Genoa; and Prince Doria going a-horseback to walk the round one night, the soldier took his horse by the bridle, and asked what the price of him was, for he wanted a horse. The prince, seeing in what humour he was, caused him to be taken into a house and put to sleep. In the morning he sent for him, and asked him what he would give for his horse. 'Sir,' said the recovered soldier, the merchant that would have bought him last night of your Highness went away betimes in the morning.' The boonest companions for drinking are the Greeks and Germans; but the Greek is the merriest of the two, for he will sing, and dance, and kiss his next companions; but the other will drink as deep as he. If the Greek will drink as many glasses as there be letters in his mistress's name, the other will drink the number of his years; and though he be not apt to break out in singing, being not of so airy a constitution, yet he will drink often musically a health to every one of these six notes, ut, re, mi, fa, sol, la; which, with his reason, are all comprehended in this hexameter : 'Ut relivet miserum fatum solitosque labores.' The fewest draughts he drinks are three-the first to quench the thirst past, the second to quench the present thirst, the third to prevent the future. I heard of a company of Low Dutchmen that had drunk so deep, that beginning to stagger, and their heads turning round, they thought verily they were at sea, and that the upper chamber where they were was a ship, insomuch that, it being foul windy weather, they fell to throw the stools and other things out of the window, to lighten the vessel, for fear of suffering shipwreck. On Tobacco. To usher in again old Janus, I send you a parcel of Indian perfume which the Spaniard calls the holy herb, in regard of the various virtues it hath, but we call it tobacco; I will not say it grew under the King of Spain's window, but I am told it was gather'd near his goldmines of Potosi (where they report that in some places there is more of that ore than earth), therefore it must needs be precious stuff: if moderately and seasonably taken (as I find you always do), 'tis good for many things; it helps digestion taken a while after meat, it makes one void rheum, break wind, and keeps the body open a leaf or two being steeped o'er night in a little white-wine is a vomit that never fails in its operation : it is a good companion to one that converseth with dead men; for if one hath been poring long upon a book, or is toil'd with the pen, and stupified with study, it quickeneth him, and dispels those clouds that usually o'erset the brain. The smoke of it is one of the wholesomest scents that is, against all contagious airs, for it o'er-masters all other smells, as K. James, they say, found true, when being once a-hunting, a shower of rain drove him into a pig-sty for shelter, where he caus'd a pipe-full to be taken on purpose: it cannot endure a spider or a flea, with such-like vermin, and if your hawk be troubled with any such, being blown into his feathers, it frees him it is good to fortify and preserve the sight, the smoke being let in round about the balls of the eyes once a-week, and frees them from all rheums, driving them back by way of repercussion; being taken backward 'tis excellent good against the cholique, and taken into the stomach, 'twill heat and cleanse it; for I could instance in a great lord (my Lord of Sunderland, President of York), who told me, that he taking it downward into his stomach, it made him cast up an imposthume, bag and all, which had been a long time engendering out of a bruise he had received at football, and so preserv his life for many years. Now to descend from the sub stance of the smoke to the ashes, 'tis well known the medicinal virtues thereof are very many; but they are st common, that I will spare the inserting of them here but if one would try a petty conclusion how much smoke there is in a pound of tobacco, the ashes will tell hir for let a pound be exactly weigh'd, and the ashes ke charily and weigh'd afterwards, what wants of a pod weight in the ashes cannot be deny'd to have been smoke, which evaporated into air. I have been told that S Walter Rawleigh won a wager of Queen Elizabeth upo this nicety. The Spaniards and Irish take it most in powder or smutchin, and it mightily refreshes the brain. and I believe there's as much taken this way in Ireland as there is in pipes in England; one shall commonly se the serving-maid upon the washing-block, and the swain upon the plough-share, when they are tir'd with labour, take out their boxes of smutchin and draw it into ther noştrils with a quill, and it will beget new spirits in them with a fresh vigour to fall to their work again. I Barbary and other parts of Afric, 'tis wonderful what : small pill of tobacco will do; for those who use to ride post thro' the sandy desarts, where they meet not with anything that's potable or edible, sometimes three days together, they use to carry small balls or pills of tobacco, which being put under the tongue, it affords them a perpetual moisture and takes off the edge of the appetite for some days. If you desire to read with pleasure all the virtues of this modern herb, you must read Dr Thorus's Patologa [Raphael Thorius, Hymnus Tabaci sive de Pato, 1644) an accurate piece couch'd in a