In addition to these 109 epithets, others might be added of a fuller character; such as "Queen of all the quire" (Chaucer), "Night-music's king" (Richard Barnfield, 1549), "Angel of the spring" (Ben Jonson), "_Music's best seed-plot_" (Crashaw), "Best poet of the grove" (Thomson), "Sweet poet of the woods" (Mrs. Charlotte Smith), "Dryad of the trees" (Keats), "Sappho of the dell" (Hood); but the foregoing list of simple adjectives (which doubtless could be greatly increased by a more extended poetical reading) sufficiently demonstrates the popularity of the nightingale as a poetical embellishment, and would, perhaps, tend to prove that a greater diversity of epithets have been bestowed upon the nightingale than have been given to any other song-bird.
[Footnote 1: The epithets "heavenly," "holy," "solemn," &c., represent the nightingale's song, as spoken of by Keats, as the bird's "plaintive _anthem_;" by Mackay, as its
and by Moore also, in his account of the Vale of Cashmere, as
"The nightingale's _hymn_ from the Isle of Chenars."
In _A Proper New Boke of the Armony of Byrdes_ (quoted by Dibdin, _Top. Antiq._, iv. 381.), of unknown date, though probably before 1580, the nightingale is represented as singing its Te Deum:
"Tibi Cherubin Et Seraphin Full goodly she dyd chaunt, With notes merely Incessabile Voce Proeclamant."]
[Footnote 2: Chaucer (_Troilus and Creseide_) imagines the nightingale to "stint" at the beginning of its song, and to be frightened at the least noise.]
[Footnote 3: This, and the epithets of "sole-sitting" and "unseen," refer to the nightingale's love of solitary seclusion.]
"He slep no more than doth the nightingale."
In King Alfred's version of Orosius, book ii. chap. iv. p. 68., Barrington, we have an account of an unsuccessful attempt made by one of Cyrus the Great's officers to swim across a river "mid twam tyncenum," with two _tynkens_. What was a _tyncen_? That was the question nearly a hundred years ago, when Barrington was working out his translation; and the only answer to be found then was contained in the great dictionary published by Lye and Manning, but is not found now in Dr. Bosworth's second edition of his Dictionary: "Tynce, _a tench_."