solitary, or it is plain that the Parrot and the Vulture would have raised some scandal about her. King John[1] did not scruple to tell his wooed Matilda—
"The Arabian bird that never is but one,
Is only chaste because she is alone."
The Earl of Surrey,[2] writing (by Drayton) to the Lady Geraldine, has a dainty reference to the bird which
"from her spiced flame
Renews herself in that she doth consume";
and other allusions, are indicated below.[3]
Drayton's idea of the rara avis was very much like that set forth by S. Clement of Rome, who introduces it into his first Epistle to the Corinthians[4] as a type of the Resurrection. One wonders whether either or neither really credited its existence, or whether it was merely honoured as one of those things which, as Maundrell said of Dead Sea apples, serve for a good illusion and help the poet to a similitude.
Let us quote St. Clement:—
"1. Let us consider that wonderful type of the resurrection which is to be seen in the Eastern countries, that is to say, in Arabia.
"2. There is a certain bird called a phoenix; of this there is never but one at a time, and that lives five hundred years. And when the time of its dissolution draws near that it must die, it makes itself a nest of frankincense and myrrh, and other spices, into which, when its time is fulfilled, it enters and dies.
"3. But its flesh putrefying, breeds a certain worm, which, being nourished with the juice of the dead bird, brings forth feathers; and, when it is so grown to a perfect state, it takes up the nest in which the bones of its parent lie and carries it from Arabia into Egypt to a city called Heliopolis.
- ↑ Eng. Heroic. Epis. [i. 233].
- ↑ Eng. Heroic. Epis. [i. 360-361]. The date palm is also called phœnix, because when burned to the ground it has the power of springing up again. Perhaps Drayton may have been thinking of this at p. 361.
- ↑ Ideas, xvi. [iv. 1265]; Eclogue ii. [iv. 1388]; Ec. iii. [iv. 1394]; Nymphal iii. [iv. 1467]; Nymph. viii. [iv. 1506].
- ↑ Chap. xii.
