Chapter 3

In the midst of all this diversity, the question was, What were the proper proportions? or, in other words, What proportions constituted a handsome figure? and here our vestiarian philosopher was for a long time at a loss. At length, however, he took 300 measurements, without selection, including the length of the trunk, of the head and neck, and of the fork, and adding them all together, struck the average: from which it resulted, that the average head and neck gives 10-1/2 inches; trunk, 25 inches; and fork, 32 inches; making the whole figure, from the crown of the head to the sole of the _shoe_, 5 feet 7-1/2 inches. The word we have italicised is the drawback: a tailor measures with the shoes on; and Mr Macdonald can only approximate to the truth when he deducts half an inch for the sole, and declares the average height of our population to be five feet seven inches. On this basis, however, he constructed a scale of beauty applying to all heights: If a man of 5 feet 7 inches give 10-1/2 inches for head and neck, 25 for trunk, and 31-1/2 for fork, what should another give, of 6 feet, or any other height? The approximation of a man's actual measurement to this rule of three determines his pretensions in the way of symmetry; and the inventor of the _shibboleth_ has found it so far to answer, that a figure coming near the rule invariably pleases the eye, and gives the assurance of a handsome man. Independently of this advantage, a man of such proportions has great strength, and is able to withstand the fatigue of violent exercise for a longer period than one less symmetrically formed.

The term 'adult,' however, used by Mr Macdonald to designate those he measured, is not satisfactory--it does not inform us that the persons measured had reached their full development; for men continue to grow, as has been shewn by M. Quetelet, even after twenty-five. The height given, notwithstanding--five feet seven inches--in all probability approximates pretty closely to the true average; and the very different result shewn in Professor Forbes's measurements in the University must be set pretty nearly out of the question. The number of Scotsmen measured by the professor was 523 in all; but these were of eleven different ages, from fifteen to twenty-five, all averaged separately; and supposing the number of each age to have been alike, this would give less than fifty of the age of twenty-five--the average height of whom was 69.3 inches. But independently of the smallness of the number, the professor's customers were volunteers, and it is not to be supposed that under-sized persons would put themselves forward on such an occasion. It may be added, that even the height of the boot-heels of young collegians of twenty-five would tend to falsify the average.

Men do not only differ in their proportions from other men, but from themselves. The arms and legs may be paired, but they are not matched, and in every respect one side of the body is different from the other: the eyes are not set straight across the face, neither is the mouth; the nose is inclined to one side; the ears are of different sizes, and one is nearer the crown of the head than the other; there are not two fingers, nor two nails on the fingers, alike, and the same disagreement runs through the whole figure. This, however, is so common an observation, that we should not have thought it necessary to mention it, but for the bearing the facts given by our statist have upon the common theory by which the irregularity is sought to be accounted for. This declares, that use is the cause of the greater growth of one limb, &c.: that the right hand, for instance, is larger than the left, because it is in more active service. It appears, however, that although the left limbs are in general smaller, this is not, as it is usually supposed, invariably the case; while the ears and eyes, that are used indiscriminately, present the same relative difference of size. We do not, therefore, make our own proportions in this respect: we come into the world with them, and our occupations merely exaggerate a natural defect. An idle man will have one arm half an inch longer than the other; while a woman, who has been accustomed in early years to carry a child, exhibits a difference amounting sometimes to an inch and a half.

When these facts were first mentioned to us, we looked with some curiosity at the machine from which we had just stepped out; and there we found an illustration of them not highly flattering to our self-esteem. Knees, hips, shoulders, ears, all were so ill-assorted, that it seemed as if Nature had been actually trying her 'prentice hand upon our peculiar self. It was in vain to bethink ourselves of the physical eccentricities of the distinguished men of other times:

'Ammon's great son one shoulder had too high; Such Ovid's nose, and, sir, you have an eye!'--

we might have gone through tho whole inventory of the figure, and concluded the quotation:

'Go on, obliging creatures, make me see All that disgraced my betters met in me. Say, for my comfort, languishing in bed, Just so immortal Maro held his head; And when I die, be sure you let me know-- Great Homer died three thousand years ago!'

