1841.] 



THE CIVIL ENGINEER AND ARCHITECT S JOURNAL. 



149 



CANDIDUS'S NOTE-BOOK. 

 FASCICULUS XXVI. 



" I must have liberty 

 Withal, as large a charter as the winds, 

 To blow on whom I please." 



I. It is consolatory to learn from the Licensers' imprimatur, that the 

 " Fabbriche e Disegni di Andrea Palladio" do not contain any thing 

 contrary to la Satila Fede Caltolica ! — they might as well have assured 

 us that Palladio was not the heathen divinity Pallas. Yet if the collec- 

 tion contain nothing against the holy Catholic faith, it contains much that 

 is calculated to stagger any reasonable man's faith in criticism, and to 

 shock his taste mortally, if he has any taste to be shocked at all. The 

 very best of Palladio's designs are but very mediocre indeed, and some 

 of them absolutely barbarous. His "PaUice of Reason" — as Mrs. 

 Cresy somewhat unreasonably calls it — is just execrable ; his Teatro 

 Olimpico, just damnable. And should it be said that this is mere 

 sweeping condemnation, amounting to nothing, I reply that it is quite 

 as good criticism as that in which the admirers of their incomparable 

 Andrea deal in. The onus prubaiidi lies with them; and if they are 

 utterly unable to point out any of those beauties, graces, and excellences 

 which they place so largely to the credit of their favourite, they have 

 centainly no right to censure their opponents for being not more ex- 

 plicit. Should it further be thought by some of my readers that I am 

 continually "harping upon" Palladio, "my excuse is that I feel it ne- 

 cessary to do so, as long as others continue to babble their praises of 

 him. When they choose to desist from their tedious iterations, I may 

 give over mine ; but I do not see why I should fling up the game, while 

 they continue it. 



II. Though few will give me credit for blushing at any time, I fre- 

 quently do blush at the drivelling silliness one meets with in architec- 

 tural writers — the more than anile twaddling to which they are ad- 

 dicted, for even the most twaddling old woman would hardly utter such 

 stuff', unless, she happened to be disguised — in liquour. — -'Facendosi 

 addictro di sicolo in secolo," says one, " tracing back the art from age 

 to age, we discover it to be almost contemporaneous with the origin 

 of the human race." Wonderful discovery, truly ! But still the tailors 

 have in point of antiquity, superiority over architects, for Breeches- 

 making is indisputably the oldest art upon record. Surely those who 

 write such egregious balderdash must trust largely to the stultification 

 of their readers. Writers on the art culinary are by far a more sensi- 

 ble race, abstaining from such asinine absurdities in which architectural 

 ones are apt to indulge, and for which they ought to be made to bear 

 a fool's cap as their crest. 



m. It certainly is amusing enough to observe how excessively lax 

 and licentious are some of those grave twaddling architectural puri- 

 tans who lay so much stress upon proportions, as if they were abso- 

 lutely articles of faith. People of that sort are absolutely scandalized 

 at the idea of any alteration in the shape of a base or capital, or of 

 making an entablature at all deeper or the contrary than usual ; yet 

 they are not the least shocked at seeing an entire ordinance thrown 

 out of proportion by disproportionably wide iutercohimns ; nor have 

 they any notion of regulating the entablature according to the distance 

 between column and column, notwithstanding that it is obvious that if 

 those intervals be unusually wide the entablature ought to be of lighter 

 proportions than is else given to the order; and vice versa. For this 

 reason, if for no other, the portico of the National Gallery ought to 

 have had a bolder and richer cornice, the intercolumniation being 

 pycnostyle, and consequently the supports numerous and the openings 

 between them narrow. For the same reason, the pediment might 

 very properly have been made deeper. Unfortunately, however, Wil- 

 kins was one of those people, who suffer themselves to be duped — or 

 rather, who dupe themselves by words and names. His building was 

 to be Greek — that was with him a sine qua non, to which other con- 

 siderations were to give way. A Roman entablature or cornice was 

 out of the question, not because it would not have harmonized with 

 the columns, but because it might have been called Roman, and there 

 might have been a sort of discord, not visible indeed, but nominal — of 

 course a most offensive one, for it is well known that people in general 

 judge of architecture as they do of pictures and of wines. Tell them 

 that a picture is by Raphael or Corregio, and though it be ever so 

 mediocre, they fall into raptures with it, at that word of command. 

