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new men a hinterland unexplored and in their opinion not worth exploring.

I have discussed Mr Robertson's book at length because in spite of its friendliness of manner and good sense in matters of detail, it is, I believe, fundamentally wrong in principle. It assumes that there is, or can be, a new architecture-that is, an architecture which cuts right adrift from the past. The idea is about as valuable as that of Esperanto. We cannot dissociate ourselves from the past, whether we want to or not, and the results of the attempt to do so are seen in the idiotic failures which are now held up to us as masterpieces of modern art and letters. What impresses one most in these struggles for something new, is not their originality but their immodesty, the folly of thinking that it is worth while to leave the beaten track and stand on one's head in the ditch in order to attract attention.

The fact is that in the best of our contemporary architecture any one with the requisite knowledge can detect the various strains assimilated from the past. Mr Marriott in his useful account of 'Modern English Architecture' says, 'With the whole history of architecture behind it modern English architecture may be looked upon as the immediate product of the Greek and Gothic revivals.' If this were really so, the result could only be a hopeless jumble of incongruous and indeed antagonistic elements. These revivals have passed like other revivals, and the best modern English architecture has Inigo Jones and Wren, Gibbs, Hawksmoor, Chambers, and Adam behind it, and a great deal more as well. The elements are there for any one to read. The real difficulty of criticism comes in with the personal equation. English art is essentially individualistic, and it is the personal and individual factor that gives to English architecture an interest rarely to be found in the architecture of any other country. Mr Marriott is aware of this, but he scarcely does justice to the pioneers of an older generation than that of any architect now living-Decimus Burton, the architect of the Athenæum, Cockerell, and Barry, on the one hand, Devey, Shaw, Nesfield, Philip Webb, and Bodley on the other. The work of these men seems to be forgotten by the younger generation, but it was owing to Burton, and in a less

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degree to Cockerell, that it was possible for architecture to be academic and yet alive, and it was Norman Shaw who first caught up again the joyous spirit of the 16th century and realised it in terms of modern domestic architecture. Mr Marriott points out the importance of Shaw's work at Bedford Park forty years ago, the real forerunner of the garden city, but he scarcely does justice to the immense influence that Shaw had on the younger men of his time, and through them on the younger men of ours. Shaw was not a scholar, but he was a great architect, a man of fascinating personality, and the fortunate possessor of an extremely subtle and penetrating mind. As Ephraim Mackellar said of a very different person, the Master of Ballantrae, 'He was on the whole the most capable man that I ever knew.' Philip Webb in quite another way was scarcely less remarkable. His sincere enthusiasm for his art, the austere reticence of his design, and his complete and splendid unworldliness, gave him an influence on the younger men of his time second only to that of Shaw. It led to the establishment of the Arts and Crafts Society and the Art Workers' Guild, two institutions which have had a much greater influence on modern English art than our critics seem to be aware of. Mr Marriott, by the way, is not quite accurate when he says that Sir Aston Webb, the late Ernest Newton, and I became responsible for the design' of the new quadrant. Shaw's design was carried out in the Piccadilly Hotel, but it was found impossible to carry it out in the rest of the Quadrant, and I was consulted by the Woods and Forests. At my request, Sir Aston Webb and Ernest Newton were associated with me to consider the problem, but in point of fact all the designs and drawings for the completion of the Quadrant façades, though approved by my colleagues, were prepared by me.

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In their discourses on The Pleasures of Architecture,' Mr and Mrs Williams-Ellis do justice to Philip Webb, but their reference to Norman Shaw is wholly inadequate; indeed, it is little more than an introduction to a panegyric, as exuberant as it is uncritical, of a well-known living architect. The writers seem so much impressed with the value and importance of