What we had seen, however, was only the length of the figure; but we were informed by our philosophic tailor, that the limbs, &c., are likewise irregularly placed as regards breadth. The trunk of the body is of various shapes, which he distinguishes as the oval, the circular, and the flat. The first has the arms placed in the middle; in the second, they are more towards the back, and relatively long; and in the third, more towards the front, and relatively short. The length of the forearm should be the length of the lower part of the leg, and if either longer or shorter, the difference appears in the walk. If shorter, the walk is a kind of waddle, the elbows inclining outwards; if longer, it is distinguished by a swinging motion, as if the person carried weights in his hands. If the circumference of the body, measured with an inch-tape just below the shoulders, be smaller than the circumference of the hips, the person will rock in walking, and plant his feet heavily upon the ground. If greater, so that the chief weight is above the limbs, the step will be light, as is familiarly seen in corpulent men, whose delicate mode of walking we witness with ever-recurring surprise. If the shoulders slope downwards, with the spine bending inwards, the individual 'cannot throw a stone, or handle firearms with dexterity.' When inclined forwards, and well relieved from the body, he may be a proficient in these exercises. A peculiarity in walking is given by the size of the head and neck being out of proportion; and an instance is mentioned of a man being discharged from the army, on account of his conformation rendering it impossible for him to keep his head steady.

All these are curious and suggestive particulars. It is customary to refer awkwardness of manner to bad habit, and such diseases as consumption either to imprudence or hereditary taint; but it may be doubted whether taints are not mainly the result of original conformation. Habit and imprudence may doubtless aggravate the evil, just as exercise may enlarge a member of the body; but it is nature which sows the seeds of decay in her own productions. Physically, the child is a copy of the parents, even to their peculiarities of gait; and these peculiarities would seem to depend on the correct or incorrect balance of the members of the body. When the conformation is of a kind which interferes with the play of the lungs, the same transmission of course takes place, and consumption may be the fatal inheritance. If the arrangement of the parts were perfect, it may be doubted--for symmetry is the basis of health as well as beauty--whether we should ever hear of such a thing as 'taint in the blood.' If this theory were to gain ground, it would simplify much the practice of medicine; for the disease would stand in visible and tangible presence before the eyes, and the employment of inventions, to counteract and finally conquer the eccentricities of nature, would be governed by science, and thus relieved from the suspicion of quackery, which at present more or less attaches to it. To pursue these speculations, however, would lead us too far; and before concluding, we must find room for a few more of our practical philosopher's observations.

All good mechanics, it seems, have large hands and thick and short fingers; which is pretty nearly the conclusion arrived at by D'Arpentigny in _La Chirognomonie_, although the captain adds, that the hands must be _en spatule_--that is to say, with the end of the fingers enlarged in the form of a spatula. The hand is generally the same breadth as the foot: a fact recognised by the country people, who, when buying their shoes at fairs--which were the usual mart--might have been seen thrusting in their hand to try the breadth, when they had ascertained that the length was suitable. A short foot gives a mincing walk, while a long one requires the person to bring his body aplomb with the foot before taking the step, which thus resembles a stride. Good dancers have the limbs short as compared with the body, which has thus the necessary power over them; but if too short, there is a deficiency of dexterity in the management of the feet.

In conclusion, it will be seen, we think, that there is much to be learned even in the business of the shears. There is no trade whatever which will not afford materials for thought to an intelligent man, and thus enlarge the mind and elevate the character.

THE NIGHTINGALE:

A MUSICAL QUESTION.

Is the song of the nightingale mirthful or melancholy? is a question that has been discussed so often, that anything new on the subject might be considered superfluous, were it not that the very fact of the discussion is in itself a curiosity worthy of attention. The note in dispute was heard with equal distinctness by Homer and Wordsworth; and indeed there are few poets of any age or country who have not, at one time or other in their lives, had the testimony of their own ears as to its character. Whence, then, this difference of opinion? Listen to Thomson's unqualified assertion, given with the seriousness of an affidavit:

----'all abandoned to despair, she sings Her sorrows through the night, and on the bough Sole sitting still at every dying fall Takes up again her lamentable strain Of winding wo; till wide around the woods Sigh to her song and with her wail resound.'

Then Homer in the _Odyssey_, through Pope's paraphrase:

'Sad Philomel, in bowery shades unseen, To vernal airs attunes her varied strains.'

Virgil, as rendered by Dryden:

----'she supplies the night with mournful strains And melancholy music fills the plains.'

Milton, too:

----'Philomel will deign a song In her sweetest, saddest plight, Smoothing the rugged brow of night, While Cynthia checks her dragon yoke Gently o'er the accustom'd oak: Sweet bird, that shun'st the noise of folly-- Most musical, most melancholy.'

And again in _Comus_:

----'the love-lorn nightingale Nightly to thee her sad song mourneth well.'

And Shakspeare makes his poor banished Valentine congratulate himself, that in the forest he can

----'to the nightingale's complaining note Tune his distresses and record his wo.

We might go on much longer in this strain. We might give, likewise, the mythological cause assigned for the imputed melancholy, and add that some, not content with this, represent the bird as leaning its breast against a thorn--

'To aggravate the inward grief, Which makes its music so forlorn.'

