He calls nothing unclean but vice and crime, He sees meanness in nothing but in the sham, the affectation, and the spangles of outward show.
"But while it is in exalting lowly excellence that Jasmin takes especial delight, he is not blind, as some are, to excellence in high places.

All he seeks is the sterling and the real.

He recognises the sparkle of the diamond as well as that of the dewdrop.

But he will not look upon paste.
"He is thus pre-eminently the poet of nature; not, be it understood, of inanimate nature only, but of nature also, as it exists in our thoughts, and words, and acts of nature as it is to be found living and moving in humanity.

But we cannot paint him so well as he paints himself.