 Call gooseberry wine by its proper name, and people turn up their 

 noses at it, yet dignify it by the style of champagne, and it becomes 

 delicious. Under the sanction of Inigo Jones or any other celebrated 

 body's name, the dullest design imaginable passes for a very fine thing, 



where one a thousand times better by some nobody, would hardly be 

 looked at. — I was once equally anuised and enlightened at the expense 

 of an unfortunate critic who was a professed admirer — -I might say 

 venerator of Palladio. We were turning over a portfolio of loose 

 architectural prints and drawings, among which there happened to be 

 one or two to which I called his attention more particularly, at the 

 same time instancing several egregious sins in them against good 

 taste. After assenting to all my objections, he exclaimed " they are in- 

 deed very trumpery specimens of the Italian style: they have nothing 

 of the Sana architeclura — of the gracefulness and happy non so die of 

 the divine Palladio." — "The deuce they haven't! — why is it possible 

 that you do not recognize them as the production of your divine Palla- 

 dio himself?" — He looked — what shall I say, aghast? — no he looked 

 as if he was actually going to jump down his own throat." The next 



time I saw him I said — " and the divine Palladio ," on which he 



cut me short by crying out, with no lack of emphasis — "Palladio be 

 damned 1" 



IV. For graphic power — for consummate mastery in the art of de- 

 picting to the eye by means of the pen alone the loveliest scenery, 

 and conjuring up the most enchanting prospects — the most fascinating 

 visions, — I hold George Robins to be the greatest genius this or any 

 country has ever produced. Some of his advertisements are perfect 

 cabinet pictures, finished up with unrivalled delicacy and grace, and 

 replete with such felicity of imagination that every object — no matter 

 what it may be in itself, is transmuted into beauty by the potent 

 alchemy of his pen. As viewed through the medium of his poetic 

 imagination, a snug suburban tenement with an acre of domain attached 

 to it, becomes — I will not say "un pezzo di cielo," nor an absolute 

 paradise, nor a lot frour the Elysian Fields, — but certainly a fragment 

 of Arcadia, a pastoral landscape fit for a scene in an opera — a fairy- 

 land encompassed by the hedge that fences it out from ordinary, every- 

 day nature — from the mere fields, the green grass and green trees, that 

 may be seen anywhere else. From my soul I pity the dull creatures 

 who can see nothing more in the great G. R.'s effusions than a mere 

 auctioneer's advertisement; and I also pity those who toss from them 

 the half sheet of the Times, exclaiming i n a tone of disappointment, 

 it is nothing but advertisements, when advertisements are in fact the 

 very essence of a newspaper, and the rest but mere flummery and fill- 

 ing-up stuff', a farrago of twaddle political, fashionable, &c., dressed up 

 in blustering phrases. 



V. " I have seen Abbotsford," says T. H. C, the clever author of 

 "A Descriptive Tour in Scotland,"— " and I hardly know whether I 

 do not regret that I have done so. It is not the Abbotsford of my 

 imagination, nor of the author's description. Where is the 'romance 

 in lime and stone'? — Dwindled to a mere story. In the exterior of 

 the dwelling there is no congruity, no massive nobleness. In the in- 

 terior there is no space for ghosts to play at hide-and-seek. If there 

 be a few odd holes and corners, they appear rather like small remnants 

 of a scanty cloth that has been cut into a thrifty garment, than the 

 ' ample room and verge enough' of true antiquity. Nothing is on a 

 great scale. Ichabod — the glory is departed. In this as in other in- 

 stances, exaggerating describers have much to answer for." — Mark you 

 that, my dear George Robins ! — " At their hands one demands an ac- 

 count of one's demolished hopes and scattered visions." If so, a good, 

 many dealers in description will have an awfully long and heavy score 

 to settle with their readers. The best way for them to do so, would 

 be to bring in a. per contra account for so many manufactured visions 

 of grandeur and beauty — not a trace of which is to be discovered in 

 the objects themselves. 



VI. A most outrageous sort of delicacy is aft'ected by writers upon 

 architecture who generally evade speaking of contemporary buildings, 

 under the pretence of its being invidious to make any comments on the 

 works of living architects. Such excuse is most flimsy: or if there 

 be any thing in it at all, gross indeed must be the indelicacy of literary 

 critics and reviewers who make the publications and writers of the 

 day the subject of their comments, without the slightest sort of scruple 

 or ceremony, and frequently w-ith the greatest imaginable freedom. 

 The excuse itself moreover, is not particularly complimentary to the 

 living, inasmuch as it almost amounts to the declaration that silence 

 on the part of criticism can alone save them and their works from the 

 censures that honestly expressed opinion would inflict upon them. In 

 itself, however, such silence is, I have no doubt, exceedingly convenient, 

 for I suspect that those who avail themselves of it, have seldom any 

 opinion of their own to express, but generally serve up to their readers 

 second-hand criticism, got out of books. 



