Castiglione is represented by Strada as having been present at this extraordinary duel himself; and however fabulous this may seem, there is a letter extant from Bartolomeo Ricci to Giambattista Pigna, contemporaries of Tasso, in which he says, that Antoniano, a celebrated improvisatore of those times, playing on the lute after a rural dinner which the writer had given to his friends, provoked a nightingale to contend with him in the same manner. Dr. Black, in his "Life of Tasso," by way of note upon this letter, quotes a passage from Sir William Jones, strongly corroborating such stories; and indeed, when we know what parrots and other birds can do, especially in imitating and answering each other, and hear the extravagant reports to which the powers of the nightingale have given rise, such as the story of an actual dialogue in Buffon, we can easily imagine that the groundwork of the relation may not be a mere fable. "An intelligent Persian," says Sir William, "declared he had more than once been present, when a celebrated lutanist, surnamed Bulbul (the nightingale), was playing to a large company in a grove near Shiraz, where he distinctly saw the nightingales trying to vie with the musician; sometimes warbling on the trees, sometimes fluttering from branch to branch, as if they wished to approach the instrument, and at length dropping on the ground in a kind of ecstasy, from which they were soon raised, he assured me, by a change in the mode.”
Now westward Sol had spent the richest beams
Of noon's high glory, when hard by the streams
Of Tiber, on the scene of a green plat,
Under protection of an oak, there sat
A sweet lute's-master: in whose gentle airs
He lost the day's heat and his own hot cares.
Close in the covert of the leaves there stood
A nightingale, come from the neighbouring wood; (The sweet inhabitant of each glad tree,
Their
muse, their syren, harmless syren she)
There stood she list'ning, and did entertain
The music's soft report: and mould the same
In her own murmurs, that whatever mood
His curious fingers lent, her voice made good:
The man perceiv'd his rival and her art,
Dispos'd to give the light-foot lady sport
Awakes his lute, and 'gainst the fight to come
Informs it, in a sweet præludium
Of closer strains; and ere the war begin,
He lightly skirmishes on every string,
Charg'd with a flying touch: and straightway she
Carves out her dainty voice as readily,
Into a thousand sweet distinguish'd tones,
And reckons up in soft divisions,
Quick volumes of wild notes; to let him know
By that shrill taste, she could do something too.
His nimble hands' instinct then taught each string
A cap'ring cheerfulness, and made them sing
To their own dance; now negligently rash
He throws his arm, and with a long-drawn dash
Blends all together; then distinctly trips
From this to that; then quick returning skips
And snatches this again, and pauses there.
She measures every measure, everywhere
Meets art with art; sometimes, as if in doubt,
Not perfect yet, and fearing to be out,
Trails her plain ditty in one long-spun note,
Through the sleek passage of her open throat,
A clear unwrinkled song; then doth she point it
With tender accents, and severely joint it
By short diminutives, that being rear'd
In controverting warbles evenly shar'd,
With her sweet self she wrangles. He amaz'd
That from so small a channel should be rais'd
The torrent of a voice, whose melody
Could melt into such sweet variety,
Strains higher yet, that tickled with rare art
The tattling strings (each breathing in his part)
Most kindly do fall out; the grumbling base
In surly groans disdains the treble's grace:
The high-perch'd treble chirps at this, and chides, Until his finger (moderator) hides
And closes the sweet quarrel, rousing all
Hoarse, shrill, at once; as when the trumpets call
Hot Mars to th' harvest of death's field, and woo
Men's hearts into their hands: this lesson too
She gives him back; her supple breast thrills out
Sharp airs, and staggers in a warbling doubt
Of dallying sweetness, hovers o'er her skill,
And folds in wav'd notes, with a trembling bill,
The pliant series of her slippery song;
Then starts she suddenly into a throng
Of short thick sobs, whose thund'ring volleys float,
And roll themselves over her lubric throat
In panting murmurs, still'd out of her breast.
That ever-bubbling spring, the sugar'd nest
Of her delicious soul, that there does lie
Bathing in streams of liquid melody;
Music's best seed-plot, where, in ripen'd airs
A golden-headed harvest fairly rears
His honey-dropping tops, plow'd by he breath
Which there reciprocally laboureth.
