and making beautiful the dust and rubbish of life, and smoothing down the roughnesses of accident, the inequalities of fortune. It is that deep and boundless sea, from which all our visions spring,-all those rich dreams of the brain, more radiant than Hesperian sunsets, more beautiful than the painter's touch, or the sculptor's marble art. It is called a fable, a fancy, a something to be derided and hooted (if possible) from existence, because it is not as tangible as the ground we tread upon. It is as real as ourselves. It is the finest and subtlest portion of the mind; and if ever we make a large stride in knowledge, it will probably be owing to our imagination rather than to our reason. Our intellect, we mean the mathematical part of our intellect, which proceeds upon established common places, and deals in defined premises and strict conclusions,must always necessarily have the weight and alloy of earth about it, and be bound down by lines and figures. But there is a subtler spirit, a finer instinct, if we may so call it, in the mind, which sometimes defies both analysis and reason, which comes to us through our sensations sometimes, and sometimes-we know not how. And this will, some day or other, we doubt not, go forth, like the winged thought of the poet, through the paradise and wildernesses of creation,-a herald, soaring beyond our "visible diurnal sphere," and bring back to us some wealthy store, which shall redeem the prophecies of the critic, and support the philosophy of poetry; while the men of figures, and mathematicians, and arithmeticians, and utilitarians, (the scorners!) Parthians, and Medes, and Edomites," shall be shamed and reduced to silence.

66

But we must proceed with our labour. We will not detain the reader with an account of the many natural marvels which follow in succession in this antique record. We pass by the Orson, who was born near the "citty of Pysa," and the player's son of Germany, who was born in the likeness of the Devil; and the little Franciscan friar, who became a patriarch at ten years of age; and others. There are two or three tribes of people, however, whom we cannot altogether pass over; the more especially, as they may now, by intermarriages with other nations, have lost a portion of their primitive singularity.

"Some they called Monosceli, which have but one leg, with the which they are so light in leaping, that they overtake all other beasts, only in jumping after them; their foot is so great, that in hot weather lying on the ground, they lift it up, and with the shadow thereof defend themselves from the heat of the sun. There are others without either neck or head, having their eyes in their shoulders: others their faces plain without nostrils, instead of which they have two little holes only others without mouths, maintaining themselves with only the

smell of fruits and herbs, the force of whose scent is such, that they dry and wither up the flowers, in smelling out of them all their substance. The smell of any evil or noisome thing is so contrary to them, that oft-times it putteth them in danger of their lives. Their speech and understanding is by signs.-Besides, they write that there are men in the mountains of Scythia, or Tartaria, with so little mouths, that they cannot eat, but maintain their lives with sucking in only the substance and juice of flesh and fruits. There is another kind of men with dogs' faces and ox-feet, which contain all their speech under two words only, with the which the one understandeth the other. There are others whom they call Phanaces, whose ears are so great, that they cover therewith their whole bodies; they are so strong, that with one pull they tear whole trees up by the roots, using them in their fight with exceeding agility. There are others with one eye only, and that in their forehead; their ears like dogs, and their hair standing stiff up on end. Others they describe with divers and monstrous forms, which if I should rehearse all, I should never make an end; yet, by the way, I will tell you what I have read in one of Ptolemy's tables of Tartaria Major. There is in it, saith he, a country now called Georgia, fast by the kingdom of Ergonil, in the which there are five sorts of peoplesome black as Ethiopians, some white like us, some having tails like peacocks, some of very little and low stature, with two heads; and others whose face and teeth are in manner of horse-jaws: and, if this be true, it is a wonderful thing that there should be in one land such diversities of men."

We then come to a little discussion touching Satyres, and Faunes, and Egipanes; wherein Pomponius Mela, Sabellicus, (who admits that there are some men "in the mountain Atlas, which runne on four feete"), Plinie, Virgil's Georgics, and Ovid's Metamorphoses (!) are quoted to our somewhat edification. We confess that we were sceptical as to the existence of the Houyhnhnms, until we met with The Spanish Mandevile, when we were cured of our doubts. There can be but little question, we apprehend, that the following race of people and Swift's islanders, must be the same. There is a little difference, it must be admitted, namely, a couple of legs; but cut off these, and here they are!

