te

cipula intentione magna, et reddit: « vicibufque reticent. Intelligitur emen"datæ correptio, et in docente quidam "reprehenfio." "The younger fort meditate and receive leffons for their imitation. The scholar liftens with great attention, and repeats; and each is filent by turns. An attempt to mend in a corrected paffage may be perceived; and a kind of reprehenfion in the teacher."

FROM the fame ingenious paper of Mr. Barrington's we learn, that the mufic of the nightingale, of which the highly laboured defcriptions of Pliny and Strada, copied by the poets, have given only confused and indefinite ideas, has in reality all the excellen

cies

ciesbafcribed to it, but excellencies of a kind which may be clearly and scien tifically stated.

Irs tone," fays he, "is infinite ly more mellow than that of any "other bird, though at the fame time,

by a proper exertion of its musical "powers, it can be exceffively bril iliant.

"WHEN this bird, (a very fine caged nightingale which Mr. B. kept) Jang its Jong round, in its whole compass, I have obferved fixteen different beginnings and clofes, at the fame time that the intermediate notes were commonly * varied in their fucceffion with fuch -nellaɔxa i 4 valot All cat viisaku «judgment

2913

judgment as to produce a most plea fffing variety. I ) ¿quill brid »

1 AH.

A

THE next point of fuperiority in nabur jensgut dow (disłym.“ "a nightingale, is its continuance of "fong, without a paufe, which I have "obferved fometimes not to be lefs << than twenty feconds. Whenever "refpiration, however, became necef"sary, it was taken with as much judg«ment as by an opera finger.

"But it is not only in tone and va

*THIS variety of the nightingale's fong is most poețically expreffed in a line of Homer's Odyssey, B. XIX, V. 521.

MR. POPE's translation of it is exceffively languid. motor to est035

da

"To vernal airs attunes her varied ftrain."

I SHALL venture to offer one, which, at leaft, approaches nearer to the original. vision 515W

arving pours her many-founding strain.

Quick varying

PJAJCO

"riety

riety that the nightingale excells; the "bird alfo fings (if I may fo exprefs myself) with fuperior judgment and tafte."

ες

N

"I HAVE therefore commonly ob<< ferved that my nightingale began "foftly like the ancient orators; re"ferving its breath to fwell certain "notes, which by this means had "a most astonishing effect, and which “eludes all verbal description.

Ir poets have been inattentive to the real state of nature in their own country, it cannot be expected that their pictures of foreign regions should be accurate and characteristic. Yet, were they fufficiently qualified by their own obfervation, or the authentic ac

I

counts

counts of others, for the attempt, it is obvious that no fource could be fo fo productive of novelty, as the defcription of countries where almost every object is new. Such, to the inhabitant of a temperate climate, are the polar and tropical parts of the globe. It is highly to the credit of Virgil's genius, that he first among the ancient poets ventured to transport his reader into a new world, and place the foft Italian amid the rigours of a Scythian winter. His defcription of this dreary fcene has been thought so just and lively, as to be very clofely imitated even by the natural Thomson; who has, however, according to his usual manner, greatly improved upon it, by the addition of new circumftances. To the flocks and herds

1

plearoni 4003014 şives auoi bra basq-wole * Georg. III. v. 349 and feq.