Poets and their Favourite Trees. 183 



poetry and forestry ; not only for its grotesque figure and great size 

 but for the interest felt in the poet of " The Task." 



"England," said Hugh Miller, "has produced many greater poets than 

 Shenstone, but she never produced a greater landscape gardener." 

 "Leasowes" is Shenstone's best and noblest woodland poem. 



Samuel Rogers saw at Daltou a lime 130 feet high at Lord ]\Ionta- 

 gue's country seat and never forgot the time, — 



" When the sweet lime so full of bees in June 

 Led us to meet beneath its boughs at noon." 



Wordsworth's hearty love for trees is well known; Scott was almost 

 an idolater of woodlands; Tennyson's delight in forest scenery is written 

 in many pages of his pleasing poems. Did space permit we might 

 extend these cursory notes to almost any length ; but we shall at 

 present draw to a close by quoting a few passages from an epistle 

 addressed in 1711 to Jacob Bobert, author of "The Effects of Great 

 Forests onJTrees and Plants, &c," Professor of ]^>otany at Oxford. 



" Show us the trees by nature spread 

 To form the coolest noontide shade ; 

 When our first ancestors were seen 

 Outstretched upon the grassy green. 



***** 



Teach us, thou kindjudicious sage, 

 The manners of a wiser age. 

 To thee was given by Jove to keep 

 Those grottoes where the Muses sleep ; 

 To plant the forests where they sing, 

 Fast by the cool Castalian spring ; 

 With myrtles their fair lions raise, 

 Soft, intermixed with Delian bays ; 

 And when they wake at earliest day, 

 To strew with sweetest flowers their way. 



=3^ tF "Tr ^ TT 



Till soft Favonius, from the flowers 

 Breathes balmy dews, drops fruitful showers, 

 And with the gentle twins at play 

 Brings in the Elysian month of May." 



