Heav'n vifits with a Taste the wealthy fool, You show us, Rome was glorious, not profufe, VARIATION S. After 22. in the MS. Muft Bishops, Lawyers, Statesmen, have the skill NOTES. l VER. 18. Ripley] This man was a carpenter, employed by a firft Minifter, who raised him to an Architect, without any genius in the art; and after fome wretched proofs of his infufficiency in public Buildings, made him Comptroller of the Board of works. P. VER. 19. See! Sportive fate, to punish aukward pride,] Pride is one of the greatest mifchiefs, as well as abfurdities of our nature; and therefore, as appears both from profane and facred Hiftory, has ever been the more peculiar object of divine vengeance. But aukward Pride intimates VER. 23. The Earl of Bur- Yet fhall (my Lord) your juft, your noble rules 25 Fill half the land with Imitating-Fools; Who random drawings from your sheets fhall take 39 NOTES. VER. 28. And of one beauty many blunders make;] Because the road to Tafte, like that to Truth, is but one; and those to Error and Abfurdity a thousand. VER. 29. Load fome vain Church with old Theatric ftate,] In which there is a complication of abfurdities, arifing both from their different natures and forms: For the one being for holy fervice, and the other only for civil amufement, it is impoffible that the profufe and lafcivious ornaments of the latter fhould become the retenuë, reverence, and fanctity of the other. Nor will any examples of this vanity of ornament in the facred buildings of antiquity justify this imitation; for those ornaments might be very fuitable to a Temple of Bacchus, orVenus, which would ill become the fobriety and purity of the prefent Religion. Again, we fhould confider, that the ufual form of a Theatre would only permit the ar chitectonic ornaments to be placed on the outward face; whereas thofe of a Church may be as commodiously, and are more properly put within; particularly in great and close pentup Cities, where the inceffant driving of the fmoke, in a lit tle time corrodes and destroys all outward ornaments of this kind; efpecially if the members, as is the common taste, be fmall and little. OurGothic ancestors had jufter and manlier notions than these modern mimics of Greek and Roman magnificence: which, because the thing does honour to their genius, I fhall endeavour to explain. All our ancient churches are called, without diftinction, Gothic; but erroneoufly. They are of two forts the one built in the Saxon times; the other during our Norman race of kings. Several Cathedral and Collegiate Churches of the first fort are yet remaining, either in whole or in part; of which this was the Original: Reverse your Ornaments, and hang them all NOTES. 1:. When the Saxon kings became | cient art appeared in the circuchriftian, their piety, (which lar arches, the entire columns, was the piety of the times) conthe divifion of the entablature, fifted in building Churches at into a fort of Architrave, Frize home, and performing pilgri- and Cornich, and a solidity emages to the Holy Land: and qually diffufed over the whole thefe fpiritual exercises affifted mafs. This, by way of diftincand supported one another. tion, I would call the SAXON For the moft venerable as well Architecture. as moft elegant models of religious edifices were then in Palestine. From these our Saxon Builders took the whole of their ideas, as may be feen by comparing the drawings which travellers have given us of the churches yet standing in that country, with the Saxon remains of what we find at home; and particularly in that fameness of style in the later religious edifices of the Knights Templars (profeffedly built upon the model of the church of the holy Sepulchre at Jerufalem) with the earlier remains of our Saxon Edifices. Now the architecture of the Holy Land was entirely Grecian, but greatly fallen from its ancient elegance. Our Saxon performance was indeed a bad copy of it, and as much inferior to the works of St. Helene, as her's were to the Grecian models fhe had followed: Yet ftill the footsteps of an But our Norman works had a very different original. When the Goths had conquered Spain, and the genial warmth of the climate, and the religion of the old Inhabitants, had ripened their wits, and inflamed their mistaken piety (both kept in exercife by the neighbourhood of the Saracens, thro' emulation of their science and averfion to their fuperftition,) they ftruck out a new species of Architecture unknown to Greece and Rome; upon original principles, and ideas much nobler than what had given birth even to claffical magnificence. For having been accustomed, during the gloom of paganism, to worship the Deity in GROVES (a practice common to all nations) When their new Religion required covered edifices, they ingeniously projected to make them refemble Groves, as nearly as the Then clap four flices of Pilafter on't, That, lac'd with bits of ruftic, makes a Front. NOTES. diftance of Architecture would I interfection with one another? This too will account for Under this idea of fo extraordinary a fpecies of Architecture, all the irregular tranfgreffions against art, all the monitrous offences against nature, difappear; every thing has its reafon, every thing is in order, and an harmonious Whole arifes from the ftudious application of means proper and proportioned to the end. For could the Arches be otherwife than pointed when the Workman was to imitate that curve which branches make by their Shall call the winds thro' long arcades to roar, 35 Proud to catch cold at a Venetian door Confcious they act a true Palladian part, NOTES. the contrary qualities in what I call the Saxon Architecture. These artifts copied, as has been faid, from the churches in the holy Land, which were built on the models of Grecian architecture; but corrupted by prevailing barbarifm; and ftill further depraved by a religious idea. The first places of Chriftian worship were Sepulchres and fubterraneous caverns, places, of neceffity, low and heavy. When Chriftianity became the Religion of the State, and fumptuous Temples began to be erected, they yet, in regard to the first pious ages, preferved the maffive Style: which was made more venerable by the Church of the holy Sepulchre: This, on a double account being more than ordinary heavy, was for its fuperior fanctity generally imitated. VOL. III. Such then was GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE. And it would be no difcredit to the warmeft admirers of Jones and Palladio to acknowledge it has its merit. They muft at least confefs it had a nobler birth, tho' an humbler fortune, than the GREEK and ROMAN AR CHITECTURE. VER. 30. Turns Arcs of triumph to a Garden-gate ;] This abfurdity feems to have arisen from an injudicious imitation of what these Builders might have heard of, at the entrance of the antient Gardens of Rome: But they don't confider, that those were pubftillic Gardens, given to the people by fome great man after a triumph; to which, therefore, Arcs of this kind were very suitable ornaments. VER. 36. Proud to catch cold at a Venetian door;] In the |