28 A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER. 



Jubinal has printed an Anglo-Norman piece of doggerel in 

 which Winter and Summer dispute which is the better 

 man. It is not without a kind of rough and inchoate 

 humour, and I like it because old Whitebeard gets tolerably 

 fair play. The jolly old fellow boasts of his rate of living, 

 with that contempt of poverty which is the weak spot in 

 the burly English nature. 



&quot; Jk Dieu ne place que me avyenge 

 Que ne face pins honour 

 Et plus despenz en un soul jour 

 Que vus en tote vostre vie : &quot; 



&quot; Now God forbid it hap to me 

 That I make not more great display, 

 And spend more in a single day 

 Than you can do in all your life.&quot; 



The best touch, perhaps, is Winter s claim for credit as a 

 mender of the highways, which was not without point when 

 every road in Europe was a quagmire during a good part of 

 the year unless it was bottomed on some remains of Roman 

 engineering. 



&quot; Je su, fet-il, seignur et mestre 

 Et h bon droit le dey estre, 

 Quant de la bowe face cauce 

 Par un petit de geele : &quot; 



&quot; Master and lord I am, says he, 

 And of good right so ought to be, 

 Since I make causeys, safely crost, 

 Of mud, with just a pinch of frost. 1 



But there is no recognition of Winter as the best of out-door 

 company. 



Even Emerson, an open-air man, and a bringer of it, if 

 ever any, confesses, 



&quot; The frost-king ties my fumbling feet, 

 Sings in my ear, my hands are stones, 

 Curdles the blood to the marble bones, 

 Tugs at the heartstrings, numbs the sense, 

 And hems in life with narrowing fence.&quot; 



