Pugin and Ruskin

Author(s): Patrick R. M. Conner

Source: Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, Vol. 41 (1978), pp. 344-350
Published by: The Warburg Institute
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/750883
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344 NOTES AND DOCUMENTS
which attacks charlatans and charlatanism in masterfully captured in the portrait, seemed
general terms later becomes Capricho33, analogous to the state of mind of Capricho43's
whose concrete personal reference can be sleeping figure. By altering the compositional
Goya infused
immediately recognized by its title Al Conde elements of the existing Capricho,
Palatino. Perhaps Capricho 43/Pl. 56b is the pen-and-ink drawing with political
another such instance of reworking. reference. Moreover, by combining pose,
The genesis of the drawing might then be identity and social commentary, Goya was
the following. Having reached the final able to employ the liberal iconography
stages in the preparation of the Caprichosin so successfully used in the contemporary
1798, Goya recognized in the completed portraits of Guillemardet, Saavedra and
enigmatic Capricho43 a basis for sketching Jovellanos.
out his feelings about the political events of S. A. MANSBACH
the spring and summer of this crucial year.
The distressing circumstances of Jovellanos, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

PUGIN AND RUSKIN tecture, the smallest interest in his opinions'.4

he relationship between John Ruskin and
Augustus Welby Pugin, those passionate
bigots of art criticism, is a curious and still
unsettled matter. The consensusof twentieth-
century opinion is that Ruskin was consider-
ably influenced by the writings of Pugin: it
is, for instance, asserted that 'much of
[Ruskin's] teaching, wittingly or not, re-
flected the brilliance of Pugin's mind'.' The
view that 'he was wholly influenced by Pugin'
in matters of architecture2 is frequently
reiterated.3
At the outset it must be admitted that
Ruskin repudiated Pugin, a convert to
Catholicism, in the most venomous fashion.
He first attacked Pugin as 'one of the smallest
possible or conceivable architects'and warned
that although 'no-one, at present, can design
a better finial', one should not 'thence deduce
the incompatibility of Protestantism and art'.
In a later work Ruskin dismissedthe idea that
Pugin's writings had influenced him: he had
glanced at Pugin's Contrasts,he said, and
noticed RemarksontheArticles... in theRambler,
but 'I never read a word of any other of his
works, not feeling, from the style of his archi-
x H. Casson, An Introductionto VictorianArchitecture,
1948, p. 31.
2 N. Pevsner, Some ArchitecturalWritersof the Nine-
teenthCentury,I1972, p. 141.
3 See R. Wellek, A Historyof ModernCriticism,z75o-
195o, iii, 1955-66, p. 199;
G. Hough, The Last Roman-
tics, 196I, p. 90; J. D. Rosenberg, The DarkeningGlass,
1961, p. 50; N. Pevsner, 'Matthew Digby Wyatt', 1949,
reprinted in Studies in Art, Architectureand Design, ii, of John Ruskin,ix, 1903-12, pp. 438-9, and v, pp. 428-9.
1968, p. 10o4; R. Hewison, John Ruskin: The Argument
of the Eye, 1976, p. 129.
This is certainly untrue. A series of notes in
Ruskin's 'Sketchbook 4' (1846), now in the
Ruskin Museum at Coniston, is taken directly
from one of Pugin's most important books,
The TruePrinciplesof Pointedor ChristianArchi-
tecture (1841). They read as follows:
Pugin. 'A wall 3 ft. thick with buttresses
projecting 3 ft. is stronger than a wall
six ft. thick'.
St. Pauls has flying buttressesconcealed by
a screen, the upperstoryof the outside.
Boss means spring of water?
P. finds fault, cautiously with Ks [King's]
College chapel, on the ground of its flat
arches.
His remarks on small and irregular stones
very good & well illustrated. Small stones,
he says, are strongest.? This is evidently so
in one instance he gives, but query it
generally.
[Illustrated by sketch]
joints should always be drawn to centre of
curves, in crossing several curves its bed (?)
should vary.
[Illustrated by sketch]
The old iron ornaments 'cut out of thin
metal plate and twisted up with pliers',
how superior to cast and chased orna-
ments. Tracery produced by different
thickness of pierced plates laid over each
other. All his remarksseem (?) very good.5
Ruskin's observations are not uncritical,
4 E. T. Cook and A. Wedderburn (eds.), The Works
5 I am grateful to Mr. B. K. Bilton, curator of the
Coniston Museum, for transcribing these notes.

