"The nightingale--
'Most musical, most melancholy' bird!
A melancholy bird! Oh! idle thought!
In nature there is nothing melancholy.
But some night-wandering man whose heart was pierced
With the remembrance of a grievous wrong,
. . . . he, and such as he,
First named these notes a melancholy strain."
Plato Phædo, § 77. (p. 85., Steph.):
"Men, because they fear death themselves, slander the swans, and say
that they sing from pain lamenting their death, and do not consider
that no bird sings when hungry, or cold, or suffering any other pain;
no, not even the nightingale, and the swallow, and the hoopoe, which
you know are said to sing for grief," &c.
* * * * *
Hooker, E. P. I. c.5. § 2.:
"All things therefore coveting as much as may be to be like unto God in
being ever, that which cannot hereunto attain personally doth seek to
continue itself another way, that is, by offspring and propagation."