IT may be objected at this stage that in our treatment of earlier English furniture, criticisms and objections have been made only to a moderate extent, but that now Chippendale suffers from the lack of that former spirit of leniency. He does indeed incur the consequences of being regarded as a pioneer in the mahogany style of furniture, whose name and designs, moreover, are definitely known. In face of such a vast mass of anonymous work as the seventeenth century presents, work of which it is but rarely possible to ascribe more than one or two examples to one and the same hand, criticism in detail seems unprofitable. The lover of old oak furniture is less inclined to balance praise and blame, than to regard with appreciative toleration the naive and rude workmanship of village tradition and village carpenters. While safeguarding ourselves from the attitude which accepts all things old and genuine as equally artistic, we are still inclined to be less exacting with the seventeenth century than with the eighteenth. The latter makes pretensions of which the former would never have dreamed. It is hardly likely that the early joiner, if he had ever published a pattern-book, would have troubled himself or his public with the 'five orders' or the rules of perspective.

In his work, perhaps, he was more nearly akin to the architect than those later cabinetmakers of whom Batty Langley complained in 1740. In The City and Country Builder's and Workmen's Treasury of Designs, he speaks of 'the evil genius that so presides over cabinetmakers as to direct them to persevere in such a pertinacious and stupid manner that the rules of architecture, from whence all beautiful proportions are deduced, are unworthy of their regard.' To avoid this clumsily expressed accusation of being thus hag-ridden, the furniture-book makers perhaps committed themselves to their parade of architecture and perspective. These pretensions have brought the natural consequence of closer inquiry into their merits and defects. It is impossible to regard Chippendale in the same light as we view the village joiner. We are compelled to perceive that his designs include much that was extremely meretricious. Yet that need not blind us to the fact that he produced a great variety of furniture which is truly excellent in execution and truly charming in design. Even Sheraton, who, busied with his own claims, could not be expected to display enthusiasm for a forerunner, does Chippendale a certain justice.

In The Cabinet-Maker and Upholsterer's Drawing-Book, though he says that Chippendale's designs are 'now wholly antiquated and laid aside,' he admits that they are 'possessed of great merit, according to the times in which they were executed.' He suspects that Manwaring copied his chairs from Chippendale, and as to the book of Ince and Mayhew, it was 'a book of merit in its day, though much inferior to Chippendale's, which was a real original, as well as more extensive and masterly in its designs.' Placed at a distance from both Chippendale and Sheraton, we are able to perceive that the reproach of being antiquated and old-fashioned depended only upon the passing fancy of the hour. We ourselves feel now the old-fashionedness of late Sheraton and early nineteenth-century furniture, which is also inherently bad; but the best of Chippendale's work, and that of his successors, could only for a time be thrown aside. We have come back to the designs of all three of the great names of the eighteenth century cabinetmakers.

We take delight in Chippendale, Heppel-white, and Sheraton.