1849.] 



THE CIVIL ENGINEER AND ARCHITECT'S JOURNAL. 



33 



CANDIDUS'S NOTE-BOOK, 

 FASCICULUS XC. 



" I must have liberty 

 Withal, as large a charter aR the winds, 

 To blow on whom I please." 



I. "Pedantic prejudice," says Taylor, in his Notes from Books, 

 "is of all prejudice the most obstinate;" wherefore, all the more 

 unlucky is it that it should so greatly infect both architectural 

 study and architectural practice. The consequence is, that while 

 the study is pursued chiefly historically and archaeologically, with- 

 out any exercise of impartial aesthetic judgment, practice is more 

 technical than artistic. Such is the state of the art at the present 

 day, that we are not only content with getting both modern and 

 second-hand antiquity, and modern and second-hand mediasvalism, 

 but actually plume ourselves upon doing so, as if we ourselves had 

 thereby accomplished some extraordinary achievement. To such 

 absurdly preposterous extent is the blind and superstitious 

 reverence for medifevalism carried by some, — or in other words, 

 such is the arrant humbug now practised, that with "art" in their 

 mouths, people do not scruple to affect admiration for the most 

 atrocious barbarism. I could name a very carefully and expen- 

 sively got-up publication, which exhibits as specimens of orthodox 

 mediaeval art some of the most hideous monsters and mon- 

 strosities conceivable, — truly diabolical angels, and hagiai or female 

 saints that would better answer to the idea and name of hags. 

 Still, such is the force of superstition, though it be only the su- 

 perstition of fashion, or fashionable archaeology, that it can pre- 

 vail upon people to overcome instinctive disgust, and pretend to 

 admire figures which, were they to appear to them in reality, 

 would throw them into fits. I particularly remember a figure of 

 St. George, of such intense ugliness and deformity that they of 

 themselves were quite sufficient to scare the poor dragon to death. 

 That things of the kind may and do possess interest for antiqua- 

 ries and those who have got an acquired relish for them, is not 

 denied. As records of the infantine lispings of art, and accord- 

 ingly as curiosities, they have a certain fictitious value; but to 

 propose them as actual studies, and to think of imitating them at 

 the present day, is as exquisitely preposterous as it would be for 

 grown-up persons to affect to speak in the dialect of the nursery, 

 and imitate the charming nonsense of the " pretty darlings." 

 Even papas and mammas themselves do not venture to do that. 

 Such degree of intrepidity in defying common-sense is reserved 

 for our Pugins and Puginists, whose ultra-orthodoxy in adhering 

 to venerable uncouthness and deformity is more calculated to 

 shock than to edify the uninitiated, and artists most especially. 

 Fashion can sanctify the grossest absurdities; therefore, so long as 

 Puginistic taste and orthodoxy can maintain themselves as a 

 fashion, they will go down, — as go down they also will and must in 

 a different sense of that expression ; and then fashion will cry out 

 against them as much or more than it now does for tliem. 



II. As one instance of the length to which fashion can go, it 

 was once the fashion to admire Strawberry Hill, although it was 

 such a doggrel piece of architecture that it' ought to have entirely 

 destroyed Walpole's credit as a critic and connoisseur. Never- 

 theless, it has been expressely praised by one who passed in his 

 day for an eminent authority in the Gothic style. To our very 

 great astonishment now, we read from his pen as follows : " The 

 connoisseur will here" (viz., the Duke of Devonsliire's villa at 

 Chiswick) "contemplate all that is exquisite in the Palladian archi- 

 tecture, and all that is fascinating in the Gothic style at Straw- 

 berry Hill." Oh! James Dallaway— for thou art the man— thou 

 must have been mellowed by an extra pnH-prandian potation, ere 

 thou couldst have written that, and could not have got exactly 

 sober when thou printedst it. He goes on to sav: "The noble 

 architect, who pursued the study of English antiquities with so 

 much science and grace, withheld from his own work the merit of 

 a perfect imitation, attributed to it by his friends less versed in 

 architecture than himself." Alinost incredible is it, that a man 

 like Dallaway, who set himself up for a judge in matters of archi- 

 tecture, and of Gothic more especially, should have brought him- 

 self to speak as he did of Strawberry' Hill, instead of denouncing 

 it as the abortion of an equally vulgar and puerile taste. Although 

 Gothic was not tlien by any means so well understood and appre- 

 ciated as it now is, Dallaway himself, it is to be presumed, had 

 studied and was intimately familiar with the best models of all its 

 varieties in this kingdom ; and ought, therefore, in decency to 

 have been scandalised at Walpole's wretched parody and gim- 



No. 137.— Vol. XII.— February, 1849. 



crack imitation of it. As it is, his extravagantly hyperbolic 

 praise in that instance — and assuredly nothing else than extrava- 

 gant it was to speak of Strawberry Hill as exhibiting "all that is 

 fascinating in the Gothic style" — discredits his judgment generally, 

 and renders his opinions valueless, — at any rate, of very question- 

 able value. 



