"The folk be of little stature, but three span long, and they be right fair and gentle, after their quantity, both the men and the women. And they marry them when they be half a year of age, and get children. And they live not but six or seven years at the most. And he that liveth eight years, men hold him there right passing old.... And they have often war with the birds of the country that they take and eat. These little folks labour neither in lands nor in vineyards. But they have great men among them of our stature that till the land and labour amongst the vines for them. And of the men of our stature have they a great scorn and wonder as we would have among us of Giants if they were amongst us." Mandeville speaks as calmly about the ants, known to Herodotus, which guard the hills of gold, and are as large as hounds; and of the devil's head in the valley perilous, through which the knight and his company travelled in great fear, "and therefore were we the more devout a great deal". Thence he reached an isle where men are from twenty-eight to thirty feet in stature, "and they eat more gladly men's flesh than any other flesh," being indeed the Læstrygonians who devoured the men of Odysseus, or the Mermedonians of the Anglo-Saxon poem of "St. Andreas," who meant to devour St. Matthew. Mandeville enjoyed and deserved great popularity, being a follower of Lucian's "True History," and a predecessor of Gulliver. Pecock. "The Repressor." A writer of English prose even more interesting, though much less popular and amusing than Mandeville, is Reginald Pecock (1395-1460), the deposed Bishop of Chichester, author of "The Repressor of overmuch blaming of the Clergy". The clergy blamed Pecock, and repressed him. This remarkable man, born shortly before the date of Chaucer's death, in North Wales, was a Fellow of Oriel College, Oxford (1417), was patronized by Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, obtaining the Mastership of Lord Mayor Whittington's school in London (1431), became Bishop of St. Asaph (1444), and passed his life in attempts to convert the Lollards by persuasion, not by the stake. "The clergy shall be condemned at the last day," he writes, "if by clear wit they draw not men into consent of true faith otherwise than by fire, sword and hangment; although I will not deny these second means to be lawful, provided the former be first used." In the opinion of the Lollards, nothing in ecclesiastical matters was defensible that was not positively inculcated in the Bible as interpreted by the average Christian man, however unlettered. Pecock defended Episcopacy, and even defended non-preaching Bishops, on the score that they had to discharge more important duties. Even the much abused friars he stood up for, arguing that, whatever their offences, they and the world would be worse rather than better if there were no religious orders. His arguments in support of the begging Franciscans