22 JUNE 1912, Page 17

THE NIGHTINGALE.

[To THII EDITOR 01 THE " SPICTATOR."] SIR,—Your correspondent Mr. L. J. Roberts asks if it is not true that Coleridge was the first poet who accurately character- ized the song of the nightingale as a " merry" one. It is not true, for in this, like many other of our English writers, he

followed Chaucer. In the "Flower and the Leaf " these lines occur :

"The nightingale with so mery a note Answered him, that all the woodo tong."

Chaucer's references to the nightingale are very numerous and always true to nature. His writings may not only have prompted Coleridge's allusion, but also Milton's still more famous sonnet.—I am, Sir, &a., Castle Ashby, Northampton.

RICHARD G. SCRIVEN.