But we would rather pause to admit candidly, that two of the above witnesses might be challenged--Virgil and Thomson; who indeed should be counted but as one, for the author of the _Seasons_, in the lines quoted, has translated, though not so closely as Dryden, from the _Georgics_ of the Latin poet. If you will read the passage--it matters not whether in Virgil, Dryden, or Thomson--you will perceive that it is a special occurrence that is spoken of: no statement whatever is made as to the character of the nightingale's ordinary song. Thomson, in the course of his humane and touching protest against the barbarous art: 'through which birds are

---- by tyrant man Inhuman caught, and in the narrow cage From liberty confined, and boundless air,'

represents the nightingale's misery when thus bereaved. This portion of the lines shall stand entire; none, we are sure, would wish us further to mangle the passage:

'But chief, let not the nightingale lament Her ruined care, too delicately framed To brook the harsh confinement of the cage. Oft, when returning with her loaded bill, The astonished mother finds a vacant nest, By the rude hands of unrelenting clowns Robbed: to the ground the vain provision falls. Her pinions ruffle, and low drooping, scarce Can bear the mourner to the poplar shade; Where all abandoned to despair, she sings Her sorrows through the night.'

It will at once be seen that this description relates to an exceptional condition, and we have yet to seek what character Virgil and Thomson would give to the ordinary song of this paradoxical musician. For the Roman, we do not know that any passage exists in his works which can help us to a conclusion; but Thomson's testimony must undoubtedly be ranged on the contra side, as appears from the following lines in his _Agamemnon_:

'Ah, far unlike the nightingale! she sings Unceasing through the balmy nights of May-- She sings from love and joy.'

In the passage from his Spring, which we have given, we cannot but fancy that the poet endeavoured--if we may so say--to effect a compromise between the opinion which, through the influence of classical poetry, generally prevailed as to the character of the bird's music, and the opposing convictions which his own senses had forced upon him. It was desirable to describe its strains according to the popular fancy, and therefore he borrowed from Virgil such a description of the bird's sorrow as under the assumed circumstances did no violence to his own judgment.

Thomson is not the only poet in whom we fancy we detect some such attempt at compromise. It appears to us that Villega, the Anacreon of Spain, in the following little poem, which we give in Mr Wiffen's translation, adopted, with a similar object, this idea of the nightingale robbed of her young. The truthful and somewhat minute description in the song, however, represents the bird's ordinary performance, and but ill suits the circumstances under which it is supposed to be uttered. The failure on the part of the poet may be ascribed to his secret conviction, that the nightingale's was a cheerful melody; and his labouring against that conviction to the necessity he felt himself under of following his classical masters.

'I have seen a nightingale On a sprig of thyme bewail, Seeing the dear nest that was Hers alone, borne off, alas! By a labourer: I heard, For this outrage, the poor bird Say a thousand mournful things To the wind, which on its wings From her to the guardian sky Bore her melancholy cry-- Bore her tender tears. She spake As if her fond heart would break. One while in a sad, sweet note, Gurgled from her straining throat, She enforced her piteous tale, Mournful prayer and plaintive wail; One while with the shrill dispute, Quite o'er-wearied, she was mute; Then afresh, for her dear brood, Her harmonious shrieks renewed; Now she winged it round and round, Now she skimmed along the ground; Now from bough to bough in haste The delighted robber chased; And alighting in his path, Seemed to say, 'twixt grief and wrath: "Give me back, fierce rustic rude! Give me back my pretty brood!" And I saw the rustic still Answer: "That I never will!"'

Independently of the untruthfulness of which a naturalist would complain in this description--for no birds under such circumstances of distress sing, but merely repeat each its own peculiar piercing cry, never at any other time heard, and which cannot be mistaken--there is a palpable effort of ingenuity discoverable in the representation, which seems to tell us that the writer was making up a story, rather than uttering his own belief. It may even be doubted whether Virgil himself, who seems first to have invented this fancy, and behind whose broad mantle later poets have sheltered themselves, may not have felt an inclination to depart from the Greek opinion of Philomel's ditty. Why otherwise did he not simply and at once--as his masters Homer and Theocritus had done before him--describe her notes as mournful, instead of casting about for some cause that might excuse him for giving them that character? But however this may be, we cannot conceal from ourselves, that some stubborn passages still remain in the poets, proclaiming that there are men, and those among the greatest and most tasteful, to whose fancy the voice of the nightingale has sounded full of wo.

Homer must be counted of this number--unless we think with Fox, in the preface to his _History of Lord Holland_, that it is only as to her wakefulness Penelope is compared to the night singing-bird; and so must Milton (for although Coleridge has satisfactorily dealt with the passage in _Il Penseroso_, the line of the Lady's song in _Comus_ remains still); and Shakspeare himself, who could scarcely be influenced, as Milton might very possibly be, by the opinions of the Grecian poets.