"Nicolaus Leonicus, in his second book de vana historia, writeth of another sort of Satyrs, much differing in shape from these before rehearsed he allegeth an author, called Pausanias, whose authority he followeth in his whole work, who saith, that he heard Eufemius, a man of great estimation and credit, affirm, that sailing towards Spain, the ship in which they went, through a great tempest and storm, being driven with a violent western wind to run along the ocean seas, brought them at last upon the coast of certain islands, which seemed to be uninhabited; where they had no sooner landed to take in fresh water, but there appeared certain wild men, of fierce and cruel resemblance, all covered with hair, somewhat reddish, resembling in each other

part, men, but only that they had long tails full of bristled hairs, like unto horses. These monsters discovering the mariners, joined themselves in a great troop and squadron together, making an ill-favoured noise, like the barking, or rather howling of dogs, and at last, of a sudden, set upon them, with such a fury and vehemence, that they drove them back to their ship."

After all, this kind of men are really not so very uncommon; for

"Plinie writeth, alleging the authority of Megasthenes, that there are, towards the East, certain people, which have long bushy tails like foxes: so that they are, in a manner, like unto those which you have said. I partly believe this the rather, because of that which (as I have heard) happened to a lineage of men that brake up a vessel pertaining to S. Toribius, bishop of Astorga, in which he held sacred reliques, with whose delectable savour he sustained himself, putting in place thereof things stinking and unsavoury; for punishment and perpetual mark of which wicked offence, both they and their posterity came to have tails, which race, as it is said, continueth till this day."

We then come to "a strange story of a Pilgrime;" then to a man with two heads; then to another lusus natura; then to Amazons and Pigmies: of these last

-that Pigmian race

Beyond the Indian mount

we have an interesting account; marvellous indeed, but withal amusing, we think; and, as such, we offer it to the reader.

be

"Of these, the most part of Cosmographers make mention, describing them to be men of three spans in length. Plinie holdeth, that they exceed not in length three hand-breadths, the thumb being straight out. Juvenal speaking of them, saith, that their whole stature passeth not the height of a foot. Both the one and the other may true, for as amongst us there be some men greater than others, so may there be between them difference of statures; though the highest cannot exceed three spans, or very little more. Their habitation is in the utter parts of India, towards the East, near the rising of the river Ganges, in certain mountains, where at such times as it is in other places winter, the cranes come to lay their eggs, and to bring up their young ones about the river sides; whose coming, so soon as the pigmies perceive, because they are so little that the cranes regard them not, but do them much hurt, as well in their persons, as in eating up their victuals and spoiling their fruits, they join themselves (as Homer writeth) in great number to break their eggs; and to prepare themselves to this terrible fight, they mount upon goats and rams, and, in very goodly equipage, go forward to destroy this multiplication of cranes, as to a most dangerous and bloody enterprise.

"Bernardo. This is a fierce people, and of great courage, as it

seemeth; but as I have heard, they live not long, for their women at three years of age bear children, at six years are barren and reputed old, and the greatest age they may reach unto is nine or ten years.Ovid, in his sixth book of Metamorphoses, saith, that they are two feet long, double the reckoning of Juvenal, and that their women bear children at five years, and at eight years are old, and die soon after.

"Antonio. The common fame that goeth of them is so, and the like saith Aristotle, by these words: the cranes come out of the plains of Scythia, to the lakes above Egypt, which is where the river Nilus runneth; and it is said, that they fight in this place with the pigmies, and this is no fable, but an assured truth, that there are marvellous little men, and very little horses also; the men are about two feet and a hand-breadth high, the women breed children at five years, at eight are barren, and live not much longer. Solinus also, in treating of the self same matter, saith, that the pigmies inhabit certain hills of India, and that the longest term of their life is eight years.

