MEMOIR OF PLINY. 77 



yet all is not false even in those narratives most re- 

 plete with fiction. We may sometimes detect the 



For example, when treating in the 52d chapter of the 

 eleventh book on the signs and prognostications of longe- 

 vity to be discovered in certain lines or marks in the hu- 

 man body, he says : " I wonder verily that Aristotle not 

 only belieued, but also sticked not to set downe in writing, 

 that there were certaine signs in men's bodie, whereby we 

 might foreknowe whether he were longliued or no. Which 

 albeit, I take to be but vanities, and not rashly to be ut- 

 tered without good aduisement ; yet will I touch the same, 

 and deliuer them in some sort, since so great a clerk as 

 Aristotle, was, held them for resolutions, and thought them 

 worthy the penning." Again in the chapter fc< Of Wolves," 

 in the eighth book, when speaking of a tradition in Arcadia 

 that men could be transformed into wolves, by merely 

 swimming across a certain pool, he thus characterises those 

 "Greek writers," of whom Cuvier accuses him as being the 

 servile and credulous copyist. " A wonder it is to see to 

 what passe these Greeks are come in their credulity ; there 

 is not so shameless a lye but it findeth one or other of them 

 to vphold and maintain it." Even the seventh book that 

 horrid register of human monsters noseless or headless 

 bipeds with claws and shaggy hair he prefaces with this 

 general caveat : " Thus much must I aduertise the read- 

 ers of this mine history by the way, that I will not pawne 

 my credit for many things that herein I shall deliuer, nor 

 bind them to believe all I write, as touching strange and 

 forreine nations : refer them rather I will to mine authors, 

 whom in all points more doubtfull than the rest, I will cite 

 and allege, whom they may belieue if they list. Only let 

 them not thinke much to follow the Greeke writers," &c. 

 Whatever may be thought of Pliny's want of discernment 

 as a writer, or his defects as a naturalist, had his censurers 

 attended to these and similar passages, they would have 

 been more sparing of their reproaches, and less apt to 

 charge him with faults which he never committed, and 

 : vhich he condemns as much as they do, 