strenuous heroic verse. full of matter, and continuing its strength from first t last; insomuch, that for the bigness it may be compar to any piece of antiquity, and, in my opinion, is beyond βατραχομυομαχία [The Battle of the Frogs and the Mic erroneously attributed to Homer] or yaλewuvoμayia [Ti Battle of the Cats and the Mice, a burlesque poem by the twelfth-century Greek, Theodorus Prodromus]. So I conclude these rambling notions, presuming you will accept this small argument of my great respects to you: if you want paper to light your pipe, this letter may serve the turn; and if it be true what the poets frequently sing, that affection is fire, you shall need no other than the clear flames of the donor's love to make ignition, which is comprehended in this distich : 'Ignis amor si fit, tobaccum accendere nostrum, On Learning in England. The subject of this letter may peradventure seem a paradox to some, but not, I know, to your lordship, when you have pleased to weigh well the reasons. Learning is a thing that hath been much cried up an coveted in all ages, especially in this last century years, by people of all sorts, tho' never so mean an mechanical every man strains his fortunes to keep his children at school; the cobler will clout it till midnight. the porter will carry burdens till his bones crack aga the plough-man will pinch both back and belly to give his son learning; and I find that this ambition reigns nowhere so much as in this island. But under favour this word learning is taken in a narrower sense among us than among other nations; we seem to restrain it only to the book; whereas, indeed, any artisan whatsoever (if he know the secret and mystery of his trade) may be called a learned man: a good mason, a good shoemaker, that can manage St. Crispin's lance handsomely, a skil ful yeoman, a good shipwright, &c., may all be called learned men; and indeed the usefullest sort of learned men; for without the two first we might go barefoot, and lie abroad as beasts, having no other canopy than the wild air; and without the two last we might starve for bread, have no commerce with other nations, or ever be able to tread upon a continent. These, with such-like dextrous artisans, may be termed learned men, and the more behoveful for the subsistence of a country, than those Polymathists that stand poring all day in a corner upon a moth-eaten author, and converse only with dead men. The Chinese (who are the next neighbours to the rising sun on this side of the hemisphere, and consequently the acutest) have a wholesome piece of policy, that the son is always of the father's trade; and 'tis all the learning he aims at: which makes them admirable artisans; for, besides the dextrousness and propensity of the child, being descended lineally from so many of the same trade, the father is more careful to instruct him, and to discover to him all the mystery thereof. This general custom or law keeps their heads from running at random after book-learning, and other vocations. I have read a tale of Rob. Grosthead [Grosseteste], Bishop of Lincoln, that being come to this greatness, he had a brother who was a husbandman, and expected great matters from him in point of preferment; but the bishop told him that if he wanted money to mend his plow or his cart, or to buy tacklings for his horses, with other things belonging to his husbandry, he should not want what was fitting; but wish'd him to aim no higher, for a husbandman he found him, and a husbandman he would leave him. The extravagant humour of our country is not to be altogether commended, that all men should aspire to book-learning: there is not a simpler animal, and a more superfluous member of state, than a mere scholar, than only a self-pleasing student; he is- Telluris inutile pondus. From Howell's Instructions for Forreine Travel, which, like his Letters, contains many acute observations on men and things, we extract this on the Tales of Travellers. Others have a custom to be always relating strange things and wonders (of the humour of Sir John Mandeville), and they usually present them to the hearers through multiplying-glasses, and thereby cause the thing to appear far greater than it is in itself; they make mountains of mole-hills, like Charenton Bridge echo, which doubles the sound nine times. Such a traveller was he that reported the Indian fly to be as big as a fox, China birds to be as big as some horses, and their mice to be as big as monkeys; but they have the wit to fetch this far enough off, because the hearer may rather believe it than make a voyage so far to disprove it. Every one knows the tale of him who reported he had seen a cabbage under whose leaves a regiment of soldiers were sheltered from a shower of rain. Another who was no traveller, yet the wiser man, said he had passed by a place where there were 400 brasiers making of a caldron -200 within and 200 without, beating the nails in; the traveller asking for what use that huge caldron was, he told him: Sir, it was to boil your cabbage.' Such another was the Spanish traveller, who was so habituated to hyperbolise and relate wonders, that he became ridiculous in all companies, so that he was forced at last to give order to his man, when he fell into any excess this way, and report anything improbable, he should pull him by the