OLIYBR GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES.

genius, lie was in excellent condition for such labour;
though it may be, with Thomson, he might think both the
birds and the poets happier in the light, and singing sweetest
amid luxuriant woods, with the full spring blooming around
them.* What alone seems certain as to that matter, be it
light or dark, is that the song, if a true song, will make itself
audible.

There is a note among Newbery's papers with the date of
the 17th of December 1763, which states Goldsmith to have
received twenty-five guineas from, the publisher, for which
he promises to account. At this time, too, he dis-
appears from his usual haunts, and is supposed to have
been in concealment somewhere. Certainly he was in distress,
and on a less secure footing with Newbery than at the com-
mencement of the year.f Yet it is also at this time we find

* Goldsmith's philosophy on this subject appears in that delightfully written
book, the Animated Nature, and is yery much opposed to fat Dr. Oheyne's.
" The music of every bird in captivity produces no very pleasing sensations : it
" is but the mirth of a little animal insensible of its unfortunate situation. It is
" the landscape, the grove, the golden break of day, the contest upon the haw-
'' thorn, the fluttering from branch to branch, the soaring in the air, and the
" answering of its young, that gives the bird's song its true relish. These united,
"improve each other, and raise the mind to a state of the highest, yet most
" harmless exultation. Nothing can in this situation of mind be more pleasing
" than to see the lark warbling on the wing ; raising its note as it soars, until it
" seems lost in the immense heights above us ; the note continuing, the bird itself
" unseen ; to see it then descending with a swell as it comes from the clouds, yet
" sinking by degrees as it approaches its nest; the spot where all its affections
"are centred, the spot that has prompted all this joy." iv. 261-2. In the same chapter
Goldsmith incidentally contributes his experience to what Charles Fox, Coleridge,
and other famous men have since written on the song of the nightingale. '' For weeks
" together, if undisturbed, they sit upon the same tree ; and Shakspeare rightly
' describes the nightingale sitting nightly in the same place, which I have
' frequently observed she seldom, departs from. . Her note is soft, various, and
' interrupted; she seldom holds it without a pause above the time that one can
' count twenty. The nightingale's pausing song would be the proper epithet for
' this bird's music with us, which is more pleasing than the warbling of any other
' bird, because it is heard at a time when all,the rest are silent, iv. 256-7.
These passages, exquisite in feeling, in expression emulate the music they describe,
•f A brief letter of Goldsmith's with which I was favoured after this part of my
narrative was printed in my first edition, gave strong -corroboration to the state-the meaner inmates of the upper floors "