[5.] The Attic warbler. The nightingale, called "the Attic bird," either because it was so common in Attica, or from the old legend that Philomela (or, as some say, Procne), the daughter of a king of Attica, was changed into a nightingale. Cf. Milton's description of Athens (P. R. iv. 245):
|
"where the Attic bird Trills her thick-warbled notes the summer long." |
Cf. Ovid, Hal. 110: "Attica avis verna sub tempestate queratus;" and Propertius, ii. 16, 6: "Attica volucris."
Pours her throat is a metonymy. H. p. 85. Cf. Pope, Essay on Man, iii. 33: "Is it for thee the linnet pours her throat?"
[6, 7.] Cf. Thomson, Spring, 577:
| "From the first note the hollow cuckoo sings, The symphony of spring." |
[9, 10.] Cf. Milton, Comus, 989:
| "And west winds with musky wing About the cedarn alleys fling Nard and cassia's balmy smells." |
[12.] Cf. Milton, P. L. iv. 245: "Where the unpierc'd shade Imbrown'd the noontide bowers;" Pope, Eloisa, 170: "And breathes a browner horror on the woods;" Thomson, Castle of Indolence, i. 38: "Or Autumn's varied shades imbrown the walls."
According to Ruskin (Modern Painters, vol. iii. p. 241, Amer. ed.) there is no brown in nature. After remarking that Dante "does not acknowledge the existence of the colour of brown at all," he goes on to say: "But one day, just when I was puzzling myself about this, I happened to be sitting by one of our best living modern colourists, watching him at his work, when he said, suddenly and by mere accident, after we had been talking about other things, 'Do you know I have found that there is no brown in nature? What we call brown is always a variety either of orange or purple. It never can be represented by umber, unless altered by contrast.' It is curious how far the significance of this remark extends, how exquisitely it illustrates and confirms the mediæval sense of hue," etc.