We shall, however, find a witness among the writers of his period in Gawain Douglas, who died Bishop of Dunkeld in 1522. He, in a prologue to one of his _Æneids_, applies not only the word 'merry' to our bird, but one of less questionable signification--'mirthful.' If we come down to more modern times, we shall find Wordsworth, who seems above all others, except Burns, to have had a catholic ear for the whole multitude of natural sounds, not only refusing the character of melancholy to the nightingale's song, but placing it below the stock-dove's, because it is deficient in the pensiveness and seriousness which mark the note of the latter. However, of all testimonies which can be brought on this side of the question, the strongest is that of Coleridge. No other has so accurately described the song itself; moreover, he alone has entered the lists avowedly as an antagonist, and confessing in so many words to the existence of an opinion opposite to his own. 'And hark! the nightingale begins its song, "Most musical, most melancholy" bird. A melancholy bird? oh, idle thought![2] In nature there is nothing melancholy. But some night-wandering man, whose heart was pierced With the resemblance of a grievous wrong, Or slow distemper, or neglected love, First named these notes a melancholy strain: And youths and maidens most poetical, Who lose the deepening twilight of the spring In ball-rooms and hot theatres, they still, Full of meek sympathy, must heave their sighs O'er Philomela's pity-pleading strains. My friend, and thou, our sister! we have learnt A different love: we may not thus profane Nature's sweet voices, always full of love And joyance! 'Tis the _merry_ nightingale That crowds and hurries and precipitates With fast-thick warble his delicious notes, As he were fearful that an April night Would be too short for him to utter forth His love-chant and disburden his full soul Of all its music!' Little now remains to be said. We have laid before the reader specimens of the two contending opinions, as well as of that which is set up as a golden mean between them; and he has but to put down our pages, and to walk forth--provided he does not live too far north, or in some smoke-poisoned town--to judge for himself as to the true character of the strains. Small risk, we think, would there be in pronouncing on which side his verdict would be given! Well do we remember the night when we first heard this sweet bird: how we listened and refused to believe--for we were young, and our idea had of course been that his song was a melancholy one--that those madly hilarious sounds could come from the mournful nightingale. Wordsworth attempts thus to account for the delusion under which the older poets laboured on this subject: