MEMOIR OF PLINV. 
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 “Of Wolves,” 
in the eighth hook, 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 hook — 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 w’ay, 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 Greeko 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. 
