, and Spenser's _Faerie Queen_, book
ii. canto xii. st. 71., "divine respondence meet" is made by the last lines
in Tennyson's _Dying Swan_.]
_Swearing by Swans_ (Vol. ii., p. 392.).--The quotation given by your
correspondent E.T.M. (Vol. ii., p. 451.), only increases my desire to
receive a reply to my query on this subject, since he has adduced a
parallel custom. What are the earliest notices of the usage of swearing by
swans and pheasants? Was the pheasant ever considered a _royal_ bird?
R.V.
_The Frozen Horn_ (Vol. iii., p. 25.).--I am quite angry with J.M.G. for
supposing my old friend Sir John Maundevile guilty of such a _flam_ as that
which he quotes from memory as the worthy knight's own statement. There is
no such story in the _Voiage and Travaile_: nay more, there is not in the
whole of that "ryght merveillous" book, a single passage given on the
authority of Sir John as eyewitness that is not perfectly credible. When he
quotes Pliny for monsters, the Chronicles for legends, and the romances of
his time for narratives of an extraordinary character, he does so in
evident good faith as a compiler.
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