Oofy here: Editorial: Cowper. Deal with it.
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‘When in Sense and Sensibility Marianne Dashwood lamented that “every body pretends to feel and tries to describe with the taste and elegance of him who first defined what picturesque beauty was”, the ‘him’ in question was the Reverend William Gilpin.
Mr R.S. has written from Devon to ask our editor why Repton cross-references from red book to red book
‘Many theorists have advanced evidence for an association between Humphry Repton and Jane Austen.
Oofy here: Editorial: Time for candour. Point is. Reppers had no class. Stood at the wrong end of m’ punt. Cambridge man. Tryin’ too hard. Same as Jane Austen.
The editor being out of town, the Type-Setter is called on to address the correspondence that daily reaches the Gazette. The question that falls to him now is this: if in each of his landscapes Repton tried to design something unique, does he thereby lose our respect, for being a jack-of-all-trades with no integrity, prepared to turn his hand to anything that would make him a bob or two?
Oofy here: Editorial: time to talk horses. Bought Gi-gi at the Stowe Fair. Crossed the gipsy’s palm with silver and she said the horse was mine. Couldn’t run faster if she had 5 legs. Matter of fact. You can say that about her. Fact is. If you were a horse and had 5 legs you’d spend all your time thinking which hoof to go down on next. Never get anywhere.
‘“On this principle they have proceeded too hastily at Plas Newydd in grubbing hedges & pulling down cottages, for the sake of showing an extent of open lawn in a direction where plantations ought to be encouraged to screen a bleak country,
‘The approaches at Norris Castle are symmetrical and have a certain overriding geometry. There is nothing else like this in Repton’s oeuvre, hence they are unlikely to have been designed by him.