FRANCIS WILLUGHBY. 
41 
of them. In vain, however, do we look into his 
works for any of the excellencies of Aristotle. 
Amid the enormous multitude of facts which he 
has recorded, he could scarcely have avoided the 
statement of some truths : but compilation was 
evidently his great object, and the choice of the 
strange and marvellous his ruling passion. It is 
an open question, how far his sentiments respect- 
ing religion may have influenced the composition 
of his works on natural history ; but those works 
themselves exhibit an utter absence of discrimi- 
nation, guided either by an acquaintance with 
the system of nature, or regard to what was even 
possible in itself. The writings of travellers, 
historians, geographers, philosophers, and phy- 
sicians, are all laid under the contribution of his 
huge drag-net, but on the contents of which he 
bestows no selection. Hence, amid an immense 
congregation of absurdities, he tells stories of 
men without heads, and men without mouths, or 
of men having but one foot. Along with de- 
scriptions of the elephant and the lion he gives 
accounts of manticores, creatures with the head 
of a man and the tail of a serpent ; winged horses ; 
and of dolphins who became attached to children, 
and carried them on their backs every day to 
school, through lakes and arms of the sea; of 
ravens and cocks that spoke, and - recognized by 
name different important personages. “ More 
than two-thirds of his descriptions are erroneous, 
false, or fabulous.”* 
* Macgillivray, 
