⁂ The legend of William Tell has furnished Florian with the subject of a novel in French (1788); A. M. Lemierre with his tragedy of Guillaume Tell (1766); Schiller with a tragedy in German, Wilhelm Tell (1804); Knowles with a tragedy in English, William Tell (1840); and Rossini with the opera of Guglielmo Tell, in Italian (1829).
Tellus’s Son, Antæos, son of Posei´don and Gê, a giant wrestler of Lib´ya, whose strength was irresistible so long as he touched his mother (earth). Herculês, knowing this, lifted him into the air, and crushed him to death. Near the town of Tingis, in Mauritania, is a hill in the shape of a man, called “The Hill of Antæos,” and said to be his tomb.
So some have feigned that Tellus’ giant son
Drew many new-born lives from his dead mother;
Another rose as soon as one was done,
And twenty lost, yet still remained another.
For when he fell and kissed the barren heath,
His parent straight inspired successive breath,
And tho’ herself was dead, yet ransomed him from death.
Phineas Fletcher, The Purple Island, ix. (1633).