180 The Animal-Lore of ShaJcspeare's Time. 
the minds of children with kind actions, through the 
medium of the various ballads on k the doleful story of 
“ the Babes in the Wood.” Drayton probably refers to 
that tragic history when he writes :— 
“ Covering with moss the dead unclosed eye, 
The little redbreast teacheth charity.” 
(The Old.) 
The robin is introduced with a double meaning in a 
poem on Robert Earl of Essex, which is supposed to have 
been written by one of the friends of that nobleman while 
he was in possession of the queen’s favour. 
“ The goose but gaggelith in her gate, 
The cock he can but crowe, 
A thousand birdes do not but prate, 
And gangell wheare they goo : 
The lark and lynnett singith well, 
The thrisell dothe his best; 
The robbyn beares away ye bell, 
And passeth all the rest. 
He is famyllyer with a lorde. 
And dreames wheare ladies are ; 
He can in howse singe and record e, 
When busshe and bryer is bare.” 
(Camden Miscellany , vol. ii.) 
Thomas Fuller, writing of Sussex, tells us that— 
“ the Wheat-ear is a bird peculiar to this county, hardly found out of 
J it. It is so called because fattest when wheat is ripe, 
whereon it feeds ; being no bigger than a lark, which it 
equalleth in the fineness of the flesh, far exceedeth in the fatness 
thereof. The worst is, that being only seasonable in the heat of 
summer, and then naturally larded with lumps of fat, it is soon subject 
to corrupt. That palate-man shall pass in silence, who being seriously 
demanded his judgment concerning the abilities of a great lord, con¬ 
cluded him a man of very weak parts, ‘ because once he saw him, 
at a feast, feed on chickens when there were wheat-ears on the table.’ ” 
(Worthies of England, vol. ii. p. 382.) 
This etymology is not quite correct. Not with standing the 
