of chivalry before the fables of Greece.”  Hurd says that, if the “Faerie Queene” be regarded as a Gothic poem, it will be seen to have unity of design, a merit which even the Wartons had denied it.  “When an architect examines a Gothic structure by the Grecian rules he finds nothing but deformity.  But the Gothic architecture has its own rules by which; when it comes to be examined, it is seen to have its merit, as well as the Grecian.”

The essayist complains that the Gothic fables fell into contempt through the influence of French critics who ridiculed and disparaged the Italian romancers, Ariosto and Tasso.  The English critics of the Restoration—­Davenant, Hobbes, Shaftesbury—­took their cue from the French, till these pseudo-classical principles “grew into a sort of a cant, with which Rymer and the rest of that school filled their flimsy essays and rumbling prefaces. . .  The exact but cold Boileau happened to say something about the clinquant of Tasso,” and “Mr. Addison,[2] who gave the law in taste here, took it up and sent it about,” so that “it became a sort of watchword among the critics.”  “What we have gotten,” concludes the final letter of the series, “by this revolution, is a great deal of good sense.  What we have lost is a world of fine fabling, the illusion of which is so grateful to the charmed spirit that, in spite of philosophy and fashion ‘Faery’ Spenser still ranks highest among the poets; I mean with all those who are earlier come of that house, or have any kindness for it.”

We have seen that, during the classical period, “Gothic,” as a term in literary criticism, was synonymous with barbarous, lawless, and tawdry.  Addison instructs his public that “the taste of most of our English poets, as well as readers, is extremely Gothic."[3] After commending the French critics, Bouhours and Boileau, for their insistence upon good sense, justness of thought, simplicity, and naturalness he goes on as follows:  “Poets who want this strength of genius, to give that majestic simplicity to nature which we so much admire in the works of the ancients, are forced to hunt after foreign ornaments, and not to let any piece of wit, of what kind soever, escape them.  I look upon these writers as Goths in poetry, who, like those in architecture, not being able to come up to the beautiful simplicity of the old Greeks and Romans, have endeavored to supply its place with all the extravagances of an irregular fancy.”  In the following paper (No. 63), an “allegorical vision of the encounter of True and False Wit,” he discovers, “in a very dark grove, a monstrous fabric, built after the Gothic manner and covered with innumerable devices in that barbarous kind of sculpture.”  This temple is consecrated to the God of Dullness, who is “dressed in the habit of a monk.”  In his essay “On Taste” (No. 409) he says, “I have endeavored, in several of my speculations, to banish this Gothic taste which has taken possession among us.”