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 PUGIN AND RUSKIN 345
but they reveal a considerable respect for great significance in these principles that, we
what Pugin had to say. Moreover Ruskin are told, 'brought Pugin enduring fame'.9 It
seems to have looked at or remembered these has, moreover, been claimed that 'in spite of
notes in preparing The SevenLampsof Archi- his noisy emphasis upon religious revivalism
tecture. The reference to iron ornaments in his main contention was for his aesthetic
the last paragraph reappears in the published principles'.10 Pugin's contemporaries would
version of SevenLamps(1849): perhaps not have agreed. Some, notably
I believe no cause to have been more active those involved with the Journalof Design and
in the degradation of our national feeling Manufactures, admired Pugin's rules of design
for beauty than the constant use of cast- but the architectural theorists seem to have
iron ornaments. The common iron work been less impressed.
of the middle ages was as simple as it was Pugin prescribed:
effective, composed of leafage cut flat out Ist, that there should be no features about
of sheet iron, and twisted at the workmen's a building which are not necessary for con-
will.6 venience, construction, or propriety; 2nd,
that all ornament should consist of enrich-
Does this not confirm that Ruskin was ment of the essential construction of the
thoroughly indebted to Pugin? Does it not building... [commonly today] ornaments
support the current view that Ruskin pro- are actuallyconstructed, instead of forming
tested too much, that 'his hysterical denial the decoration of construction, to which in
proves' his message to have been derived good taste they should always be subser-
from Pugin after all? I think not. The notes vient. In pure architecture the smallest
in Ruskin's sketchbook do serve to clear up detail should have a meaning or serve a
one small mystery, which arose from a letter
written to a friend in 1855: purpose.11
The weakness in the first principle lies in
... whatever I owe-and it is at least two- the
thirds of what I am-to other people, I vagueness of his term 'propriety'. As an
opponent observed at the time, 'artistical pro-
certainly owe nothing to Pugin-except priety' means more than 'barely utilitarian
two facts, one about Buttresses, and one
about ironwork.7 propriety',' and Pugin clearly did not intend
the latter. Similarly, Pugin's requirement
Since neither Contrastsnor SomeRemarkson that 'the smallest detail should have a mean-
the Articles . . . in the 'Rambler' (the works ing or serve a purpose' can hardly be
which Ruskin admitted to having seen) offer interpreted as a 'functionalist' or 'progressive'
any facts about buttresses or ironwork, the step against the florid fussinessthen prevalent,
notes in the Ruskin Museum establish what since neither he nor any contemporary ec-
had previously been suspected,8 that Ruskin clesiologist found it difficult to discover a
read True Principlestoo. His contempt for 'meaning', often two or three. And, in prac-
Roman Catholicism in the early 1850s led to tice, considerations of 'propriety' dominated
some wild excesses, and he was clearly anxious those of 'convenience' in Pugin's designs no
to forget his borrowings of detail from his less than in those of his fellow-architects.
opposite number in the enemy camp. But I Pugin's second rule is often regarded as the
believe that Ruskin was right to maintain more powerful though, considering only his
that he owed no more than facts to Pugin- immediate predecessors, it is not at all
not principles, theories or 'message'. To original. All the key words appear in a sen-
appreciate this we must consider the evidence tence of Willis's influential Remarksof 1835:
of Pugin's writing, together with the less the Barbarians used fragments of Roman
familiar works of other architectural writers decoration, he wrote, 'but naturally placing
in the 183os and I84os. them so as to be entirely subservient to the
How did Pugin alter contemporary atti-
"Phoebe Stanton, Pugin, I97I, p. 8I. See also J.
tudes to architecture? Most obviously, there Early, Romanticismand AmericanArchitecture,
New York
are his two famous maxims, set out in True 1965, P. 97.
10 P. Stanton, 'Principles of Design versus Re-
Principlesin i841. Modern critics have found the
vivalism', Journal of Architectural
Societyof Historians,
6 Works(n. 4 xiii, Dec. I954, p. 25, and see p. 2o.
above). viii, p. 85. 11 The True Principlesof Pointed or ChristianArchitec-
7 Works (n. 4 above), v, p. 429. ture, 1841, p. I (italics in original).
8 See J. D. Unrau, 'A Note on Ruskin'sReading of 12 Coventry Patmore, 'Sources of Expression in
Pugin', EnglishStudies,xlviii, 1967, pp. 335-7. Architecture', EdinburghReview,xcv, Oct. I85I, p. 370.
