Page:Architectural Review and American Builders' Journal, Volume 1, 1869.djvu/271

 1868.] The Origin of the Pointed or Gothic Style. 227 from the time of its last lineally edu- cated professors, through the genera- tions of the modern ages, down almost to the present day ; and even cultured professors continually talk of preferring it, for certain purposes, on account of its being trammeled with no set rules. This is exactly like the practice of essaj'ers on the art of versification, who constantly speak of Shakespeare as hav- ing been a wonderful, uncultivated ge- nius, who wrote in a loose kind of style, subject to no rules. The truth is, that William Shakespeare was one of the very highest educated men of his day — in English : — as a cultured grammarian and rhetorician equal to the very proud- est and most learned of his countrymen, possessing a partial acquaintance with Latin, a pretty good working knowledge of French, and a trifle of Italian, with perhaps a tinge of Greek. If Shake- speare's forms, as read in the original edition, are now many of them uncouth and many ungrammatical, they were those of cultured English society of his generation, now outgrown, or improved ; but his idiomatic grasp of our mother tongue was most absolute. His diction will never be improved upon or out- grown ; and his genius can never be surpassed. As for his poetic art in manifesting that supreme genius, it was truly of the loftiest and most subtle kind, commensurate with his "faculty divine," being quite attentive to manner, though very much more so to matter; and only undiscoverable by the mass of his glossarists and glossers, because far above their ken. Homer and Shakespeare divide the dominion of poetry between them, sim- ply, because they were — each for his own language — the most knowing and skilful makers ; although Homer's sway will proportionably decrease, his lan- guage being dead ; while, proportion- ally, Shakespeare's must enormously increase, as it is now evident, that the English is destined to become the uni- versal language in a sense no other ever was. Homer, then, will always delight classic scholars, but Shakespeare must continue to enrapture not only these, but the entire multitude of the plainly educated, as well. We have not entirely recovered the Greek rules for the artistic proportions of the human figure, as based upon the equations of their long-continued and accurate studies of the exterior forms of the sexes, both in all their detached parts and their individual binary com- pleteness, but we know enough about them to satisfy us — as, indeed, mere ocular inspection of the antique statues should have convinced the world before — that their glorious master-pieces sprang from the most profound knowl- edge in addition to the most consum- mate art. The Greek sculptors have this advantage over their great poet, that they worked in a language then understood and forever to be understood by all human souls. These considerations should long ago have taught architects and their patrons to reason thus : Here is a style — replete with beauty, loftiness and grace — which possesses an intense charm alike for the untutored multitude and the select few. It seems to be without and beyond rules : but nothing great or charming was ever yet effected in defiance of syva- metry and proportion ; and as we know that the best ancient Greek and Roman architects observed rules founded upon these attributes, which were lost for ages, and are not entirely recovered to this time, the presumption is, that the masters in Pointed Architecture pos- sessed a series of formulas equally adapted for their purpose. All we know of the Classic Rules is derived from the revelations of Vitruvius and the meas- urements of Palladio. Let us then measure accurately, as opportunity opens ; wait, with patience ; and con- stantly and assiduously compare. In due time, if these rules ever existed, they will be, in part at least, and per- haps all, opened out to us.