In praise of … Edward Lear's drawings

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/aug/30/in-praise-edward-lear-drawings

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There was an old man with a nose, who said it's just as I suppose. You devote a life to drawing fowl, enough to make Darwin scowl, and end up being known for the verse, or worse, and end being known for the verse. How could it be, said the bobcat to the gum tree, that they see us not for the postcards that we are? Why make us absurd, for whom and what nurd, when the picture's so much better than the word? Tis that man Lear, who's to blame. Not content with his fame, as travel writer, illustrator and painter. He made nonsense out of botany, and frightful monotony, out of words that simply do not scan. For it is not what they mean, but the laughs that they glean, that matters to posterity and pecan. An exhibition of his work will send you beserk at the talent of the man. Hats off to Lear, poet, painter and seer, for being such a renaissance bloke. Neither beast nor folk can shake off the yoke of the man with the terribly long nose.