INTRODUCTION 5 



the later writers are incomparable as naturalists. Milton 

 wrote many things which are immortal, about the country ; 

 but if ' L'Allegro ' was written to-day there would be much 

 quiet criticism of details, amid the chorus of praise. Milton 

 wrote of the moon and the clouds indeed as an observer ; but 

 his famous list of flowers is cold and conventional, his allusions 

 to birds wrong, and his mingling of the seasons ludicrous. 

 You will scarcely find in Shelley, who, however, observed 

 clouds more closely than any writer in prose or verse, more 

 closely even than Ruskin you will find neither in him nor 

 Wordsworth, that supreme poet of country scenes, any real 

 naturalist's knowledge or interest. Though of course poets 

 of poetic value far beyond their successors, they cannot com- 

 pare with Matthew Arnold, with Tennyson, with Bridges, 

 with Meredith, and above all Lord de Tabley, as observers 

 of nature in the naturalist's sense. Never in any literature 

 of any times have descriptions of nature's details been con- 

 densed into quotable words as in Tennyson. What Milton 

 did for wider views, as in the wonderful line describing 

 innumerable English churches among the elms : 



* Bosomed high in tufted trees,' 

 Tennyson did for tiny things as in the line : 



1 When rosy plumelets tuft the larch.' 



But both are surpassed by Meredith in intensity of pleasure 

 in natural history. Almost every other poem bears the 

 signs. His best inspiration often comes from his naturalist's 

 knowledge. ' Love in the Valley ' and ' The Sweet o' the 

 Year ' have no parallels in literature for the association of 

 almost ecstatic insight into seasonal change. Milton used 

 the telescope, as it were. Tennyson used the microscope. 

 Meredith the unassisted eyes of such a long-sighted observer 



