With all his zeal for reform by a stricter conformity to classic models, the designs of Inigo Jones were never truly classical, and they often exhibit ludicrous aberrations. He had no true conception of the principles of classic art, as no architects of the Renaissance ever had. The Palladian architecture, which he mainly strove to follow, was itself, as we have seen, far from true to classic design. Some of these aberrations are strikingly shown in the west front which he built to the nave of old St. Paul’s cathedral. In attempting to apply classic details to such a building he was obliged to depart widely from classic principles. His scheme, as shown in Kent’s print (Fig. 134) is as incongruous a mixture as was ever produced by the Elizabethan craftsmen. This front, in its main outline, has to follow the form of the Mediæval structure, with its high nave and low aisles. To this mediæval form the architect has affixed a variety of features derived from Roman, Renaissance, and even Egyptian sources. He has crowned the wall with a pseudo-classic cornice surmounted by a steep gable, he has set obelisks on Roman pedestals over the buttresses, affixed reversed consoles to the clerestory walls, and built a Corinthian portico with a balustrade upon its entablature, and completed the scheme with flanking towers crowned with lanterns. It is a thoroughly barbarous composition, which even Walpole complains of as follows: “In the restoration of that cathedral he made two capital faults. He first renewed the sides with very bad Gothic, and then added a Roman portico, magnificent and beautiful indeed, but which has no affinity with the ancient parts that remained, and made his own Gothic appear ten times heavier.”[165] The art of Inigo Jones has been thoughtlessly lauded in more recent times. “His special strength,” says Mr. Bloomfield, his latest panegyrist, “lay in his thorough mastery of proportion, his contempt for mere prettiness, and the rare distinction of his style. His own theory of architecture was that, in his own words, ‘it should be solid, proportional according to the rules, masculine and unaffected.’[166] Was Inigo Jones a master of proportion? Does he not in this declaration betray a fundamental misconception of the true meaning of proportion? Is any genuine work of art “proportional according to the rules,” _i.e._ the mechanical formulas of Vitruvius or Palladio on which he professed to base his practice? And did Jones ever carry out in practice his avowed theory that architecture should be unaffected? Can an art be unaffected which is so frankly copied from a foreign style? I have characterized the spirit of much of the architecture of the Renaissance as theatrical; that of Inigo Jones is preëminently so, and it is significant that he was extensively employed, in his early career, in designing architectural backgrounds for the stage.