and DONNE sang of
"Nature's great masterpiece, an Elephant;
The only harmless great thing:
Yet Nature hath given him no knee to bend:
Himself he up-props, on himself relies;
Still sleeping stands."[1052]
Sir THOMAS BROWNE, while he argues against the delusion, does not fail to record his suspicion, that "although the opinion at present be reasonably well suppressed, yet from the strings of tradition and fruitful recurrence of errour, it was not improbable it might revive in the next generation;"[1053]—an anticipation which has proved singularly correct; for the heralds still continued to explain that the elephant is the emblem of watchfulness, "nec jacet in somno,"[1054] and poets almost of our own times paint the scene when
"Peaceful, beneath primeval trees, that cast
Their ample shade on Niger's yellow stream,