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 is, bon droit le dey estre, 



Quant de la bowe face cauce 



Par tin petit de geel^ : 



Master and lord I am, says he, 



And of good right so ought to be, 



Since I make 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 my 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 narrowing fence." 

 Winter was literally " 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 storm 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. 



