l. 2. _Get with child a mandrake root._ 'Many Mola's and false conceptions there are of _Mandrakes_, the first from great Antiquity, conceiveth the Root thereof resembleth the shape of Man.... Now whatever encourageth the first invention, there have not been wanting many ways of its promotion. The first a Catachrestical and far derived similitude it holds with Man; that is, in a bifurcation or division of the Root into two parts, which some are content to call Thighs.' Sir Thomas Browne's _Vulgar Errors_ (1686), ii. 6, p. 72. Compare also _The Progresse of the Soule_, st. xv, p. 300. PAGE =10=. THE UNDERTAKING. l. 2. _the Worthies._ The nine worthies usually named are Joshua, David, Judas Maccabaeus, Hector, Alexander, Julius Caesar, Arthur, Charlemagne, and Godfrey of Bouillon, but they varied. Guy of Warwick is mentioned by Gerard Legh, _Accedens of Armorye_. Nash mentions Solomon and Gideon; and Shakespeare introduces Hercules and Pompey in _Love's Labour's Lost_. _All the Worthies_ therefore covers a wide field. The Worthies figured largely in decorative designs and pageants. On a target taken at the siege of Ostend 'was enammeled in gold the seven [_sic_] Worthies, worth seven or eight hundred guilders'. Vere's _Commentaries_ (1657), p. 174. l. 6. _The skill of specular stone._ Compare _To the Countesse of Bedford_, p. 219, ll. 28-30: You teach (though wee learne not) a thing unknowne To our late times, the use of specular stone, Through which all things within without were shown. Grosart (ii. 48-9) and Professor Norton (Grolier, i. 217) take 'specular' as meaning simply 'translucent', and the latter quotes Holinshed's _Chronicle_, ii. ch. 10: 'I find obscure mention of the specular stone also to have been found and applied to this use' (i.e. glazing windows) 'in England, but in such doubtful sort as I dare not affirm for certain.' This is the 'pierre spéculaire' or 'pierre à miroir' which Cotgrave describes as 'A light, white, and transparent stone, easily cleft into thinne flakes, and used by th' Arabians (among whom it growes) instead of glasse; anight it represents the Moon, and even increases or decreases, as the Moon doth'. But surely Donne refers to crystal-gazing. Paracelsus has a paragraph in the _Coelum Philosophorum_: 'How to conjure the Crystal so that all Things may be seen in it.