sleeve. The master falling into his wonted hyperboles, spoke of a church in China that was ten thousand yards long; his man, standing behind, and pulling him by the sleeve, made him stop suddenly. The company asking: 'I pray, sir, how broad might that church be?' he replied: 'But a yard broad; and you may thank my man for pulling me by the sleeve, else I had made it foursquare for you.' The following may serve as a specimen of his poetry, from a farewell letter to a dying friend: This Life's at longest but one Day; He who in youth posts hence away, Leaves us i' th' morn: He who hath run His race till Manhood parts at Noon: And who at seventy odd forsakes this Light, He may be said to take his leave at Night. See Arber's edition of the Instructions (1869), and the edition of the Epistolæ by Joseph Jacobs (1890). John Earle (1601?-65), a native of York, studied at Oxford, was deprived of his living in 1643, was Chaplain and Clerk of the Closet to Charles II. in exile, became successively Bishop of Worcester and of Salisbury, and was a very successful miscellaneous writer. He had great learning and eloquence, was extremely agreeable and facetious in conversation, and was a man of so many excellences that, in the language of Walton, there had lived since the death of Richard Hooker no man whom God had blessed with more innocent wisdom, more sanctified learning, or a more pious, peaceable, primitive temper.' He dealt very tenderly with the Nonconformists, and, according to Clarendon, he was among the few excellent men who never had and never could have an enemy. He wrote some poems; but his principal work is Microcosmographie, or a Peece of the World Discovered in Essayes and Characters (1628), a marvellous storehouse of wit and humour. Collections of 'characters' were long exceedingly common and popular-some two hundred such have been catalogued-and form a link between the 'humours' of the old comedy on the one hand, and the familiar essay and novel of the eighteenth century on the other. Earle's is by far the most notable. 'An undeniable wit, a real gift of finished if biting satire, a constant rattle of telling epigram, make him at his best-and he often is at his bestas good reading as the heart of man can desire;' so said the Athenæum criticising a recent edition of the Microcosmographie, and pointing out at the same time Earle's skill in handling sentiment and his touches of poetry. Among the characters drawn are those of a raw preacher, an antiquary, a reserved man, a college butler, a carrier, a player, a pot-poet, a university dun, and a plain country fellow. A Pot-Poet Is the dreggs of wit; yet mingled with good drinke may have some relish. His inspirations are more reall then others; for they doe but faine a God, but hee has his by him. His verses run like the tap, and his invention as the barrell, ebs and flowes at the mercy of the spiggot. In thin drinke hee aspires not above a ballad, but a cup of sacke inflames him, and sets his Muse and nose a fire together. The presse is his mint, and stamps him now and then a sixe pence or two in reward of the baser coyne his pamphlet. His workes would scarce sell for three halfe pence, though they are given oft for three shillings, but for the pretty title that allures the country gentleman: and for which the printer maintaines him in ale a fortnight. His verses are like his clothes, miserable cento's and patches, yet their pace is not altogether so hobling as an almanacks. The death of a great man or the burning of a house furnish him with an argument, and the nine Muses are out strait in mourning gowne, and Melpomine cryes Fire, Fire. His other poems are but briefs in rime, and like the poore Greekes collections to redeeme from captivity. He is a man now much imploy'd in commendations of our navy, and a bitter inveigher against the Spaniard. His frequent'st workes goe out in single sheets, and are chanted from market to market, to a vile tune, and a worse throat whilst the poore country wench melts like her butter to heare them. And these are the stories of some men of Tiburne, or a strange monster out of Germany or sitting in a baudy-house, hee writes Gods judgements. Hee ends at last in some obscure painted cloth, to which himselfe made the verses, and his life like a canne too full spils upon the bench. He leaves twenty shillings on the score, which my hostesse looses. : A Plain Country Fellow Is one that manures his ground well, but lets himselfe lie fallow and until'd. Hee has reason enough to doe his businesse, and not enough to bee idle or melancholy. Hee seemes to have the judgement of Nabuchadnezar: for his conversation is among beasts, and his tallons none of the shortest, only he eates not grasse, because hee loves not sallets. His hand guides the plough, and the plough his thoughts, and his ditch and land-marke is the very mound of his meditations. He expostulates with his oxen very understandingly, and speaks Gee and Ree better then English. His mind is not much distracted with objects: but if a goode fat cowe come in his way, he stands dumbe and astonisht, and though his haste bee never so great, will fixe here halfe an houres contemplation. His habitation is some poore thatcht roofe, distinguisht from his barn by the loope-holes that let out smoak, which the raine had long since washt