[018] Two hundred acres and two hundred millions of francs were made over to Le Notre by Louis XIV. to complete these geometrical gardens.  One author tells us that in 1816 the ordinary cost of putting a certain portion of the waterworks in play was at the rate of 200 L. per hour, and another still later authority states that when the whole were set in motion once a year on some Royal fete, the cost of the half hour during which the main part of the exhibition lasted was not less than 3,000 L. This is surely a most senseless expenditure.  It seems, indeed, almost incredible.  I take the statements from Loudon’s excellent Encyclopaedia of Gardening.  The name of one of the original reporters is Neill; the name of the other is not given.  The gardens formerly were and perhaps still are full of the vilest specimens of verdant sculpture in every variety of form.  Lord Kames gives a ludicrous account of the vomiting stone statues there;—­“A lifeless statue of an animal pouring out water may be endured” he observes, “without much disgust:  but here the lions and wolves are put in violent action; each has seized its prey, a deer or a lamb, in act to devour; and yet, as by hocus-pocus, the whole is converted into a different scene:  the lion, forgetting his prey, pours out water plentifully; and the deer, forgetting its danger, performs the same work:  a representation no less absurd than that in the opera, where Alexander the Great, after mounting the wall of a town besieged, turns his back to the enemy, and entertains his army with a song.”

[019] Broome though a writer of no great genius (if any), had yet the honor to be associated with Pope in the translation of the Odyssey.  He translated the 2nd, 6th, 8th, 11th, 16th, 18th, and 23rd books.  Henley (Orator Henley) sneered at Pope, in the following couplet, for receiving so much assistance: 

    Pope came clean off with Homer, but they say,
    Broome went before, and kindly swept the way.

Fenton was another of Pope’s auxiliaries.  He translated the 1st, 4th, 19th and 20th books (of the Odyssey).  Pope himself translated the rest.

[020] Stowe

[021] The late Humphrey Repton, one of the best landscape-gardeners that England has produced, and who was for many years employed on alterations and improvements in the house and grounds at Cobham, in Kent, the seat of the Earl of Darnley, seemed to think that Stowe ought not to monopolize applause and admiration, “Whether,” he said, “we consider its extent, its magnificence or its comfort, there are few places that can vie with Cobham.”  Repton died in 1817, and his patron and friend the Earl of Darnley put up at Cobham an inscription to his memory.