cared for the real flower or bird so much more than the lesson that he drew from them, to lift this kind of verse into the realm of poetry. When Nature is used as a pulpit, she revenges herself and becomes a preacher, oratorical, unreal, and inconclusive. Most of such poems are too dull to quote, but there is one, in a lighter vein, from which it is irresistible to insert some lines. It is called The Good Gardener and the Elephant, and it is by William Hayley, Esq. (the Esq. seems essential), the Mr. Hayley of Blake's correspondence.
Some dainty from the stall bestowed
So made the beast his friend ; 'Twas joy to see, at this abode,
His blythe proboscis bend.
But O ! can humour's giddy range
Mislead the brutal mind ? Can elephants their friendship change
As fickle as mankind ?
Elegance is a great refuge for unreality, but there are, in the far past, still more formal modes of expressing Nature. The elaborate conceits of the Elizabethans, the sentimental mythology of the Jacobeans, the Pastorals and Eclogues of the eighteenth century, give us a sense of chill. Nature re- fuses to allow herself to be twisted into an artificed euphuism, or compressed into an epigrammatic couplet. Of course, in all ages, there have been exceptions. The interest of the lyrics and the drama of the Elizabethans centred in human character and in newly found thought ; Nature hardly existed for them except as a jewel to ornament their pages. Even Spenser, who has beautiful passages upon the sky and the stars, and who knows the ' silver scaly trout … and greedy pikes ', and ' rushy lake ', generally treats Nature without intimacy and on a secondary plane : as a peg for reflections, or as an embroidery upon his theme. Shake- speare is practically unique in this, that, however confined his field of observation, he nearly always uses Nature natur-
