12 London Birds. 



Jardin," complains of the misrepresentations which 

 have resulted 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 com- 

 plaint, and because poor Philomela did complain and 

 was changed 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 altogethe free him- 



