Dr. Johnson's gastronomic allusions to nature recal the old story of a poet pointing out to a utilitarian friend some white lambs frolicking in a meadow. "Aye," said, the other, "only think of a quarter of one of them with asparagus and mint sauce!" The story is by some supposed to have had a Scottish origin, and a prosaic North Briton is made to say that the pretty little lambs, sporting amidst the daisies and buttercups, would "_mak braw pies_."
A profound feeling for the beautiful is generally held to be an essential quality in the poet. It is a curious fact, however, that there are some who aspire to the rank of poet, and have their claims allowed, who yet cannot be said to be poetical in their nature--for how can that nature be, strictly speaking, _poetical_ which denies the sentiment of Keats, that
Both Scott and Byron very earnestly admired Dr. Johnson's "_London_" and "_The Vanity of Human Wishes_." Yet the sentiments just quoted from the author of those productions are far more characteristic of a utilitarian philosopher than of one who has been endowed by nature with
and made capable, like some mysterious enchanter, of
Clothing the palpable and the familiar With golden exhalations of the dawn.
Crabbe, also a prime favorite with the authors of the _Lay of the Last Minstrel_, and _Childe Harold_, is recorded by his biographer--his own son--to have exhibited "a remarkable indifference to all the proper objects of taste;" to have had "no real love for painting, or music, or architecture or for what a painter's eye considers as the beauties of landscape." "In botany, grasses, the most _useful_ but the least ornamental, were his favorites." "He never seemed to be captivated with the mere beauty of natural objects or even to catch any taste for the arrangement of his specimens. Within, the house was a kind of scientific confusion; in the garden the usual showy foreigners gave place to the most scarce flowers, especially to the rarer weeds, of Britain; and were scattered here and there only for preservation. In fact he neither loved order for its own sake nor had any very high opinion of that passion in others."[024] Lord Byron described Crabbe to be
Though nature's sternest painter, yet _the best_.