18 LONDON BIRDS 



His song, poor fellow, was all the more impassioned, 

 because the lady he sang for in all probability existed 

 only in his dreams; or, if they had really met and 

 engaged themselves in the warm winter among the 

 olive groves of the South, thought herself absolved 

 from the engagement, and free to console herself with 

 a less audacious mate in a quieter home beside some 

 Kentish lane, when she heard her lover could wish her 

 to follow him to shameless London. 



Alphonse Karr, in his Voyage autour de mon Jardin, 

 complains of the misrepresentations which have re- 

 sulted from slavish imitation of the classics by modern 

 writers. Why, he asks, because poets writing in softer 

 climates spoke truly enough of May as 'the month 

 of roses,' should every French poet think it necessary 

 to do the same, forgetting that what is true in Greece 

 or Italy is not necessarily true in France, and that, 

 as a matter of fact, roses do not blossom there in any 

 very great profusion before June ? 



Nightingales have even more just cause to protest. 

 Philomela as all of us know who are not too far 

 removed from school-days to remember anything of 

 our Ovids was a Greek girl compromised in an affair 

 of a marriage with a ' deceased wife's sister.' Her 

 position, which was trying enough from the first, became 

 unbearable when it was found out that the first wife 

 was not really 'deceased' at all, but only put out of 

 sight by the husband, who had cut out her tongue. 

 Both sisters had cause enough for complaint, and 

 because poor Philomela did complain and was changed 



