234 
CORVUS CORAX. 
The poets have taken advantage of this weakness of 
human nature ; and, in their hands, the raven is a ht 
instrument of terror. Shakespeare puts the followiOp 
niiilediction into the mouth of his Caliban; — 
As wicked dew, as e’er my mother brush’d, 
M ith ravca’s feather, from unwholesome fen, 
Drop on you both ! * 
The ferocious wife of Macbeth, on beingf advised 
the approach of Duncan, whose death she had conspiretb 
thus exclaims : — 
The raven himself is hoarse, 
That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan 
Under my battlements ! f 
The Moor of Venice says, — 
It comes o’er my memory, 
As doth the raven o’er the infected house, 
Boding to all. ^ 
e 
The last quotation alludes to the supposed habit 0‘ 
this bird’s flyiujr over those houses which contain th* 
sick, whose dissolution is at hand, and thereby 
nounced. Thus Marlowe, in the Jew of Malta, as cite* 
by Malone: — 
The Slid presaging raven tolls 
The sick man’s passport in her hollow beak ; 
And, in the shadow of the silent night, 
Doth shake contagion from her sable wing. 
But it is the province of philosophy to dispel thes* 
illusions which bewilder the mind, by pointing out 
simple truths which nature has been at no pains ** 
conceal, but which the folly of mankind has shroud* 
in all the obscurity of mystery. . 
The raven is a general inhabitant of the UnH* 
States, but is more common in the interior. On tj* 
lakes, and particularly in the neighbourhood of 
* Tempest, act i, scene 2. 
t Othello, act i, scene 4. 
f Aet i, scene 5. 
