l bed,
And heavenly quires the hymenean sung

I have already quoted from Leigh Hunt's "Stories from the Italian poets"
an amusing anecdote illustrative of Ariosto's ignorance of botany. But
even in these days when all sorts of sciences are forced upon all sorts
of students, we often meet with persons of considerable sagacity and
much information of a different kind who are marvellously ignorant of
the vegetable world.

In the just published Memoirs of the late James Montgomery, of
Sheffield, it is recorded that the poet and his brother Robert, a
tradesman at Woolwich, (not Robert Montgomery, the author of 'Satan,'
&c.) were one day walking together, when the trader seeing a field of
flax in full flower, asked the poet what sort of corn it was. "Such corn
as your shirt is made of," was the reply. "But Robert," observes a
writer in the _Athenaeum_, "need not be ashamed of his simplicity.
Rousseau, naturalist as he was, could hardly tell one berry from
another, and three of our greatest wits disputing in the field whether
the crop growing there was rye, barley, or oats, were set right by a
clown, who truly pronounced it wheat."

Men of genius who have concentrated all their powers on some one
favorite profession or pursuit are often thus triumphed over by the
vulgar, whose eyes are more observant of the familiar objects and
details of daily life and of the scenes around them. Wordsworth and
Coleridge, on one occasion, after a long drive, and in the absence of a
groom, endeavored to relieve the tired horse of its harness. After
torturing the poor animal's neck and endangering its eyes by their
clumsy and vain attempts to slip off the collar, they at last gave up
the matter in despair. They felt convinced that the horse's head must
have swollen since the collar was put on. At last a servant-girl beheld
their perplexity. "La, masters," she exclaimed, "you dont set about it
the right way." She then seized hold of the collar, turned it broad end
up, and slipped it off in a second. The mystery that had puzzled two of
the finest intellects of their time was a very simple matter indeed to a
country wench who had perhaps never heard that England possessed a
Shakespeare.

James Montgomery was a great lover of flowers, and few of our English
poets have written about the family of Flora, the sweet wife of Zephyr,
in a more genial spirit. He used to regret that the old Floral games and
processions on May-day and other holidays