792:--

"_TO JOHN JOHNSON, ESQ._

"You talk of primroses that you pulled on Candlemas Day, but what think
you of me, who heard a nightingale on New Year's Day? Perhaps I am the
only man in England who can boast of such good fortune. Good indeed! for
if was at all an omen, it could not be an unfavourable one. The winter,
however, is now making himself amends, and seems the more peevish for
having been encroached on at so undue a season. Nothing less than a
large slice out of the spring will satisfy him."

He adds the following lines on the occasion:--

"_TO THE NIGHTINGALE, WHICH THE AUTHOR HEARD SING ON
NEW YEAR'S DAY, 1792._

"Whence is it that amazed I hear
From yonder wither'd spray,
This foremost morn of all the year,
The melody of May?

"And why, since thousands would be proud
Of such a favour shown,
Am I selected from the crowd,
To witness it alone?

"Sing'st thou, sweet Philomel, to me,
For that I also long
Have practised in the groves like thee,
Though not like thee in song?

"Or, sing'st thou rather under force
Of some divine command,
Commissioned to presage a course
Of happier days at hand?

"Thrice welcome then! for many a long
And joyless year have I,
As thou to-day, put forth my song
Beneath a wintry sky.

"But thee no wintry skies can harm,
Who only need'st to sing
To make e'en January charm,
And every season spring.

R.B."

[3] I once witnessed this silly and barbarous sport, and saw at least a
score of maimed and wounded birds upon the barns, and stables, and
outhouses of the village. I was utterly disgusted, and it required a
strong effort of the mind to avoid wishing that one of the gunners at
least had hobbled off the ground with a dangling leg, which might for
one half-year have reminded him of the cowardly practice of "shooting
from the trap."--R. B.

[4] The poor pigeon, I think, must here allude to the old well-known
quarrel between the two families about building their nests. The magpie
once undertook to teach the pigeon how to build a more substantial and
commodious dwelling, and certainly it would have become the learner to
have observed her progress, and not interrupt the teacher; but the
pigeon kept on her usual cry, "Take two, Taffy, take two" (for thus it
is translated in Suffolk), but Mag insis