Page:Charles Moore--Development and Character of Gothic Architecture.djvu/252

Rh modes of design to the local type characterised by the round abacus; but the result is awkward and unsatisfactory. Associated with the round abacus, especially, as in this case, a round abacus of small proportionate diameter, the heavy crockets are meaningless, and spoil the profile of the bell. These crockets are, however, in themselves very beautiful. Their refined execution is in marked contrast with the singular coarseness of execution exhibited by the native sculpture; and with a square abacus, in connection with which such crockets were originally designed, nothing could be finer. Capitals of this distorted French type are curiously mingled with those of the local character in nearly all the arcades of this early portion of Lincoln Cathedral. In the south triforium the entire groups of the first and second bays, counting from the west, are composed of them, while the widely different Anglo-Norman work elsewhere generally prevails. Other capitals in these arcades are still different. They have crockets arranged as in the preceding example, but differing from the French work entirely in design and execution. They are apparently local imitations of the French type; one of them, from an early portion of the west transept, is shown in Fig. 142. This form of capital, with exaggerated crockets, as in the next figure but one, came at length to be very widely employed in the early pointed architecture of England. Fig. 143 exhibits another type of frequent occurrence. It is a modification of the type shown in Fig. 140, but hardly an improvement, since the ornamentation is excessively redundant, having the appearance of a wreath entwined around the bell, whose profile it too much hides. Yet as compared with the later forms of capitals in England it has the merits of comparative compactness, temperance, and considerable beauty.

The tendency to excessive redundance of ornament in capitals became very strong before the middle of the thirteenth century; and this peculiarity, quite as much as the use of the round abacus, characterises the later forms of the so-called early English style. Fig. 144, a capital from the arcade of the north choir screen of Lincoln, is a fair instance of this phase of design; though others might be chosen, as, for instance, some of those of the west façade of