RAVEN. 
281 
consecrated it to Apollo, as to the god of divination, its flight was 
observed with the greatest solemnity ; and its tones and inflections 
of voice were noted with a precision which intimated a belief in its 
infallible prescience. 
But the ancients have not been the only people infected with 
this species of superstition ; the moderns, even though favoured 
with the light of Christianity, have exhibited as much folly, through 
the impious curiosity of prying into futurity, as the Romans them- 
selves. It is true that modern nations have not instituted their 
sacred colleges or sacerdotal orders, for the purposes of divination; 
but in all countries there have been self-constituted augurs, whose 
interpretations of omens have been received with religious respect 
by the credulous multitude. Even at this moment, in some parts 
of the world, if a Raven alight on a village church, the whole fra- 
ternity is in an uproar ; and Heaven is importuned, in all the ar- 
dour of devotion, to avert the impending calamity. 
The poets have taken advantage of this weakness of human 
nature, and in their hands the Raven is a fit instrument of terror. 
Shakspeare puts the following malediction into the mouth of his 
Caliban : 
“ As wicked dew, as e’er my mother brush’d, 
With Raveris feather, from unwholesome fen 
Drop on you both !”* 
The ferocious wife of Macbeth, on being advised of the ap- 
proach of Duncan, whose death she had conspired, thus exclaims ; 
“ The Raven himself is hoarse. 
That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan 
Under my battlements !”f 
^ Tempest, act i, scene 2, t Act i, scene 5, 
4 B 
VOL. IX. 
