STUDIES FOR A PAINTER. 29 



are fine studies for a painter, especially when 

 their brown or glowing orange foliage is con- 

 trasted with the more lasting green of the oak. 

 Few artists have delineated forest scenery at this 

 period of the year with happier effect than Mr. 

 Starke, the Hobbima of England. He follows 

 nature with so much truth, and pourtrays her on 

 his canvas with so much effect and talent, that 

 on looking at one of his pictures, I have almost 

 fancied myself strolling in the wood, enjoying 

 the tranquillity of its scenery, and exclaiming with 

 the poet ; 



O lead me, guard me from the sultry hours, 

 Hide me, ye forests, in your closest bowers, 

 Where the tall oak his spreading arms entwines, 

 And with the beech* a mutual shade combines.f 



* A friend of mine remarks, that Csesar, in his commentaries, 

 mentions, that he did not see the ' Fagus' in England : and yet 

 Caesar marched through the eastern part of Kent, where the Beech 

 is indigenous. Did he mean the chesnut or a particular kind of 

 oak, by the generic term of Fagus ? The Italian poet, Fracasto- 

 rius, who knew the niceties of the Latin language, seems to use 

 the word ' fagus' for an oak, 



Glandifera sub fago, aut castanea hirsuta. 



and perhaps by the word ' Fagus,' Caesar meant the 0^yoc, or 

 Quercus sesculus the Italian oak, which of course he did not 

 meet with in Britain. 



t GAY. 



