34 A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER. 



pellucid atmosphere. I once spent a winter in Dresden, 

 a southern climate compared with England, and really 

 almost lost my respect for the sun when I saw him grop- 

 ing among the chimney-pots opposite my windows as he 

 described his impoverished arc in the sky. The enforced 

 seclusion of the season makes it the time for serious study 

 and occupations that demand fixed incomes of unbroken 

 time. This is why Milton said " that his vein never 

 happily flowed but from the autumnal equinox to the 

 vernal," though in his twentieth year he had written, on 

 the return of spring, — 



Fallor ? an et nobis redeunt in carmina vires 

 Ingeniumque mihi munere veris adest ? 



Err I ? or do the powers of song return 



To me, and genius too, the gifts of Spring ? 



Goethe, so far as I remember, was the first to notice 

 the cheerfulness of snow in sunshine. His Harz-reise im. 

 Winter gives no hint of it, for that is a diluted reminis- 

 cence of Greek tragic choruses and the Book of Job in 

 nearly equal parts. In one of the singularly interesting 

 and characteristic letters to Frau von Stein, however, 

 written during the journey, he says : " It is beautiful in- 

 deed ; the mist heaps itself together in light snow-clouds, 

 the sun looks through, and the snow over everything 

 gives back a feeling of gayety." But I find in Cowper 

 the first recognition of a general amiability in Winter. 

 The gentleness of his temper, and the wide charity of 

 his sympathies, made it natural for him to find good in 

 everything except the human heart. A dreadful creed 

 distilled from the darkest moments of dyspeptic solitaries 

 compelled him against his will to see in that the one evil 

 thing made by a God whose goodness is over all his 

 works. Cowper's two walks in the morning and noon of 

 a winter's day are delightful, so long as he contrives to 

 let himself be happy in the graciousness of the landscape 



