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:”[61]
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.”[62]
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;”[63]—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,”[64] and poets almost of our own times paint the scene when