Page:A happy half-century and other essays.djvu/119

 Rh "Botanic Garden" combined "the sublimity of Michael Angelo, the correctness and elegance of Raphael, with the glow of Titian," was shocked by Nebuchadnezzar's pendant ears, and admitted that the passage was likely to provoke inconsiderate laughter.

The first part of Dr. Darwin's poem, "The Economy of Vegetation," was warmly praised by critics and reviewers. Its name alone secured for it esteem. A few steadfast souls, like Mrs. Schimmelpenninck, refused to accept even vegetation from a sceptic's hands; but it was generally conceded that the poet had "entwined the Parnassian laurel with the balm of Pharmacy" in a very creditable manner. The last four cantos, however,—indiscreetly entitled "The Loves of the Plants,"—awakened grave concern. They were held unfit for female youth, which, being then taught driblets of science in a guarded and muffled fashion, was not supposed to know that flowers had any sex, much less that they practised polygamy. The glaring indiscretion of their behaviour in the "Botanic Garden," their seraglios, their amorous embraces and involuntary libertinism, offended