RIVAL CHAFFINCHES GRA Y'S ODE TO SPRING. 407 



and occasionally uttering a twink-twink of self-admiration, is an 

 aged hawthorn, on which the rivals select to hold their tournament 

 of song ; and the energy and heart with which a bird sings in such 

 a case must he seen and quietly studied to he fully appreciated. 

 Swaying lightly each on his own hough, the rivals hegin to sing as 

 if their very lives depended upon it ; their throats swollen almost 

 to bursting ; the feathers on their polls erected into a crest, and 

 their whole bodies tremulous to the very tips of the quill feathers 

 of their wings, as they pour forth a torrent of song so rapid, clear, 

 and loud, that all the other birds in the neighbourhood are for the 

 moment silent, as if they had purposely ceased their own aimless 

 melodies to listen to the impassioned strains of the competitors in 

 the thorn. Of human eloquence, Quintilian says, " Pectus, id est 

 quod disertum facit " the heart (and not the brain) is that which 

 makes a man eloquent ; and even more than of eloquence, with all 

 the might of its " winged words," is the same thing true of song. 

 To be all it ought to be, and be at its best, it must well up a living 

 stream from the hot, impassioned heart; not from the marble 

 fountain of mere intellect, which, if always clear, is not 'the less 

 always cold. If ever song came, in Quintilian's phrase, direct a 

 pectore from the heart, it is the song at this moment of the rival 

 competitors in yonder thorn. It is only when one has seen and 

 studied a bird singing after this fashion that the full force and 

 meaning of a line in Gray's Ode to Spring can be understood and 

 appreciated. Under the lens of a cold, critical analysis, the line is 

 sheer nonsense ; in sight of the bird itself, as at this moment, 

 singing with all his might, heart and soul in every note, its truth 

 and beauty are at once apparent. The line is this 



4 ' The Attic warbler pours her throat, 

 t Responsive to the cuckoo's note." 



Had not the poet seen, and closely and intelligently observed, a 

 bird in the act of loud and excited song, he would never have 



