WHITE-THROAT. 239 



music may best inform us why harmony or melody should so 

 strangely affect some men, as it were by recollection, for days 

 after a concert is over. What I mean the following passage will 

 most readily explain : 



"Praehabebat porro vocibus humanis, instrumentisque har- 

 monicis musicam illam avium : non quod alia quoque non delec- 

 taretur ; sed quod ex musica humana relinqueretur in animo 

 continens quaedam, attentionemque et somnum conturbans 

 agitatio ; dum ascensus, exscensus, tenores, ac mutationes illae 

 sonorum, et consonantiarum euntque, redeuntque per phan- 

 tasiam : cum nihil tale relinqui possit ex modulationibus avium, 

 quae, quod non sunt perinde a nobis imitabiles, non possunt 

 perinde internam facultatem commovere." 



Gassendus in Vita Peireskii. 



This curious quotation strikes me much by so well representing 

 my own case, and by describing what I have so often felt, but 

 never could so well express. When I hear fine music I am 

 haunted with passages therefrom night and day ; and especially 

 at first waking, which, by their importunity, give me more un- 

 easiness than pleasure : elegant lessons still tease my imagination, 

 and recur irresistibly to my recollection at seasons, and even 

 when I am desirous of thinking of more serious matters. 



I am, &c. 



LETTER LVII. To THE HON. DAINES BARRINGTON. 



A RARE, and I think a new, little bird frequents my garden, 

 which I have great reason to think is the pettichaps : it is com- 

 mon in some parts of the kingdom ; and I have received for- 

 merly several dead specimens from Gibraltar. This bird much 

 resembles the white-throat, but has a more white or rather sil- 

 very breast and belly ; is restless and active, like the willow- 

 wrens, and hops from bough to bough, examining every part 

 for food ; it also runs up the stems of the crown-imperials, and, 

 putting its head into the bells of those flowers, sips the liquor 

 which stands in the nectarium of each petal. Sometimes it feeds 

 on the ground like the hedge-sparrow, by hopping about on the 

 grass-plots and mown walks.* 



* This is the white-breasted fauvet, or, as some term it, the lesser whitethroat (ficeduta 

 garruld) , a species common enough in the southern counties, though nowhere so abundant as the 



