3i6 BIRD WATCHING 



public would. How I should rejoice to be accused — 

 yes, and even convicted — of having no ear for the 

 song of the nightingale, if only it could be discovered, 

 also, that " critics " who, with a natural incapacity for 

 seeing beauty in beauty, yet step modestly forward 

 to teach us, and dance as fantastically on the body of 

 a dead poet as did ever a Lilliputian on that of the 

 sleeping Gulliver, are neither profound nor discerning 

 nor even literary, but merely dull dogs posing, of 

 which sort, indeed, most "great oneyers" keep their 

 pack. Yet I wish they could leave the imperfections 

 of Shakespeare (which they discern in his master- 

 strokes) as utterly beyond them, and busy themselves 

 only with the perfections of such Baviuses and 

 Moeviuses as it is their wont to crown. I commend 

 them to old Bunyan with his "'Then,' said Mr 

 Blind-man, ' I see clearly ' " — and so pass on. 



The sweet song of the nightingale has caused the 

 more stress to be laid upon the sobriety of its colour- 

 ing, the natural tendency being to exaggerate such a 

 contrast. But now, when one watches for the bird 

 in the shade of leafy thickets, the way in which it 

 generally reveals itself is by a sudden flash of red or 

 chestnut brown, a bright spot of colour which is con- 

 spicuously visible, sometimes even in the centre of a 

 thorn-bush, and, one may almost say, brilliantly so, 

 as its wearer flits amongst the trees and undergrowth. 

 This brightness belongs to the tail generally, but there 

 must, I think, be either upon or just above it — on the 

 upper tail coverts, perhaps — a specially bright and 

 more ruddy-hued patch which produces the effect of 

 which I speak ; and as nightingales habitually haunt 

 wooded and umbrageous spots, it has sometimes 



