[115] Book I., Canto V. [116] A very good illustration of this treatment may be seen in the statement that “the dogs in Egypt use to lap their water running when they come to Nilus, for fear of the crocodiles there, which cannot but be a fit pattern for us in the use of pleasures; for true it is, we may not stand to take a heartie draught, for then delights be dangerous, howbeit we may refresh ourselves with them as we go on our way, and may take them, but may not be taken by them; for when they detain us, and cause us to stand still, then their sweet waters have fierce Crocodiles; or if not so, they have strange Tarantulas, whose sting causeth to die laughing.” [117] We meet a like precision of statement in Cockeram’s Dictionary, a quaint old volume, wherein “all such as desire to know the plenty of the English” will find some very strange illustrations of it. He says, edition of 1623, that “the crocodile having eaten the body of a man, will, in fine, weep over the head.” [118] Readers of Shakespeare will recall how Falstaff rails at Bardolph, calling him the “Knight of the Burning Lamp,” and other sarcasms inspired by the effects of strong liquor on his rubicund countenance. “Thou hast saved me a thousand marks in links and torches, walking with thee in the night. I have maintained that Salamander of yours with fire any time this two-and-thirty years.” [119] Galen, in one of his prescriptions, includes the ashes of a salamander, an ingredient impossible to obtain if fire had no power to destroy the creature. [120] A parallel idea is that if the body of a crab be laid in the sunshine while the sun is in Cancer it will generate scorpions. [121] “Andromachus a voulu changer le nom de Mithridate en celuy de Theriaque, à cause des vipères, auxquelles il a attribué le nom, et lesquelles il a ajouté pour la base principale de cette composition.” (Chares, “l’histoire des Animaux etc. qui entrent dans la Theriaque,” Paris, 1868.) See also Heberden’s “Antitheriaca.” [122] A viper drowned in a bowl of wine gave the draught great healing virtues for leprosy. This happy discovery, like many others of still greater value, was the result of accident. Some mowers found on going to their provisions that a viper had got into the wine, so they, very naturally, “contented themselves with water; but when they had finished their day’s work, and were to go out of the field, as it were out of pity they gave a leprous man the wine wherein the viper was drowned, supposing it better for him to die than to live on in that misery, but he, when he had drank it, was miraculously cured,” at least, so we read in the “Miracles of Art and Nature,” Galen being referred to as the original authority for the story. The first essential in many of these ancient remedies appeared to be that they should be most improbable and unreasonable, and, secondly, that they should be as repulsive as possible. [123] Spenser.