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"GOTHIC" ARCHITECTURE
It would require more space than you could allot to the subject, to
explain, at much length, "the origin, as well as the date, of the
introduction of the term '_Gothic_,' as applied to pointed styles of
ecclesiastical architecture," required by R. Vincent, of Winchester, in
your Fourth Number. There can be no doubt that the term was used at
first contemptuously, and in derision, by those who were ambitious to
imitate and revive the Grecian orders of architecture, after the revival
of classical literature. But, without citing many authorities, such as
Christopher Wren, and others, who lent their aid in depreciating the old
mediæval style, which they termed Gothic, as synonymous with every thing
that was barbarous and rude, it may be sufficient to refer to the
celebrated Treatise of Sir Henry Wotton, entitled _The Elements of
Architecture_, 4to., printed in London so early as 1624. This work was
so popular, that it was translated into Latin, and annexed to the works
of Vitruvius, as well as to Freart's _Parallel of the Ancient
Architecture with the Modern_. Dufresnoy, also, who divided his time
between poetry and painting, and whose work on the latter art was
rendered popular in this country by Dryden's translation, uses the term
"_Gothique_" in a bad sense. But it was a strange misapplication of the
term to use it for the pointed style, in contradistinction to the
circular, formerly called Saxon, now Norman, Romanesque, &c. These
latter styles, like Lombardic, Italian, and the Byzantine, of course
belong more to the Gothic period than the light and elegant structures
of the pointed order which succeeded them. Felibien, the French author
of the _Lives of Architects_, divides Gothic architecture into two
distinct kinds--the _massive_ and the _light_; and as the latter
superseded the former, the term Gothic, which had been originally
applied to both kinds, seems to have been restricted improperly to the
latter only. As there is now, happily, no fear of the word being
understood in a bad sense, there seems to be no longer any objection to
the use of it in a good one, whatever terms may be used to discriminate
all the varieties of the style observable either at home or abroad.