16 



tory. Milton, and I approatli his name with reverence, 

 who sang so delightfully in his minor poems of rural sce- 

 nery, was not always a correct describer. In " Penseroso," 

 he says — 



The Bee, " with honied thigh." 

 Milton took much of his rural sceneiy from books, and 

 wrote in his back parlour in London of the country he 

 loved, all the more delightfuUy, for the smoke, and noise 

 and gloom around him. In the " Allegro" he says — 



" Though the sweet briar and the vine, 

 Or the twisted Eglantine." 



By " twisted Eglantine" he meant doubtless to describe the 

 honeysuckle — but the Eglantine is the wild rose. In the 

 same poem he describes the lark as coming to his window, 

 there to bid good morrow— a habit more applicable to the 

 robin than the lark. 



Ben Jonson, who made a journey on foot to Scotland to 

 visit Drummond of Hawthornden, thus wrote sweetly of 

 the bee, and other matters suggestive, and described that 

 insect correctly too — 



" Have you seen but a bright lily grow, 



Before rude hands have touched it ? 



Have you marked the fall of the snow, 



Before the soil hath smutched it 'i 



Have 3'ou felt the wool of the bever, or swan's down ever, 



Or smelt of the bud of the briur, or Nard in the fire, 



Or have tasted the bag of the bee— 



Oh so white, so soft, so sweet, is she V 



Again with the poets, the nightingale has from aU 

 time " leaned her breast up 'tiU a thorn," and sang 

 to the rose, and the rose has blushed back in reply, 

 and as for the phoenix, his existence is not only taken for 

 granted as a proved fact, but like the poet himself he is 

 always ready to be consumed in his own fires. Taking 

 therefore PhiUips' evidence with caution, I am nevertheless 

 inclined to the opinion that he related a fact, and that when 

 in this country there existed a large area of fens, forests. 



