THE RAVEN. 273 



in civilised society, for its perpetual bickerings with 

 stranger dogs, and its incautious approach to the 

 heels of vicious horses, seldom fail, sooner or later, 

 to bring it to an untimely end. Still, I should be the 

 last man in the world to question the veracity of 

 remote antiquity, upon the mere strength of hasty 

 surmise. Those who are gone before us, may 

 possibly have had better opportunities of ascertain- 

 ing the longevity of birds, than any which we now 

 possess. 



I never tire with reading the old fables in which 

 birds are introduced. Notwithstanding the impos- 

 sibilities and absurdities which are manifest in 

 those rich effusions of ancient wit and humour; 

 still I can always find much in them to convince me, 

 that the writers of the olden times were no strang- 

 ers to the real habits of birds. Ovid, who flou- 

 rished some two thousand years ago, tells of a re- 

 markably old raven. It might indeed have been a 

 companion for Methusalem himself. When Medea, 

 that wicked, wanton, wandering witch, had made 

 up her mind to restore her aged father to the bloom 

 of youth, (which was contrary to the order of the 

 Fates,) she boiled a pot of herbs, and threw into it 

 the bones and carcass of an owl, together with a few 

 slices of wolf's flesh, and the shell and inside of a 

 fresh water-turtle. To these she added the beak 

 and head of a raven, above nine hundred years old. 



" Quibus insuper addit 



Ora, caputque, novem cornieis saecula passse." 



Thrice she soused her father over head in water, 

 T 



