[1766] Our next meeting at the Mitre was on Saturday the 15th of February … I having mentioned that I had passed some time with Rousseau in his wild retreat, and having quoted some remark made by Mr Wilkes, with whom I had spent many pleasant hours in Italy, Johnson said, sarcastically: ‘It seems, sir, you have kept very good company abroad, Rousseau and Wilkes!’ Thinking it enough to defend one at a time, I said nothing as to my gay friend, but answered with a smile: ‘My dear sir, you don’t call Rousseau bad company. Do you really think him a bad man?’ JOHNSON : Sir, if you are talking jestingly of this, I don’t talk with you. If you mean to be serious, I think him one of the worst of men; a rascal, who ought to be hunted out of society, as he has been. Three or four nations have expelled him; and it is a shame that he is protected in this country. […] Rousseau, sir, is a very bad man. I would sooner sign a sentence for his transportation, than that of any felon who has gone from the Old Bailey these many years. Yes, I should like to have him work in the plantations. BOSWELL : Sir, do you think him as bad a man as Voltaire? JOHNSON: Why, sir, it is difficult to settle the proportion of iniquity between them. […]
On the 30th of September [1769] we dined together at the Mitre. I attempted to argue for the superior happiness of the savage life, upon the usual fanciful topics. JOHNSON: Sir, there can be nothing more false. The savages have no bodily advantages beyond those of civilised men. They have not better health; and as to care or mental uneasiness, they are not above it, but below it, like bears. No, sir; you are not to talk such paradox: let me have no more of’t. It cannot entertain, far less can it instruct. Lord Monboddo, one of your Scotch judges, talked a great deal of such nonsense. I suffered him; but I will not suffer you. BOSWELL: But, sir, does not Rousseau talk such nonsense? JOHNSON: True, sir; but Rousseau knows he is talking nonsense, and laughs at the world for staring at him. […]
In the morning of Tuesday, 15th June [1784], while we sat at Dr Adams’s, we talked of a printed letter from the Reverend Herbert Croft, to a young gentleman who had been his pupil, in which he advised him to read to the end of whatever books he should begin to read. JOHNSON: This is surely a strange advice; you may as well resolve that whatever men you happen to get acquainted with, you are to keep to them for life. A book may be good for nothing; or there may be only one thing in it worth knowing; are we to read it all through? These Voyages (pointing to the three large volumes of Voyages to the South Sea, which were just come out), who will read them through? A man had better work his way before the mast, than read them through; they will be eaten by rats and mice before they are read through. There can be little entertainment in such books; one set of savages is like another. BOSWELL: I do not think the people of Otaheite can be reckoned savages. JOHNSON: Don’t cant in defence of savages. BOSWELL: They have the art of navigation. JOHNSON: A dog or a cat can swim. BOSWELL: They carve very ingeniously. JOHNSON: A cat can scratch, and a child with a nail can scratch.
IIC12 Antoine Quatremère de Quincy (1755–1849) from Egyptian Architecture
Quatremère de Quincy became an influential administrator of the arts at the Institut des Beaux‐Arts in Paris during the early nineteenth century. He initially studied as a sculptor, however, at the French school in Rome, where he was influenced by Winckelmann’s ideas, and in his early career wrote extensively on architecture. In the present text, he argues against claims that Greek architecture was indebted to Egypt, and tries to look below the surface of what he regarded as merely superficial similarities, in order to essay something akin to a grammar of architecture. What makes this of note for the present anthology is that he rooted his conception of architecture in contemporary theories of human social evolution, from hunter‐gatherers to pastoralists to agriculture (cf. IIC8). Quatremère argues that three primordial architectural forms – the cave, the tent and the hut – stood at the root of Egyptian, Chinese and Greek architecture respectively. What is significant about the text is not so much the veracity of Quatremère’s claims as such (e.g. whether Chinese architecture was ‘really’ grounded in the tent, or Egyptian in the cave, or Greek in the hut) but the way that his argument builds a bridge between socio‐economic theory on the one hand and material culture on the other – a connection that is not always secure even today. In changed circumstances – not least in the wake of fully fledged theories of evolution – Quatremère’s claim about the roots of architecture and early technologies of plaiting and weaving was to have a bearing on the nineteenth‐century debate over the origins of art (cf. IIIA12 and IVC passim, especially IVC8). The present extracts are taken from De l’Architecture Égyptienne, considérée dans son origine, ses principes et son goût, et comparée sous les mêmes rapports à l’Architecture Grecque, Paris, 1785, pp. 12–19. They were translated for this volume by Chris Miller. (Further selections from Quatremère de Quincy can be found in Art in Theory 1648–1815 IVB7, pp. 710–18 and Art in Theory 1815–1900 IB5 pp. 120–5.)
Architecture was not invented by any one people. It is, by nature, a universal consequence of the needs of humankind and of the pleasures that are, in the social state, inseparable from those needs.
The invention of architecture must be paralleled with that of language, meaning that neither invention can be attributed to any individual; both are among the attributes of humankind. […]
It would be a grave error if, by confusing the principles of the universal grammar that pertains to language itself with the syntactical rules particular to each language, one sought to establish an affinity based solely on the fact that two languages both possessed declensions and conjugations. In this field, I am not aware of anyone who has fallen into such error.
By contrast, one might say that, in architecture, this kind of error has very rarely been avoided. The general maxims of the art of building, common to all forms of architecture, have almost invariably been confused with the particular principles and originating circumstances of each tradition, so that connections and kinship have been imagined to exist between the most mutually exclusive species of architecture.
A great many authors claim that the origins of Greek architecture are to be found in Egypt because the Egyptians employed columns, capitals, cornices, and so on in their buildings before the Greeks.
In an area as susceptible to the spirit of system as architecture, if once superficial authors bring to bear either too vague or too confined a knowledge, if once an ignorance of the facts, an irrelevant preoccupation or mere bad judgement infiltrate the elements of their analysis, there is no limit to the abuse that they are capable of committing in this field, no limit to the superficiality of their inferences, analogies or comparisons.
One needs neither profoundly researched notions nor a great power of reason to perceive that several of the similarities discovered between the architectures of different peoples indicate neither a common origin nor a communication of taste. There is, in the nature of the case, an important distinction to be made between characteristic features and general ones. In this field, the spirit of sane enquiry lies in distinguishing common features – the elementary resemblances resulting from the uniformity of certain universal causes – from true resemblances, which are the local or particular results of affinity or imitation. […]
Among the causes that must very actively have determined the characteristic forms of different architectural traditions, one can hardly deny that the lifestyle of the nascent