Sweet artless songster, thou my mind dost raise
To airs of spheres, yes, and to angels lays.

Drummond's Flowers of Sion.

One while the mean part she did sweetly warble,
The tenor now, the base, and then the treble:
Then all at once, with many parts in one,
Dividing sweetly in division:

Now some sweet strain to mind she doth restore,
Which all the winter she had conn'd before,
And with such cunning descant thereupon,
That curious art ne'er doctrin'd any one
With lute, with viol, or with voice in quire,
That to her matchless music might aspire.

The Cuckow, p. 12, 1607.

Bird-fanciers are accustomed to call the practice of old birds teaching their young to sing, recording; from this circumstance Drayton very poetically and fancifully dates the origin of music, which I think exceeds what Lucretius has advanced on the same subject, Lib. V. 1378:

Philomel in spring

Teaching by art her little one to sing;

By whose clear voice sweet music first was found
Before Amphion ever knew a sound.

The Owl.

Browne, a very minute observer, and sometimes an accurate describer of nature and rural objects, has remarked the same property of this bird:

Under whose shade the nightingale would bring
Her chirping young, and teach them how to sing.
Brit. Past. B. i. Song 5

In mentioning the time before sun-rise he introduces it again :

For the turtle and her mate

Sitten yet in nest:

And the thrustle hath not been

Gath ring worms yet on the green,
But attends her rest.

Not a bird hath taught her young,
Nor her morning's lesson sung

In the shady grove:

But the nightingale in dark*

Singing, woke the mounting lark

She records her love.

Shepherd's Pipe, Eclog. 3.

But Browne attributes the custom of teaching to other birds as well as the nightingale: describing a place of retirement, he says,

Wherein melodious birds did nightly harbour;
And on a bough, within the quick'ning spring,
Would be a teaching of their young to sing.

Book I. Song 3.

See Andrew Marvel's "Appleton House," who touches upon the nightingale, Vol. I. p. 65, Cooke's Edit.

Drayton describes with great spirit a consort of birds, in which the nightingale is highly distinguished:

When Phoebus lifts his head out of the winter's wave,
No sooner doth the earth her flowery bosom wave,
At such time as the year brings on the pleasant spring,
But hunts-up to the morn the feather'd sylvans sing:
And in the lower grove, as on the rising knoll,
Upon the highest spray of every mounting pole,
Those choristers are perch'd with many a speckled breast.
Then from her burnish'd gate the goodly glitt'ring east
Gilds every lofty top, which late the humorous night
Bespangled had with pearl, to please the morning's sight:
On which the mirthful choirs, with their clear open throats,
Unto the joyful morn so strain their warbling notes,
That hills and vallies ring, and even the echoing air
Seems all compos'd of sounds, about them every where.
The throstle with shrill sharps; as purposely he sung
T' awake the lustless sun; or chiding, that so long
He was in coming forth, that should the thickets thrill:
The woosel near at hand, that hath a golden bill:
As nature him had mark'd of purpose, t' let us see
That from all other birds his tunes should different be:
For, with their vocal sounds, they sing to pleasant May;
Upon his dulcet pipe the merle doth only play.
When in the lower brake, the nightingale hard by,
In such lamenting strains the joyful hours doth ply,
As though the other birds she to her tunes would draw,
And (but that nature by her all-constraining law),

This is Milton's:

as the wakeful bird

Sings darkling

P. Lost, III. S8.

Each bird to her own kind this season doth invite,

They else, alone to hear that charmer of the night,

(The more to use their ears) their voices sure would spare, That moduleth her tunes so admirably rare,

As man to set in parts at first had learn'd of her.

Poly-Olbion, Song 13.

See likewise a very minute and accurate description in Sylvester's Du Bartas, p. 44, fol. Edit. 1641. See Vol. IV. p. 1319, 1536, Drayton, Oldys's Edit.

To accumulate yet more instances of a similar nature would be neither difficult nor unpleasing:

Sed fugit interea, fugit irreparabile tempus,

Singula dum capti circumvectamur amore.

VIRG.

To him who has been " long in populous cities pent," who has seldom been accustomed to view" each rural sight" with poetical eyes, and to" each rural sound" has turned a deaf or an undelighted ear, these notices, it is feared, will seem most diminutive and frivolous; but to others who have heard from this bird

Strains that might create a soul

Under the ribs of Death,

in the luxurious groves of Hertfordshire, it is hoped, however unimportant they may be, that they will at least be considered as not incurious.

SPEECHES.

HAROLD'S SPEECH,

BEFORE THE BATTLE OF HASTINGS.

129

SEE, valiant war-friends, yonder be the first, the last, and all The agents of our enemies, they henceforth cannot call Supplies; for weeds at Normandy by this in porches grow*: Then conquer these would conquer you, and dread no fur

ther foe.

They are no stouter than the brute, whom we did hence exile: Nor stronger than the sturdy Danes, our victory erewhile:

*

. for weeds at Normandy by this in porches grow:] Meaning, that they had so exhausted their country (Normandy) by the forces they had drafted from it already, that its cities were left desolate and uninhabited. The expression is awkward; but the idea is forcible, and not unlike what Thomson says of the effects of the plague:

Empty the streets, with uncouth verdure clad;

Into the worst of deserts sudden turn'd

The cheerful haunt of men.

Summer, 1. 1060.

Not Saxony could once contain, or scarce the world beside, Our fathers, who did sway by sword where listed them to bide:

Then do not ye degenerate, take courage by descent,

And by their burials, not abode, their force and flight pre

vent.

Ye have in hand your country's cause, a conquest they pretend,

Which (were ye not the same ye be) even cowards would de

fend.

I grant that part of us are fled and linked to the foe,
And glad I am our army is of traitors cleared so:
Yea pardon hath he to depart that stayeth mal-content*:
I prize the mind above the man, like zeal hath like event.
Yet truth it is, no well or ill this island ever had,
But through the well or ill support of subjects good or bad:
Not Cæsar, Hengest, Swayn, or now (which ne'ertheless shall

fail)

The Norman bastard, Albion true, did, could, or can prevail. But to be self-false in this isle a self-foe ever is,

Yet wot I, never traitor did his treason's stipend miss.

Shrink who will shrink, let armour's weight press down the burd❜ned earth,

My foes, with wond'ring eyes shall see I over-prize my death. But since ye all (for all, I hope, alike affected be,

Your wives, your children, lives, and land, from servitude to free)

* Yea pardon hath he to depart, &c.] Thus Henry the Fifth to his soldiers:

don't wish one more:

Rather proclaim it, Westmoreland, through my host,
That he which hath no stomach to this fight

Let him depart.

SHAKSPEARE.