extended, as is obvious in Milton’s Lycidas, for example, both to its spirit and form in a degree that can never be revived.  No doubt the hackneyed and lifeless use into which mythology fell towards the close of the 17th century, and which continued through the 18th, disgusted the general reader with all allusion to it in modern verse.  And though, in deference to this disgust, and also in a measure participating in it, I abstained in my earlier writings from all introduction of pagan fable,—­surely, even in its humble form, it may ally itself with real sentiment—­as I can truly affirm it did in the present case.

444. *_Memory_. [XXVIII.]

The verses ‘Or strayed from hope and promise, self-betrayed,’ were, I am sorry to say, suggested from apprehensions of the fate of my friend H.C., the subject of the verses addressed to H.C. when six years old.  The piece which follows, to ‘Memory,’ arose out of similar feelings.

445. *_This Lawn_. [XXIX.]

This lawn is the sloping one approaching the kitchen-garden, and was made out of it.  Hundreds of times have I here watched the dancing of shadows amid a press of sunshine, and other beautiful appearances of light and shade, flowers and shrubs.  What a contrast between this and the cabbages and onions and carrots that used to grow there on a piece of ugly-shaped unsightly ground!  No reflection, however, either upon cabbages or onions.  The latter, we know, were worshipped by the Egyptians; and he must have a poor eye for beauty who has not observed how much of it there is in the form and colour which cabbages and plants of this genus exhibit through the various stages of their growth and decay.  A richer display of colour in vegetable nature can scarcely be conceived than Coleridge, my sister, and I saw in a bed of potatoe plants in blossom near a hut upon the moor between Inversneyd and Loch Katrine.  These blossoms were of such extraordinary beauty and richness that no one could have passed them without notice.  But the sense must be cultivated through the mind before we can perceive those inexhaustible treasures of Nature—­for such they truly are—­without the least necessary reference to the utility of her productions, or even to the laws whereupon, as we learn by research, they are dependent.  Some are of opinion that the habit of analysing, decomposing, and anatomising, is inevitably unfavourable to the perception of beauty.  People are led into this mistake by overlooking the fact that such processes being to a certain extent within the reach of a limited intellect, we are apt to ascribe to them that insensibility of which they are in truth the effect, and not the cause.  Admiration and love, to which all knowledge truly vital must tend, are felt by men of real genius in proportion as their discoveries in Natural Philosophy are enlarged; and the beauty in form of a plant or an animal is not made less but more apparent as a whole by a more accurate insight into its constituent properties and powers.  A Savant, who is not also a poet in soul and a religionist in heart, is a feeble and unhappy creature.