A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER. 37 



per 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 so- 

 elusion, 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. 

 Wordsworth strikes a deeper note ; but does it not some- 

 times 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 flavor of W. W. 1 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 can't 

 look at a mountain without fancying the late laureate's 

 gigantic Roman nose thrust between me and it, and think- 

 ing 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 intel- 

 lectual product are inextricably interfused. 



If I remember aright, Wordsworth himself (except in 

 his magnificent skating-scene in the " Prelude") 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 in the Lake Country even the winter 

 storms bring rain rather than snow. He was thankful 

 for the Christmas visits of Crabb Robinson, because they 

 "helped him through the winter." His only hearty 

 praise of winter is when, as General F6 vrier, he defeats 

 the French : 



" Humanity, delighting to behold 

 A fond reflection of her own decay, 

 Hath painted Winter like a traveller old, 

 Propped on a staff, and, through the sullen day, 

 In hooded mantle, limping o'er the plain 

 As though his weakness were disturbed by pain: 



