r
plum-pudding, or turtle-soup that could be swallowed during a long life by
the most craving and capacious alderman of London! Man is of a dual
nature: he is not all body. He has other and far higher wants and
enjoyments than the purely physical--and these nobler appetites are
gratified by the charms of nature and the creations of inspired genius.

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

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever?

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

The vision and the faculty divine,

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
scattere