The Elizabethan poets, however, when they talked of
Philomel, 'her breast against a thorn,' were unaware that they and
the Greeks were talking of two different birds; that our English
Lusciola Luscinia is not Lusciola Philomela, one of the various birds
called Bulbul in the East. The true Philomel hardly enters Venetia,
hardly crosses the Swiss Alps, ventures not into the Rhineland and
Denmark, but penetrates (strangely enough) further into South Sweden
than our own Luscinia: ranging meanwhile over all Central Europe,
Persia, and the East, even to Egypt. Whether his song be really sad,
let those who have heard him say. But as for our own Luscinia, who
winters not in Egypt and Arabia, but in Morocco and Algeria, the only
note of his which can be mistaken for sorrow, is rather one of too
great joy; that cry, which is his highest feat of art; which he
cannot utter when he first comes to our shores, but practises
carefully, slowly, gradually, till he has it perfect by the beginning
of June; that cry, long, repeated, loudening and sharpening in the
intensity of rising passion, till it stops suddenly, exhausted at the
point where pleasure, from very keenness, turns to pain; and -
'In the topmost height of joy
His passion clasps a secret grief.
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