and he was one of the better ones ...

I remember reading something about the differences in the western and eastern mindsets, demonstrated by the flower poems of Tennyson and Some Japanese Bloke. the SJB has a delicate hiaku, praising the mystery of the flower, whilst Tennyson steams in, ripping it apart in order to try to understand the composite parts

or Billy Connolly, describing the British interest in nature as shooting a bird out of the sky in order to see what it was, then carrying on ,..