“As when a wearie traveiler, that strayes By muddy shore of broad seven-mouthed Nile, Unweeting of the perillous wandring wayes, Doth meete a cruell craftie Crocodile, Which in false grefe hyding his harmefull guile, Doth weepe full sore, and sheddeth tender teares; The foolish man, that pities all this while His mournful plight, is swallowed up unawares, Forgetfull of his owne that mindes an other’s cares.” “Thereupon,” ungallantly adds an old writer, “came this proverb that is applied unto women when they weep. Lachrymæ Crocodili, the meaning whereof is, that as the Crocodile when he crieth goeth about most to deceive, so doth a woman most commonly when she weepeth.” Thus Othello misanthropically exclaims— “If that the earth could teem with woman’s tears, Each drop she falls would prove a crocodile.” In the same spirit Barnfield, in his “Cassandra,” written in the year 1595, has the following passage:— “He, noble lord, fearlesse of hidden treason, Sweetely salutes this weeping Crocodile; Excusing every cause with instant reason They kept him from her sight so long a while; She faintly pardons him; smiling by art, For life was in her lookes, death in her hart.” The author of the “Speculum Mundi,” who is ever seeking a moral[116] or an opportunity of improving the occasion, declares that “the crocodile when he hath devoured a man and eaten all up but the head, will sit and weep over it[117] as if he expressed a great portion of sorrow for his cruel feast, but it is nothing so, for when he weeps it is because his hungrie paunch wants such another prey. And from hence the proverb took beginning, viz. Crocodiles’ tears; which is then verified when one weeps cunningly without sorrow, dissembling heaviness out of craftinesse; like unto many rich men’s heirs who mourn in their gowns when they laugh in their sleeves; or like to other dissemblers of the like nature who have sorrow in their eyes, but joy and craftiness in their hearts.” However this may be, the supposititious tears of the crocodile have been turned to abundant literary and moral account. The tears of the crocodile were supposed, according to some who were great authorities in their day and generation, to crystallize into gems, but as supposititious tears could only produce supposititious gems the actual value would be but small.