HE voices of these two noblest of the singing-birds of the Old World may be heard, in echoing accompaniment, throughout the prolonged choir of European poets, from the earliest dawn of civilization to the present hour. There are few poems of any length, in either of the languages of Europe, in which some allusion to one or the other has not a place. The noblest poets of the earth were born companions to these birds; beneath skies saluted by the lark, among groves haunted by the nightingale. These little creatures sung with Homer and Sappho among the isles of Greece-for Virgil and Horace on the plains of Italy; they cheered Dante in his lifelong wandering exile, and Petrarch in his solitary hermitage. Conceive also the joy with which Chaucer, and Shakspeare, and Spenser listened, each in his day, among the daisied. fields of England, to music untaught, instinctive like their own! What pure delight, indeed, have these birds not given to the heart of genius during thousands of springs and summers! How many generations have they not charmed with their undying melodies! They would almost seem by their sweetness to have soothed the inexorable powers of Time and Death. Were an old Greek or an ancient Roman to rise from the dust this summer's day-were he to awaken, after ages of sleep, to walk his native soil again, scarce an object on which his eye fell would wear a familiar aspect; scarce a sound which struck his ear but would vibrate there most strangely; yet with the dawn, rising from the plain of Marathon, or the Latin Hills, he would hear the same noble lark which sung in his boyhood; and with the moon, among the olives and ilexes shading the fallen temple, would come the same sweet nightingale which entranced his youth. THE NOTE OF THE NIGHTINGALE. A LETTER OF CHARLES JAMES FOX. DEAR GREY-In defense of my opinion about the nightingales, I find Chaucer who of all poets seems to have been the fondest of the singing of birds-calls it a merry note; and though Theocritus mentions nightingales six or seven times, he never mentions their note as plaintive or melancholy. It is true he does not call it anywhere merry, as Chaucer does, but by mentioning it with the song of the blackbird, and as answering it, he seems to imply that it was a cheerful note. Sophocles is against us; but he says, "lamenting Itys," and the comparison of her to Electra is rather as to perseverance, day and night, than as to sorrow. At all events, a tragic poet is not half so good authority in this question as Theocritus and Chaucer. I can not light upon the passage in the "Odyssey," where Penelope's restlessness is compared to the nightingale, but I am sure it is only as to restlessness that he makes the comparison. If you will read the last twelve books of the "Odyssey" you will certainly find it, and I am sure you will be paid for your hunt, whether you find it or not. The passage in Chaucer is in the Flower and Leaf." The one I particularly allude to in Theocritus is in his " Epigrams," I think in the fourth. Dryden has transferred the word merry to the goldfinch, in the Flower and the Leaf"-in deference, may be, to the vulgar error. But pray read his description of the nightingale there; it is quite delightful. I am afraid that I like these researches as much better than those that relate to Shaftesbury and Sunderland, as I do those better than attending the House of Commons. Yours affectionately, C. J. Fox The nightingale with so merry a note I stood astonied, so was I with the song I ne wist in what place I was, ne where; And ayen, me thought, she song ever by mine ear. A goldfinch there I saw, with gaudy pride Of painted plumes, that hopp'd from side to side, DRYDEN'S "Flower and Leaf.” As when the months are clad in flowery green, Now doom'd a wakeful bird to wail the beauteous boy. A sad variety of woes I mourn. Odyssey, Book XIX. SONNET. O, nightingale, that on yon bloomy spray, First heard before the shallow cuckoo's bill, JOHN MILTON, THE NIGHTINGALE. APRIL, 1798. No cloud, no relic of the sunken day, I know a grove Of large extent, hard by a castle huge, Thin grass, and king-cups grow within the paths. In wood and thicket, over the wide grove And one low, piping sound, more sweet than all, That should you close your eyes, you might almost Whose dewy leaflets are but half disclosed, You may, perchance, behold them on the twigs, Their bright, bright eyes-their eyes both bright and full, Lights up her love-torch. A most gentle maid, Who dwelleth in her hospitable home, (Even like a lady, vowed and dedicate To something more than Nature in the grove), Glides through the pathways; she knows all their notes, What time the moon was lost behind a cloud, On blossoming twig still swinging from the breeze, Like tipsy joy that reels with tossing head. SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. ODE TO A NIGHTINGALE. My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains Of beechen green, and shadows numberless, |