A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century

by Henry A. Beers

In short, Pugin's Catholicism, though doubtless sincere, was prompted by his professional feelings. His reverence was given to the mediaeval Church, not to her—aesthetically—degenerate daughter; and it extended to the whole system of life and thought peculiar to the Middle Ages. "Men must learn," he wrote, "that the period hitherto called dark and ignorant far excelled our age in wisdom, that art ceased when it is said to have been revived, that superstition was piety, and bigotry faith." In many of his views Pugin anticipates Ruskin. He did not like St. Peter's at Rome, and said: "If those students who journey to Italy to study art would follow the steps of the great Overbeck,[22] . . . they would indeed derive inestimable benefit. Italian art of the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries is the beau ideal of Christian purity, and its imitation cannot be too strongly inculcated; but when it forsook its pure, mystical, and ancient types, to follow those of sensual Paganism, it sunk to a fearful state of degradation."

As a practising architect Pugin naturally received and executed many commissions for Catholic churches. But the Catholic Church in England did much less, even in proportion to its resources, than the Anglican establishment towards promoting the Gothic revival. Eastlake says that Pugin's "strength as an artist lay in the design of ornamental detail"; and that he helped importantly in the revival of the mediaeval taste in stained glass, metal work, furniture, carpets, and paper-hangings. Several of his works have to do with various departments of ecclesiology; chancel-screens, roodlofts, church ornaments, symbols and costumes, and the like. But the only one that need here be mentioned is the once very influential "True Principles of Pointed or Christian Architecture" (1841). This revival of ecclesiastical Gothic fell in with the reform of Anglican ritual, which was one of the features or sequences of the Oxford movement, and the two tendencies afforded each other mutual support.

Evidence of a newly awakened interest in mediaeval art is furnished by a number of works of a more systematic character which appeared about the middle of the century, dealing not only with architecture, but with the early schools of sculpture and painting. One of these was "Sketches of the History of Christian Art" (3 vols., 1847) by Alexander William Crawford Lindsay, twenty-fifth Earl of Crawford. In the preface to the reprint of this book in 1885, Lady Crawford speaks of it as a pioneer in an "early time of unawakened interest." Ruskin refers to it repeatedly—always with respect—and acknowledges in "Praeterita" that Lord Lindsay knew a great deal more about Italian art than he himself did. The book reviews in detail the works of Christian builders, sculptors and painters, both in Italy and north of the Alps, from the time of the Roman catacombs and basilicas down to the Renaissance. It gives likewise a history of Christian mythology, iconography and symbolism; all that great body of popular beliefs about angels, devils, saints, martyrs, anchorites, miracles, etc., which Protestant iconoclasm and the pagan spirit of the cinque-cento had long ago swept into the dust-bin as sheer idolatry and superstition. Lord Lindsay's treatment of these matters is reverential, though his own Protestantism is proof against their charm. His tone is moderate; he has no quarrel with the Renaissance, and professes respect for classical art, which seems to him, however, on a lower spiritual plane than the Christian. He remarks that all mediaeval art was religious; the only concession to the secular being found in the illuminations of some of the chivalry romances. Gothic architecture was the expression of Teutonic genius, which is realistic and stands for the reason, while Italian sacred painting was idealistic and stands for the imagination. In the most perfect art, as in the highest type of religion, reason and imagination are in balance. Hence, the influence of Van Eyck, Memling, and Dürer on Italian painters was wholesome; and the Reformation, the work of the reasoning Teutonic mind, is not to be condemned. Reason is to blame only when it goes too far and extinguishes imagination.[23]

"The sympathies of the North, or of the Teutonic race, are with Death, as those of the Southern, or classic, are with Life. . . . The exquisitely beautiful allegorical tale of 'Sintram and His Companions' by La Motte Fouqué, was founded on the 'Knight and Death' of Albert Dürer, and I cannot but think that Milton had the 'Melancholy' in his remembrance while writing 'Il Penseroso.'" [24] The author thinks that, whatever may be true of Gothic architecture—an art less national than ecclesiastical—"sculpture and painting, on the one hand, and the spirit of chivalry on the other, have usually flourished in an inverse ratio one to the other, and it is not therefore in England, France, or Spain, but among the free cities of Italy and Germany that we must look for their rise." [25] I give these conclusions—so opposite to those of Catholic mediaevalists like Digby and Pugin—because they illustrate the temper of Lindsay's book. One more quotation I will venture to add for its agreement with Uvedale Price's definition of the picturesque:[26] "The picturesque in art answers to the romantic in poetry; both stand opposed to the classic or formal school—both may be defined as the triumph of nature over art, luxuriating in the decay, not of her elemental and ever-lasting beauty, but of the bonds by which she had been enthralled by man. It is only in ruin that a building of pure architecture, whether Greek or Gothic, becomes picturesque." [27]

Lord Lindsay's "Sketches" contained no illustrations. Mrs. Jameson's very popular series on "Sacred and Legendary Art" was profusely embellished with wood-cuts and etchings. The first number of the series, "Legends of the Saints and Martyrs," was begun in 1842, but issued only in 1848. "Legends of the Monastic Orders" followed in 1850; "Legends of the Madonna" in 1852; and the "History of Our Lord" (completed by Lady Eastlake) in 1860. Mrs. Jameson had an imperfect knowledge of technique, and her work was descriptive rather than critical. But it probably did more to enlist the interest of the general reader in Christian art than Lord Lindsay's more learned volumes; or possibly even than the brilliant but puzzling rhetoric of Ruskin.

