I
never more lively beheld the starved characters of
Dante+ in any living face; an
aruspex might have read
a lecture upon him without exenteration, his flesh
being so consumed, that he might, in a manner, have
discerned his bowels without opening of him; so that
to be carried,
sexta cervice# to the grave, was but a
civil unnecessity; and the complements of the coffin
might outweigh the subject of it.
Omnibonus Ferrarius in mortal dysenteries of chil-
dren looks for a spot behind the ear; in consumptive
diseases some eye the complexion of moles; Cardan
eagerly views the nails, some the lines of the hand, the
thenar or muscle of the thumb; some are so curious as
to observe the depth of the throat-pit, how the pro-
portion varieth of the small of the legs unto the calf,
or the compass of the neck unto the circumference of
the head; but all these, with many more, were so
drowned in a mortal visage, and last face of Hippocra-
tes, that a weak physiognomist might say at first eye, this
was a face of earth, and that
Morta$ had set her hard seal
upon his temples, easily perceiving what
caricatura||
* Turkish history.
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