Langley thus catered to some extent to the tastes of those who admired the French styles, but he did not approve of them himself. He says:
“The great pleasure that builders and workmen of all kinds (those called cabinet-makers, I think, only excepted) have of late years taken in the study of architecture has induced me to the compiling of this work. And indeed I am very sorry that cabinet-makers should have been supine therein; because of all small architectural works none is more ornamental to buildings than theirs, when well and justly executed, as being generally made with such kinds of materials which Nature has wantonly adorned with delightful textures of colours that contribute very greatly to their beauty.
“The evil genius that so presides over cabinet-makers as to direct them to persevere in such a pertinacious and stupid manner that the rules of architecture, from whence all beautiful proportions are deduced, are unworthy of their regard, I am at a loss to discover; except Murcea, the Goddess of Sloth, acts that part and has thus influenced them to conceal their dronish, lowlife incapacities and prompt them, with the fox in the fable, to pronounce grapes sour that ripen out of their reach.
“Cabinet-makers originally were no more than spurious indocile chips, expelled by joiners for the superfluity of their sap, and also, by instilling stupid notions and prejudice to architecture into the minds of youth educated under them has been the cause that at this time ’tis a very great difficulty to find one in fifty of them that can make a book-case, etc., indispensably true after any of the Five Orders without being obliged to go to a joiner for to set out the work and make his templets to work by.
“But if these gentlemen persist much longer thus to despise the study of this noble art, the very basis and soul of their trade, which now to many joiners is well understood, they will soon find the bad consequences of so doing and have time enough on their hands to repent of their folly—and more especially since that our nobility and gentry delight themselves now more than ever in the study of architecture, which enables them to distinguish good work and workmen from assuming pretenders.”
On Plate [XXV.] are three of his eight designs of bookcases, which, “if executed by a good joiner, and with beautiful materials, will have good effects, or even if by a cabinet-maker, provided that he understands how to proportion and work the Five Orders, which at this time, to the shame of that trade be it spoken, there is not one in a hundred that ever employed a moment’s thought thereon, or knows the Tuscan from the Doric, or the Corinthian from the Composite Order, and more especially if the Doric freeze hath its triglyphs and mutules omitted. In short, the ultimate knowledge of these sort of workmen is generally seen to finish with a monstrous Cove, on an Astragal, crowned with a Cima Reversa, in an open pediment of stupid height.
PLATE XXVI
“When a Gentleman applies himself with a good design of a book-case, etc., made by an able architect, to most of the masters in this trade, they instantly condemn it and allege that ’tis not possible to make cabinet works look well that are proportioned by the Rules of Architecture; because, they say, the members will be too large and heavy, etc., whereas the real truth is that they do not understand how to proportion and work the members of these designs, and therefore advise the unwary to accept of such stuff as their poor, crazy capacities will enable them to make, and wherein ’tis always seen that the magnitudes of their Coves and Cima Reversas (their darling finishing) are much larger members than any members of a regular cornice (even of the Tuscan Order) of the same height, wherefore, ’tis evident that all their assertions of this kind are used for nothing more than to conceal an infinite fund of stubborn ignorance which cannot be paralleled by any other set of mortals in the world. This I mention that for the future Gentlemen may have a more particular regard in the choice of works and workmen, in this way, than any have heretofore done. For I do affirm that a good joiner will not only execute a design of this nature in much less time than any of the common run of cabinet-makers can, but will perform it in that masterly manner which is known but to very few, if any, in the cabinet trade.”
Isaac Ware, who, as we have seen, was a determined enemy to the French innovations, says: “We shall here direct the eye of the student from the frivolous decorations which France has furnished us to those which dignified the works of Greece and Rome, and have been an honour to the names of some of our own architects in times of better taste.” Though he prefers the nobler style of Inigo Jones, he advises the architect “to consider the other kind of richness. We consider the proprietor dislikes the former kind; he thinks it too heavy, or he has corrupted his taste in France so far as to dislike the Grecian science. He desires to have a ceiling as rich as that proposed to him, but more airy; and he will have some of the French crooked figures introduced into it.”