A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER. 35 



recalling the glorified sugar-candy of Lamb s first night at 

 the theatre. It has an artificial air, altogether beneath the 

 grand artist of the atmosphere, and besides does too much 

 mischief to the trees for a philodendrist to take unmixed 

 pleasure in it. Perhaps it deserves a poet like Philips, who 

 really loved Nature, and yet liked her to be mighty fine, as 

 Pepys would say, with a heightening of powder and rouge : 



And yet but lately have I seen e en here 

 The winter in a lovely dress appear. 



Ere yet the clouds let fall the treasured snow, 



Or winds begun through hazy skies to blow, 



At evening a keen eastern breeze arose, 



And the descending rain unsullied froze. 



Soon as the silent shades of night withdrew, 



The ruddy noon disclosed at once to view 



The face of Nature in a rich disguise, 



And brightened every object to my eyes ; 



For every shrub, and every blade of grass, 



And every pointed thorn, seemed wrought in glass ; 



In pearls and rubies rich the hawthorns show. 



And through the ice the crimson berries glow ; 



The thick-sprung reeds, which watery marshes yield, 



Seem polished lances in a hostile field; 



The stag in limpid currents with surpri:--; 



Sees crystal branches on his forehead ri.^2 ; 



The spreading oak, the beech, the towering pine, 



Glazed over in the freezing ether shine ; 



The frighted birds the rattling branches shun, 



Which wave and glitter in the distant sun, 



When, if a sudden gust of wind arise, 



The brittle forest into atoms flies, 



The crackling wood beneath the tempest bends 



And in a spangled shower the prospect ends. 



It is not uninstructive to see how tolerable Ambrose is, so 

 long as he sticks manfully to what he really saw. The 

 moment he undertakes to improve on Nature he sinks into 

 the mere court poet, and we surrender him to the jealousy 

 of Pope without a sigh. His rattling branches and 

 1 crackling forest are good, as truth always is, after a fashion ; 

 but what shall we say of that dreadful stag which, there is 

 little doubt, he valued above all the rest, because it was 

 purely his own ? 



The damper snow tempts the amateur architect and 

 sculptor. His Pentelicus has been brought to his very door, 

 and if there are boys to be had (whose company beats all 

 other recipes for prolonging life) a middle-aged Master of 

 the Works will knock the years off his account and make 

 the family Bible seem a dealer in foolish fables, by a few 



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