"
George Wither has well said in commendation of his Muse:
Her divine skill taught me this;
That from every thing I saw
I could some instruction draw,
And raise pleasure to the height
By the meanest object's sight,
By the murmur of a spring
_Or the least bough's rustelling;
By a daisy whose leaves spread
Shut, when Titan goes to bed;
Or a shady bush or tree_,
She could more infuse in me
Than all Nature's beauties can
In some other wiser man.
We must not interpret the epithet _wiser_ too literally. Perhaps the
poet speaks ironically, or means by some other _wiser man_, one allied
in character and temperament to a modern utilitarian Philosopher.
Wordsworth seems to have had the lines of George Wither in his mind when
he said
Thanks to the human heart by which we live,
Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,
To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.
Thomas Campbell, with a poet's natural gallantry, has exclaimed,
Without the smile from partial Beauty won,
Oh! what were man?--a world without a sun!
Let a similar compliment be presented to the "painted populace that
dwell in fields and lead ambrosial lives." What a desert were this scene
without its flowers--it would be like the sky of night without its
stars! "The disenchanted earth" would "lose her lustre.
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