Note 13 — HYLAS AND ÆGON.

It was a time-honoured fancy that the "moan" of the turtle-dove was a lament for the loss of its mate. Turtur, the Latin name for the bird, is a correct representation of its monotonous note. The poets commonly call it simply the turtle, but since the term, to quote the explanation of Johnson in his Dictionary, is also "used by sailors and gluttons for a tortoise" the description of its "deep murmurs" as "filling the sounding shores," calls up this secondary sense, and gives an air of ludicrousness to the passage.