23

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 346 NOTES AND DOCUMENTS
actual construction of the building'.13 The
year before, E. A. Trotman had put forward
a similar principle, writing of '. . . archi-
tecture, having for its first object, the expres-
sion of the parts and method of construction,
and, for its second, the application of the
appropriate ornament to those constructive
parts'.14 Or there is Hugo Ritgen's Beitrdge
zur Wiirdigungdes Antheils derLehre . . . of 1835,
quoted in the Foreign Quarterly soon after-
wards, to the effect that an architect 'should
proceed honestly and openly, exhibiting his
construction such as it really is, without any
attempt to mask or fortify it.... At the same
time the natural constructive forms and out-
lines will admit of being decorated and filled
up.'15 All of these are paralleled and pre-
ceded by an italicized passage in Georg
Moller's Denkmdhler,which was published in
English in 1824 and 1836-a passage, further-
more, that is quoted in John Britton's biblio-
graphical essay of 1826, and cannot have
escaped the attention of any serious student
of the subject.'8
Pugin's formulation is actually less clear
than several of these-for although in its con-
text 'decorate construction' is unmistakably a
call to restrict ornament, the phrase in isola-
tion remains ambiguous; and so we find the
1852 edition of Nicholson's Encyclopaedia of
Architectureenthusiastically invoking Pugin's
rule, not as a demand for chaste surfaces, but
to justify the copious ornamentation already
associated with Gothic architecture.'7 How-
ever, there is an objection to this second
principle more serious than its vagueness: it
does not serve to promote Gothic architec-
ture, as Pugin intended; one could even
argue that Gothic buildings conspicuously
contradicted the principle. Coventry Patmore
questioned the axiom by asking whether a
church spire was to be regarded merely as
'embellishment to construction'.'8
13
Remarkson the Architecture of the Middle Ages, 1835,
p. 19.
14 Architectural
Magazine, i, March 1834, p. 33.
15
Foreign QuarterlyReview, xix, April 1837, p. 74.
16 G. Moller, Denkmdhler der Deutscher Baukunst,
i, p. 22; J. Britton, Architectural
Antiquitiesof is
i8a5-5t,
Great Britain, v, 1826, p. I1oo:'The ornamental, as well
as the other accessory parts, must in every kind of
architecture be regulated, as to their forms, by the
essential superstructure of a building; and not the
superstructure, or body of the edifice, by the orna-
mental portions.'
17 P.
Nicholson, Encyclopaediaof Architecture,1852,
ed. E. Lomax and T. Gunyon, pp. 456-7.
18 British QuarterlyReview, x, Aug. 1849, pp. 68-69.
Much later, however, Patmore took a more favourable
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Pugin, then, whatever his originality as an
architect, was not an innovator in aesthetic
principles. However, he laid greater em-
phasis than had his predecessors on his 'great
rules for design', introducing them on his first
page and presenting them with such passion
and forcefulness that they could not fail to
attract attention. Even so, I believe that the
case for the great influence of these maxims
has yet to be made. The idea that 'con-
venience' and 'construction' should regulate
building is as old as architectural literature.
Pevsner sees the first principle as 'developed
straight out from Pugin's reading of French
architectural theory of the eighteenth cen-
tury',19 but he could have derived it also
from German or English writing. Such trite
sayings had achieved almost conventional
status by the mid-nineteenth century. Pat-
more quoted nine such maxims from Milizia's
Memorie degli Architetti, and commented that
'from these and a thousand similar and in-
finitely tautologous "general rules", with
which architectural criticism is burdened,
we defy anyone to get any clear notions what-
ever'.2o One need not be surprised that
architects as different as Soane and Pugin
could state the same 'principles': it was
practical design, not theoretical platitude,
which caught the imagination of the pro-
fession and brought about changes in taste
and style.