thorow, but for the double seeling of bacon on the inside, which has hung there from his grandsires time, and is yet to make rashers for posterity. His dinner is his other worke, for he sweats at it as much as at his labour; he is a terrible fastner on a piece of beefe, and you may hope to stave the guard off sooner. His religion is a part of his copy-hold, which hee takes from his land-lord, and referres it wholly to his discretion. Yet if hee give him leave, he is a good Hee Christian to his power; that is, comes to church in ho best clothes, and sits there with his neighbours, where he is capable onely of two prayers, for raines and faire weather. Hee apprehends Gods blessings onely in a good yeere or a fat pasture, and never praises him but on good ground. Sunday he esteemes a day to make merry in, and thinkes a bag-pipe as essentiall to it as evening-prayer, where hee walkes very solemnly after service with his hands coupled behind him, an! censures the dauncing of his parish. His complemen with his neighbour is a good thumpe on the backe; and his salutation commonly some blunt curse. thinks nothing to bee vices but pride and ill husbandrie, for which hee wil gravely disswade youth, and has some thriftie hobnayle proverbes to clout his discourse. He is a niggard all the weeke except onely market-day, where if his corne sell well, hee thinkes hee may be drunke with a good conscience. His feete never stincke so unbecomingly as when hee trots after a lawyer in Westminster-hall, and even cleaves the ground with hard scraping, in beseeching his worship to take his money. Hee is sensible of no calamitie but the burning of a stacke of corne or the over-flowing of a medow, and thinkes Noahs flood the greatest plague that ever was, not because it drowned the world, but spoyl'd the grasse. For Death hee is never troubled, and if hee get in but his Harvest before, let it come when it wil be cares not. A Criticke Is one that has speld over a great many of bookes. and his observation is the orthographie. Hee is the surgeon of old authors, and heales the wounds of dust and ignorance. He converses much in fragments and Desunt multa's, and if he piece it up with two lines, he is more proud of that booke then the authour. Hee runnes over all sciences to peruse their syntaxis, and thinkes all learning compris'd in writing Latine. Hee tastes styles, as some discreeter palats doe wine; and tels you which is genuine, which sophisticate and hastard. His owne phrase is a miscellany of old words, deceas'd long before the Cæsars, and entoomb'd by Varro, and the modern'st man hee followes is Plautus. Hee writes omneis at length, and quicquid, and his gerun is most inconformable. Hee is a troublesome vexer of the dead, which after so long sparing must rise up to the judgement of his castigations. He is one that makes all bookes sell dearer, whilst he swels them into folics with his comments. The Microcosmographie passed through three editions in 1525 was often reprinted, was edited by Dr Philip Bliss in 1811, reprinted by Arber in 1868 and 1891, by S. T. Irwin in 1897, and elaborately edited by A. S. West in 1898. The first edition has but fifty-four characters, the sixth (1635) had seventy-eight. Owen Felltham, or FELTHAM (1602-78, author of Resolves; Divine, Morall, and Political. was of a good Suffolk family, and lived for some years as chaplain in the Northamptonshire house of the Earl of Thomond at Great Billing, where Felltham died and was buried. The Resea appeared about 1620, being a hundred short essays To the second edition (1628) a 'seconde centurie was added. He wrote an account of the Low Countries in 1652, and some rather interesting poems. His Resolves fell almost completely into oblivion from 1709 (the date of the twelfth edition till 1806, when they were reprinted by Cumming. Hallam and others have condemned Felltham's prose as obscure and affected; he strains after conceits, and the comparison with Bacon's Essays, often made, is not to the advantage of Felltham. But he has a fine vein of observation and reflection, not without frequent felicities of expression. Of Thoughtfulness in Misery. I like of Solon's course, in comforting his constant friend; when, taking him up to the top of a turret, overlooking all the piled buildings, he bids him think how many discontents there had been in those houses since their framing, how many are and how many will be; then, if he can, to leave the world's calamities, and mourn but for his own. To mourn for none else were hardness and injustice. To mourn for all were endless. The best way is to uncontract the brow, and let the world's mad spleen fret, for that we smile in woes. . . . Silence was a full answer in that philosopher, that being asked what he thought of human life, said nothing, turned him round, and vanished. Of Curiosity in Knowledge. Nothing wraps a man in such a mist of errors as his own curiosity in searching things beyond him. How happily do they live that know nothing but what is necessary! Our knowledge doth but shew us our ignorance, we see the effect but cannot guess at the cause. Learning is like a river whose head being far in the land, is at first rising little and easily viewed; but still as you go, it gapeth with a wider bank, not without pleasure and delightful winding, while it is on