CHAPTER VIII

Romantic Movement, Historidsm
and Modem Movement
FROM 1760 TO THE PRESENT DAY
THE Romantic Movement originated in England. In literature
this fact is well enough known. For the arts and for archi-
tecture in particular it has yet to be established. In literature
Romanticism is the reaction of sentiment against reason, of nature
against artificiality, of simplicity against pompous display, of faith
against scepticism. Romantic poetry expresses a new enthusiasm for -
nature and a self-abandoning veneration of the whole, elemental,
undoubting life of early or distant civilisations. This veneration
led to the discovery of the Noble Savage and the Noble Greek, the
Virtuous Roman and the Pious Mediaeval Knight, Whatever its
object, the Romantic attitude is one of longing, that is antagonism
to the present, a present which some saw predominantly as Rococo
flippancy, others as unimaginative rationalism, and others again as
ugly industrialism and commercialism.
The opposition to the present and the immediate past goes through
all utterances of the Romantic spirit, although certain tendencies
within the new movement grew out of the i8th century's Ration-
alism and Rococo. It has been shown for instance how tie concep-
tion of the landscape garden—a truly Romantic conception—dates
back to Addison and Pope, but appears at first in Rococo dress.
Similarly that most popular architectural expression of Romanti-
cism, the revival of mediaeval forms, started long before the
Romantic Movement proper and went through all the phases of
18th-century style, before it became wholly Romantic in character.
. In fact the Gothic style had never quite died in England. There
is college work in Oxford of the iyth century which is unself-
conscious Perpendicular, notably the staircase up to the hall of
Christ Church. Wren also used Gothic forms in some of the
London City churches, and others followed him. But the beginnings
of an original handling of mediaeval elements, a revival and not a
survival, are connected with Vanbrugh and his school. His own house
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