SONGS. 285 



monotonous, yet laboured effort of execution; and 

 with the exception of the 'jug, jug, jug,' which oc- 

 casionally interrupts the thin and Rossinian charac- 

 ter of its strains, there is not a poetical note in its 

 whole gamut. Philomel is the Henrietta Sontag of 

 the woods unimpassioned, artificial, but miraculous 

 in point of delicacy of execution ; and the fact of her 

 being a night vocalist, instead of establishing her 

 claims to sentimentality, as 



' Most musical, most melancholy ,' 



proves only the self-conviction of the bird, that its 

 strains are incompetent to vie with those of its fellow- 

 choristers, or, perhaps, an envious and invidious 

 desire of distinction. The ancient apologue, of the 

 nightingale expiring in the successful effort of rival- 

 ship with the poet's lute, proves that it has ever been 

 suspected of a paltry and narrow jealousy of com- 

 petition. 



" Who, that has ever listened to the mellow vesper 

 hymn of the blackbird, or the thrush-notes gush- 

 ing in bursts of gladness from the heart of a haw- 

 thorn bush, but must acknowledge that there dwells 

 more poetry in their music than in all the demi-semi- 

 quavers of the * plaintive Philomel ? ' What lover 

 of poetical justice but longs to transpose the line of 

 Petrarch, 



1 E garrir Progne, e pianger Filomele/ 

 and distribute the garrizitura (chatter) to the tink- 

 ling nightingale*?" Others even go so far as to 

 speak of the screeching or hissing of the nightingale. 

 Sidonius Apollinaris associates the " hissing night- 

 ingale" (Philomelamsibilantem) with the crinking of 

 grasshoppers, the croaking of frogs, the screaming of 

 geese, the cackling of hens, and the cawing of rooks f- 

 In the same spirit Aristophanes is interpreted by 

 some to say, the "stridulous nightingale" 



* Court Journal, May 14th, 1831. f Epist. lib. xi. 



