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

THEROMANTIC FALLACY 73

influencewill,
inalllikelihood,

impose

inappropriate

standards of its own. The necessary

balance be-

tweenformal

andsignificantelements,

which

inevery

artisdifferentlypoised,isthenoverweighted.

Over-

chained with literary

significance

and atrophied

in

itsdesign,the

artofformlosesthepower

to

impress

;

itceases,inanyaestheticsense,tobe

significantatall.

i^hus, in

transporting romance

from poetry

to

architecture, it wasnot consideredhow

different

is

thepositionwhich, in thesetwo arts,the

romantic

elementmustoccupy. For,inpoetry,

itis

attached

not to theform but to the content.

Coleridge

wrote

aboutstrange,fantastic,unexpected,

orterrible

things,

buthewroteabouttheminbalancedand

conventional

metrps. Hepresentedhisromanticmaterial

through

amediumthatwassimple,familiar,

andfixed.

But

in architecture this distinction could

not be

main-

tained. When the romantic material

entered, the

conventionalformofnecessity

disappeared.

'

Quaint'

designandcrookedplanningtookits

place. For

here

formandcontent

werepracticallyone. And,

further,

the romantic quality

ofthe material was,

inarchi-

tecture,extremelyinsecure.l The

*

magiccasements

'

of Keatshave

theirplaceinaperfectly

formal and

conventionalmetricscheme

thatdisplaystheir

beauty,

andarepowerful overusbecausetheyare

imagined.

But the casements of

the romantic architecture,

realised

in stone,must lack this

reticence andthis