both sides set with trees and the beauties of various flowers. But still the further you follow it, the deeper and the broader 'tis; till at last it inwaves itself in the unfathomed ocean; there you see more water, but no shore, no end of that liquid, fluid vastness. things we may sound Nature in the shallows of her revelations. We may trace her to her second, causes; but beyond them we meet with nothing but the puzzle of the soul and the dazzle of the mind's dim eyes. While we speak of things that are, that we may dissect, and have power and means to find the causes, there is some pleasure, some certainty. But when we come to metaphysics, to long-buried antiquity, and unto unrevealed divinity, we are in a sea which is deeper than the short reach of the line of man. Much may be gained by studious inquisition; but more will ever rest, which man cannot discover. ... Against Readiness to take Offence. In many We make ourselves more injuries than are offered us; they many times pass for wrongs in our own thoughts, that were never meant so by the heart of him that speaketh. The apprehension of wrong hurts more than the sharpest part of the wrong done. So by falsely making ourselves patients of wrong, we become the true and first actors. It is not good in matters of discourtesy to dive into a man's mind beyond his own comment; nor to stir upon a doubtful indignity without it, unless we have proofs that carry weight and conviction with them. Words do sometimes fly from the tongue that the heart did neither hatch nor harbour. While we think to revenge an injury, we many times begin one; and Meditation is the soul's perspective glass, whereby in her long remove she discerneth God as if he were nearer hand. I persuade no man to make it his whole life's business. We have bodies as well as souls; and even this world, while we are in it, ought somewhat to be cared for. As those states are likely to flourish where execution follows sound advisements, so is man when contemplation is seconded by action. Contemplation generates; action propagates. Without the first, the latter is defective; without the last, the first is but abortive and embryous. St Bernard compares contemplation to Rachel, which was the more fair; but action to Leah, which was the more fruitful. I will neither always be busy and doing, nor ever shut up in nothing but thought. Yet that which some would call idleness, I will call the sweetest part of my life, and that is, my thinking. Sir Kenelm Digby [1603-65] was born at Gothurst or Gayhurst, near Newport Pagnell, the son of the Sir Everard Digby who in 1592 came into a large estate, but seven years later turned Catholic, and was hanged for his part in the Gunpowder Plot. Kenelm himself was bred a Catholic, but in 1616 was sent to a Protestant tutor, the future Archbishop Laud; and in 1618, after seven months in Spain, entered Gloucester Hall, Oxford (now Worcester College). He left it in 1620 without a degree, and spent nearly three years abroad, in Florence chiefly. At Madrid he fell in with Prince Charles, and following him back to England, was knighted, and entered his service. In 1625, after a singular courtship, he secretly married that celebrated beautie and courtezane,' Venetia Stanley (1600-33), who had been his playmate in childhood. With two privateers he sailed in 1628 to the Mediterranean, and on 11th June vanquished a French and Venetian squadron off Scanderoon; in August, on the island of Melos, he began and wrote most of his Memoirs. On his beloved wife's death he withdrew to Gresham College, and there passed two hermit-like years, diverting himself with chemistry and the professors' good conversation. Meanwhile he had professed the Protestant faith, but, 'looking back,' in 1636 he announced his reconversion to Archbishop Laud; and his tortuous conduct during the Great Rebellion was dictated, it seems, by his zeal for Catholicism. He was imprisoned by the Parliament (1642-43), and had his estate confiscated; was at Rome (1645-47), where he finished by 'hectoring at his Holiness;' and thrice revisited England (1649–51-54), the third time staying two years, and entering into close relations with Cromwell. At the Restoration, however, he was well received, and retained his office of chancellor to Queen Henrietta Maria. He was one of the first members of the Royal Society (1663). 'The very Pliny of our age for lying,' said Stubbes of Digby, whom Evelyn terms 'an arrant mountebank.' Yet he was a friend of Descartes and Sir Thomas Browne; he could appreciate the discoveries of Harvey, Bacon, and Galileo. In the Dictionary of National Biography (vol. xv. 1888) Mr S. Lee points out that 'as a philosopher-an Aristotelian-Sir Kenelm undoubtedly owed much to Thomas White;' and he questions whether his much-vaunted powder of sympathy' was not really invented by Sir Gilbert Talbot. This powder— Digby professed to have learned the secret from a Carmelite who had travelled in the farthest Eastwas 'powder of vitriol'—that is, a sulphate of one of the metals powdered (presumably copperas)— and had this convenience, that it did not require to be applied to the wound itself. A bandage or anything that had the blood of the wound on it could be carried to the medicine-man, and by him hopefully immersed in sympathetic mixtures, at any distance from