The Lives of the Most Eminent British Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, Vol. 4 (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from The Lives of the Most Eminent British Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, Vol. 4

Called barbarians are not all barbarous, and he who is in danger of becoming a Catholic from looking at an abbey, is near of kin to him who dreads drunkenness from gazing at an empty cup. I shall attempt no definition of what is classic or what Is barbarous - to me Gothic Archi tecture exhibits a harmony of parts, a scientific elegance of combination, a solemn grandeur of effect, and such fitness of purpose, as class it with the finest efforts of the human mind. That it dif fers from the classic architecture of Greece is its merit: if it resembles it in any way, it is only as two statues resemble each other; dissimilar in attitude, and expressing different sentiments, both are works of art, and imitations of nature. I claim for this style of architecture a character ori ginal and peculiar; by many it has been called the Gothic, by others the Norman, and by some the English; but it may more properly be called the Order of the Catholic Church - for here, at least, it rose with her rising and sank with her decline. Of those clerical architects the names of but few are known, though their labours extend over a period of five hundred years; - since the Reformation one cathedral only, and that too in the classic style, has been built in England; - and the memories of our Gothic artists have become dim amongst us. Indeed, History has only taken care of the fame of one - the architect of Winchester Cathedral, Windsor Castle, and New College, Oxford, whose life has been written at some length, and with much learning and no little eloquence, by Bishop Lowth.

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