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NOTES.

POETICAL EPITHETS OF THE NIGHTINGALE.

Having lately been making some research among our British poets, as to
the character of the nightingale's song, I was much struck with the
great quantity and diversity of epithets that I found applied to the
bird. The difference of opinion that has existed with regard to the
quality of its song, has of course led the poetical adherents of either
side to couple the nightingale's name with that very great variety of
adjectives which I shall presently set down in a tabular form, with the
names of the poetical sponsors attached thereto. And, in making this the
subject of a Note, I am only opening up an old Query; for the character
of the nightingale's song has often been a matter for discussion, not
only for poets and scribblers, but even for great statesmen like Fox,
who, amid all the anxieties of a political life, could yet find time to
defend the nightingale from being a "most musical, most melancholy"
bird.

Coleridge's onslaught upon this line, in his poem of "The Nightingale,"
must be well known to all lovers of poetry; and his re-christening of
the bird by that epithet which Chaucer had before given it:

"'Tis the _merry_ nightingale,
That crowds, and hurries, and precipitates,
With fast thick warble, his delicious notes,
As he were fearful that an April night
Would be too short for him to utter forth
His love-chant, and disburthen his full soul
Of all its music!"

The fable of the nightingale's origin would, of course, in classical
times, give the character of melancholy to its song; and it is rather
remarkable that AEschylus makes Cassandra speak of the _happy_ chirp of
the nightingale, and the Chorus to remark upon this as a further proof
of her insanity. (Shakspeare makes Edgar say, "The _foul fiend_ haunted
poor Tom in the voice of a nightingale."--_King Lear_, Act III. Sc. 6.)

Tennyson seems to be almost the only poet who has thoroughly recognised
the great variety of epithets that may be applied to the nightingale's
song, through the very opposite feelings which it {398} seems to
possess the power to awaken. In his _Recollections of the Arabian
Nights_, he says,--

"The living airs of middle night
Died round the Bulbul as he sun