Compare her face with some that I shall show And I will make thee think thy swan a crow.[149] [Illustration: THE RAVEN] [Sidenote: _The Chough_] In Shakespeare’s day the CHOUGH must have been a much commoner bird in our islands than it is now. At present it is not known to breed on the south coast of England further east than the cliffs of Dorset. Three hundred years ago, however, it seems to have been abundant about the chalk headlands of Kent. That it was a familiar English bird may be inferred from various passages in our poet’s writings. The most striking scene depicted by him, wherein this bird plays a conspicuous part, is his picture of Dover cliffs, drawn so vividly, as from an actual visit to the place: How fearful And dizzy ’tis to east one’s eyes so low! The crows and choughs that wing the midway air Show scarce so gross as beetles: half way down Hangs one that gathers samphire, dreadful trade! Methinks he seems no bigger than his head: The fishermen that walk upon the beach Appear like mice; and yond tall anchoring bark Diminish’d to her cock; her cock, a buoy Almost too small for sight: the murmuring surge, That on the unnumber’d idle pebbles chafes, Cannot be heard so high.[150] It is interesting to notice that while birds are here taken as a help to the eye in estimating the height of the precipice as seen from the summit, a bird is again used as a guide to gauge the height as seen from below: Look up a-height; the shrill-gorged lark so far Cannot be seen or heard.[151] The habits of the chough were not unknown to the poet, since he chose the bird as a symbol for a certain courtier of whom it was said that “it was a vice to know him”: ’Tis a chough, but, as I say, spacious in the possession of dirt.[152] The chough’s continuous and unmusical chatter is more than once contemptuously invoked to describe the talk of some men. When Antonio in _The Tempest_ tempts Sebastian to assassinate the honest old Counsellor Gonzalo, he speaks of Lords that can prate As amply and unnecessarily As this Gonzalo; I myself could make A chough of as deep chat.[153] In a passage in _All’s Well that Ends Well_ where the ambush party are concocting some sort of gibberish to deceive the vainglorious Parolles, they agree to talk “Choughs’ language, gabble enough and good enough.”[154] When Puck recounts to Oberon what happened to the rustics when Bottom reappeared among them wearing the ass’s head, he gives an excellent description of the effect of the discharge of a fowling-piece at a bird-haunted cliff: When they him spy, As russet-pated choughs, many in sort, Rising and cawing at the gun’s report, Sever themselves and madly sweep the sky: So, at his sight, away his fellows fly.[155]