Note 42 — Chapter III · EARLY PROFESSIONAL LIFE. 1820-1829.

On this point, it was remarked by the ‘Building News,’ immediately after his death (May 18th, 1860),—“It is the perfection of invention to invest with novelty that which is old, to adapt what has hitherto been useless, to make artistic that which is commonplace, and to impart life and beauty to dead forms. Greater inventive powers are required to accomplish this transformation than perhaps to devise new forms, which will never move or have their being.... Critics who prefer the charge of copyism against him probably mistake eccentricity for originality; in that sense Sir Charles was never original, for he was never eccentric.”