These corbels are the projections from which, the arches spring, usually carved in some fantastic mask or face; and on these the Shakspearian imagination of the Gothic artists seems to have let itself loose to run riot: there is every variety of expression, from, the most beautiful to the most goblin and grotesque. One has the leer of fiendish triumph, with budding horns, showing too plainly his paternity; again you have the drooping eyelids and saintly features of some fair virgin; and then the gasping face of some old monk, apparently in the agonies of death, with his toothless gums, hollow cheeks, and sunken eyes. Other faces have an earthly and sensual leer; some are wrought into expressions of scorn and mockery, some of supplicating agony, and some of grim, despair.
One wonders what gloomy, sarcastic, poetic, passionate mind has thus amused itself, recording in stone all the range of passions—saintly, earthly, and diabolic—on the varying human face. One fancies each corbel to have had its history, its archetype in nature; a thousand possible stories spring into one's mind. They are wrought with such a startling and individual definiteness, that one feels as about Shakspeare's characters, as if they must have had a counterpart in real existence. The pure, saintly nun may have been some sister, or some daughter, or some early love, of the artist, who in an evil hour saw the convent barriers rise between her and all that was loving. The fat, sensual face may have been a sly sarcasm on some worthy abbot, more eminent in flesh than spirit. The fiendish faces may have been wrought out of the author's own perturbed dreams.
An architectural work says that one of these corbels, with an anxious and sinister Oriental countenance, has been made, by the guides, to perform duty as an authentic likeness of the wizard Michael Scott. Now, I must earnestly protest against stating things in that way. Why does a writer want to break up so laudable a poetic design in the guides? He would have been much better occupied in interpreting some of the half-defaced old inscriptions into a corroborative account. No doubt it was Michael Scott, and looked just like him.
It were a fine field for a story writer to analyze the conception and growth of an abbey or cathedral as it formed itself, day after day, and year after year, in the soul of some dreamy, impassioned workman, who made it the note book where he wrought out imperishably in stone all his observations on nature and man. I think it is this strong individualism of the architect in the buildings that give the never-dying charm, and variety to the Gothic: each Gothic building is a record of the growth, character, and individualities of its builder's soul; and hence no two can be alike.
I was really disappointed to miss in the abbey the stained glass which gives such a lustre and glow to the poetic description. I might have known better; but somehow I came there fully expecting to see the window, where—
"Full in the midst his cross of red
Triumphant Michael brandished;
The moonbeam kissed the holy pane,
And threw on the pavement the bloody stain."
Alas! the painted glass was all of the poet's own setting; years ago it was shattered by the hands of violence, and the grace of the fashion of it hath perished.