Yet shall (my Lord) your just, your noble rules 25 NOTES. VER. 28. And of one beau- , chitectonic ornaments to be ty many blunders make;] Be- / placed on the outward face cause the road to Tafte, like whereas those of a Church may that to Truth, is but one ; and be as commodiously, and are those to Error and Absurdity a more properly put within ; parthousand. ticularly in great and close pentVER. 29. Load fome vain up Cities, where the incessant . Church with old Theatric state,] driving of the smoke, in a lite In which there is a complication tle time corrodes and destroys. of absurdities, arising both from all outward ornaments of this their different natures and forms: kind; especially if the memFor the one being for holy | bers, as is the common taste, service, and the other only be small and little. for civil amusement, it is im- OurGothic ancestors had juster poffible that the profuse and and manlier notions than these lascivious ornaments of the lat- modern mimics of Greek and ter should become the rete- Roman magnificence : which, nuë, reverence, and fanctity because the thing does honour of the other. Nor will any ex- to their genius, I shall endeaamples of this vanity of orna- vour to explain. All our anciment in the facred buildings of entchurches are called, without antiquity justify this imitation; distinction, Gothic; but erronefor those ornaments might be ously. They are of two forts; very suitable to a Temple of the one built in the Saxon times; Bacchus, or Venus, which would the other during our Norman ill become the fobriety and pu- race of kings. Several Catherity of the prefent Religion. dral and Collegiate Churches of Again, we should consider, the first sort are yet remaining, that the usual form of a The- either in whole or in part; of atre would only permit the ar- which this was the Original : Reverse your Ornaments, and hang them all NOTES. When the Saxon kings became cient art appeared in the circu. christian, their piety, (which lar arches, the entire columns, was the piety of the times) con: the division of the entablature, fisted in building Churches at into a sort of Architrave, Frize home, and performing pilgri- and Cornich, and a solidity emages to the Holy Land: and qually diffused over the whole these spiritual exercises affifted mass. This, by way of distincand supported one another. tion, I would call the SAXON For the most venerable as well | Architecture. a's most elegant models of re- But our Norman works had ligious edifices were then in a very different original. When Palestine. From these our the Goths had conquered Spain, Saxon Builders took the whole and the genial warmth of the of their ideas, as may be seen climate, and the religion of the by comparing the drawings old Inhabitants, had ripened which travellers have given us their wits, and inflamed their of the churches yet standing in mistaken piety (both kept in that country, with the Saxon exercise by the neighbourhood remains of what we find at of the Saracens, thro' emulahome; and particularly in that tion of their science and averfameness of style in the later fion to their superstition) they religious edifices of the Knights ftruck out new species Teinplars (professedly built up- of Architecture unknown to on the model of the church of Greece and Rome; upon orithe holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem) ginal principles, and ideas much with the earlier remains of our nobler than what had given Saxon Edifices. Now the ar- birth even to classical magnichitecture of the Holy Land was ficence. For having been acentirely Grecian, but greatly customed, during the gloom fallen from its ancient elegance. of paganism, to worship the Our Saxon performance was in- Deity in Groves (a practice deed a bad copy of it, and as common to all nations) When much inferior to the works of St. their new Religion required coHelene, as her's were to the vered edifices, they ingeniously Grecian models she had follow- projected to make them resemed: Yet still the footsteps of an- ble Groves, as nearly as the a ESSAYS . Ep. IV. Then clap four slices of Pilaster on't, That, lac'd with bits of rustic, makes a Front. NOTES distance of Architecture would intersection with one another? permit; at once indulging their Or could the Columns be otherold prejudices, and providing wise than spilt into diftinct for their present conveniencies, shafts, when they were to reby a cool receptable in a sultry present the Stems of a group of climate. And with what art Trees? On the same principle and success they executed the was formed the spreading ramiproject appears from hence, fication of the stone-work in That no attentive observer ever the windows, and the