He is
never coarse, never harsh, for a single note. Always graceful,
always sweet, he keeps perfect delicacy in his most utter
carelessness.
And why should we overlook, common though he be, yon hedge-sparrow,
who is singing so modestly, and yet so firmly and so true? Or cock-
robin himself, who is here, as everywhere, honest, self-confident,
and cheerful? Most people are not aware, one sometimes fancies, how
fine a singer is cock-robin now in the spring-time, when his song is
drowned by, or at least confounded with, a dozen other songs. We
know him and love him best in winter, when he takes up (as he does
sometimes in cold wet summer days) that sudden wistful warble,
struggling to be happy, half in vain, which surely contradicts
Coleridge's verse:-
'In Nature there is nothing melancholy.'
But he who will listen carefully to the robin's breeding song on a
bright day in May, will agree, I think, that he is no mean musician;
and that for force, variety and character of melody, he is surpassed
only by black-cap, thrush, and nightingale.
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