WHITE-THROAT. 
239 
music may best inform us why harmony or melody should so 
strangely affect some men, as it were by recollection, for days 
after a concert is over. What I mean the following passage will 
most readily explain : — 
"Praehabebat porro vocibus humanis, instrumentisque har- 
monicis musicam illam avium : non quod alia quo que non delec- 
taretur; sed quod ex musica humana relinqueretur in animo 
continens quaedam, attentionemque et somnum conturbans 
agitatio ; dum ascensus, exscensus, tenores, ac mutationes illae 
sonorum, et consonantiarum euntque, redeuntque per phan- 
tasiam : — cum nihil tale relinqui possit ex modulationibus avium, 
quae, quod non sunt perinde a nobis imitabiles, non possunt 
perinde internam facultatem commovere/' 
Gassendus in Vita Peireskii, 
This curious quotation strikes me much by so well representing 
my own case, and by describing what I have so often felt, but 
never could so well express. When I hear fine music I am 
haunted with passages therefrom night and day ; and especially 
at first waking, which, by their importunity, give me more un- 
easiness than pleasure : elegant lessons still tease my imagination, 
and recur irresistibly to my recollection at seasons, and even 
when I am desirous of thinking of more serious matters. 
I am, &c. 
LETTER LVII. To the Hon. DAINES BARRINGTON. 
A RARE, and I think a new, little bird frequents my garden, 
which I have great reason to think is the pettichaps : it is com- 
mon in some parts of the kingdom ; and I have received for- 
merly several dead specimens from Gibraltar. This bird much 
resembles the white-throat, but has a more white or rather sil- 
very breast and belly ; is restless and active, hke the willow- 
wrens, and hops from bough to bough, examining every part 
for food ; it also runs up the stems of the crown-imperials, and, 
putting its head into the bells of those flowers, sips the liquor 
which stands in the nectarium of each petal. Sometimes it feeds 
on the ground like the hedge-sparrow, by hopping about on the 
grass-plots and mown walks.* 
* This is the white-breasted fauvet, or, as some term it, the lesser whitethroat {Jicedul* 
garrula), a species common enough in the southern counties, though nowhere so abundant as the 
