And liberal applications lie in art as nature. The Warwickshire justice tells Shakspeare, after hearing him recite his stanzas on a sweetbriar, “Thou mightest have added some moral about life and beauty: poets never handle roses without one.” But then Justice Shallow is the critic. The author of the “Citation and Examination” in which the criticism is uttered, has an imaginary dialogue between Vittoria Colonna and Michel Angelo—the former of whom defines the difference betwixt poetry and all other arts, all other kinds of composition, to be this: in them, utility comes before delight; in this, delight before utility. Buonarotti submits that in some pleasing poems there is nothing whatsoever of the useful. But Vittoria thinks he is mistaken: an obvious moral is indeed a heavy protuberance, which injures the gracefulness of a poem; but there is wisdom of one kind or other, she alleges, in every sentence of a really good composition, and it produces its effect in various ways. “The beautiful in itself is useful by awakening our finer sensibilities, which it must be our own fault if we do not often carry with us into action.” Leigh Hunt, in his “Song of the Flowers,” makes them exult in the fact, by their mere existence demonstrated, that heaven loves colour; that great Nature clearly joys in red and green: “What sweet thoughts she thinks of violets, and pinks, and a thousand flashing hues, made solely to be seen:” “Uselessness divinest Of a use the finest Painteth us, the teachers of the end of use; Travellers weary eyed Bless us far and wide; Unto sick and prison’d thoughts we give sudden truce; Not a poor town window Loves its sickliest planting, But its wall speaks loftier truth than Babylon’s whole vaunting.” So again Mr. Procter apostrophizes Nature in his “Song of the Snowdrop,” as having surely sent it forth alone to the cold and sullen season, like a thought at random thrown,—“sent it thus for some grave reason. “If ’twere but to pierce the mind With a single gentle thought, Who shall deem thee hard or blind, Who, that thou hast vainly wrought?”