+ In the poet Dante's description.
# i.e. "by six persons."
$ Morta, the deity of death or fate.
|| When men's faces are drawn with resemblance to some
other animals, the Italians call it, to be drawn
in caricatura.
draughts death makes upon pined faces, and unto what
an unknown degree a man may live backward.
Though the beard be only made a distinction of sex,
and sign of masculine heat by
Ulmus,* yet the
precocity and early growth thereof in him, was not
to be liked in reference unto long life. Lewis,
that virtuous but unfortunate king of Hungary,
who lost his life at the battle of Mohacz,<9> was
said to be born without a skin, to have bearded at
fifteen, and to have shown some grey hairs about
twenty; from whence the diviners conjectured that he
would be spoiled of his kingdom, and have but a short
life; but hairs make fallible predictions, and many
temples early grey have outlived the psalmist's period.+
Hairs which have most amused me have not been in the
face or head, but on the back, and not in men but
children, as I long ago observed in that endemial
distemper of children in Languedoc, called the
mor-
gellons,# wherein they critically break out with harsh
hairs on their backs, which takes off the unquiet symp-
toms of the disease, and delivers them from coughs and
convulsions.
Pages:
258
259
260
261
262
263
264
265
266
267
268
269
270
271
272
273
274
275
276
277
278
279
280
281
282