Lectures on the rise and development of medieval architecture; vol. 2

by Sir George Gilbert Scott

It is not difficult to understand how this tended to the revival in Italy of old Roman art; and, once revived there, the centre of ecclesiastical and, in a great degree, of literary influence, the centre, too, of the revival of painting in its highest form, it need not be wondered that it spread itself as a fashion into more northern countries where the same literary tastes had taken root. However this may be, the fact is undoubted, that from this time forward original art ceased, and borrowed or resuscitated art took its place.

My predecessor, Mr. Smirke, in one of his lectures, gave a highly interesting description of the noble enthusiasm which inspired the early architects of the Renaissance in Italy; and I can quite appreciate this feeling in a land where the Mediæval styles were less deeply rooted, where classical traditions had never been extinct, and where the reminiscences of ancient Rome were a subject of national exultation. The revival of the noble literature of their mighty ancestors could scarcely fail, in such a country, to prompt a wish to revive their arts; and I am convinced that such a revival became a spontaneous and irresistible movement, wholly unconnected with any premeditated plan.

Anyhow, whether for good or for ill, the revival was a great and potent fact; and its results have now lasted as long as the whole period of the ascendancy of Pointed architecture, and have extended their sway to all parts of the globe where European influence is felt; nor can its opponents deny that, on its native soil especially, its productions were often of the most masterly description and exquisite beauty; enriched as they are by decorative painting which has never been excelled; by sculpture of which antique artists would not have been ashamed; and by other arts of proportionate merit. In other lands, it has produced works of which no one would venture to dispute the value; and, though a borrowed style, it has developed anew many marked chronological and national varieties, and has produced, as we have seen in my last lecture, works and types scarcely even foreshadowed by its antique originals.

Nevertheless, in the opinion at least of many, it had, by the close of the last century or early in the present, so far run its course, at least in this country, as to have lost its old artistic power. Art had become enfeebled, while art-history had risen more prominently into view; and the decay of the one was promoted by the distraction of thought occasioned by the other.

The revived knowledge of the architecture of Greece rudely disturbed the vernacular style derived from Rome, so that by about the year 1830 the old state of things seemed almost hopelessly damaged; and every architect, instead of working on the traditions handed down to him by his predecessors, seemed to do just what was right in his own eyes, though with a special rage for not very practicable reproductions of Greek, coupled with a conviction that Roman and its derivatives were little short of barbarous.

All the traditions of the past appeared to be broken up. Our every-day architecture, as exhibited in ordinary houses, had become mean and contemptible in the extreme; and, though things have since greatly mended, it has been from a purely eclectic, and not in the least degree from a traditional, point of view; while the untutored house-builder, left to himself, even now disports himself in reminiscences of these first decades of our century—the halcyon days of Gower Street and Tavistock Place.

It was just at this strange juncture that, by some occult influence, the public mind was brought back to view—first with interest, and then with admiration and love—the long-neglected architecture of our own country and our own race (or group of kindred races). At first this was with no intention or thought of revival; it was only interest, admiration, and love. Writers on this subject, whether friendly or hostile, affect to systematise the movement; but it was wholly unsystematic. It arose from the inmost feelings of the heart, and in no degree from premeditation or plan.

It is now the fashion to speak contemptuously of revivals; and truly they do seem strange and inconsistent after following the more natural history of art from the dawn of civilisation to the Renaissance. Yet I cannot but agree with Mr. Smirke that the Classic revival was, in the land, at least, of its rise, a natural, spontaneous, and unpremeditated movement of the human mind. That the Gothic Renaissance was so too, I know, for it was my own happy lot to be a humble agent in it, and I am old enough to have watched it, I may say practically, if not literally, from its commencement.

People talk of Horace Walpole, of Sir Walter Scott, or of any one else they like, as the early promoters of the feeling which led to the revival. I do not know how it may have been with others, but, for myself, I know that my love for Gothic architecture was absolutely spontaneous, and that I had no kind of incentive for following up its study other than the delight I took in it, before I knew a word about other architecture, or was acquainted even with the published works on our own, and that, without a thought of its study ever becoming practically useful to me. I am convinced that the revived love for our old buildings, followed as it was subsequently by a desire to imitate their architecture, was as spontaneous and as irresistible a movement of the human mind as those which had originated either Classic or Mediæval art, or that which, two thousand years after its first rise, had led to the revival of the former. It is true that its results have not yet been so all-pervading as those of the Classic Renaissance, yet they have been very great; out and away the most marked feature in modern architectural history, inasmuch as it, almost alone, has resulted from ardent and genuine enthusiasm, and from the inmost recesses of the heart.

As one of the survivors from among the more active of the earlier agents in this great movement, I may claim a right to dilate a little on my reminiscences of it.