ABSTRACT
In eighteenth-century Britain, antiquarian efforts to evaluate and canonize the nation's most enduring early authors were closely associated with an archaeological enthusiasm for the study and recovery of what was perceived to be a native architectural style: a renewed appreciation of buildings — both extant and ruined — from the Middle Ages. Indeed, literary scholars frequently drew an analogy between Gothic architecture and British authors who were understood to have worked outside the classical tradition. In 1715, John Hughes introduced his edition of Spenser with the assertion that to compare the Faery Queen with
Models of Antiquity, would be like drawing a Parallel between the Roman and the Gothick architecture. In the first there is doubtless a more natural Grandeur and Simplicity: in the latter we find great Mixtures of Beauty and Barbarism yet assisted by the Invention of a Variety of inferior Ornaments; and tho the former is more majestick in the whole, the latter may be very surprising and agreeable in its Parts.
(Hughes 1715: lx–lxi)