224, 
TAME SWAN. — Cass IL. 
Wheel round the island, caroling mean time 
Soft melody, the favourites of the Nine, 
Thus ushering to birth with dulcet sounds 
The God of harmony, and hence sev’n strings 
Hereafter to his golden lyre he gave, 
For ere the eighth soft concert was begun 
~~ He sprung to birth. Dods Callimachus, p. 115 
Upon this idea of their being peculiarly conse- : 
erated to Apollo and the Muses, (the deities of 
harmony) seems to have been ingrafted the no- 
tion the antients had of swans being endowed 
with a musical voice. ‘Though this might be one 
reason for the fable, yet, to us there appears 
another still stronger, which arose from the Py- 
thagorean doctrine of the transmigration of the 
soul into the bodies of animals ; from the belief, 
that the body of the swan was allotted for the 
mansion of departed poets. Thus Plato makes his 
prophet say, sev wer yao Wuryy egy ray more Oggews 
yevouevyy xuxvov Biov asgovmeryy™. “* T saw the soul 
of Orpheus prefer the life of a swan.” - 
After the antients had thus furnished these 
birds with such agreeable inmates, it is not to be 
doubted but they would attribute to them the 
same powers of harmony, that poets possessed, 
previous to their transmigration ; but the vulgar’ 
not distinguishing between the sweetness of num- 
bers, and that of voice, ignorantly believed that 
* De Repull. Lil, X. sub fine. 
ig 
