PARALLEL PASSAGES: COLERIDGE, HOOKER, BUTLER

I do not remember to have seen the following parallels pointed out. Coleridge. *The Nightingale. A conversation poem:* "The nightingale— 'Most musical, most melancholy' bird! A melancholy bird! Oh! idle thought! In nature there is nothing melancholy. But some night-wandering man whose heart was pierced With the remembrance of a grievous wrong, . . . . he, and such as he, First named these notes a melancholy strain." Plato Phædo, § 77. (p. 85., Steph.): "Men, because they fear death themselves, slander the swans, and say that they sing from pain lamenting their death, and do not consider that n…