Notes and Queries, Number 182, April 23, 1853 / A Medium of Inter-communication for Literary Men, Artists, Antiquaries, Genealogists, etc.

Transcriber's Note:
This text contains Greek words such as ΝΙΨΟΝ . Overlines indicating abbreviations will also be encountered: Dne. You may want to change fonts if any of the preceding characters render as ? or boxes on your screen or the overlines appear adjacent rather than over the appropriate letters. If your system allows for it, hovering over Greek text will show a transliteration. Transliterations and transcriber notes in the text are identified by red dashed underlines as shown above. Archaic spellings and inconsistent hyphenation have been left as originally printed.

Having lately been making some research among our British poets, as to the character of the nightingale's song, I was much struck with the great quantity and diversity of epithets that I found applied to the bird. The difference of opinion that has existed with regard to the quality of its song, has of course led the poetical adherents of either side to couple the nightingale's name with that very great variety of adjectives which I shall presently set down in a tabular form, with the names of the poetical sponsors attached thereto. And, in making this the subject of a Note, I am only opening up an old Query; for the character of the nightingale's song has often been a matter for discussion, not only for poets and scribblers, but even for great statesmen like Fox, who, amid all the anxieties of a political life, could yet find time to defend the nightingale from being a most musical, most melancholy bird.
Coleridge's onslaught upon this line, in his poem of The Nightingale, must be well known to all lovers of poetry; and his re-christening of the bird by that epithet which Chaucer had before given it:
'Tis the merry nightingale,
That crowds, and hurries, and precipitates,
With fast thick warble, his delicious notes,
As he were fearful that an April night
Would be too short for him to utter forth
His love-chant, and disburthen his full soul