predecessors and find out their likings by a flower snapped off here and there to garnish their own nosegays. Cowper had been reading Thomson, and "the inverted year" pleased his fancy with its suggestion of that starry wheel of the zodiac moving round through its spaces infinite. He could not help loving a handy Latinism (especially with elision beauty added), any more than Gray, any more than Wordsworth, on the sly. But the member for Olney has the floor : "O Winter, ruler of the inverted year, Thy scattered hair with sleet like ashes filled, A sliding car, indebted to no wheels, But urged by storms along its slippery way, I love thee all unlovely as thou seem'st, And dreaded as thou art! Thou hold'st the sun A prisoner in the yet undawning east, Shortening his journey between morn and noon, .... I call this a good human bit of writing, imaginative, too, not so flushed, not so highfaluting (let me dare the odious word!) as the modern style since poets have got hold of a theory that imagination is commonsense turned inside out, and not common-sense sublimed, --but wholesome, masculine, and strong in the simplicity of a mind wholly occupied with its theme. To me Cow per is still the best of our descriptive poets for every-day wear. And what unobtrusive skill he has! How he heightens, for example, your sense of winter-evening se clusion, by the twanging horn of the postman on the bridge! That horn has rung in my ears ever since I first heard it, during the consulate of the second Adams. Wordsworth strikes a deeper note; but does it not sometimes come over one (just the least in the world) that one would give anything for a bit of nature pure and simple, without quite so strong a flavor of W. W. W. W. is, of course, sublime and all that - but! For my part, I will make a clean breast of it, and confess that I can't look at a mountain without fancying the late laureate's gigantic Roman nose thrust between me and it, and thinking of Dean Swift's profane version of Romanos rerum dominos into Roman nose! a rare un ! dom your nose! But do I judge verses, then, by the impression made on me by the man who wrote them? Not so fast, my good friend, but, for good or evil, the character and its intellectual product are inextricably interfused. If I remember aright, Wordsworth himself (except in his magnificent skating-scene in the "Prelude") has not much to say for winter out of doors. I cannot recall any picture by him of a snow-storm. The reason may possibly be that in the Lake Country even the winter storms bring rain rather than snow. He was thankful for the Christmas visits of Crabb Robinson, because they "helped him through the winter." His only hearty praise of winter is when, as Général Février, he defeats the French: "Humanity, delighting to behold A fond reflection of her own decay, Hath painted Winter like a traveller old, As though his weakness were disturbed by pain: Or, if a juster fancy should allow The Scottish poet Grahame, in his "Sabbath," says manfully : "Now is the time To visit Nature in her grand attire"; and he has one little picture which no other poet has surpassed : "High-ridged the whirled drift has almost reached The powdered keystone of the churchyard porch: Mute hangs the hooded bell; the tombs lie buried." Even in our own climate, where the sun shows his winter face as long and as brightly as in central Italy, the seduction of the chimney-corner is apt to predominate in the mind over the severer satisfactions of muffled fields and penitential woods. The very title of Whittier's delightful "Snow-Bound" shows what he was thinking of, though he does vapor a little about digging out paths. The verses of Emerson, perfect as a Greek fragment (despite the archaism of a dissyllabic fire), which he has chosen for his epigraph, tell us, too, how the "Housemates sit Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed In a tumultuous privacy of storm." They are all in a tale. It is always the tristis Hiems of Virgil. Catch one of them having a kind word for old Barbe Fleurie, unless he whines through some cranny, like a beggar, to heighten their enjoyment while they toast their slippered toes. I grant there is a keen relish of contrast about the bickering flame as it gives an emphasis beyond Gherardo della Notte to loved faces, or kindles the gloomy gold of volumes scarce less friendly, especially when a tempest is blundering round the house. Wordsworth has a fine touch that brings home to us the comfortable contrast of without and within, . during a storm at night, and the passage is highly characteristic of a poet whose inspiration always has an undertone of bourgeois :· "How touching, when, at midnight, sweep Snow-muffled winds, and all is dark, To hear, and sink again to sleep!' J. H., one of those choice poets who will not tarnish their bright fancies by publication, always insists on a snow-storm as essential to the true atmosphere of whist. Mrs. Battles, in her famous rule for the game, implies winter, and would doubtless have added tempest, if it could be had for the asking. For a good solid read also, into the small hours, there is nothing like that sense of safety against having your evening laid waste, which Euroclydon brings, as he bellows down the chimney, making your fire gasp, or rustles snow-flakes against the pane with a sound more soothing than silence. Emerson, as he is apt to do, not only hit the nail on the head, but drove it home, in that last phrase of the "tumultuous privacy." But I would exchange this, and give something to boot, for the privilege of walking out into the vast blur of a north-northeast snow-storm, and getting a strong draught on the furnace within, by drawing the first furrows through its sandy drifts. I love those "Noontide twilights which snow makes With tempest of the blinding flakes." If the wind veer too much toward the east, you get the heavy snow that gives a true Alpine slope to the boughs of your evergreens, and traces a skeleton of your elms in white; but you must have plenty of north in your gale if you want those driving nettles of frost that sting the cheeks to a crimson manlier than that of fire. During the great storm of two winters ago, the most robustious periwig-pated fellow of late years, I waded and floundered a couple of miles through the whispering night, and brought home that feeling of expansion we have after being in good company. "Great things doeth He which we cannot comprehend; for he saith to the snow, 'Be thou on the earth."" There is admirable snow scenery in Judd's "Margaret," but some one has confiscated my copy of that admirable book, and, perhaps, Homer's picture of a snowstorm is the best yet in its large simplicity :— "And as in winter-time, when Jove his cold sharp javelins throws Amongst us mortals, and is moved to white the earth with snows, The winds asleep, he freely pours till highest prominents, Hill-tops, low meadows, and the fields that crown with most contents The toils of men, seaports and shores, are hid, and every place, But floods, that fair snow's tender flakes, as their own brood, embrace." Chapman, after all, though he makes very free with him, comes nearer Homer than anybody else. There is nothing in the original of that fair snow's tender flakes, but neither Pope nor Cowper could get out of their heads the Psalmist's tender phrase, "He giveth his snow like wool," for which also Homer affords no hint. Pope talks of "dissolving fleeces," and Cowper of a "fleecy mantle." But David is nobly simple, while Pope is simply nonsensical, and Cowper pretty. If they must have prettiness, Martial would have supplied them with it in his Densum tacitårum vellus aquarum, which is too pretty, though I fear it would have pleased Dr. Donne. Eustathius of Thessalonica calls snow dwp épíades, woolly water, which a poor old French poet, Godeau, has amplified into this: Lorsque la froidure inhumaine De leur verd ornement depouille les forêts |