RIVAL CHAFFINCHES— GRAY'S ODE TO SPRING. 407 



and occasionally uttering a twink-ttoinJc of self-admiration, is an 



aged hawthorn, on which the rivals select to hold their tournament 



of song ; and the energy and heart with which a hird sings in such 



a case must be seen and quietly studied to be fully appreciated. 



Swaying lightly each on his own bough, the rivals begin to sing as 



if their very lives depended upon it ; their throats swollen almost 



to bursting ; the feathers on their polls erected into a crest, and 



their whole bodies tremulous to the very tips of the quill feathers 



of their wings, as they pour forth a torrent of song so rapid, clear, 



and loud, that all the other birds in the neighbourhood are for the 



moment silent, as if they had purposely ceased their owii aimless 



melodies to listen to the impassioned strains of the competitors in 



the thorn. Of human eloquence, Quintilian says, " Pectus, id est 



quod diserfum facit " — the heart (and not the brain) is that which 



makes a man eloquent ; and even more than of eloquence, with all 



the might of its " winged words," is the same thing true of song. 



To be all it ought to be, and be at its best, it must well up a living 



stream from the hot, impassioned heart; not from the marble 



fountain of mere intellect, which, if always clear, is not the less 



always cold. If ever song came, in Quintilian's phrase, direct a 



pectore — from the heart, it is the song at this moment of the rival 



competitors in yonder thorn. It is only when one has seen and 



studied a bird singing after this fashion that the full force and 



meaning of a line in Gray's Ode to Spring can be understood and 



appreciated. Under the lens of a cold, critical analysis, the line is 



sheer nonsense; in sight of the bird itself, as at this moment, 



singing with all his might, heart and soul in every note, its truth 



and beauty are at once apparent. The line is this — 



' ' The Attic warbler pours her throat. 

 Responsive to the cuckoo's note." 



Had not the poet seen, and closely and intelligently observed, a 

 bhd in the act of loud and excited song, he would never have 



