_Character of the Song of the Nightingale_ (Vol. vii., p. 397.; Vol.
viii., p. 112.).--Although Milton seems to have generally used the
epithet _solemn_ in its classical sense (as cleverly pointed out by MR.
SYDNEY GEDGE), and meant to represent the nightingale as the _customary_
attendant of night, yet there is at least one passage where the epithet
appears to me not to have this meaning; but to express that the song
of the nightingale caused "a holy joy," and was heard not only in the
day-time, but all through the night. For although Milton calls the
nightingale "the night-warbling bird," and so makes it "the customary
attendant of the night," yet he also elsewhere as truly speaks of it as a
_day_ singer. The passage I referred to is in _Paradise Lost_, book vii.,
and seems to me to bear the meaning above spoken of; though MR. GEDGE may
perhaps make "solemn" refer back to the last noun "even." And I confess
that the meaning seems dubious:
"From branch to branch, the smaller birds with song
Solac'd the woods, and spread their painted wings
Till even; nor then the solemn nightingale
Ceas'd warbling, but all night tun'd her soft lays."
I can add one other epithet to the one hundred and nine which I have
already given of the nightingale's song:
_Wond'ring._ Dryden ("Palamon and Arcite").
I may add, that Otway and Grainger (erroneously printed Graingle) appear
to have used "solemn" in the ordinary meaning of the word.