III. Attention to rules and the authority of examples will 

 suffice for producing the prosaic — the respectable, but still prosaic. 

 The poetical, however, is not to be so achieved even in archi- 

 tecture; for criticism does not bestow that epithet on what is 

 merely borrowed or reflected from the genial conceptions of other 

 minds. At present, we are content with the mere moonshine of 

 art (alias Fergusson's "monkey styles"), reflected upon us from 

 luminaries now set and departed. And we are fain to mistake 

 such reflected lustre for the rising sun of art, and to bow down to 

 it like devout Persians. It must be admitted that moonshine has 

 its advantages, one of them being that people are not dazzled by 

 it; it is besides mild and melancholy, inspiring pensivenes and 

 cogitation; and reason we have to be thankful — no, not thankful, 

 but thoughtful — and pensive and melancholy when we find that we 

 are likely never more to have any of the genial and invigorating 

 sunshine of art. Melancholy I certainly am just now, mild I need 

 not add, — for when am I ever otherwise .'' 



IV. Even buildings have a sort of destiny attached to them 

 which, wholly irrespective of actual merit, either ensures or denies 

 them celebrity. While it is the fate of some to be continually 

 spoken of — to be noticed again and again in books, and represented 

 over and over again in engravings, it is that of others to obtain 

 no mention from tongue, pen, or pencil. Many of the smaller 

 towns of Italy, for instance, contain unedited specimens of archi- 

 tecture, quite as well worth studying, some of them perhaps 

 more so, than those which are repeatedly published and spoken of, 

 because they happen to be of greater notoriety and guide-book 

 fame, and also to be in the usual route of tourists, — a route which 

 even artists who go abroad professionally and professedly "in search 

 of the picturesque," like Dr. Combe's hero, rarely ever deviate from. 

 There are edifices, too, for which even celebrity itself cannot 

 secure from the pencil the attention which they merit. We have 

 one here at home which may he said to be a virgin subject, notwith- 

 standing that it is a most noble work, a monumental pile, and one 

 which England is justly proud of, it being what no other country 

 can match. I do not say that no view of it exists, since one there 

 is which seems to have been stereotyped, and repeated on every 

 occasion; but how far does a mere single general view go towards 

 the graphic and architectural illustration of a pile which would 

 furnish subjects for at the very least fifty engravings? Yet, so it 

 is: no one has ever thought, even as mere matter of speculation — 

 and a safe speculation it assuredly would be — of bringing out a 

 complete work, entirely devoted to — what I will not yet name. 

 Such a subject would employ the pen as much as the pencil, for 

 many are the heroes and the deeds of heroism — of British heroism, 

 with its achievements and triumphs, which might with great pro- 

 priety be recorded. It might have been thought that national 

 pride alone would long ere this have induced England and En- 

 glishmen to exhibit, in the worthiest possible form, graphic and 

 architectural illustrations of what, if nothing else, is still the 

 noblest pile upon the banks of the Thames, in spite of the New 

 Palace of Westminster. — Header, you will not now ask its name, 

 or inquire what it is that I allude to, or I must blush for either 

 your obtuseness or your ignorance, should you not have felt almost 

 all along that it can be no other than 



Greenwich Hospital, 

 which, although certainly not faultless, possesses a majesty and 

 glory that would atone for far greater defects. My Public, only 

 put on your best spectacles, and compare the Palace hight Buck- 

 ingham, and the Hospital hight Greenwich, and if you be not 

 seized with exceedingly unpleasant feelings and qualms, all I can 

 say is, I do not envy your taste, however much I may envy your 

 stoical imperturbility. 



V. Another noble edifice, St. Paul's Cathedral, is in the same 

 predicament as Greenwich Hospital, it being similarly slighted by 

 the pencil, instead of being made the subject of graphic illustra- 

 tion in a complete series of views. The interior would afford 

 many highly scenic subjects to an artist capable of doing them 

 justice, and selecting the most picturesque points, so as to bring 

 out the architecture and place it in its most attractive attitudes ; 

 which is certainly what has not been yet attempted. Hitherto, 

 the pencil has done for St. Paul's scarcely anything more than to 

 exhibit a formal frigid view of the nave, — a surt of dry architec- 

 tural anatomy; hardly at all more pictorial than a section, without 



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