"Ludovico. These authors are well wide one from another, seeing the one placeth them in Africa, and the other in the uttermost bounds of Asia, being so many thousand miles difference between them. Pomponius Mela will have their habitation to be in the farthest parts of all Africa. Some others will have it to be in Europe; for Gemafrisius, in his Cosmography, saith, that there was a ship made of leather, driven through a vehement tempest upon the coast of the kingdom of Norway, in the which were no other people than pigmies, of whose habitation there could no knowledge be had, because no man could understand their language; but according to the course of their voyage, it could not be but in some part between the west and the north, which we will farther prove, when we come to discourse thereof. It must be in some other new part of the world, or else it must be in some country contained under Europe. Pigafeta, a knight of Malta, which accompanied Magellan, in his voyage to the Indies, when he discovered the Straight, and returned back in the ship called Victoria, (which they say went round about the world) in a relation that he made to the Pope, of his strange adventures by the way, said, that being in the Archipelago, which is in the Sea of Sur, and on the other side of the Straight, there were found pigmies in a certain island, of different fashion from these, for their ears were as great as their whole body; they laid themselves down on the one, and covered themselves with the other, and were in their running exceeding swift, which, though he himself did not see, because he could not apart himself from the voyage which the ship held, yet it was in the islands there about, a thing notoriously known and manifest, and the most part of the mariners testified the same.

"Antonio. Pigafeta had need, for the credit of his report, to bring such witnesses as had seen them in person; but the matter is not great, for every man may believe herein what he list, without committing deadly sin."

Of the people of the island of the South, we have specimens even in England; except that their bones are not "like

sinews," nor are they " entirely beautiful," nor altogether "covered with hair;" but for their tongues. However, the reader shall see what manner of men they were, and then judge whether the breed be extinct or not. They are remarkable, as we have hinted, for several distinguishing traits; but

"The chiefest thing wherein they differ from us, is their tongues, which have a singular particularity given them by nature, the which is, that from their birth they are so parted and divided, that they seem to be double, so that they use them diversly, and in one instant pronounce different reasons; and which is more, they counterfeit also the voice of the birds and fowls of the air; but which is of other most admirable, they speak with two men at once-to one with the one part, and to the other with the other part of the tongue, and demanding of the one, they answer to the other, as though the two tongues were in two several mouths of two sundry men."

Leaving these "Biloquists," as Charles Brockden Brown would have called them, and other matters, we arrive at the narratives of men remarkable for strength. Among these, we hear of the Fencer Tritamio, who overcame the strongest men, although he himself was bound hand and foot; of the celebrated Milo (p. 19); of Tritormo (p. 20), who raised even the wonder of Milo; of Pero Pardo de Riba de Neyra, who griped his enemy to death, (who was a bishop to boot) after the fashion of Alcides.-We are then told of a man who remained from youth to old age without drinking, and of another who never drank in the course of his life. In short, almost every remarkable story of antiquity is brought forward and discussed, The book is prodigal in narrative and marvel beyond any other which ever came before us; and the multitude of facts, extracted from Pliny, Solinus, Sabellicus, &c. &c. is altogether without parallel. We think that there cannot be less than six hundred stories (some brief, to be sure) scattered over the six days' dialogue of The Spanish Mandevile. We are yet, it must be observed, in the "First Discourse;" the which, unless we quit it very speedily, will of itself exhaust the limit which we can afford for the criticism of the whole book: nevertheless, in this age of disinterments, we will venture upon another extract. How the Patagonians shrunk in comparison with the ancient worthies, dug up and embalmed by our friend Torquemeda. Even the mammoths could scarcely have been deemed fit companions for men, whose skulls could hold "a bushel" of brains, or for the giant son of Evander, "slain by Turnus."

"For my part, I think that this matter of giants be for the most part feigned; and though there have been great men, yet were they never so huge as they are described, for every one addeth that as he thinketh good. Solinus writeth, that it is by many authors agreed,