With Pugin's "Contrasts" began the "Battle of the Styles." This was soon decided in Pugin's favour, so far as ecclesiastical buildings were concerned. Fergusson, who is hostile to Gothic, admits that wherever clerical influence extended, the style came into fashion. The Cambridge Camden Society was founded in 1839 for the study of church architecture and ritual, and issued the first number of its magazine, The Ecclesiologist, in 1841. But the first national triumph for secular Gothic was won when Barry's design for the new houses of Parliament was selected from among ninety-seven competing plans. The corner-stone was laid at Westminster in 1840, and much of the detail, as the work went on, was furnished by Pugin.

It was not long before the Gothic revival found an ally in the same great writer who had already come forward as the champion of Pre-Raphaelite painting. The masterly analysis of "The Nature of Gothic" in "The Stones of Venice" (vol. i., 1851; vols. ii. and iii., 1853), and the eloquence and beauty of a hundred passages throughout the three volumes, fascinated a public which cared little about art, but knew good literature when they saw it. Eastlake testifies that Ruskin had some practical influence on English building. Young artists went to Venice to study the remains of Italian Gothic, and the results of their studies were seen in the surface treatment of many London facades, especially in the cusped window arches, and in the stripes of coloured bricks which give a zebra-like appearance to the architecture of the period. But, in general, working architects were rather contemptuous of Ruskin's fine-spun theories, which they ridiculed as fantastic, self-contradictory, and super-subtle; rhetoric or metaphysics, in short, and not helpful art criticism.

Ruskin's adhesion to Gothic was without compromise. It was "not only the best, but the only rational architecture." "I plead for the introduction of the Gothic form into our domestic architecture, not merely because it is lovely, but because it is the only form of faithful, strong, enduring, and honourable building, in such materials as come daily to our hands." [28] On the other hand, Roman architecture is essentially base; the study of classical literature is "pestilent"; and most modern building is the fruit of "the Renaissance poison tree." "If . . . any of my readers should determine . . . to set themselves to the revival of a healthy school of architecture in England, and wish to know in few words how this may be done, the answer is clear and simple. First, let us cast out utterly whatever is connected with the Greek, Roman, or Renaissance architecture, in principle or in form. . . . The whole mass of the architecture, founded on Greek and Roman models, which we have been in the habit of building for the last three centuries, is utterly devoid of all life, virtue, honourableness, or power of doing good. It is base, unnatural, unfruitful, unenjoyable, and impious. Pagan in its origin, proud and unholy in its revival, paralysed in its old age." [29]

Ruskin loved the religious spirit of the mediaeval builders, Byzantine, Lombard, or Gothic; and the pure and holy faith of the early sacred painters like Fra Angelico, Orcagna, and Perugino. He thought that whatever was greatest even in Raphael, Leonardo, and Michelangelo came from their training in the old religious school, not from the new science of the Renaissance. "Raphael painted best when he knew least." He deplored the harm to Catholic and Protestant alike of the bitter dissensions of the Reformation. But he sorrowfully acknowledged the corruption of the ancient Church, and had no respect for modern Romanism. Against the opinion that Gothic architecture was fitted exclusively for ecclesiastical uses, he strongly protested. On the contrary, he advised its reintroduction, especially in domestic building. "Most readers . . . abandon themselves drowsily to the impression that Gothic is a peculiarly ecclesiastical style. . . . The High Church and Romanist parties . . . have willingly promulgated the theory that, because all the good architecture that is now left is expressive of High Church or Romanist doctrines, all good architecture ever has been and must be so—a piece of absurdity. . . . Wherever Christian Church architecture has been good and lovely, it has been merely the perfect development of the common dwelling-house architecture of the period. . . . The churches were not separated by any change of style from the buildings round them, as they are now, but were merely more finished and full examples of a universal style. . . . Because the Gothic and Byzantine styles are fit for churches, they are not therefore less fit for dwellings. They are in the highest sense fit and good for both, nor were they ever brought to perfection except when they were used for both." [30]

The influence of Walter Scott upon Ruskin is noteworthy. As a child he read the Bible on Sundays and the Waverley Novels on week-days, and he could not recall the time when either had been unknown to him. The freshness of his pleasure in the first sight of the frescoes of the Campo Santo he describes by saying that it was like having three new Scott novels.[31] Ruskin called himself a "king's man," a "violent illiberal," and a "Tory of the old-fashioned school, the school of Walter Scott." Like Scott, he was proof against the religious temptations of mediaevalism. "Although twelfth-century psalters are lovely and right," he was not converted to Catholic teachings by his admiration for the art of the great ages; and writes, with a touch of contempt, of those who are "piped into a new creed by the squeak of an organ pipe." If Scott was unclassical, Ruskin was anti-classical. The former would learn no Greek; and the latter complained that Oxford taught him all the Latin and Greek that he would learn, but did not teach him that fritillaries grew in Iffley meadow.[32] Even that fondness for costume which has been made a reproach against Scott finds justification with Ruskin. "The essence of modern romance is simply the return of the heart and fancy to the things in which they naturally take pleasure; and half the influence of the best romances, of 'Ivanhoe,' or 'Marmion,' or 'The Crusaders,' or 'The Lady of the Lake,' is completely dependent upon the accessories of armour and costume." [33] Still Ruskin had the critical good sense to rate such as they below the genuine Scotch novels, like "Old Mortality" and "The Heart of Mid-Lothian"; and he is quite stern towards the melodramatic Byronic ideal of Venice. "The impotent feelings of romance, so singularly characteristic of this century, may indeed gild, but never save the remains of those mightier ages to which they are attached like climbing flowers, and they must be torn away from the magnificent fragments, if we would see them as they stood in their own strength. . . . The Venice of modern fiction and drama is a thing of yesterday, a mere efflorescence of decay, a stage dream." [34] For it cannot be too often repeated that the romance is not in the Middle Ages themselves, but in their strangeness to our imagination. The closer one gets to them, the less romantic they appear.