By time, or force, or sickness, dispossess’d,
And lodges, where it lights, in bird or beast;
Or hunts without, till ready limbs it find,
And actuates those according to their kind.
From tenement to tenement is toss’d,
The soul is still the same, the figure only lost.”
This is from Dryden’s translation of Chaucer.
And Burton’s record is as follows:
“The Pythagoreans defend Metempsychosis and Palingenesia, that souls go from one body to another, epotâ prius Lethes nudâ, as men into wolves, beares, dogs, hogs, as they were inclined in their lives, or participated in conditions:
‘——inque ferinas