A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER. 27 



of Greek tragic choruses and the Book of Job in nearly 

 equal parts. In one of the singularly interesting and cha-~ 

 racteristic letters to Frau von Stein, however, written during 

 the journey, he says : It is beautiful indeed ; the mist heaps 

 itself together in light snow-clouds, the sun looks through, 

 and the snow over everything gives back a feeling of 

 gaiety. But I find in Cowper the first recognition of a 

 general amiability in Winter. The gentleness of his temper, 

 and the wide charity of his sympathies, made it natural for 

 him to find good in everything except the human heart. A 

 dreadful creed distilled from the darkest moments of dys 

 peptic solitaries compelled him against his will to see in 

 that the one evil thing made by a God whose goodness is 

 over all His works. Cowper s two walks in the morning and 

 noon of a winter s day are delightful, so long as he contrives 

 to let himself be happy in the graciousness of the landscape. 

 Your muscles grow springy, and your lungs dilate with the 

 crisp air as you walk along with him. You laugh with him 

 at the grotesque shadow of your legs lengthened across the 

 snow by the just-risen sun. I know nothing that gives a 

 purer feeling of out-door exhilaration than the easy verses of 

 this escaped hypochondriac. But Cowper also preferred his 

 sheltered garden-walk to those robuster joys, and bitterly 

 acknowledged the depressing influence of the darkened year. 

 In December 1780 he writes : At this season of the year, 

 and in this gloomy uncomfortable climate, it is no easy 

 matter for the owner of a mind like mine to divert it from 

 sad subjects, and to fix it upon such as may administer to 

 its amusement. Or was it because he was writing to the 

 dreadful Newton ? Perhaps his poetry bears truer witness 

 to his habitual feeling, for it is only there that poets \ 

 disenthral themselves of their reserve and become fully 1 

 possessed of their greatest charm, the power of being / 

 franker than other men. In the Third Book of The Task 

 he boldly affirms his preference of the country to the city 

 even in winter : 



But are not wholesome airs, though unperfumed 

 By roses, and clear suns, though scarcely felt, 

 And groves, if inharmonious, yet secure 

 From clamour, and whose very silence charms, 

 To be preferred to smoke ? . . . . 

 They would be, were not madness in the head 

 And folly in the heart ; were England now 

 What England was, plain, hospitable, kind, 

 And undebauched. 