Pugin's True Principles also include an on-
slaught on 'deception' in architecture. He
denounces the 'fictitious dome' of St. Paul's
(the dome seen from the outside is not the
one seen from within), and the screening of
its buttresses; and, a little later, he rejects
cast-iron as 'a deception' on the grounds that
it is usually painted to look like stone, wood
or marble.21 Articles of utility, he often wrote,
are to be beautified and not disguised.
Ruskin's 'Lamp of Truth', devoted to the
same subject, has recently been styled 'pure
Pugin'.22 This view is not that of the
in I1850, which believed that
Ecclesiologist
Ruskin's condemnation of architectural deceit
'might have been taken from one of our own
pages'.23 Neither remark is justified, as this
again a widely disseminated notion for
view of Pugin's 'law of constructional decoration', in
his Principlesof Art, I889, pp. 2-3.
19 Some Writers . .. (n. 2 above), p. i Io.
20
North British Review, xii, Feb. 1850 pp. 312-13.
21 True
Principles (n. ii above), pp. 8, 4, 30.
22 B. F. L. Clarke, ChurchBuilders of the Nineteenth
Century, 2nd edn., 1969, p. 139.
23
Ecclesiologist, x, 1850, p. I 12.
 PUGIN AND RUSKIN
which individuals have later been given un-
deserved credit-or discredit, as it may be in
this case.
Ruskin's version is rather complicated.
Having instructed his readers in the varieties
of untruth, and enjoined them to speak the
exact truth at all times, he explains three
kinds of deceit in architecture: suggesting a
mode of support other than the true one,
giving a false impression of the wall-material,
and using cast or machine-made ornament.
As so often happened, Ruskin's natural pre-
ferences were not fully justified by his prin-
ciples. In particular he disliked flying
buttresses,24 however practical, and twisted
his argument into the most sophistical con-
tortions to rationalize this distaste. Flying
buttresses which are not structurally neces-
sary could of course be despised as deceits,
but those which are necessary, he had to
argue, may yet be legitimately concealed if
they appear unnecessary to the innocent
spectator. Ruskin seems to be floundering in
his own double negatives, for earlier in the
same section (VII) he has argued that there
is no dishonesty in imagining something if we
know well, or can easily discover, that the
reverse is true; thus, we may regard the sky
as a blue vault just because we can readily
learn that it is in fact a lightless abyss. In
other words, as well as claiming that there is
no dishonesty if we are well deceived, Ruskin
proposes that there is no dishonesty if we are
not deceived! Fortunately for his readers
Ruskin is not usually so perplexing. His
general and reasonable precept is that only
what seems deliberately intended to deceive
should be rejected: so that it is deceitful to
cover brick with cement, or to divide this
cement with joints to make it look like stone,
but to cover brick with plaster is permissible,
and so is the practice of gilding, since it is by
now 'understood for what it is, a film
merely'.25
The notion of deception in architecture was
current long before Pugin and Ruskin. The
term was used in a sense akin to 'copyism',
for example by Edmund Aikin, who thought
that all contemporary Gothic was bound to
be 'a deception' on the grounds that architects
currently imitated particular buildings in-
stead of 'generalizing the style'.26 The sense
24
Pugin, like Willis, was an admirer of flying but-
tresses; Ruskin, like Whewell, was not. See also
Ruskin, Works,ix, pp. 207-10.
25 Works
(n. 4 above), viii, pp. 77-78.
26 E.
Aikin, Designsfor Villas and otherRuralBuildings,
i8o8, p. 9.
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347
of Ruskin's 'surface deceits' was also in use:
Thomas Kerrich asserted in 1809 that
medieval architects 'abhorred the very idea
of anything like deception or imposture in
their buildings', and
would have discarded with contempt, and
almost with horror, when they were erect-
ing a temple to the Deity, the stucco, the
artificial marble, the plaster walls, and all
these substitutes which we now employ and
admire, and which are intended to look
like something that they are not.27
However, if one accepts Ruskin's distinc-
tion between surface and structural deceits,
then Pugin was (as far as I can discover) the
first in England to make a point of'deception'
in structural features.
