iar piercing cry,
never at any other time heard, and which cannot be mistaken--there is
a palpable effort of ingenuity discoverable in the representation,
which seems to tell us that the writer was making up a story, rather
than uttering his own belief. It may even be doubted whether Virgil
himself, who seems first to have invented this fancy, and behind whose
broad mantle later poets have sheltered themselves, may not have felt
an inclination to depart from the Greek opinion of Philomel's ditty.
Why otherwise did he not simply and at once--as his masters Homer and
Theocritus had done before him--describe her notes as mournful,
instead of casting about for some cause that might excuse him for
giving them that character? But however this may be, we cannot conceal
from ourselves, that some stubborn passages still remain in the poets,
proclaiming that there are men, and those among the greatest and most
tasteful, to whose fancy the voice of the nightingale has sounded full
of wo.

Homer must be counted of this number--unless we think with Fox, in the
preface to his _History of Lord Holland_, that it is only as to her
wakefulness Penelope is compared to the night singing-bird; and so
must Milton (for although Coleridge has satisfactorily dealt with the
passage in _Il Penseroso_, the line of the Lady's song in _Comus_
remains still); and Shakspeare himself, who could scarcely be
influenced, as Milton might very possibly be, by the opinions of the
Grecian poets.

It is a strange contest we are here considering. Which of us would for
a moment doubt our ability to decide in a dispute as to the liveliness
or sadness of any given melody?--yet here we see the greatest poets,
the favoured children of nature, utterly at variance on a point
concerning which we should have expected to find even the most
ordinary minds able to decide.

The question becomes more involved from the fact, that some writers
take _both_ sides; for instance, Chiobrera in _Aleippo_: the
nightingale

'Unwearied still reiterates her lays,
Jocund _or_ sad, delightful to the ear;'

and Hartley Coleridge, in the following beautiful song, which we
transcribe the more readily because it has not long been published,
and may be new to many of our readers:

''Tis sweet to hear the merry lark,
That bids a blithe good-morrow;
But sweeter to hark in the twinkling dark
To the soothing song of sorrow.
Oh, nightingale! what doth she