s its

"_Hymn_ of gratitude and love;"

and by Moore also, in his account of the Vale of Cashmere, as

"The nightingale's _hymn_ from the Isle of Chenars."

In _A Proper New Boke of the Armony of Byrdes_ (quoted by Dibdin, _Top.
Antiq._, iv. 381.), of unknown date, though probably before 1580, the
nightingale is represented as singing its Te Deum:

"Tibi Cherubin
Et Seraphin
Full goodly she dyd chaunt,
With notes merely
Incessabile
Voce Proeclamant."]

[Footnote 2: Chaucer (_Troilus and Creseide_) imagines the nightingale
to "stint" at the beginning of its song, and to be frightened at the
least noise.]

[Footnote 3: This, and the epithets of "sole-sitting" and "unseen,"
refer to the nightingale's love of solitary seclusion.]

[Footnote 4:

"He slep no more than doth the nightingale."

Chaucer, _Cant. Pil._]

* * * * *

ON A PASSAGE IN OROSIUS.

In King Alfred's version of Orosius, book ii. chap. iv. p. 68.,
Barrington, we have an account of an unsuccessful attempt made by one of
Cyrus the Great's officers to swim across a river "mid twam tyncenum,"
with two _tynkens_. What was a _tyncen_? That was the question nearly a
hundred years ago, when Barrington was working out his translation; and
the only answer to be found then was contained in the great dictionary
published by Lye and Manning, but is not found now in Dr. Bosworth's
second edition of his Dictionary: "Tynce, _a tench_."

How the Persian nobleman was to be supported by two little fishes, which
were more likely to land their passenger at the bottom of the river than
on the opposite bank, we are left to guess. But, before we proceed with
the experiment, let us see that we have got the fishes. That tench was
in the Gyndis we have no authority for denying; but, if its Anglian or
Saxon name was such as the dictionary exhibits, we have no trace of it
{400} in the text of Alfred; for under no form of declension,
acknowledged in grammar, will _tynce_ ever give _tyncenum_. We have no
need, then, to spend time in calculating the chance of success, when we
have not the means of making the experiment.

As either _tync_ or _tynce_ would give _tyncum_, not _tyncenum_, the
latter must come out of _tyncen_ (query, _tynkin_ or _tunkin_, a little
tun, a barrel, or a cask?). Such was the form in which the question
presented itself to my mind, upon my first examinatio