26 A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER. 



&quot; Prelude.&quot; But their feeling is not precisely of the kind I 

 speak of as modern, and which gave rise to what is called 

 descriptive poetry. Chaucer opens his Clerk s Tale with a 

 bit of landscape admirable for its large style, and as well 

 composed as any Claude. 



&quot; There is right at the west end of Itaille, 

 Down at the root of Vesulus the cold, 

 A lusty plain abundant of vitaille, 

 Where many a tower and town thou mayst behold, 

 That founded were in time of fathers old, 

 And many an other delectable sight ; 

 And Saluces this noble country hight.&quot; 



What an airy precision of touch there is here, and what 

 a sure eye for the points of character in landscape ! But 

 the picture is altogether subsidiary. No doubt the works 

 of Salvator Rosa and Caspar Poussin show that there must 

 have been some amateur taste for the grand and terrible in 

 scenery ; but the British poet Thomson (&quot; sweet-souled &quot; is 

 Wordsworth s apt word) was the first to do with words 

 what they had done partially with colours. He was turgid, 

 no good metrist, and his English is like a translation from 

 one of those poets who wrote in Latin after it was dead ; 

 but he was a man of sincere genius, and not only English, 

 but European literature is largely in his debt. He was the 

 inventor of cheap amusement for the million, to be had of 

 All-out-doors for the asking. It was his impulse which uncon 

 sciously gave direction to Rousseau, and it is to the school 

 of Jean Jacques that we owe St. Pierre, Cowper, Chateau 

 briand, Wordsworth, Byron, Lamartine, George Sand, 

 Rusldn the great painters of ideal landscape. 



So long as men had slender means, whether of keeping 

 out cold or checkmating it with artificial heat, Winter was 

 an unwelcome guest, especially in the country. There he 

 was the bearer of a lettre de cachet, which shut its victims 

 in solitary confinement with few resources but to boose 

 round the fire and repeat ghost-stories, which had lost 

 all their freshness and none of their terror. To go to bed 

 v/as to lie awake of cold, with an added shudder of fright 



