IN AN OLD GARDEN 217 



Certainly there is nothing spiritual in the song 

 of the chaffinch* There he sits within sight/ motion- 

 less, a little bird-shaped automaton, made to go off 

 at intervals of twelve or thirteen seconds ; but 

 unfortunately one hears with the song the whirr 

 and buzz of the internal machinery* It is not now 

 as in April, when it is sufficient in a song that it 

 shall be joyous ; in the leafy month, when roses 

 are in bloom, one grows critical, and asks for sweet- 

 ness and expression, and a better art than this 

 vigorous garden singer displays in that little double 

 flourish with which he concludes his little hurry- 

 scurry lyric* He has practised that same flourish 

 for five thousand years to be quite within the mark 

 and it is still far from perfect, still little better 

 than a kind of musical sneeze* So long is art ! 



Perhaps in some subtle way, beyond the psycho- 

 logist's power to trace, he has become aware 

 of my opinion of his performance the unspoken 

 detraction which yet affects its object; and, feel- 

 ing hurt in his fringilline amour propre, he has 

 all at once taken himself off* Never mind ; a better 

 singer has succeeded him* I have heard and seen 

 the little wren a dozen times to-day; now he has 

 come to the upper part of the tree I am lying under, 

 and although so near his voice sounds scarcely 

 louder than before* This is also a lyric, but of another 

 kind* It is not plaintive, nor passionate ; nor is it 



