Quant li elefant vendrat, ki s’i apuierat,
La arbre u le mur carrat, e il tribucherat;
Issi faiterement le parnent cele gent.”
P. 100.
[61] Troilus and Cressida, act ii. sc. 3. A. D. 1609.
[62] Progress of the Soul, A. D. 1633.
[63] Sir T. Browne, Vulgar Errors, A. D. 1646.
[64] Randal Home’s Academy of Armory, A. D. 1671. Home only perpetuated the error of Guillim, who wrote his Display of Heraldry in A. D. 1610; wherein he explains that the elephant is “so proud of his strength that he never bows himself to any (neither indeed can he), and when he is once down he cannot rise up again.” (Sec. iii. ch. xii. p. 147.)
[65] Thomson’s Seasons, A. D. 1728.
[66] So little is the elephant inclined to lie down in captivity, and even after hard labour, that the keepers are generally disposed to suspect illness when he betakes himself to this posture. Phile, in his poem De Animalium Proprietate, attributes the propensity of the elephant to sleep on his legs, to the difficulty he experiences in rising to his feet: