d 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_.

What! was he a better painter of nature than Shakespeare? The truth is
that Byron was a wretched critic, though a powerful poet. His praises
and his censures were alike unmeasured.

His generous ardor no cold medium knew.

He seemed to recognize no great general principles of criticism, but to
found all his judgments on mere prejudice and passion. He thought Cowper
"no poet," pronounced Spenser "a dull fellow," and placed Pope above
Shakespeare. Byron's line on Crabbe is inscribed on the poet's tombstone
at Trowbridge. Perhaps some foreign visitor on reading the inscription
may be surprized at his own ignorance when he learns that it is not the
author of _Macbeth_ and _Othello_ that he is to regard as the best
painter of nature that England has produced, but the author of the
_Parish Register_ and the _Tales of the Hall_. Absurd and indiscriminate
laudations of this kind confound all intellectual distinctions and make
criticism ridiculous. Crabbe is unquestionably a vigorous and truthful
writer, but he is not the _best_ we have, in any sense of the word.

Though Dr. Johnson speaks so contemptuously of Shenstone's rural
pursuits, he could not help acknowledging that when the poet began "to
point his prospects, to diversify his surface, to entangle his walks and
to wind his waters," he did all this with such judgment and fancy as
"made his little domain the envy of the great and the admiration of the
skilful; a place to be visited by travellers, and copied by designers."

Mason, in his _English Garden_, a poem once greatly admired, but now
rarely read, and never perhaps with much delight, does justice to the
taste of the Poet of the Leasowes.

Nor, Shenstone, thou
Shalt pass without thy meed, thou son of peace!
Who knew'st, perchance, to harmonize thy shades
Still softer than thy song; yet was that song
Nor rude nor inharmonious when attuned
To pastoral plaint, or tale of slighted love.

English pleasure-gardens have been much imitated by the French. Viscomte
Girardin, at his estate of Ermenonville, dedicated an inscription in
amusing French-English to the proprietor of the Leasowes--

THIS PLAIN STONE
TO WILLIAM SH