the sufferer. Anyhow, Digby's Discourse thereon (1658), like his treatise Of Bodies and of Man's Soul (1644), contains much that is curious, if little of real value; whilst in his Discourse concerning the Vegetation of Plants (1660), the chief of his other fifteen works, he is said to have been the first to notice the importance of vital air or oxygen to plants.' See his bombastic Memoirs, dealing with his courtship (ed. Nicolas, 1827); his Scanderoon Voyage (Camden Society, 1868); and his Life by one of his descendants' (1896). The extracts are all from the book Of Bodies save the last, which is from the appended discourse on Digby's patent medicine. One full example this age affords us in this kind; of a man whose extremity of fear wrought upon him to give *us this experiment. He was born in some village of the countrey of Liege and therfore among strangers he is known by the name of John of Liege. I have been informed of this story by several (whom I dare confidently believe) that have had it from his own mouth; and have question'd him with great curiosity particularly about it. : When he was a little boy, there being wars in the countrey (as that state is seldom without molestations from abroad, when they have no distempers at home, which is an inseparable effect of a countries situation upon the frontiers of powerful neighbouring princes that are at variance), the village of whence he was had notice of some unruly scatter'd troups that were coming to pillage them which made all the people of the village flie hastily with what they could carry with them, to hide themselves in the woods; which were spacious enough to afford them shelter, for they joyn'd upon the Forrest of Ardenne. There they lay till some of their scouts brought them word that the souldiers, of whom they were in such apprehension, had fired their town and quitted it. Then all of them return'd home excepting this boy: who, it seems, being of a very timorous nature, had images of fear so strong in his phantasie, that first he ran further into the wood then any of the rest, and afterwards apprehended that every body he saw through the thickets, and every voice he heard, was the souldiers; and so hid himself from his parents, that were in much distress seeing him all about, and calling his name as loud as they could. When they had spent a day or two in vain. they return'd home without him; and he lived many years in the woods, feeding upon roots and wild fruits and maste. : He said that, after he had been some time in this wille habitation, he could by the smel judge of the tast of any thing that was to be eaten: and that he could at a grea distance wind by his nose where wholsom fruits or roots grew. In this state he continu'd (still shunning men with as great fear as when he first ran away; so strong the impression was, and so little could his little reaso master it) till, in a very sharp winter, when many leas of the forrest perish'd for want of food, necessity brough him to so much confidence, that, leaving the wild pizces of the forrest, remote from all peoples dwellings, he would in the evenings steal among cattel that were fothered, especially the swine, and among them glezn that which serv'd to sustain wretchedly his miserable life. He could not do this so cunningly but that, returning often to it, he was on a time espied: and they who saw a beast of so strange a shape (for such they took him be, he being naked and all overgrown with hair), believ ing him to be a satyre or some such prodigious creature as the recounters of rare accidents tells of, laid wat te apprehend him. But he, that winded them as far off as any beast could do, still avoided them; till at length they laid snares for him, and took the wind so advantagiously of him that they caught him: and then soon perceiv'd he was a man, though he had quite forgotten the use of all language; but by his gestures and cries he express'd the streatest affrightedness that might be Which afterwards he said (when he had learn'd anew to speak) was because he thought those were the souldiers he had hidden himself to avoid, when he first betook himself to the wood; and were alwayes lively in his phantasie, through his fears continually reducing them thither. This man, within a little while after he came to good keeping and full feeding, quite lost that acuteness of smelling which formerly govern'd him in his taste; and grew to be in that particular as other ordinary men were But at his first living with other people, a woman (that had compassion of him, to see a man so near like a beast. and that had no language to call for what he wish'd or needed to have) took particular care of him; and was alwayes very sollicitous to see him furnish'd with wh he wanted which made him so apply himself unto her in all his occurrents, that whenever he stood in need of ought, if shee were out of the way, and were gone abros! in the fields, or to any other village near by, he would scent her out presently by his scent; in such sort as with us those dogs use to do which are taught to draw dry foot. I imagine he is yet alive, to tell a better story himself then I have done; and to confirm what I have here said of him: for I have from them who saw hi but few years agone, that he was an able strong mas, and likely to last yet a good while longer. |