“Onward, and things not to be feared fear not thou, who speakest nothing little or of humble measure, nothing mortal. While the pure priest of the Muses and of Phœbus with no weak nor unpractised wing through the liquid air as prophet stretches to the lofty regions of the clouds. Onward, and let father Phœbus himself bear thee to heaven.” Now by the side of Le Bey’s laudatory sentences, may be placed the Poet’s glory as sung in the _Midsummer Night’s Dream_ (act v. sc. 1, l. 12, vol. ii. p. 258),— “The poet’s eye, in a fine frenzy rolling, Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven; And as imagination bodies forth The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing A local habitation and a name.” The Swan of silvery whiteness may have been the heraldic badge of the Poets, but that “bird of wonder,” the Phœnix, which,— “Left sweete Arabie: And on a Cædar in this coast Built vp her tombe of spicerie,”[163]— is the source of many more Poetic ideas. To the Emblem writers as well as to the Poets, who preceded and followed the time of Shakespeare, it really was a constant theme of admiration. One of the best pictures of what the bird was supposed to be occurs in Freitag’s “MYTHOLOGIA ETHICA” (Antwerp, 1579). The drawing and execution of the device are remarkably fine; and the motto enjoins that “youthful studies should be changed with advancing age,”— Iuuenilia ſtudia cum prouectiori ætate permutata. [Illustration: _Freitag, 1579._] “_Deponite vos, ſecundum priſtinam conuerſationem, veterem hominem, qui corrumpitur ſecundum deſideria erroris._”—_Epheſ._ 4. 22. After describing the bird, Freitag applies it as a type of the resurrection from the dead; but its special moral is,— “That ye put off concerning the former conversation the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts.” Ancient authors, as well as the comparatively modern, very gravely testify to the lengthened life, and self-renovating power, and splendid beauty of the Phœnix. In the “EUTERPE” of Herodotus (bk. ii. 73) we meet with the following narrative,—