The architecture of humanism; a study in the history of taste

200 THEARCHITECTURE

OF

HUMANISM

they sacrificed

the unaffected

merits of the old

national architecture, were a

mere travesty

of the

foreign. Thespirit offashion,

as iscommonly the

case, seized on

the detail and failed

to grasp the

principle. Ignorant builders,

with German

pattern

books in hand, were little likely to

furnish space,

proportion

and dignity. But capitals

and friezes

were theauthentic

mode ofRome. Thus, with

an

ardent prodigality, little

pilasters ofallshapesand

sizes were lavished, wherever they could

find

a

footing, upon Jacobean

mansionsand the chateaux

of Touraine. But the printed

pages of Serlio and

Palladio, when they came, wereapledge ofortho-

doxy.

The academic influence rescued the archi-

tectureofEnglandandFrance. It

provided

a

canon

offormsbywhicheventheuninspiredarchitectcould

secureatleastameasureofdistinction

;

andgenius,

where it existed, could be trusted to use this

scholastic learning as a means and not

an end.

Wren, Vanbrugh,and Adam in England, and the

whole eighteenth-century architecture of France,

areevidenceofthefact.

ThevalueofVitruvius

wasrelativetoatimeand

place. After
three hundred years of exaggerated

gloryandhonestusefulnesshebecamea
bywordfor

stupidity. Pope satirised him
; archaeologists dis-

coveredthatthe Roman

buildingscorresponded

but

imperfectly
to

his

laws; the Greek

movement