says Heine, whilst others say that the song is apt to keep them awake at night, and, having first paid their orthodox tribute to its supremacy over every other, will confess that they have sometimes been obliged to open the window and throw something out to put a stop to it. Yet the thought of how appreciative the world really is, and how severely a heretic in such a matter may be dealt with, shall not deter me from expressing a slight doubt as to the reality of this supremacy—or, at least, of its extent and absoluteness. Letters each year to the papers, from people who have been so fortunate as to hear the nightingale long before the nightingale is accustomed to reach our shores, have given rise to the suspicion that a thrush is, in most cases, the real performer; and if this be so, it shows that, with many, the comparative merits of the two depend upon its being known, for certain, which is which. For myself, I go with the general opinion in this respect, yet it is difficult to summon up in imagination the effect that the clear, joyous notes of the thrush might have upon one, did they ring out in the silence and stillness of the night. And if this is true in regard to the thrush, does it not apply still more to the skylark?—a bird whose lovely and long-continued outpouring, uttered, as it is, in the day and all around—common, and therefore, of necessity, undervalued—may yet, as it appears to me, in spite of such a disadvantage, well challenge comparison with the song of the nightingale itself. If we look to effect, at any rate, the former bird seems to have inspired poets as highly, or almost as highly, as the latter. Then we have an opinion which, perhaps, may have been that of Shakespeare himself, who was a rare lover of music, that
The nightingale, if she should sing by day
When every goose is cackling, would be thought
No better a musician than the wren.
Now the nightingale does sing by day, and, as a matter of fact, she is then thought at least no better than the lark or thrush—in fact, she is, like these, often not noticed at all, as I have had some opportunities of observing. This, at least, shows that some of the effect produced upon some of us by this bird's song, is due to that added and exquisite poetry which night and silence gives to it. We have no other night-singing bird who is sufficiently common, and whose song is at the same time sufficiently distinguished for it to attract much attention, and therefore the nightingale has this great advantage practically all to itself. I cannot help thinking that it owes to this that easy and unquestioned superiority which has been accorded to it in popular estimation over all our other song-birds, especially such glorious ones as the skylark, thrush, blackcap, blackbird, etc.[26]
[24] Proximity to the nest, with young, is the most frequent cause.
[25] Especially when driven from the eggs.
[26] But do the musical powers of some birds differ in different countries? Never have I heard the two last sing here as I have in Germany. Germans, as we know, are very musical. Have the same general causes which —— etc., etc.?
It will be said that I cannot appreciate the song of the nightingale, though I am trying only properly to appreciate that of other members of the choir. Yet if I were to say that Shakespeare was full of imperfections, that Julius Cæsar was a dull play, King Lear a—I forget what, something uncomplimentary—play, and Richard III. such a one as allowed "the discerning admirer" (a nom de plume) to see the author's quill-driven expression whilst writing it; that, moreover, the seven ages of man was by no means a fine passage, and that Hamlet's soliloquy had been much over-rated, it would not be said, on this account, that I was unable to appreciate Shakespeare. I judge so, because others who make these and similar statements (whether they or the Baconians are the more pestilent, I find it difficult to decide) pass, apparently, for the appreciative persons, which, I suppose, they think themselves to be. Yet how they can think so puzzles me, for people who write in this way must be, really, as much bored by Shakespeare as Shakespeare would have been by them, had an introduction been possible—and surely they must have found this out. I wish the poor, gullible public would. How I should rejoice to be accused—yes, and even convicted—of having no ear for the song of the nightingale, if only it could be discovered, also, that "critics" who, with a natural incapacity for seeing beauty in beauty, yet step modestly forward to teach us, and dance as fantastically on the body of a dead poet as did ever a Lilliputian on that of the sleeping Gulliver, are neither profound nor discerning nor even literary, but merely dull dogs posing, of which sort, indeed, most "great oneyers" keep their pack. Yet I wish they could leave the imperfections of Shakespeare (which they discern in his master-strokes) as utterly beyond them, and busy themselves only with the perfections of such Baviuses and Mœviuses as it is their wont to crown. I commend them to old Bunyan with his "'Then,' said Mr Blind-man, 'I see clearly'"—and so pass on.
The sweet song of the nightingale has caused the more stress to be laid upon the sobriety of its colouring, the natural tendency being to exaggerate such a contrast. But now, when one watches for the bird in the shade of leafy thickets, the way in which it generally reveals itself is by a sudden flash of red or chestnut brown, a bright spot of colour which is conspicuously visible, sometimes even in the centre of a thorn-bush, and, one may almost say, brilliantly so, as its wearer flits amongst the trees and undergrowth. This brightness belongs to the tail generally, but there must, I think, be either upon or just above it—on the upper tail coverts, perhaps—a specially bright and more ruddy-hued patch which produces the effect of which I speak; and as nightingales habitually haunt wooded and umbrageous spots, it has sometimes occurred to me that this has been developed as a guiding star for one to follow another by, just as the white tail of the rabbit is supposed to have been. I have often watched two pursuing each other through the dim leafiness, each uttering a variant of the deep, croaking note of which I have spoken, and which answers to the call, chirp, or twitter amongst other birds. At such times the ruddy star or streak has always, as I say, been most conspicuous. Independently of this, the bird's general colouring is a pleasing olive brown which, according to position and circumstances, has a more or less glossy appearance, the tail having received the finest polish. By virtue of all this, I feel sure that, to anyone who had watched and waited for her, the nightingale would come rather as a conspicuous than a dull-looking bird, at least amongst our smaller British birds. Tits and chaffinches, as it seems to me, flash less as they flit through the trees. Therefore, when I read the eternal remarks about its dull colouring, which—and this is the bane of natural history—one writer hands down from the mouth of another through the generations, I say to myself that each and all of them have, either, never called upon the bird and stayed an hour or two, or else that they have got out of the habit—which may be also a trouble—of seeing anything other than as "it is written." So far from the nightingale being specially like a plain-bound book in which lovely songs are contained, to me it seems to offer an example of a bird distinguished both by its musical powers and—to a much lesser extent, certainly, but still not insignificantly—by its colour also. I am thinking of its tail, and particularly of that ruddy star or patch which, I think, is upon it, and which, little as it may seem in a stuffed specimen or one quite still or hardly seen, becomes a conspicuous feature under such circumstances as I have mentioned. That this patch, or the whole tail, means something I feel sure, but as to whether it is a badge or an ornament—whether natural or sexual selection[27] has been at work—I can say little. In the latter case the same force would have been brought to bear in two different directions, and this, I think, has been often the case with our song-birds, though it seems to have been agreed to talk as if the opposite were. Surely the bullfinch, chaffinch, robin, linnet, greenfinch, and others—the males of all of which show off to some extent before the females—have been selected (if at all) as much by the eye as by the ear of the latter; whilst the lyre-bird of Australia offers an example of a highly adorned species that is also conspicuously musical. The nightingale is glossy, and sometimes—in effect, at least, and in some part of it—bright. It may be getting brighter, but, if so, it will probably have to rival the kingfisher before it ceases to be an encouraging symbol to those who hide a worth which they feel beneath a want which everybody can see.