kingdom under their authority, that they might "have even kings to be their slaves:" Ut haberent instrumenta servitutis et reges.* It is likely, that Solyman, whom we have seen make a gift of Hungary, and other principalities, had therein more respect to this consideration, than to that he was wont to allege, viz. "That he was glutted and overcharged "with so many monarchies, and so much dominion, "as his own valour, or that of his ancestors, had "acquired." CHAPTER XVI. Not to counterfeit Sickness. came a real THERE is a choice epigram in Martial, for he has Gont coun of all sorts, where he pleasantly tells the story of terfeit beCælius, who, to avoid making his court to some gout. great men of Rome, to go to their levee, and to attend them abroad, pretended to have the gout; and the better to colour it, anointed his legs, had them swathed up, and perfectly counterfeited both the gesture and countenance of a gouty person; till, in the end, fortune did him the kindness to give him the gout in earnest'; Tantum cura potest et ars doloris, So much has counterfeiting brought about, became I think I have read, somewhere in Appian, a Instance of story like this, of one who, to escape the proscrip- a man, who tions of the triumviri of Rome, and the better to be really blind concealed from the discovery of those who pursued in one eye, * Tit. Liv. in Vità Julii Agricolæ. counter feited it. Ridiculous vow of some * ૬. him, having masked himself in a disguise, did also add this invention, "To counterfeit having but one eye; but, when he came to have a little more liberty, and went to take off the plaster he had a great while worn over his eye, he found he had totally lost the sight of it." It is possible, that the action of sight was dulled, for having been so long without exercise, and that the optic power was wholly retired into the other eye: for we evidently perceive, that the eye we keep shut, sends some part of its virtue to its fellow, which thereby swells and grows bigger; moreover, the sitting still, with the heat of the ligatures and plasters, might very well have brought some gouty humour upon this dissembler in Martial. Reading, in Froissard,* the vow of a company of young Eng-young English gallants, "To carry their left eyes "bound up till they were arrived in France, and "had performed some notable exploit against lish gal Lants. It is pro der chil counter feiting personal defects. us:" I have often been tickled with the conceit of its befalling them as it did the before-named Roman, and that they found they had but one eye a-piece when they returned to their mistresses, for whose sakes they had entered into this ridiculous Mothers have reason to rebuke their children, per to hin- when they counterfeit having but one eye, squintdren from ing, lameness, or other such personal defects; for, besides that their bodies, being then so tender, may be subject to take an ill bent, fortune, I know not how, sometimes seems to delight to take us at our word; and I have heard several instances of people who have become really sick, by only feigning to be SO. I have always used, whether on horseback, or on foot, to carry a stick in my hand, and so as to affect doing it with a grace. Many have threatened me, that this affected hobbling would, one day, be * Vol. i. chap. 29. turned into necessity, that is, "That I should be "the first of my family to have the gout.' a man who in his sleep. But let us lengthen this chapter, and eke it out Instance of with another piece, concerning blindness. Pliny was deprivreports of one," That dreaming he was blind, found ed of sight "himself so next day, without any preceding ma"lady."* The force of imagination might assist in this case, as I have said elsewhere, and Pliny seems to be of the same opinion; but it is more likely, that the motions the body felt within (whereof the physicians, if they please, may find out the cause), which took away his sight, were the occasion of his dream. who fell with the lived in, a resem Let us add another story, of much the same na- A foolish ture, which Seneca relates, in one of his epistles. † woman, "You know," says he, writing to Lucillius," that blind, "Harpaste, my wife's fool, is thrown upon my fa- found fault mily as an hereditary charge, for I have naturally house she "an aversion to those monsters; and, if I have a that it was "mind to laugh at a fool, I need not seek him far, too dark; "I can laugh at myself. This fool has suddenly blance of "lost her sight: I can tell you a strange, but a very most men's "true thing; she is not sensible that she is blind, "but eternally importunes her keeper to take her "abroad, because she says my house is dark: but, "believe me, that what we laugh at in her, happens to every one of us: no one knows him"self to be avaricious. Besides the blind call for a guide, but we wander of our own accord. I am "not ambitious, we say, but a man cannot live "otherwise at Rome: I am not wasteful, but the 66 city requires a great expense: it is not my fault if "I am choleric; and, if I have not yet established "any certain course of life, it is the fault of youth. "Let us not look abroad for our disease, it is in us, "and planted in our intestines: and our not per"ceiving ourselves to be sick even renders us more "hard to be cured: if we do not betimes begin to folly. "dress ourselves, when shall we have done with so "many wounds and evils that afflict us? And yet "we have a most pleasant medicine in philosophy; "of all others, we are not sensible of the pleasure "till after the cure; this pleases and heals at the "same time." This is what Seneca says, who has carried me from my subject; but it is a digression. not unprofitable. A custom the thumbs, them, and CHAPTER XVII. Of Thumbs. TACITUS* reports, that, amongst certain bar of screwing barian kings, their manner was, when they would wounding make a firm obligation, to join their right hands sucking the close together, and twist each other's thumbs; and blood. when, by force of pressure, the blood appeared in the ends, they lightly pricked them with some sharp instrument, and mutually sucked them. Etymology tin word Physicians say, "That the thumb is the masterof the La 66 finger of each hand, and that the Latin etymology pollex, for" is derived from pollere." The Greeks called it avrixie, as who should say, another hand. And it seems, that the Latins also sometimes take it, in this sense, for the whole hand: thumb. When the Sed nec vocibus excitata blandis, It was, at Rome, a signification of favour, to turn thumbs de-down and clap in the thumbs : noted fa vour, and when dis gust. Fautor utroque tuum laudabit pollice ludum.§ * Annal. lib. xii. This seems to be taken from Macrobius's Saturn. lib. vii. cap. 13, who took it, in his turn, from Atticus Capito. Mart. lib. xii. epig. 99, ver.. 8, 9. Horat. lib. i. ep. 18, ver. 66. Thy patron, when thou mak'st thy sport, And of disfavour to lift them up, and thrust them outward: Converso pollice vulgi Quemlibet occidunt populariter. The vulgar, with up lifted thumbs, Kill each one that before them comes.↑ thumbs, nished by The Romans exempted from war all such as were Those who maimed in the thumbs, as persons not able to bear cut off their arms. Augustus confiscated the estate of a Roman why puknight, "Who had maliciously cut off the thumbs the Ro "of two young children he had, to excuse them mans. "from going into the armies ;"‡ and, before him, the senate, in the time of the Italian war, condemned Caius Valienus to perpetual imprisonment, and confiscated all his goods, "For having purposely "cut off the thumb of his left hand, to exempt him"self from that expedition."Ş the van off. Some one, I have forgot who, having won a naval Thumbs of battle, "Cut off the thumbs of all his vanquished quished e"enemies, to render them incapable of fighting, nemy cut "and of handling the oar." The Athenians also caused the thumbs of those of Ægina to be cut off, "To deprive them of the preference in the art of "navigation." And, in Lacedæmonia, pedagogues chastised their scholars by biting their thumbs. *Juv. sat. iii. ver. 36. This was a metaphorical manner of speech, taken from the arena. When a gladiator was thrown in fighting, the people asked his life, by turning down their thumbs, or his death by lifting them |