A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER. 33 



And gathering at short notice, in one group, 

 The family dispersed, and fixing thought, 

 Not less dispersed by daylight and its cares. 

 I crown thee king of intimate delights, 

 Fireside enjoyments, homeborn happiness, 

 And all the comforts that the lowly roof 

 Of undisturbed Retirement, and the hours 

 Of long uninterrupted evening know.&quot; 



I call this a good human bit of writing, imaginative, too 

 not so flushed, not so ... highfaluting (let me dare the 

 odious word !) as the modern style since poets have got 

 hold of a theory that imagination is common-sense 

 turned inside out, and not common-sense sublimed 

 but wholesome, masculine, and strong in the simplicity 

 of a mind wholly occupied with its theme. To me Cowper 

 is still the best of our descriptive poets for every-day wear. 

 And what unobtrusive skill he has ! How he heightens, 

 for example, your sense of winter-evening seclusion, 

 by the twanging horn of the postman on the bridge ! That 

 horn has rung in my ears ever since I first heard it, during 

 the consulate of the second Adams. &quot;Wordsworth strikes a 

 deeper note ; but does it not sometimes come over one (just 

 the least in the world) that one would give anything for a 

 bit of nature pure and simple, without quite so strong a 

 flavour of W. W. ? W. W. is, of course, sublime and all 

 that but ! For my part, I will make a clean breast of it, 

 and confess that I cannot look at a mountain without 

 fancying the late laureate s gigantic Roman nose thrust 

 between me and it, and thinking of Dean Swift s profane 

 version of Romanos rerum dominos into Roman nose / a 

 rare un/ dom your nose ! But do I judge verses, then, by 

 the impression made on me by the man who wrote them ? 

 Not so fast, my good friend, but, for good or evil, the 

 character and its intellectual product are inextricably 

 interfused. 



If I remember aright, Wordsworth himself (except in his 

 magnificent skating scene in the &quot; Prelude &quot;) has not much 

 to say for winter out of doors. I cannot recall any picture 

 by him of a snow-storm. The reason may possibly be that 



