sses and record his wo.

We might go on much longer in this strain. We might give, likewise,
the mythological cause assigned for the imputed melancholy, and add
that some, not content with this, represent the bird as leaning its
breast against a thorn--

'To aggravate the inward grief,
Which makes its music so forlorn.'

But we would rather pause to admit candidly, that two of the above
witnesses might be challenged--Virgil and Thomson; who indeed should
be counted but as one, for the author of the _Seasons_, in the lines
quoted, has translated, though not so closely as Dryden, from the
_Georgics_ of the Latin poet. If you will read the passage--it matters
not whether in Virgil, Dryden, or Thomson--you will perceive that it
is a special occurrence that is spoken of: no statement whatever is
made as to the character of the nightingale's ordinary song. Thomson,
in the course of his humane and touching protest against the barbarous
art: 'through which birds are

---- by tyrant man
Inhuman caught, and in the narrow cage
From liberty confined, and boundless air,'

represents the nightingale's misery when thus bereaved. This portion
of the lines shall stand entire; none, we are sure, would wish us
further to mangle the passage:

'But chief, let not the nightingale lament
Her ruined care, too delicately framed
To brook the harsh confinement of the cage.
Oft, when returning with her loaded bill,
The astonished mother finds a vacant nest,
By the rude hands of unrelenting clowns
Robbed: to the ground the vain provision falls.
Her pinions ruffle, and low drooping, scarce
Can bear the mourner to the poplar shade;
Where all abandoned to despair, she sings
Her sorrows through the night.'

It will at once be seen that this description relates to an
exceptional condition, and we have yet to seek what character Virgil
and Thomson would give to the ordinary song of this paradoxical
musician. For the Roman, we do not know that any passage exists in his
works which can help us to a conclusion; but Thomson's testimony must
undoubtedly be ranged on the contra side, as appears from the
following lines in his _Agamemnon_:

'Ah, far unlike the nightingale! she sings
Unceasing through the balmy nights of May--
She sings from love and joy.'

In the passage from his Spring, which we have given, we cannot but
fancy that the poet endeavoured-