Pliny and the author of the Apocalypse are here acknowledged as masters and authorities in the art of description. In other places of the same work there is a very liberal use of natural history such as is common in many versions of the history of Alexander. There is, for example, a long description of the precious clothes of Briseide (Cressida) at her departure, especially of her mantle, which had been given to Calchas by an Indian poet in Upper India. It was made by nigromancy, of the skin of the beast _Dindialos_, which is hunted in the shadowless land by the savage people whose name is _Cenocefali_; and the fringes of the mantle were not of the sable, but of a "beast of price" that dwells in the water of Paradise:-- Dedans le flum de Paradis Sont et conversent, ço set l'on Se c'est vrais que nos en lison. Calchas had a tent which had belonged to Pharaoh:-- Diomedes tant la conduit Qu'il descendi al paveillon Qui fu al riche Pharaon, Cil qui noa en la mer roge. In such passages of ornamental description the names of strange people and of foreign kings have the same kind of value as the names of precious stones, and sometimes they are introduced on their own account, apart from the precious work of Arabian or Indian artists. Of this sort is the "dreadful sagittary," who is still retained in Shakespeare's _Troilus and Cressida_ on the ultimate authority (when it comes to be looked into) of Benoit de Sainte More.[80] [Footnote 80: Il ot o lui un saietaire Qui molt fu fels et deputaire: Des le nombril tot contreval Ot cors en forme de cheval: Il n'est riens nule s'il volsist Que d'isnelece n'ateinsist: Cors, chiere, braz, a noz semblanz Avoit, mes n'ert pas avenanz. l. 12,207.] A quotation by M. Gaston Paris (_Hist. litt. de la France_, xxx. p. 210), from the unpublished romance of _Ider_ (Edeyrn, son of Nudd), shows how this fashion of rich description and allusion had been overdone, and how it was necessary, in time, to make a protest against it. Kings' pavilions were a favourite subject for rhetoric, and the poet of _Ider_ explains that he does not approve of this fashion, though he has pavilions of his own, and can describe them if he likes, as well as any one:-- Tels diz n'a fors savor de songe, Tant en acreissent les paroles: Mes jo n'ai cure d'iperboles: _Yperbole_ est chose non voire, Qui ne fu et qui n'est a croire, C'en est la difinicion: Mes tant di de cest paveillon Qu'il n'en a nul soz ciel qu'il vaille. Many poets give themselves pains to describe gardens and pavilions and other things, and think they are beautifying their work, but this is all dreaming and waste of words; I will have no such hyperbole. (_Hyperbole_ means by definition that which is untrue and incredible.) I will only say of this pavilion that there was not its match under heaven.