“Fall a singing, as soon as they perceive that they are about to die, and sing far more sweetly than at any former time, being glad that they are about to go away to the God whose servants they are.... They possess the power of prophesying, and foreseeing the blessings of Hades they sing and rejoice exceedingly. Now I imagine that I am also a fellow-servant with the Swans and sacred to the same God, and that I have received from the same Master a power of foresight not inferior to theirs, so that I could depart from life itself with a mind no more cast down.” Thus the melodious dirge of the swan was attributed to the same kind of prescience which enables good men to look forward with delight to that time “when this mortal shall put on immortality.” The “PICTA POESIS,” p. 28, adopts the same fancy of the swan singing at the end of life, but makes it the emblem of “old age eloquent.” Thus,— “FACVNDA SENECTVS. “CANDIDA Cygnus auis suprema ætate canora est: Inquam verti homines tabula picta docet, Nam sunt canitie Cygni dulciq. canore, Virtute illustres, eloquioque senes. _Dulce vetus vinum: senis est oratio dulcis, Dulcior hoc ipso quò sapientior est._” _i.e._—“At the end of life tuneful is the bird, the white swan, into which the painted tablet teaches that men are changed, for swans are illustrious from hoariness and the sweet singing, old men illustrious for virtue and for eloquence. Old wine is sweet; of an old man sweet is the speech; sweeter, for this very cause, the wiser it is.” Shakespeare himself adopts this notion in the _Merchant of Venice_ (act i. sc. 2, l. 24, vol. ii. p. 286), when he says, “Holy men at their death have good inspirations.” Reusner, however, luxuriating in every variety of silvery and snowy whiteness, represents the swan as especially the symbol of the _pure simplicity of truth_. (_Emblemata_, lib. ii. 31, pp. 91, 92, ed. 1581.) Simplicitas veri ſana. [Illustration: _Reusner, 1581._] _EMBLEMA XXXI._