THE NIGHTINGALE. 
37 
more celebrated amongst the natives of the Carnatic for its fighting qualities. It is 
held on the finger, attached to it by a string, and fights with great pertinacity. 
Matthew Arnold exactly points out the time and place when the Nightingale may 
be best heard— 
“ With a free onward impulse brushing through, 
By night, the silvered branches of the glade— 
Far on the forest-skirts, where none pursue, 
On some mild pastoral slope 
Emerge, and resting on the moonlit pales, 
Freshen thy flowers, as in former years, 
With dew, or listen with enchanted ears 
From the dark dingles to the Nightingales ! ” 
What that song is has been described by a multitude of poets in every term of 
praise permitted by the language. A list of 178 adjectives applied as epithets to 
this bird has been published, and probably a diligent student of poetry could add 
many more to them. A most excellent prose imitation was composed by Bechstein, 
upon a type of Bettini’s, a Jesuit who lived more than two hundred years ago. It 
will be found in a book easily accessible to most people, Chambers’ “ Book of 
Days,” Vol. I., p. 516. But no one has written so beautifully of the bird as Izaak 
Walton, who is popularly celebrated for quite another craft than authorship :—“ The 
Nightingale, another of my airy creatures, breathes such sweet loud music out of her 
little instrumental throat, that it might make mankind to think miracles are not 
ceased. He that at midnight, when the very labourer sleeps securely, should hear, 
as I have very often, the clear airs, the sweet descants, the natural rising and 
falling, the doubling and redoubling of her voice, might well be lifted above earth 
and say, ‘ Lord, what music hast Thou provided for the saints in Heaven when 
Thou affordest bad men such music on earth! ’ ” For a scientific criticism of its 
melody perhaps the following words recently published by Mr. Sully may suffice :— 
“It is a noteworthy feature of bird-song that for the most part it does not wander 
freely from note to note, but confines itself to certain fixed groups of notes, which 
may be called elementary themes or motives. The song of the lark illustrates the 
absence of such recurring phrases; the song of the robin, the chaffinch, the thrush, 
the Nightingale, and a host of others is marked by their presence. A bird’s rank 
in the feathered orchestra may be determined by the number and beauty of these 
recurring phrases. Measured in this way, the Nightingale is facile princeps among 
the visitants of our climate, though it is disputed whether the American mocking¬ 
bird is not superior by reason of its richer rdpertoire of subjects.” 
