) : The cathedral 

 church of St. Marie at Derby, one of his earlier and more pleasing 

 works ; St Chad's, Birmingham ; three churches at Liverpool ; St. 

 Wilfred's, Manchester; church and convent at Edge Hill; churches at 

 Oxford, Cambridge, Reading, Kenilworth, Stockton-on-Tees, New- 

 castle-upon-Tyue, Preston, Keightley, Rugby, Northampton, Stoke- 

 upon-Trent, Brewood, Woolwich, Hammersmith, Fulham, Pontefract, 

 St. Edward's near Ware, Buckingham, and St. Wilfred near Alton ; a 

 church, and a convent and chapel, at Nottingham ; convents of the 

 Sisters of Mercy at London, Birmingham, and Liverpool ; a priory at 

 Downside near Bath ; colleges at KadcliSe and Rugby ; improvements 

 at Maynooth ; and cathedrals, with schools and priests' houses 

 attached, at St. George's (Southwark), Killarney, and Enniscorthy. 

 To these must be added the extensive and costly works executed for 

 his great patron the Earl of Shrewsbury, consisting, besides the 

 alterations made in the mansion, of a church, school-house, and 

 monastery at Alton Towers ; and a church at Cheadle, which has the 

 moat splendid interior of any of his churches. The very pretty gate- 

 way to Magdalen College, Oxford, is one of the very few works exe- 

 cuted by him for any Protestant body; indeed he is said to have 

 refused to accept any commissions for Protestant places of wor-hip. 

 The list of works given above would in truth seem to have been more 

 than sufficient to exhaust the tune and energies of a man who ceased 

 working at the age of forty ; yet he was chiefly employed during his 

 last years in designing and superintending the ornamentation of the 

 New Palace of Westminster, which probably owes its somewhat extrava- 

 gnntly mediaeval and ecclesiastical character to Pugin's idiosyncracies. 

 But, besides the practice of his profession, he found time to add to its 

 literature a second and revised edition of his ' Contrasts ; ' a treatise 

 on the ' True Principles of Pointed or Christian Architecture," 1841 ; 

 'An Apology for the Revival of Christian Architecture,' 1843; a 

 'Glossary of Ecclesiastical Ornament,' 1844 ; a treatise on 'Floriated 

 Ornaments,' 1849 ; and ' A Treatise on Chancel Screens,' 1851. We 

 out lit also to add that he was connected commercially with the house 

 of -Me.-srs. Hardman of Birmingham, who manufactured ecclesiastical 

 brasi-wurk from his designs; and he is said to have filled up his leisure 

 hours with landscape-painting. 



Mr. Pugiu had always been fond of the sea (indeed it is stated in 

 one of the biographical notices of him that he once owned " and for 

 a time commanded a merchant smack trading to Holland/' though it 

 u difficult to see when that time could have been) and having realised 

 by his profession a handsome sum, he purchased an estate at Rams- 

 gate, in order at once to enjoy his favourite element and carry out 

 unfettered his notions of architectural propriety. Here he expended 

 all his property in erecting for himself a house, a church, schools, &c., 

 the whole being dedicated to St. Augustine. As he advanced in life 

 his religious feelings took more and more entire possession of him. 

 He now (1850) wrote and published 'An Address to the Inhabitants 

 of Ramsgate,' ' An Earnest Appeal for the Revival of the Ancient 

 Plain Kong,' ' The Present State of Public Worship among the Roman 

 Catholics,' and other pamphlets of a religious character. At length, 

 overtasked with all this excessive labour and excitement, his intellect 

 be^au to give way, and in his fortieth year it was deemed necessary to 

 remove him to a lunatic asylum. For a brief space his mental powers 

 were so far restored that it became practicable for him to return to 

 his home at Rum.-gate ; but his life was ebbiug, and he expired there 

 on the 14th of September 1852, three days after his return. Ho was 

 buried in a vault of his own church of St Augustine. He had been 

 three times married, and shortly after his death a pension of 1001. 

 a year was granted to his widow from the Civil List. 



As will have been seen, Mr. Pugiu was a man of extraordinary 

 industry and energy, and he possessed a very unusual amount of 

 knowledge and great ability. He attempted too many things, and ho 

 worked too much and too fast to produce many great works, even had 

 be been a man of original power ; but iu truth his was not a creative 

 mind, and he lacked comprehensive thought. His great principle 

 was, that, except as to size, the architect should aim at a faithful 



:iIV. VOI. IV. 



expedite its construction we may even increase its scale or grandeur ; 

 but we can never successfully deviate one tittle from the spirit and 

 principles of gothic architecture. We must rest coutent to follow, not 

 to lead. We may indeed widen the road which our Catholic fathers 

 formed, but we can never depart from their track without a certainty 

 of failure being the result of our presumption." Following such a 

 dogma, it is evident that the highest success must be a respectable 

 imitation. But even on his own principles, few of his works are 

 entirely satisfactory as a whole ; in particular parts and in details ho 

 is generally very happy, and some of his interiors have a rich and 

 pleasing effect. His writings have had a powerful influence on tho 

 taste and practice of professed architects, and still more on the tasto 

 of ecclesiastical amateurs, and the influence has not been entirely a 

 happy one. More than any single man perhaps has he been the cause 

 of that perverse fashion which has predominated during the last fifteen 

 or twenty years, of building modern churches in all their parts on the 

 precise model of the churches of the middle ages, although at least 

 in Protestant churches the forms of worship and the requirements of 

 tho congregations are so changed. In Pugin it was consistent : in his 

 disciples it is absurd. 