Ruskin adds considerably to Pugin's con-
ception. Apart from the tortuous reasoning
which even Pugin would not have put for-
ward, the original element lies in Ruskin's
third category, 'Operative Deceit'. A
machine-made product is dishonest, he be-
lieves, because it gives a false 'sense of human
labour and care spent on it'-not a very com-
pelling argument, as Ruskin later realized,
for the more widespread the practice of
machine manufacture became, the less would
people be deceived into thinking a machine
product was made by hand.28 When Ruskin
comes to argue against the use of cast-iron
ornaments, he finds himself unable to con-
demn their dishonesty. Rather, 'on the score
of truth, we can hardly allege anything
against them, since they are always distin-
guishable, at a glance, from wrought and
hammered work, and stand only for what
they are'.29 Ruskin disliked cast iron as
'vulgar' and 'paltry'; and when in another
context he admits that 'metallic construction'
may soon be the basis of architecture, he
discourages the use of iron in general-not
on grounds of its dishonesty, but because it
runs counter to 'all present sympathy and
association'.30
There is yet another kind of architectural
'deceit' to be found in the 'Lamp of Truth'.
Ruskin describes how, as the Gothic style
developed, window tracery was designed with
increasing delicacy; the mouldings became
27
'Some Observations on the Gothic Buildings
abroad', Archaeologia,xvi, 1812, p. 9.
28 Works (n. 4 above), viii, pp. 81-83 and n.
29
Ibid., p. 86.
30Ibid., p. 66. In 1854 Ruskin objected to the use of
iron on the additional grounds of lack of Biblical
precedent (Works (n. 4 above), xii, p. 52).
 348 NOTES AND DOCUMENTS
thinner, the openings wider and the shapes
more curvilinear. As this happened, the
stone-work 'lost its essence as a structure of
stone'; the tracery began to seem as flexible
and yielding as a net of thread, and in this
lay 'a deliberate treachery'. Then the tracery
was represented as not only ductile but pene-
trable, so that one moulding appeared to
flow through another unbroken: 'this form of
falsity was that which crushed the art'.31
Here, surely, is the reductioad absurdumof the
notion of truthfulness in architecture, for
Ruskin is condemning as dishonest a style of
tracery which might possibly be thought in-
appropriate, but which could hardly have
been intended to deceive or have deceived
anyone in practice. One might say that after
Pugin had first extended an old and useful
principle, Ruskin stretched it until its mean-
ing threatened to disappear.
The rather different axiom that an archi-
tectural component should not only perform
its function, but also appear to do so, was
likewise widespread in the early nineteenth
century, and indeed may be found in Vit-
ruvius. Willis made considerable use of the
principle with regard to Gothic architecture,
but this was surely not his 'most original
thought' ;32 one may find it clearly enun-
ciated by Aikin in 18o6 and, ironically for
Ruskin, it was even used by Joseph Forsyth,
writing from his French prison in I812,33 to
disparage the ducal palace of Venice. At
any rate, the question of apparent support is
not easily subsumed under the heading of
'deceits', and Ruskin might have avoided
some of his stranger leaps of logic if he had
not tried to deal with both subjects at once.
Of all the modern views on Pugin, the most
provocative is the theory that Pugin antici-
pated Ruskin in establishing a connexion
between the characteristicsof an architectural
style and those of the civilization which pro-
duced it. In his complaint that nineteenth-
century Gothic building lacks the 'soul' of its
ancient prototype, that only 'a restoration of
the ancient feeling and sentiments . . . can
restore Gothic architecture', Pugin is said to
31 Works(n. 4 above), viii, pp. 90-98.
32N. Pevsner, 'Robert Willis', Smith College,
xlvi, 1970o,P. 9;
inHistory,
Northampton,U.S.A., Studies
Willis, Remarks, 1835, p. 15. in An Apologyfor the Revival of Christian Archi-
33E. Aikin, 'An Essay on Modern Architecture', tecturehe admires 'that scholastic gravity of
i8o6, in Essays of the LondonArchitecturalSociety, 8o8,
p. 16; J. Forsyth, Remarkson the Antiquities,Arts and
LettersDuring an Excursionin Italy in theyears 180o2 and
1803, 1813, p. 364. See alsoJ. C. Loudon, A Treatise 188. 35 'A Batch of Architects', Fraser's Magazine, Mar.
on Farming, Improvingand Managing CountryResidences,
i8o6, p. 73.
