LONDON BIRDS 19 



in pity into a Nightingale, and the poets sang her 

 sorrows, therefore the Nightingale must be sad, and 

 always posing as a love-lorn maiden. 



' The melancholy Philomel, 

 Who, perched all night alone in shady grove, 

 Tunes her soft voice to sad complaining love, 

 Making her life one great harmonious woe.' 



Milton, the Londoner, steeped as he was in the 

 classics, as a matter of course follows suit, and for him 

 the Nightingale is necessarily 



' Most musical, most melancholy.' 



But even Shakespeare, of whom we might have 

 hoped better things, could not altogether free himself; 

 and once, in his writings though certainly only to 

 put the word into the mouth of Valentine, the love- 

 sick Gentleman of Verona we find the inevitable 



' Nightingale's complaining note.' 



By the bye, if nothing to do with Milton and Shake- 

 speare had come down to us but their poetry, we should 

 not have had any great difficulty hi arriving at a fairly 

 true idea of the sort of lives the two men lived, by 

 merely comparing the manner in which each refers to 

 birds. 



Take, for instance and there are plenty of other 

 passages at least as much to the point such little 

 touches, fresh from Nature, as 



'Far from her nest the Lapwing cries "away," 

 My heart prays for him, though my tongue do curse,' 



