DEAR GREY—In defense of my opinion about the nightingales, I find
Chaucer—who of all poets seems to have been the fondest of the singing
of birds—calls it a merry note; and though Theocritus mentions
nightingales six or seven times, he never mentions their note as
plaintive or melancholy. It is true he does not call it anywhere
merry, as Chaucer does, but by mentioning it with the song of the
blackbird, and as answering it, he seems to imply that it was a
cheerful note. Sophocles is against us; but he says, “_lamenting
Itys_,” and the comparison of her to Electra is rather as to
perseverance, day and night, than as to sorrow. At all events, a
tragic poet is not half so good authority in this question as
Theocritus and Chaucer. I can not light upon the passage in the
“Odyssey,” where Penelope’s restlessness is compared to the
nightingale, but I am sure it is only as to restlessness that he makes
the comparison. If you will read the last twelve books of the
“Odyssey” you will certainly find it, and I am sure you will be paid
for your hunt, whether you find it or not. The passage in Chaucer is
in the “Flower and Leaf.” The one I particularly allude to in
Theocritus is in his “Epigrams,” I think in the fourth. Dryden has
transferred the word _merry_ to the goldfinch, in the “Flower and the
Leaf”—in deference, may be, to the vulgar error. But pray read his
description of the nightingale there; it is quite delightful. I am
afraid that I like these researches as much better than those that
relate to Shaftesbury and Sunderland, as I do those better than
attending the House of Commons.