234 
CORVUS CORAX. 
The poets have taken advantage of this weakness of 
human nature ; and, in their hands, the raven is a fit 
instrument of terror. Shakespeare puts the following 
malediction into the mouth of his Caliban: — • 
As wicked dew, as e’er my mother brush’d, 
With raven’s feather, from unwholesome fen, 
Drop on you both ! * 
The ferocious wife of Macbeth, on being advised of 
the approach 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 
The Moor of Venice says,— 
It comes o’er my memory, 
As doth the raven o’er the infected house, 
Boding to all. £ 
The last quotation alludes to the supposed habit of 
this bird’s flying over those houses which contain the 
sick, whose dissolution is at hand, and thereby an- 
nounced. Thus Marlowe, in the Jew of Malta, as cited 
by Malone : — 
The sad 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 these 
illusions which bewilder the mind, by pointing out the 
simple truths which nature has been at no pains to 
conceal, but which the folly of mankind has shrouded 
in all the obscurity of mystery. 
The raven is a general inhabitant of the United 
States, but is more common in the interior. On the 
lakes, and particularly in the neighbourhood of the 
* Tempest , act i, scene 2. f Act i, scene 5. 
| Othello , act i, scene 4. 
