t of
landscape, a more delightful place to lose one-self in, than even its
larger and better preserved neighbour.

[024] Coleridge is reported to have said--"There is in Crabbe an
absolute defect of high imagination; he gives me little pleasure. Yet no
doubt he has much power of a certain kind, and it is good to cultivate,
even at some pains, a catholic taste in literature." Walter Savage
Landor, in his "Imaginary Conversations," makes Porson say--"Crabbe
wrote with a two-penny nail and scratched rough truths and rogues' facts
on mud walls." Horace Smith represents Crabbe, as "Pope in worsted
stockings." That there is merit of some sort or other, and that of no
ordinary kind, in Crabbe's poems, is what no one will deny. They
relieved the languor of the last days of two great men, of very
different characters--Sir Walter Scott and Charles James Fox.

[025] The poet had a cottage and garden in Kew-foot-Lane at or near
Richmond. In the alcove in the garden is a small table made of the wood
of the walnut tree. There is a drawer to the table which in all
probability often received charge of the poet's effusions hot from the
brain. On a brass tablet inserted in the top of the table is this
inscription--"_This table was the property of James Thomson, and always
stood in this seat._"

[026] Shene or Sheen: the old name of Richmond, signifying in Saxon
_shining_ or _splendour_.

[027] Highgate and Hamstead.

[028] In his last sickness

[029] On looking back at page 36 I find that I have said in the foot
note that it is only within _the present century_ that gardening has
been elevated into _a fine art_. I did not mean within the 55 years of
this 19th century, but _within a hundred years_. Even this, however, was
an inadvertency. We may go a little further back. Kent and Pope lived to
see Landscape-Gardening considered a fine art. Before their time there
were many good practical gardeners, but the poetry of the art was not
then much regarded except by a very few individuals of more than
ordinary refinement.

[030] Catherine the Second grossly disgraced herself as a woman--partly
driven into misconduct herself by the behaviour of her husband--but as a
sovereign it cannot be denied that she exhibited a penetrating sagacity
and great munificence; and perhaps the lovers of literature and science
should treat her memory with a little consideration. When Diderot was in
distress and advertized his library for sale, the Empress