164 WILD SCENES AND SONG-BIEDS. 



Every trill and quaver of a rival song its victorious, Elfin 

 skill would reproduce, until each separate throat was choked 

 with envy. Ah, then the joy and glory of its conquest 

 comes ! Out of the silence there would go such a " storm 

 of music," 



" Such harmonious madness 

 From its throat would flow," 



as might " shake the dull oblivion from his dreams !" 



Shakspeare was diverse as a peopled world ; all moods, all 

 thoughts, all humors of all men, alike were his. The veri- 

 similitudes and Protean versatility of the Mocking Bird are 

 quite as strange. Indeed, its power of adaptation is most 

 remarkable. Mr. Audubon represents it in its native and 

 congenial home the dew-dropping, odor-breathing South 

 as the most gentle and confiding of creatures. We can 

 bear eye-witness of this ; for here it is known and cherished 

 in the fraternal spirit of our Philosophy, and is as fearless, 

 familiar, and domestic as a household sprite. We have seen 

 it, as he represents, place its nest openly upon the fence by 

 the side of the public road, and have often thrown crumbs 

 to it as it hopped about the door-sill. But like all vigorous 

 natures, it is restless and a wanderer though, with a saga- 

 cious and mysterious sympathy or apprehension, it never 

 pushes its migations beyond the vicinage of Humanity of 

 some sort or other. 



So when impulse and poverty had driven Shakspeare to 

 London, his masterly genius mated itself with circumstances 

 as he found them, (so far as was necessary,) with the base 

 huckstering elements he saw to be all-powerful around the 

 theatres until, interfusing his own " candied nature" into 

 those about him, he elevated them upon his triumphs into 

 dignity, as well as awed respect. But this facility of adap- 

 tation illustrates only a phase of its Shaksperian character. 

 Shakspeare was the genius of " infinite humors " Jack 



