The Nigfitingcde and the Blackcap, 4-27 



the thrush and swallow, even to deception, if not seen ; and, 

 like the mightiest of bards, will, from his highest flights, sud- 

 denly break off* into his chat^ chat, chat^ of homeliest prose. 



I find, in my notes of 1819, that very early, one April 

 morning, in bed, with the sash open (for I frequently, on fine 

 nights, place an ^olian harp in my chamber window), I 

 imagined I heard a nightingale in full song. I rushed out 

 half-dressed and slipshod to the thicket, where the fine 

 strains still flowed by fits, and distinctly saw it was my friend 

 the blackcap ; which, had I not seen, I should have believed 

 to have been a nightingale, so full, thick, rich, and loud were 

 the many modulated notes. They were not repeated the next 

 morning. Might not this blackcap, in his passage through 

 the south of England, resting in the night, have heard a 

 nightingale, and retained in his memory parts of the song ? 



The good and honest old Izaak Walton, with the finest 

 spirit of that faith he sincerely believed and felt, thus honours 

 the nightingale : — " But the nightingale, another of my airy 

 creatures, breathes such sweet loud music out of her little 

 instrumental throat, that it might make mankind to think 

 miracles are not ceased. He that at midnight, when the 

 very labourer sleeps securely, should hear, as I have very 

 often, the clear airs, the sweet descants, the natural rising and 

 falling, the doubling and redoubling of her voice, might well 

 be lifted above earth, and say, ' Lord, what music hast thou 

 provided for thy saints in heaven, when thou affbrdest bad 

 men such music on earth ? ' " The Latin scholar of taste may 

 be highly gratified with a masterly description of the night- 

 ingale's song, on referring to the Natural History of Pliny, 

 book X. chap. 29,, which I will not expose my pedantry by 

 quoting, nor my clumsiness by attempting to translate. It 

 begins about the middle of the chapter, *' Lusciniis diebus ac 



noctibus continuis densante se frondium germine," &c. 



&c., and is a rich masterpiece of brilliant composition. 



Mind, I am not writing a history of these birds, or I 

 should never know where to end ; but merely a chit chat 

 sketchy scrap, for the lighter readers of the Magazine, who 

 prefer the poetry of natural history to the dry and draffy 

 multiplication-table nomenclature of technicalities, and the 

 concatenated articulations of inductiveness. I leave these to 

 the learned. I never loved to deal in the nugce difficiles, 

 [puzzling trifles], though, I fear me, like poor Dogberry, I 

 am sometimes guilty of " letting my reading and writing 

 appear, when there is no need of such vanity." I had lately 

 an inkling to have offered you some remarks on many of our 

 warblers' melodies, and the language of birds, both their 



