300 Mediceval Lore. 



the number, the edition from which " Medieval 

 Lore " is compiled bearing date 1535. It was no 

 doubt immensely popular, but perhaps had hardly 

 so great an effect on the general literature of the 

 sixteenth century, at least directly, as Mr. Steele 

 would have us believe. Indeed Gesner, in his 

 "History of Animals," treats it with scant courtesy, 

 and apparently thought but little of the author's 

 Latin and less of his facts, though he himself was 

 sufficiently credulous. 



Like all the writers of what may be called the 

 pre-scientific age, Bartholomew Anglicus drew 

 largely on Pliny for his natural history, and we 

 accordingly find an account of all the wonderful 

 beings described by that author, men " that be all 

 headless and noseless, and their eyen be in their 

 shoulders, and some have plain faces without 

 nostrils, and the nether lips of them stretch so, 

 that they hele therewith their faces when they be 

 in the heat of the sun," and so on, and so on, 

 through all the wonderful descriptions known to 

 readers of Pliny, or of the " Voyage and travayle 

 of Sir John Maundeville, Knight." 



Of our author's stories of animals, among the 

 best, perhaps, is that which treats of the " ever- 

 lasting fighting" between elephants and dragons, 

 the end of the fight being as follows : " The 

 dragon leapeth upon the elephant, and busieth 

 him to bite him between the nostrils, and assaileth 

 the elephant's eyen, and maketh him blind some- 

 time, and leapeth upon him sometime behind, and 



