476 MAN OF SCIENCE. 



time attending classes, and among other tasks, had 

 to produce verses upon given themes. She consulted 

 her father upon her performances, and he would take 

 the opportunity of delivering a chatty little lecture upon 

 poetry, taking down from the shelf the works of some 

 well-known author, to serve for the illustration of his re- 

 marks. This evening the subject of lecture was Cowper, 

 one of his supreme favourites. He ranked the bard of 

 Olney, both in poetry and in prose, among the great 

 masters of the English language. The verses on Yardley 

 Oak he would often refer to, as evincing the wonderful 

 power with which Cowper could bend the roughest words 

 to suit his purposes of delineation and of melody. The 

 lines are perhaps the fittest which a critic could select 

 to illustrate the genius of Cowper. They have that 

 brief, decisive force by which, at his best, he recalls 

 the mighty touch of Dryden, with a vivid, eye-to-eye 

 truth to nature which reminds us that Cowper, if the 

 poetical child of Dryden, was the poetical sire of Words- 

 worth. 



' Thou wast a bauble once ; a cup and ball, 

 Which babes might play with ; and the thievish jay, 

 Seeking her food, with ease might have purloined 

 The auburn nut that held thee, swallowing down 

 Thy yet close-folded latitude of boughs, 

 And all thine embryo vastness, at a gulp. 

 But fate thy growth decreed ; autumnal rains 

 Beneath thy parent-tree mellowed the soil 

 Designed thy cradle ; and a skipping deer, 

 With pointed hoof dibbling the glebe, prepared 

 The soft receptacle, in which, secure, 

 Thy rudiments should sleep the winter through.' 



The vein of reflection, too, obscured by no mysticism 

 yet touching on deep things, which runs through the 

 piece, would please Miller. 



' While thus through all the stages thou hast pushed 

 Of treeship first a seedling, hid in grass ; 



