Criticks, attend the Rules which I impart;
They are at least; instructive to the Art:
Mark how Convenience, Strength, and Beauty join:
With these let Harmony of Parts combine.
(p. 18.)
These lines may be construed as the architect's equivalent of Horace's advice for winning applause. But in fact the entire verse paragraph which these lines introduce is simply a paraphrase of Vitruvius (I, iii, 2. Cf. Wotton's remark, "Wel-building hath three Conditions, Commodity, Firmnesse, and Delight").[13] The leap which follows the introduction of these three principles has no precedent in Horace, but it does in Vitruvius, whose De Architectura is notorious for its eccentric organization and abrupt transitions. Immediately following this passage in Vitruvius is his chapter on the "salubrity of sites" (I, iv).
It is ironical that where Gwynn is closest to Vitruvius in one respect he departs most radically from him in another. Vitruvius's attention is almost exclusively on the physical requirements of sites for maintaining men's health and comfort; Gwynn's is on the requirements for maintaining men's psychological well-being. His conceptions of decorum of situation begin with Vitruvius and the Renaissance demands that a site be healthy, that it permit efficient transportation, and that, if possible, it provide raw materials for building, rich lands for crops and pastures, and natural beauty conducive to ease and contemplation. Gwynn emphasizes this last point, building upon perceptions of nature nourished on Thomson's Seasons, and upon a psychology drawn largely from the Earl of Shaftesbury (pp. 19-22). In his earlier Essay on Harmony. As it relates chiefly to Situation in Building he quotes Shaftesbury on the title page, acknowledges his debt to Thomson, and quotes long passages from The Seasons to illustrate various rural "situations."[14] In The Art of Architecture he follows Morris's example in writing his own verse in language imitative of Thomson's (except for one direct quotation, "From the moist Meadow; to the brown-brow'd Hill"). The verbal precision of his poetic epithets, and the analysis of perception which they imply, help to distinguish the sensory, aesthetic, and emotional effects of a wide variety of disparate experiences, and thus make possible the identification of those attributes that guide an architect in choosing a mode appropriate to a site. The perfect fitting of a building to its site, as of the parts to a whole, will result in what Gwynn calls "Ideal Harmony," for it "ariseth from such Numbers, Parts, or Proportions, which may be resolved in the Mind, and ranged together in Order, by Contemplation."[15]
For Gwynn such harmony still has quite clear religious and moral implications, although he does not, like Morris, attribute to it a specifically religious function. Yet since the rules are supposedly based upon natural laws, violations of them betray a failure to appreciate divine harmony, the highest object of human contemplation. This accounts for the indignation Gwynn reveals in attacking mad architects and patrons at the end of the poem, even if it also reveals his obtuseness in failing to perceive the causes of his outrage. But, then, Gwynn was no Alexander Pope, either as a poet or as a thinker.[16]
The Ohio State University