contemporary work that they have rather neglected the study of the past, and their pages suggest an absence of that knowledge of antiquity which all architects in the past were supposed to possess, and without which the criticism of architecture is worthless, because it means that the critic has no standard of values. " Soanian Greek,' for example, as a description of Soane's manner of design, is about as wide of the mark as it is possible for a description to be. Jules Hardouin Mansart did not come into contact with Bernini. He was an obscure and quite unknown young man aged nineteen when the great Italian paid his memorable and ill-starred visit to France. The writers couple Selinus with Pergamon as typical of Hellenistic art. It is true that M. Hulot once drew out a characteristic French reconstruction of Selinus as a fully organised town, but the glory of Selinus was not this, but its seven Doric temples built some two to three hundred years before the great altar of Pergamon. Again, it is a mistake to suppose, as the writers do, that the French architects of the 18th century saw nothing to admire in Gothic. They admired it a great deal and said so. Daviler in 1670, the Academy of Architecture in 1708, and Boffrand, rather later, all paid their tribute to French Gothic; but having an excellent manner of their own, which they understood perfectly well, they had the good sense to adhere to it. The younger Blondel, the protagonist of orthodox classic, said specifically, 'Il y a nombre d'Edifices Gothiques où il regne une délicatesse singulière dans la bâtisse et que les meilleurs constructeurs de nos jours seraient fort embarassés d'imiter.' The man of the 18th century in France was far too clearheaded to be under any illusion as to Gothic architecture. He admired it greatly, but had not the slightest intention of attempting to reproduce it. The writers do not seem to be familiar with the practice of architects in the 17th century. In view of existing and authentic working drawings by Inigo Jones and Wren, it is absurd to say that those architects were able to build without anything that could be called a detailed plan.' Wren actually reminded Evelyn that architects were most particular as to these matters. Architecture is difficult enough in any case, but it would be reduced to absolute chaos if sketchiness, plus the 'inspiration' of the

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amateur, is to be the order of the day. Mr Geoffrey Scott is enthusiastically described as the Gibbon of Architecture.' Need I remind the writers that Gibbon was a historian? The writers refer to the delicate question of the public criticism of contemporary architecture by architects who are themselves in practice, and they appear to be in favour of it on the ground that authors and savants in the same line habitually review each other,' and that it is only in this way that the public can obtain really competent criticism. The cases are not parallel. Literary men may fairly criticise each other in regard to the fact that they use the same language, and that there is no mystery of specialised technique. Scientific men criticise each other, but it is on the question of facts. In architecture it is not a question of facts but of æsthetic, a matter of taste. To put it mildly, it seems to me unsportsmanlike for one architect to criticise another in the public press so long as they are both in the arena. Such criticism, based as it often is on inadequate knowledge, is apt to degenerate into advertisement and log-rolling on the one hand, and to neglect and disparagement on the other, the treatment accorded to Wren throughout the last few years of his life. There is an excellent rule at the Royal Academy that in lectures given within its walls no reference is permitted to the work of living artists, and in this regard architects would do well to observe the strict and honourable etiquette of the medical profession. It is most desirable that the public should have a better understanding of architecture, but I suggest that this is more likely to be brought about by the patient study of the art than by the straight tip in modern practice. The 'Pleasures of Architecture' has justified its existence to the extent of arriving at a second edition, but it is a little difficult to understand the point of view from which this book is written. It seems to be based on no principle, to proceed on no system, and to lead nowhere. Architecture should, no doubt, be brought into the market-place, but need this be done to the accompaniment of a jazz band?

Mr Geoffrey Scott's essay on 'The Architecture of Humanism' stands on quite another footing. It is a clever and in places a brilliantly written thesis on the

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principles of architectural criticism, and though he arrives at some eccentric and, as it seems to me, quite arbitrary conclusions, it is a valuable contribution to criticism. He addresses himself to the groundwork of architecture and the point of view from which it should be approached, and quoting Sir Henry Wotton, Well building hath three conditions: commodity, firmness, and delight,' he selects delight'—that is, the aesthetic pleasure to be derived from architecture-as the ultimate justification of the art. Arguing from this premise he demolishes in turn the Romantic fallacy-that is, the habit of criticising architecture from the point of view of its literary associations-which led Diderot to say that buildings had little or no interest till they were ruined, the mechanical fallacy which resolves architecture into terms of statics and dynamics, the ethical fallacy which treats it as mainly an affair of morals, and the biological fallacy which regards architecture as a matter of evolution, without regard to the aesthetic values of the different stages of its development. With Mr Scott's demonstration of the inadequacy of these methods of criticism one is in full agreement, but there is a flaw in his premises, and though it is not always easy to catch the drift of his sonorous sentences, his conclusion seems to me to be wilfully perverse. Mr Scott writes well, and in several passages with real eloquence, yet somehow his essay in criticism gives the impression of an ingenious exercise in dialectic, such as a Sophist might have written in support of the Baroque.

In the first place, what is architecture? Is it a serious art, or is it play-acting? Mr Scott begs the question when out of the three conditions he selects aesthetic value as the sole criterion, and as an architect himself he can hardly intend to eliminate plan and construction as unessential elements and restrict the art of architecture to the frontispiece. Yet, in fact, this is just what the Italians of the 17th century did; provided they got a grandiose and startling effect they seem to have been indifferent how the effect was arrived at. They cared only for show, and after the fine flame of the great architects of the Renaissance-Peruzzi, let us say, or Sanmichele-had burnt itself out, the melodramatic instinct of the Italians asserted itself and carried all, or

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