stained viewed a regular Avenue of glass in the interftices; the one well grown trees intermixing being to represent the branches, their branches over head, but it and the other the leaves of an presently put him in mind of opening Grove; and both COAthe long Visto thro' a Gothic curring to preserve that gloomy Cathedral, or ever entered one light inspiring religious horror. of the larger and more elegant Lastly, we see the reason of Edifices of this kind, but it their studied averfion to apparepresented to his imagination rent solidity in these ftupenan Avenue of trees. And this dous masses, dous masses, deemed fo abalone is that which can be truly surd by men accustomed to called the Gothic style of the apparent as well as real Building. strength of Grecian ArchitecUnder this idea of so extra- ture. Had it been only a wanordinary a species of Architec- ton exercise of the Artist's ture, all the irregular tranf- | skill, to fhew he could give gressions against art, all the real strength without the apmonstrous offences against na- pearance of any, we might inture, disappear; every thing deed admire his superiorscience, has its reason, every thing is but we must needs condemn his in order, and an harmonious ill judgment. But when one Whole arises from the studious confiders, that this surprizing application of means proper and lightness was necessary to comproportioned to the end. For plete the execution of his idea could the Arches be otherwise of a rural place of worship, one than pointed when the Work- cannot sufficiently admire the man was to imitate that curve | ingenuity of the contrivance. which branches make by their This too will account for Shall call the winds thro' long arcades to roar, 35 the contrary qualities in what Such then was Gothic I call the Saxon Architecture. ARCHITECTURE. And it These artists copied, as has would be no discredit to the been faid, from the churches warmest admirers of Jones and in the holy Land, which were Palladio to acknowledge it has built on the models of Grecian its merit. They must at least architecture; but corrupted by confess it had a nobler birth, prevailing barbarism ; and still tho'an humbler fortune, than further depraved by a religious the Greek and Roman ARidea. The first places of Chri- CHITECTURE. ftian worship were Sepulchres Ver. 30. Turns Arcs of and subterraneous caverns, triumph to a Garden-gate ;] places, of necessity, low and This absurdity seems to have heavy. When Christianity be- arisen from an injudicious imicame the Religion of the tation of what these Builders State, and fumptuous Temples might have heard of, at the began to be erected, they yet, entrance of the antient Garin regard to the first pious dens of Rome : But they don't ages, preserved the massive confider, that those were pubStyle : which was made ftill lic Gardens, given to the peomore venerable by the Church ple by some great man after a of the holy Sepulchre : This, triumph; to which, therefore, a double account being Arcs of this kind were very more than ordinary heavy, suitable ornaments. was for its superior fanctity VER. 36. Proud to catch cold generally imitated. at a Venetian door ; ] In the VOL. III. on Oft have you hinted to your brother Peer, A certain truth, which many buy too dear : 40 Something there is more needful than Expence, And something previous ev'n to Taste—'tis Sense: COMMENTARY. Å certain truth,-) 1. The first part of it (from ý 38 to 99) delivers rules for artaining to the MAGNIFICENT in just expence; which is the fame in Building and Planting, that the SUBLIME is in Painting and Poetry; and, consequently, the qualities necessary for the attainment of both must have the same relation. 1. The first and fundamental, he shews (from x 38 to 47) to be SENSE: Good Sense, which only is the gift of Heav'n, And, tho' no Science, fairly worth the seven. And for that reason; not only as it is the foundation and parent of them all, and the conftant regulator and director of their operations, or, as the poet better expresses it,- of every art of the foul; but likewise as it alone can, in case of need, very often supply the offices of every one of them. NOTES. foregoing instances, the poet redressed, as men will be sooner exposes the absurd imitation of brought to feel for themselves foreign and discordant Man- than to see for the public. ners in public buildings; here VER: 39. Oft have you hinthe turns to the still greater ab- ed, & c. Something there is more surdity of taking their models needful than Expence,] To confrom a discordant Climate, in vince a great man of so strange their private ; which folly, he a Paradox, that Taste cannot supposes, may be more casily be bought, even after it is well |