A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER. 31 



cheerfulness of snow in sunshine. His Harz-reise im Winter 

 gives no hint of it, for that is a diluted reminiscence of 

 Greek tragic choruses and the Book of Job in nearly equal 

 parts. In one of the singularly interesting and character 

 istic letters to Frau von Stein, however, written during the 

 journey, he says : &quot;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.&quot; 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 dyspeptic 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 : &quot; 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.&quot; 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 possessed of their greatest charm 

 the power of being franker than other men. In the 

 Third Book of &quot;The Task&quot; he boldly affirms his preference 

 of the country to the city even in winter : 



