public would. How I should rejoice to be accused—yes, and even convicted—of having no ear for the song of the nightingale, if only it could be discovered, also, that "critics" who, with a natural incapacity for seeing beauty in beauty, yet step modestly forward to teach us, and dance as fantastically on the body of a dead poet as did ever a Lilliputian on that of the sleeping Gulliver, are neither profound nor discerning nor even literary, but merely dull dogs posing, of which sort, indeed, most "great oneyers" keep their pack. Yet I wish they could leave the imperfections of Shakespeare (which they discern in his masterstrokes) as utterly beyond them, and busy themselves only with the perfections of such Baviuses and Mœviuses as it is their wont to crown. I commend them to old Bunyan with his "'Then,' said Mr Blind-man, 'I see clearly'"—and so pass on.
The sweet song of the nightingale has caused the more stress to be laid upon the sobriety of its colouring, the natural tendency being to exaggerate such a contrast. But now, when one watches for the bird in the shade of leafy thickets, the way in which it generally reveals itself is by a sudden flash of red or chestnut brown, a bright spot of colour which is conspicuously visible, sometimes even in the centre of a thorn-bush, and, one may almost say, brilliantly so, as its wearer flits amongst the trees and undergrowth. This brightness belongs to the tail generally, but there must, I think, be either upon or just above it—on the upper tail coverts, perhaps—a specially bright and more ruddy-hued patch which produces the effect of which I speak; and as nightingales habitually haunt wooded and umbrageous spots, it has sometimes