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have 'first expressed the idea which changed
the course of the Gothic Revival and still
colours our architectural judgements'-that
is, 'the idea of style as something organically
connected with society, something which
springs inevitably from a way of life'.34
Both Pugin and Ruskin could be said to
have linked style with society, but not in the
same sense. For whereas Ruskin discerned
various human traits in architecture, and then
attributed these to the society responsible,
Pugin identified Gothic purely with medieval
Christianity, which he regarded as the essence
of Catholicism. Great though Pugin's in-
fluence was on builders of neo-Gothic
churches, he cannot be held responsible for
the thesis that Gothic has a particular
affinity with medieval character or social
phenomena beyond the specifically religious.
This is not to disparage Pugin; it may be to
his credit that he did not adopt this dubious
idea.
Pugin was a fervent Catholic and a devotee
of medieval Gothic, and the indissoluble
connexion between the two is the main
theme of his polemical writing: but he had
little to say about the nature of this con-
nexion-not surprisingly, since it scarcely
holds in either time or place, let alone in some
more subtle psychological way. In the first
edition of ContrastsPugin revived Rickman's
old fallacy that the demise of Gothic was due
to the Reformation, a 'palpably absurd' sug-
gestion, as Fraser'sMagazinepointed out. On
that basis, how could one explain the fact that
Gothic styles declined nearly simultaneously
in Protestant and Catholic countries? Pugin's
Replyhad to make clear that his proposition
was restricted to England; and in the preface
to the second edition of Contrastshe tacitly
acknowledged his mistake, naming instead
the fifteenth-century 'Renaissance' as the
primary cuse of the downfall of Gothic
architecture.35
The 'ancient feelings and sentiments'
quoted above are not specified. Pugin pre-
sumably felt that Catholicism extended into
every area of life, but gave his readers few
examples. In the Replyof 1837 he mentions
'the spirit of zeal, devotion and Art' that was
found in Catholics of the Middle Ages, and
34 K. Clark, The GothicRevival, 2nd edn., 1950, p.
1837, n.p., A Reply .. ., 1837, p. II.
 PUGIN AND RUSKIN
character, that reverend and solemn ap-
pearance, that is found in ancient erections'.
But this has no greater implications for art
and society than Milton's medieval ideal of
duly walking the studious cloisters pale.
Pugin's theme is that great architecture was
and can only be produced by Catholic archi-
tects and patrons, imbued with the spirit of
devotion; beyond this he does not stipulate
any particular society. His writings are free
from the suggestion that specific personal or
social qualities are transmitted from builder
to building. The message is that of Friedrich
Schlegel or Rio: in the case of the medieval
builder, 'it was the glorious nature of the
subject filled his mind with excellence, and
produced the splendid result'.36
It is misleading, therefore, to assimilate the
ideas of Pugin and Ruskin on this subject.
Thus it may be an axiom of Ruskin's that 'the
art of any country is the exponent of its
political and social virtues'; but it is not true
that 'here again he is influenced by the Pugin
relation between the quality of a society and
the quality of its art'.37
Those who attribute to Pugin a 'social
theory' of architecture may have been misled
by the illustrations to Contrasts,especially in
the 1841 edition. For these Pugin is famous,
but they are among his least typical produc-
tions. Whip-carrying Masters and down-
trodden poor are depicted against a back-
ground of drab nineteenth-century houses,
while the medieval buildings are accom-
panied by well-fed, contented-looking towns-
folk. So social and stylistic conditions are
persuasively coupled; but the social issues
suggested by the plates are not echoed in the
text.38 We read nothing of the maltreated
lower classes of the nineteenth century, nor of
the brutality of their policemen, nor of the
kindly social arrangements of the fifteenth
century. Pugin's bitesnoireswere on the whole
men he considered hostile to Catholicism or to
Gothic: Henry VIII (whose great buildings
'only offered a lure to his avarice'), 'the per-
fidious and dissembling Cranmer', 'James
Wyatt, of execrable memory', the mean, un-
Catholic Church Commissioners, and specu-
lators who indulged in 'chapel-raising' as a
lucrative investment.39This hardly amounts to
36 A An Apology for the Revival of
Reply, 1837, p. II;
ChristianArchitecture,1843, p. 31; Contrasts,I836, p. 23.
"37R. Williams, Cultureand Society z78o-z85o, Pen-
guin 1963, p. 142.
38 This point is also made
by P. Stanton (op. cit.,
n. 9 above), p. 88.
-3 Contrasts, 1836, pp. 7-27.
