Antiquaries in the Age of Romanticism: 1789-1851 - Queen Mary ...

Bright and cheerful mornings are not unfrequently the harbingers of cloudy and stormy days: the ardent
mind commences a new and favourite task with eagerness and confidence, but is often thwarted in its
progress, and disappointed at the conclusion…
At its commencement I promised more than has been, or ever could be well performed; and have
consequently given umbrage to some persons whom I would gladly have secured as friends. I have,
however, deceived myself much more than others. 79
Britton’s was, as he saw it himself, a progress towards ever greater knowledge
and accuracy in the description of topographical and architectural subjects. It is not true
to suggest, however, that he, any more than Milner, considered scholarship as the
antithesis of sensibility. His career did not represent ‘the triumph of archaeology over
romanticism’. 80 What Britton popularised was exactly that understanding of Gothic
architecture that Milner had developed which saw it as a subjective, sentimental
experience, intensified by historical knowledge. One of Britton’s most original
contributions was deliberately to introduce the romantic Picturesque to architectural
antiquarianism.
Part of the reason why he was such a successful populariser and so engaged with
his readership, was that his arduous self-improvement meant that he was only ever one
step ahead of them and heading in the same direction. He had neither Milner’s scope nor
his inclination to be a maverick. It was in 1798, the year of Milner’s Dissertation and
Carter’s first contributions to the Gentleman’s Magazine, that Britton, who had escaped
from the drudgery of his job as a cellar-man only to endure ‘seven years of vicissitudes,
privations, and hardships…occasionally relieved by occupations which produced a bare
livelihood…’ 81 began ‘to feel and perceive a prospect of fixing [on] … a specific
pursuit’. 82 He had had an offer from a publisher for a book about Wiltshire, his native
county, and so applied himself to study topography and archaeology.
79
Britton, Chronological History and Graphic Illustrations of Christian Architecture in England, pp.i-ii.
80
Crook, ‘John Britton and the Genesis of the Gothic Revival’, p.99.
81
Britton, Autobiography, (1850), 1, p.73.
82
Britton, Autobiography, (1850), 1, p.135.
57