32 A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER. 



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. 



Je su, fet-il, seignur et mestre 

 Et a bon droit le dey estre, 

 Quant de la bowe face cauce 

 Par un petit de geele: 



Master and lord I am, saj^s he, 



And of good right so ought to be, 



Since 1 mulie causeys, safely crost. 



Of mud, with just a pinch of frost. . ' 



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, 



" The frost-king ties ray 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 nai-rowing fence." 



Winter was Hterally " the inverted year," as Thomson 



called him ; for such entertainments as could be had 



must be got within doors. What cheerfulness there was 



in brumal verse was that of Horace's dissolve frigus ligna 



super foco large reponens, so pleasantly associated with 



the cleverest scene in Roderick Random. This is the 



tone of that poem of Walton's friend Cotton, which won 



the praise of Wordsworth : — 



" Let us home. 

 Our mortal enemy is come; 

 Winter and all his blustering train 

 Have made a voyage o'er the main. 



" Fly, fly, the foe advances fast; 

 Into our fortress let us haste. 

 Where all the roarers of the north 

 Can neither stoiTn nor starve us forth. 



" There underground a magazine 

 Of sovereign juice is cellared in, 

 Liquor that will the siege maintain 

 Should Phoebus ne'er return again. 



