76 BIRDS AND MAN 



to us as perhaps the most modern-minded of those 

 who ceased to live a century ago. Undoubtedly 

 he was as bad a naturalist as any singer before or 

 after him, and as any true poet has a perfect right 

 to be. As bad, let us say, as Shakespeare and 

 Wordsworth and Tennyson. He does not, it is 

 true, confound the sparrow and hedge-sparrow 

 like Wordsworth, nor confound the white owl with 

 the brown owl like Tennyson, nor puzzle the ornith- 

 ologist with a " sea-blue bird of March." But we 

 must not forget that he addressed some verses to 

 a nightingale heard on New Year's Day. It is clear 

 that he did not know the crows well, for in a letter 

 of May 10, 1780, to his friend Newton, he writes : 

 " A crow, rook, or raven, has built a nest in one 

 of the young elm-trees, at the side of Mrs Aspray's 

 orchard." But when he wrote those words 



Sounds inharmonious in themselves, and harsh, 

 Yet heard in scenes where peace for ever reigns, 

 And only there, please highly for their sake 



words which I have suggested misled Ruskin, and 

 have certainly misled others he, Cowper, knew 

 better. His real feeling, and better and wiser 

 thought, is expressed in one of his incomparable 

 letters (Hayley, vol. ii. p. 230) 



" My green-house is never so pleasant as when 



