76 BIRDS AND MAN 



to us as perhaps the most modern-minded of those 

 who ceased to Hve a century ago. Undoubtedly 

 he was as bad a naturaUst as any smger before or 

 after him, and as any true poet has a perfect right 

 to be. As bad, let us say, as Shakespeare and 

 Wordsworth and Tennyson. He does not, it is 

 true, confound the sparrow and hedge-sparrow 

 like Wordsworth, nor confound the white owl with 

 the brown owl like Tennyson, nor puzzle the ornith- 

 ologist with a " sea-blue bird of March." But we 

 must not forget that he addressed some verses to 

 a nightingale heard on New Year's Day. It is clear 

 that he did not know the crows well, for in a letter 

 of May 10, 1780, to his friend Newton, he writes : 

 " A crow, rook, or raven, has built a nest in one 

 of the young elm-trees, at the side of Mrs Aspray's 

 orchard." But when he wrote those words — 



Sounds inharmonious in themselves, and harsh, 

 Yet heard in scenes where peace for ever reigns, 

 And only there, please highly for their sake — 



words which I have suggested misled Ruskin, and 

 have certainly misled others — he, Cowper, knew 

 better. His real feeling, and better and wiser 

 thought, is expressed in one of his incomparable 

 letters (Hayley, vol. ii. p. 230) — 



" My green-house is never so pleasant as when 



i 



