Note 74 — Chapter VII

It does not seem certain that the term Gothic was applied to architecture in contempt of mediæval work. Evelyn in 1641 speaks of "one of the fairest churches of the Gotiq design I had seene," at a time when "Gothic" was used much as we employ "Teutonic" to-day. In 1713 Wren (Parentalia, a family biography by his son) says, "This we now call the Gothick manner of architecture so the Italians called what was not after the Roman style." The depreciatory use of the term seems first to occur in Dryden, 1695: "All that has not the ancient gust is called a barbarous or Gothique manner." So that it seems quite possible that Gothic architecture merely signified the style of the North of Europe as opposed to that of the South. Mallet (Northern Antiquities, translated from Introduction à l'Histoire de Dannemarc, 1770) refers to so many mediæval "edifices wherein we can find nothing to admire but the inexhaustible patience and infinite pains of those who built them!"