We are quite content to follow Fergusson, and let the architectural value of New St. Paul's stand or fall with the literary value of "Paradise Lost." Just as Addison says of the latter: "In poetry as in architecture, not only the whole, but the principal members and every part of them should be great"; "there is an unquestionable magnificence in every part"; "a work which does an honour to the English nation": just as Macaulay corroborates by eulogising it as "that extraordinary production which the general suffrage of critics has placed in the highest class of human compositions"—even so we may end here, and describe this unique and marvellous conception of a man who was not a trained architect, who was never known to have travelled further than Paris and who was incessantly hampered and hindered, as a conception, not indeed architecturally faultless, but for all that and leaving out the much greater St. Peter's, as the finest church of the Renaissance style and epoch, more stable and better adapted for public worship than any earlier cathedral in England. To the Renaissance, the genius of Milton contributed an epic in blank verse, the genius of Wren a second in stone.
FOOTNOTES:
[89] Ground-plan of Interior of First Design in Fergusson's "Modern Architecture," p. 260; and in Longman, p. 110, where the scale, though not given, is 1-1/2 inches to the 100 feet.
[90] "Parentalia," p. 290. The Temple of Peace is now known as the Basilica of Constantine or Maxentius.
[91] Fortnightly Review, October, 1872.
[92] "Handbook," p. 495.
[93] Tract II. in "Parentalia," p. 357. His mathematical demonstrations with their diagrams, wherein he works out the centre of gravity, are too technical for insertion. The Tract is incomplete.
[94] "Parentalia," p. 291.
[95] The two others on the west wall represent Melchisedek blessing Abraham, and David as a man of war praising God. On the eastern wall the central piece illustrates the texts, "Righteousness and peace have kissed each other"; "Young men and maidens, old men and children, praise the name of the Lord." At the sides the words of Job, "Unto me men gave ear, and waited, and kept silence at my counsel"; and of the Centurion, "I also am a man set under authority, having under myself soldiers."