Here, however, a serious case presents itself; in _Canna_ there was one stamen to one pistil, and this was comfortable; but in the next flower he happened to reach--the _Genista_ or Wild Broom--there were ten stamens to one pistil; that is, ten lovers to one lady; but the intrepid Doctor carries it through, all the same, managing the whole point simply by airy swiftness of treatment: "Sweet blooms Genista[A] in the myrtle shade, And ten fond brothers woo the haughty maid." But sometimes our botanist comes within a mere ace of beautiful poetry, as for example: "When o'er the cultured lawns and dreary wastes, Retiring Autumn flings her howling blasts, Bends in tumultuous waves the struggling woods, And showers their leafy honors on the floods; In withering heaps collects the flowery spoil; And each chill insect sinks beneath the soil: Quick flies fair Tulipa the loud alarms, And folds her infant closer in her arms; In some lone cave, secure pavilion, lies, And waits the courtship of serener skies." This book has what it calls Interludes between the parts, in which the Bookseller and the Poet discuss various points arising in it; and its oddity is all the more increased when one finds here a number of the most just, incisive, right-minded and large views not only upon the mechanism of poetry, but upon its essence and its relations to other arts.[B] [Footnote A: Genista, or _Planta Genista_, origin of "Plantagenet," from the original name-giver's habit of wearing a tuft of his native heath or broom in his bonnet.] [Footnote B: Carlyle's opinion of the book is given with a comical grimness in his Reminiscences _à propos_ of the younger Erasmus Darwin, who used much to visit the Carlyles after they settled in London: "Erasmus Darwin, a most diverse kind of mortal, came to seek us out very soon ('had heard of Carlyle in Germany,' &c.), and continues ever since to be a quiet home-friend, honestly attached; though his visits latterly have been rarer and rarer, health so poor, I so occupied, etc., etc. He had something of original and sarcastically ingenious in him; one of the sincerest, naturally honest, and most modest of men; elder brother of Charles Darwin (the famed Darwin on Species of these days), to whom I rather prefer him for intellect, had not his health quite doomed him to silence and patient idleness--grandsons, both, of the first famed Erasmus ('Botanic Garden,' etc.), who also seems to have gone upon 'species' questions, '_omnia ex conchis_' (all from oysters), being a dictum of his (even a stamp he sealed with still extant), as this present Erasmus once told me, many long years before this of Darwin on Species came up among us. Wonderful to me, as indicating the capricious stupidity of mankind: never could read a page of it, or waste the least thought upon it."]