warm themselves; but as soon as she feels the heat she dives and drowns them all an example of what may be expected from the devil. There is, too, the elephant that leans against a tree to take his rest. People cunningly cut the tree, and replace it; when the elephant comes the tree falls and so does he, and is caught, an emblem of our father Adam, who also owed his fall to a tree. Again the "Contes Moralisés" of Nicole Bozon, written in French by a friar who lived in England in the first half of the fourteenth century, are also full of the most curious comparisons between the properties of animals, plants, and minerals, and the sinful tendencies and frailties of mankind.2 These are old, far-off examples, and it might be supposed that people of education in Elizabethan England would have possessed a sounder knowledge of natural history. This was, however, not the case. And if we wish to know what were the current beliefs among well-informed men of the time about animals, we have only to open the two folio volumes penned with greatest care by painstaking Topsell, concerning "Foure-footed beastes" and "Serpents." 3 We shall then willingly set Lyly and his followers free from all blame of exaggeration and improbable inventions. Most often indeed "An old English Miscellany, containing a bestiary," ed. R. Morris, London, Early English Text Society, 1872. 2 Recently published by Miss Lucy Toulmin Smith and M. Paul Meyer, Paris, Société des anciens textes Français, 1889, 8vo. 66 3"The historie of Foure-footed beastes, describing the true and lively figure of every beast," London, 1607, fol. The historie of Serpents or the second book of living creatures," London, 1608, fol. they did not invent; they knew. Topsell's books are nothing but a careful summary of the then generally accepted reports concerning animated creation. His histories are the more curious as his scruples and earnestness are obvious. His purpose is high, and he means to write only for the Creator's glory, considering his subject to be a "part of Divinity that was never known in English. I take my owne conscience to witness, which is manifest to my Judge and Saviour, I have intended nothing but his glory, that is the creator of all." Secondly, his serious attention to his subject is shown by what he says of accessible animals; the engravings he gives of them, of dogs, for instance, of bulls, asses, and many others being really excellent. Even rare animals, when by any chance he had secured a glimpse of them, are represented with the utmost care; such, for instance, is his chameleon, of which he gives a very good engraving, not long after careless Robert Greene had been writing of "this byrd, a camelion." I But, then, nature is full of surprises, and so is Topsell's book. His antelopes are very dangerous things: "They have hornes . . . which are very long and sharpe; so that Alexander affirmed they pierced through the sheeldes of his souldiers, and fought with them very irefully at which time his companions slew as he travelled to India, 8,550; which great slaughter may be the occasion why they are so rare and sildome seene to this day." Undoubtedly. The blood of the elephant has a very strange pro "Alcida. Greenes metamorphosis," licensed 1588; carliest known edition, 1617. |