Thus, even in the
literature of a not too literary age, we find abundant tokens of that
strenuous national life which was manifesting itself in so many
different ways.
Art rather than literature reflected the deeper currents of the
thirteenth century. Architecture, the great art of the middle age, was
in its perfection. The inchoate gothic which the Cistercians brought
from Burgundy to the Yorkshire dales, and William of Sens transplanted
from his birthplace to Canterbury, was superseded by the more developed
art of St. Hugh's choir at Lincoln. In the next generation the new
style, imported from northern France, struck out ways of its own, less
soaring, less rigidly logical, yet of unequalled grace and
picturesqueness, such as we see in Salisbury cathedral, which
altogether dates from the reign of Henry III. Here also, as in
literature, foreign models stood side by side with native products.
Henry III.'s favourite foundation at Westminster reproduced on English
soil the towering loftiness, the vaulted roofs, the short choir, and
the ring of apsidal chapels, of the great French minsters.
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