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349
a coherent indictment ofcontemporarysociety.
It is worth remembering that this Pugin,
supposedly bent on revolution by means
of 'radical propaganda',40 was the son of
the self-styled Comte Auguste Charles de
Pugin, a Royalist refugee from the French
Revolution; Pugin himself was proud of his
aristocratic lineage, and claimed Saxon
descent. He appears to have viewed medieval
society through the eyes of the lord of the
manor, under whose benevolence labourers
worked humbly but happily. (His assistance
of impoverished seamen was in the best
tradition of manorial philanthropy.) Though
a well-read medievalist, Pugin could write
'we are governed by the same laws and system
of political economy' as our ancestors in the
middle ages;41 referring to the fact that the
nineteenth century still had a sovereign,
peers, commons, nobility and civic func-
tionaries, all of whom required impressive
public buildings just as they had done before.
And in one of the few passagesin which Pugin
draws a parallel between medieval archi-
tecture and an aspect of life not specifically
religious, he proceeds in the same vein. In
merry Catholic England 'the architecture was
in keeping with the faith and manners of the
times-at once strong and hospitable'. He
means that 'the ancient gentry' had halls
spacious enough to entertain their friends,
while under the shelter of the groined gate-
houses, alms might be distributed to 'the
humbler guests'. For it is a Catholic prin-
ciple, claimed Pugin, 'that every man should
be lodged as befits his station and dignity'.42
It is difficult for us today to appreciate
the mid-nineteenth-century enthusiasms for
Gothic architecture, the passions it evoked
and the significance of apparently slight dif-
ferences in point of view. But two Victorian
commentators have supplied what is still the
most valuable assessment of the relative con-
tributions of Pugin and Ruskin. William
Morris saw Pugin as a prominent figure in the
first act of the Gothic revival, the act in which
Gothic 'triumphed as an exotic ecclesiastical
style'; but in the eyes of Morris, it was Ruskin
who ushered in the second act, in which
Gothic gained life and spirit and shed its re-
ligious connotations.43 Similarly the younger
Charles Lock Eastlake:
40 As is
suggested by J. D. Rosenberg, The Darkening
Glass, 1963, p. 52.
41 Apology(n. 36
above), p. 37.
42 True Principles(n. ii above), p. 61.
43 E. D. Lemire (ed.), The UnpublishedLecturesof
William Morris, Detroit 1969, pp. 76-78.
350 NOTES AND DOCUMENTS
Previous apologists for the Revival had
relied more or less on ecclesiastical senti-
ment, on historical interest, or on a vague
sense of the picturesque for their plea in its
favour. It was reserved for the author of
The Stonesof Veniceto strike a chord of
human sympathy that vibrated through all
the hearts, and to advocate, independently
of considerations which had hitherto only
enlisted the sympathy of a few, those prin-
ciples of Medieval Art whose application
should be universal.44
PATRICK R. M. CONNER
Royal Pavilion, Art Gallery & Museums,
Brighton
44 A Historyof the GothicRevival, 1872, p. 278.

DR. PARMA'S MEDICINAL MACARONIC

Addendumto p. I147.
See now also Carlo Cordik (ed.), Operedi Teofilo Folengo. Appendice: i maccheronici
prefolenghiani (La letteratura italiana: storia e testi, vol. 26, tom. i), Milan 1977,
which records all previous studies of the subject, but does not mention the Macharonea
medicinalis.

Addendumto p. 156.
G. G. Bartolotti received his doctorate at Ferrara, in 1497 if that was the year in
which Giovanni Sabadino degli Arienti wrote of Ferrara:
Li militano anchora medici e phylosophanti: . . . Sebastiano Aquiliense, huomo
certo non iniuriando, persona in sua faculth a veruno secondo, col suo discipulo
che '1 Studio honora Ioane Iacobo de Bertoletti parmense, cui novamente in tanta
disciplina nel publico examino ha lo anello d'oro et diadema conseguito; Nicolao
Leoniceno, mathematico claro, et da Faventia Antonio di Citadini . . .
(edited by W. L. Gundersheimer, Art and life at the courtof Ercole d'Este, Geneva I972,
p. 85). Bartolotti himself named Sebastiano dell'Aquila as one of his teachers (the other
being Cittadini) in De antiquitatemedicinae,xxi, I.

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