310 SHAKFESPEARE'S [TOAD. 
or backer parts, wherewithal she infecteth the air, for 
revenge of them that do annoy her; and she knoweth the 
weakness of her teeth, and therefore she gathereth abun- 
dance of air into her body, wherewithal she greatly swelleth, 
and then, by sighing, uttereth that infected air as near the 
person that offendeth her as she can. A Toad useth one 
certain herb wherewithal it preserveth the sight, and also 
resisteth the poison of spiders, whereof I have heard this 
credible history related from the mouth of the good Earl 
of Bedford. It fortuned as the said Earl travelled in 
Bedfordshire, near unto a market-town called Owbourn 
[? Woburn], some of his company espied a Toad fighting 
with a spider, under a hedge; and the Earl saw how the 
spider still kept her standing, and the Toad divers times 
went back from the spider, and did eat a piece of an 
herb, which to his judgment was like a plantain; at the 
last, the Earl, having seen the Toad do it often, and still 
return to the combat against the spider, he commanded 
one of his men to go, and with his dagger to cut off 
that herb :—presently after the Toad returned to seek it, 
and, not finding it, swelled and broke in pieces. [This 
story is better told in Lupton’s “Notable Things,” bk. vi. 
§ 30, but without the names, and with slight differences. | 
There was a monk in England who had in his chamber 
divers bundles of green rushes, wherewithal he used to 
strew his chamber at his pleasure; it happened on a day 
after dinner, that he fell asleep upon one of those bundles 
of rushes, with his face upward, and, while he there slept, 
a great Toad came and sat upon his lips, bestriding him 
in such manner as his whole mouth was covered. Now 
when his fellows saw it, they were at their wits’ end, for 
to pull away the Toad was an unavoidable death, but to 
suffer her to stand still upon his mouth was a thing more 
eruel than death; and therefore one of them espying a 
spider’s web in the window, wherein was a great spider, he 
did advise that the monk should be carried to that window, 
and laid with his face upward right underneath the spider’s 
web. And as soon as the spider saw her adversary the 
Toad, she presently wove her thread, and descended down 
upon the Toad,—at the first meeting whereof the spider 
. wounded the Toad, so that it swelled, and at the second 
meeting it swelled more, but at the third time the spider 