It is a strange contest we are here considering. Which of us would for a moment doubt our ability to decide in a dispute as to the liveliness or sadness of any given melody?--yet here we see the greatest poets, the favoured children of nature, utterly at variance on a point concerning which we should have expected to find even the most ordinary minds able to decide.

The question becomes more involved from the fact, that some writers take _both_ sides; for instance, Chiobrera in _Aleippo_: the nightingale

'Unwearied still reiterates her lays, Jocund _or_ sad, delightful to the ear;'

and Hartley Coleridge, in the following beautiful song, which we transcribe the more readily because it has not long been published, and may be new to many of our readers:

''Tis sweet to hear the merry lark, That bids a blithe good-morrow; But sweeter to hark in the twinkling dark To the soothing song of sorrow. Oh, nightingale! what doth she ail? And is she _sad_ or _jolly_? For ne'er on earth was sound of mirth So like to melancholy.

The merry lark he soars on high, No worldly thought o'ertakes him; He sings aloud to the clear blue sky, And the daylight that awakes him. As sweet a lay, as loud, as gay, The nightingale is trilling; With feeling bliss, no less than his Her little heart is thrilling.

Yet ever and anon a sigh Peers through her lavish mirth; For the lark's bold song is of the sky, And hers is of the earth. By night and day she tunes her lay, To drive away all sorrow; For bliss, alas! to-night may pass, And wo may come to-morrow.'

We must now cite one or two of the many passages which represent the nightingale's as an _absolutely_ cheerful song. We fear we cannot insist so much as Fox is disposed to do, on the evidence of Chaucer, who continually styles the nightingale's a merry note, because it is evident that in _his_ day the word had a somewhat different meaning from that which it at present conveys. For example, the poet calls the organ 'merry.' Nor dare we lay stress upon the instance which Cary cites--in a note to his _Purgatory_--of a 'neglected poet,' Vallans, who in his _Tale of Two Swannes_ ranks the 'merrie nightingale among the cheerful birds,' because we do not know whether, even at the time when Vallans wrote--the book was published, it seems, in 1590--'merrie' had come to bear its present signification.

We shall, however, find a witness among the writers of his period in Gawain Douglas, who died Bishop of Dunkeld in 1522. He, in a prologue to one of his _Æneids_, applies not only the word 'merry' to our bird, but one of less questionable signification--'mirthful.' If we come down to more modern times, we shall find Wordsworth, who seems above all others, except Burns, to have had a catholic ear for the whole multitude of natural sounds, not only refusing the character of melancholy to the nightingale's song, but placing it below the stock-dove's, because it is deficient in the pensiveness and seriousness which mark the note of the latter.

However, of all testimonies which can be brought on this side of the question, the strongest is that of Coleridge. No other has so accurately described the song itself; moreover, he alone has entered the lists avowedly as an antagonist, and confessing in so many words to the existence of an opinion opposite to his own.

'And hark! the nightingale begins its song, "Most musical, most melancholy" bird. A melancholy bird? oh, idle thought![2] In nature there is nothing melancholy. But some night-wandering man, whose heart was pierced With the resemblance of a grievous wrong, Or slow distemper, or neglected love, First named these notes a melancholy strain: And youths and maidens most poetical, Who lose the deepening twilight of the spring In ball-rooms and hot theatres, they still, Full of meek sympathy, must heave their sighs O'er Philomela's pity-pleading strains. My friend, and thou, our sister! we have learnt A different love: we may not thus profane Nature's sweet voices, always full of love And joyance! 'Tis the _merry_ nightingale That crowds and hurries and precipitates With fast-thick warble his delicious notes, As he were fearful that an April night Would be too short for him to utter forth His love-chant and disburden his full soul Of all its music!'

Little now remains to be said. We have laid before the reader specimens of the two contending opinions, as well as of that which is set up as a golden mean between them; and he has but to put down our pages, and to walk forth--provided he does not live too far north, or in some smoke-poisoned town--to judge for himself as to the true character of the strains. Small risk, we think, would there be in pronouncing on which side his verdict would be given! Well do we remember the night when we first heard this sweet bird: how we listened and refused to believe--for we were young, and our idea had of course been that his song was a melancholy one--that those madly hilarious sounds could come from the mournful nightingale. Wordsworth attempts thus to account for the delusion under which the older poets laboured on this subject:

'Fancy, who leads the pastimes of the glad, Full oft is pleased a wayward dart to throw, Sending sad shadows after things not sad, Peopling the harmless fields with sighs of wo. Beneath her sway, a simple forest cry Becomes an echo of man's misery. What wonder? at her bidding ancient lays Steeped in dire grief the voice of Philomel, And that blithe messenger of summer days, The swallow, twittered, subject to like spell.'