“Then sprinkles she the juice of rue,
With nine drops of the midnight dew
From Lunary distilling.”
Nymphid.
EMBLEMS.
But to return to our doves. It is related that Mahomed had a dove which he used to feed with wheat out of his ear, which dove, when it was hungry, lighted on Mahomed’s shoulder and thrust its bill in to find its breakfast,
Mahomed persuading the rude and simple Arabians that it was the Holy Ghost that gave him advice.[111] Hence Shakespeare’s query—
“Was Mahomed inspired with a dove?”
Henry VI. Part I. Act i. Sc. 2.
As the crow has been held the type of blackness, so has the dove been considered the emblem of the opposite colour:—