Note 46 — THE PLAIN SPEAKER (continued 8)

‘The Gothic architecture, though not so ancient as the Grecian, is more so to our imagination, with which the artist is more concerned than with absolute truth.’—Sir Joshua Reynolds’s Discourses, vol. ii. p. 138.

Till I met with this remark in so circumspect and guarded a writer as Sir Joshua, I was afraid of being charged with extravagance in some of the above assertions. Pereant isti qui ante nos nostra dixerunt. It is thus that our favourite speculations are often accounted paradoxes by the ignorant,—while by the learned reader they are set down as plagiarisms.