BOOKS OF SECRETS. 17 



seem to me impossible to believe according to nature, for Aristotle 

 relates nothing like them. But it may well be that those to whom these 

 marvellous events happened, were cheated by some diabolical illusions 

 or otherwise." 



One feels disposed to agree with the compiler and to say of Gervasius 

 what King James VI said of the witches of Tranent, that ''they were all 

 extream lyars," though the editor here rather spoils his Higher Criticism 

 by quoting Aristotle and the devil. But " otherwise " is good ; it is such 

 a roomy alternative. 



In this book the stories are told at some length, but in others they 

 are reduced to the smallest dimensions and only the essential part is 

 preserved. Such is the treatment of the subject in Thomas Johnson's 

 "Cornucopiae," a thin black letter pamphlet of 24 leaves, printed at 

 London in 1596, and in the translation of Pierre de Changy's abstract of 

 Pliny, printed at London in 1587. As it contains only thirty-six leaves 

 in small 4to, the barest outline of Pliny's thirty-seven books in folio is 

 the result, but the wonders have been culled with due attention to their 

 exceptional character. 



Of equal interest and curiosity is the collection of Pierre Boaistuau, 

 which was put out in English as an original work by Edward Fenton in 

 1569. It too contains remarkable stories and it possesses an unusual 

 feature in the form of woodcuts illustrating different narratives. These 

 do ample justice to the text, and are highly creditable to the imagination 

 of the artist. The author describes monstrous men and animals, but 

 what he says would not be intelligible without the pictures. People were 

 much exercised in those times about the origin of monsters, and small 

 wonder considering the appearance of those depicted and described. 

 There was always a doubt too about the share devils had in producing 

 them, and whether in general devils could have families. Then there are 

 accounts of natural wonders : great floods, burning mountains, including 

 the eruption in which Pliny perished, with a woodcut of the catastrophe ; 



