Page:The education of the farmer.djvu/35

 thus write of his art, working-men, and such men who have no time for prettinesses, and have not the privilege of being 'admitted into the best company,' should have been indifferent to poetry, and that it should have come to be reckoned among the luxuries of the wealthy and the idle."

Now, in opposition to this view of poetry, which is about as reasonable as to admire one of the fair sex for the artificial flowers in her bonnet, let me set the picture drawn by Coleridge, our own Devon poet, of his old schoolmaster. Where, in modern times at least, shall we find the music of verse more sweet, or the delicacy of expression more tender, than in the songs of the Bard of Ottery? and yet see how strongly he feels about the common sense which is needed by the poet:—

In addressing myself to parents in the middle classes, and, in some degree, to the instructors of their children, I feel sure that this picture of a fine schoolmaster of the old school will not be out of place, and will put more plainly before them than any