PU'LCI, LUI'GI, born at Florence in 1431, of a respectable though 

 poor family, became early in life acquainted with the wealthy family 

 of Medici, through which he seems to have obtained an inferior office 

 under the Florentine republic. He travelled about Italy, and even 

 beyond its limits, according to his own statement. Few particulars of 

 his life are known. He married Lucrezia Albizzi, by whom he had 

 two sons, who survived him. He was a welcome guest at the table 

 of Lorenzo de' Medici, who relished his wit and his extempore poetical 

 effusions. Lucrezia Tornabuoni, Lorenzo's mother, urged Pulci to 

 write an epic poem. Pulci undertook the task, and he looked for his 

 theme among the traditional legends of Charlemagne and his Paladins, 

 as recorded by Turpin, which had already become familiar in Italy 

 through the Italian romance ' I Reali di Francia," written in the 13th 

 century, and was a popular theme for the extempore eifusion of strolling 

 story-tellers. Pulci took for the subject of his poem the treachery of 

 Gano of Maganza, one of Charlemagne's vassals, who is reported iu 

 the old legends to have conspired with the Saracens of Spain, against 

 his master, and to have brought about the fatal defeat of the French 

 at Roncesvalles in the Pyrenees. Pulci was well acquainted not only 

 with Turpin's ' Chronicle," but with the old French and Provencal 

 romances which related to the fabulous history of Charlemagne's 

 Spanish wars. Pulci moulded those rude materials into a living 

 form, and breathed into it his own poetical inspiration. His prede- 

 cessors had dealt out the old traditional fables in a serious strain. 

 Pulci was the first to seize the ludicrous side of the stories, and to 

 derive from it a fresh subject for poetry and a source of amusement for 

 his readers. Still his poem is not, as it has been by many supposed 

 to be, a burlesque poem, but a combination ot" the serious with the 

 facetious; it is a romance accompanied by its own parody. The poet 

 is often evidently iu earnest, being carried along by the lofty or 

 pathetic events which he describes ; but he now and then relaxes to 

 enjoy a laugh with his hearers at the expense of his heroes, and of tho 

 popular story-tellers, who formed a numerous tribe in his age, and who, 

 by their pompous diction and their exaggerations and anachronisms, 

 enhanced the absurdity of their wondrous tales. One character how- 

 ever, that of Orlando, the French and Spanish Roland, Pulci preserved 

 in its original simple grandeur, as handed down by old tradition. 

 Pulci brought also on the scene another worthy competitor for fame, 

 Rinaldo of Muntalbano, the Reynault of the French romances, whoso 

 character and adventures he took chiefly from ' Les Quatrcs FiU 

 d'Aymon," of Adenes, an old romance writer of the 13th century. 



The title of ' Morgaute Maggiore," which Pulci chose to give to his 

 poem, is a capricious one, for the giant whom he introduces by the 

 name of Morgante is only a subordinate character, and acts as squire 

 to Orlando, who is the real horo of the poem. Gano however may be 

 considered as the principal actor; like Satan in Milton, he is tho 

 author of all mischief, and his punishment is properly the end of tho 

 action. Another giant, called Margutte, is the Thermites of the poem. 

 He is an open scoffer at religion, and he has been adduced by Voltaire 

 and others as a proof of Pulci's unbelief. But the poet, from tho 

 beginning, proclaims Margutte to be what he is, a profligate despicable 

 fellow, and by so doing shows no intention of recommending his 

 opinions or example. Perhaps the finest passage of the poem ii that 

 where Roland's last fight and dying sceno at Roncesvallus are so 

 beautifully described by the poet. The farewell of liolaud to his 

 faithful steed, his trusty companion iu many a battle, his confession 

 and last prayer, and tho angelic melody which is heard above, as ho 

 expired all this part is equal iu pathos and loftiness to any passage 

 in either Dante or Tasso. The poet felt evidently interested in his 

 subject and wrote in earnest. But even here he occasionally breaks 

 out, iu the midst of hip, most serious narrative, into a fit of comic 

 humour, as if by way of relaxation. While the fearful conflict i.-> 

 raging in the glen of Roncesvalles, the poet descries two dsemons 

 keeping watch in a deserted chapel on the outskirts of the defile, 

 intent upon seizing and securing the souls of the Saracens who fell in 

 the battle, as their lawful prey. The eagerness of these satanio sentries 

 is described with much drollery. 



It is a curious fact that tuo first eJitiou of the [,Ofm of Pulci, 



