Notes and Queries, Number 182, April 23, 1853

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Various. Notes and Queries, Number 182, April 23, 1853

Notes

POETICAL EPITHETS OF THE NIGHTINGALE

ON A PASSAGE IN OROSIUS

NOTES ON SEVERAL MISUNDERSTOOD WORDS

A WORK ON THE MACROCOSM

DR. SOUTH'S LATIN TRACT AGAINST SHERLOCK

SHAKSPEARE CORRESPONDENCE

Minor Notes

Queries

SATIRICAL PLAYING CARDS

MOVABLE METAL TYPES ANNO 1435

PORTRAITS AT BRICKWALL HOUSE

Minor Queries

Minor Queries with Answers

Replies

EDMUND SPENSER, AND SPENSERS, OR SPENCERS, OF HURSTWOOD

THROWING OLD SHOES FOR LUCK

ORKNEYS IN PAWN

HOGARTH'S PICTURES

PHANTOM BELLS AND LOST CHURCHES

PHOTOGRAPHIC NOTES AND QUERIES

Replies to Minor Queries

Miscellaneous

BOOKS AND ODD VOLUMES

WANTED TO PURCHASE

Notices to Correspondents

Отрывок из книги

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:

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In addition to these 109 epithets, others might be added of a fuller character; such as "Queen of all the quire" (Chaucer), "Night-music's king" (Richard Barnfield, 1549), "Angel of the spring" (Ben Jonson), "Music's best seed-plot" (Crashaw), "Best poet of the grove" (Thomson), "Sweet poet of the woods" (Mrs. Charlotte Smith), "Dryad of the trees" (Keats), "Sappho of the dell" (Hood); but the foregoing list of simple adjectives (which doubtless could be greatly increased by a more extended poetical reading) sufficiently demonstrates the popularity of the nightingale as a poetical embellishment, and would, perhaps, tend to prove that a greater diversity of epithets have been bestowed upon the nightingale than have been given to any other song-bird.

There should not be any comma, or other stop, at body, because the sense is—"The root of that stock is amid man's body."

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