In that sweet soil, it seems a holy choir,
Founded to th' name of great Apollo's lyrc,
Whose silver roof rings with the sprightly notes
Of sweep-lipp'd angel-imps, that swill their throats
In cream of morning Helicon, and then
Prefer soft anthems to the ears of men,
To woo them from their beds, still murmuring
That men can sleep while they their matins sing:
(Most divine service) whose so early lay
Prevents the eye-lids of the blushing day!
There you might hear her kindle her soft voice
In the close murmur of a sparkling noise,
And lay the ground-work of her hopeful song,
Still keeping in the forward stream, so long
Till a sweet whirlwind (striving to get out)
Heaves her soft bosom, wanders round about,
And makes a pretty earthquake in her breast,
Till the fledg'd notes at length forsake their nest,
Fluttering in wanton shoals, and to the sky,
Wing'd with their own wild echoes, prattling fly.
She opes the floodgate, and lets loose a tide
Of streaming sweetness, which in state doth ride
On the way'd back of every swelling strain,
Rising and falling in a pompous train.
And while she thus discharges a shrill peal
Of flashing airs, she qualifies their zeal
With the cool epode of a graver note,
Thus high, thus low, as if her silver throat
Would reach the brazen voice of war's hoarse bird;
Her little soul is ravish'd: and so pour'd
Into loose ecstasies, that she is plac'd
Above herself, music's enthusiast.
Shame now and anger mix'd a double strain In the musician's face; yet once again,
Mistress, I come; now reach a strain, my lute,
Above her mock, or be forever mute.
But tune a song of victory to me;
As to thyseif, sing thine own obsequy;
So said, his hands sprightly as fire he flings,
And with a quavering coyness tastes the strings,
The sweet-lip'd sisters musically frighted,
Singing their fears, are fearfully delighted.
Trembling as when Apollo's golden hairs
Are fann'd and frizzled in the wanton airs
Of his own breath: which, married to his lyre,
Doth tune the spheres, and make heaven's self look higher.
From this to that, from that to this he flies,
Feels music's pulse in all her arteries,
Caught in a net which there Apollo spreads,
His fingers struggle with the vocal threads,
Following those little rills, he sinks into
A sea of Helicon; his hand does go
Those parts of sweetness which with nectar drop,
Softer than that which pants in Hebe's cup.
The humourous strings expound his learned touch
By various glosses; now they seem to grutch,
And murmur in a buzzing din, then gingle
In shrill-tongu'd accents, striving to be single.
Every smooth turn, every delicious stroke
Gives life to some new grace; thus doth invoke
Sweetness by all her names; thus, bravely thus
(Fraught with a fury so harmonious)
The lute's light genius now does proudly rise,
Heav'd on the surges of swoln rhapsodies,
Whose flourish (meteor-like) doth curl the air
With flash of high-born fancies; here and there
Dancing in lotty measures, and anon
Creeps on the soft touch of a tender tone:
Whose trembling murmurs melting in wild airs
Run to and fro, complaining his sweet cares;
Because those precious mysteries that dwell
In music's ravish'd soul he dares not tell,
But whisper to the world: thus do they vary,
Each string his note, as if they meant to carry
Their master's blest soul (snatch'd out at his ears
By a strong ecstasy) through all the spheres
Of music's heaven, and seat it there on high
In th' empyreum of pure harmony.
At length, (after so long, so loud a strife
Of all the strings, still breathing the best life
Of blest variety, attending on
His fingers' fairest revolution,
In many a sweet rise, many as sweet a fall)
A full-mouth'd diapason swallows all.
This done, he lists what she would say to this,
And she, although her breath's late exercise
Had dealt too roughly with her tender throat,
Yet summons all her sweet powers for a note.
Alas! in vain! for while (sweet soul) she tries
To measure all those wild diversities
Of chatt'ring strings, by the small size of one
Poor simple voice, rais'd in a natural tone;
She fails, and failing grieves, and grieving dies.
She dies and leaves her life the victor's prize,
Falling upon his lute; O fit to have
(That liv'd so sweetly) dead, so sweet a grave!
This exquisite story has had another relator in Ford, the dramatist, and according to a great authority, a finer one.* The passage is very beautiful, certainly, especially in the outset about Greece; and if the story is to be taken
* Charles Lamb; who says, in one of the notes to his "Specimens of English Dramatic Poets," "This story, which is originally to be met with in 'Strada's Prolusions,' has been paraphrased in rhyme by Crashaw, Ambrose
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