LECTURE VI. 241 



took leave of life with a sweetly-mournful song or 

 dirge. So strongly was this idea impressed on the 

 minds of the ancients, that the Swan became the 

 symbol of poetry ; but false as it really is, it seems 

 to have had its excuse, and to have originated 

 from some exaggerated descriptions of the natural 

 notes of the wild Swan ; the flocks of which, dur- 

 ing their flight, have been often observed to emit 

 a sound far from unpleasing in concert, though 

 the general notes of a single bird are harsh and 

 stridulous. The tame Swan has no other voice 

 than a mere hiss : yet so common appears to have 

 been the general belief of its musical powers, 

 that the celebrated Aldrovandus, in his Ornitho- 

 logy, speaks, as he imagines, from good authority, 

 of the music of the Swans upon the Thames near 

 London, which he had been well assured, were 

 very frequently heard to sing. 



Sir Thomas Brown, with his usual depth o 

 learning and solemnity of diction, endeavours in 

 his Pseudodoxia Epidemica, or Vulgar Errors, to 

 explode this popular notion, and concludes with 

 this sentence : " When therefore we consider the 

 dissention of authors, the falsity of relations, the 

 indisposition of the organs, and the immusical 



LECT. I. R 



