SOLINUS introduced the same fable into his Polyhistor; and DICUIL, the Irish commentator of the ninth century, who had an opportunity of seeing the elephant sent by Haroun Alraschid as a present to Charlemagne[1031] in the year 802, corrects the error, and attributes its perpetuation to the circumstance that the joints in the elephant's leg are not very apparent, except when he lies down.[1032]
It is a strong illustration of the vitality of error, that the delusion thus exposed by Dicuil in the ninth century, was revived by MATTHEW PARIS in the thirteenth; and stranger still, that Matthew not only saw but made a drawing of the elephant presented to King Henry III. by the King of France in 1255, in which he nevertheless represents the legs as without joints.[1041]
In the numerous mediæval treatises on natural history, known under the title of Bestiaries, this delusion regarding the elephant is often repeated; and it is given at length in a metrical version of the Physiologus of THEOBALDUS, amongst the Arundel Manuscripts in the British Museum.[1042]
With the Provençal song writers, the helplessness of the fallen elephant was a favourite simile, and amongst others RICHARD DE BARBEZIEUX, in the latter half of the twelfth century, sung[1043],
"Atressi cum l'olifans
Que quan chai no s'pot levar."
As elephants were but rarely seen in Europe prior to the seventeenth century, there were but few opportunities of correcting the popular fallacy by ocular demonstration. Hence SHAKSPEARE still believed that,
"The elephant hath joints; but none for courtesy:
His legs are for necessity, not flexure:"[1051]