liver, intestines, stomach, and spleen, with the greatest part of the mesentery, hung out beyond the navel, who lived but a few hours. The mother being asked by Gregorius Horstius and Dr. Major, if she knew any thing that might occasion such a birth? answered, with tears, "That three months before her delivery she was compelled to hold a calf while he was killed; and that standing by while he was opened, at the falling of the bowels she felt a commotion within her, unto which she imputed this accident.

14. At Cracovia there was born of noble parents, a child that was terrible to behold, with flaming and shining eyes: the mouth and nostrils were like to those of an ox; it had long horns, and a back hairy like a dog's; it had the faces of apes in the breast, where the teats should stand; it had cats' eyes under the navel, fastened to the hypogastrium, and they looked hideously and frightfully; it had the heads of dogs upon both elbows, and at the whirlbones of each knee, looking forwards; it was splay-footed and splay

handed; the feet were like swans' feet, and it had a tail turned upwards, that was crooked backwards, about half an ell long. It lived four hours from the birth of it, and near its death spake thus : "Watch, for the Lord your God comes." "This was," saith Lycosthenes, "A. D. 1543."

a

15. In the year 1573 there was monster born at St. Lawrence, in the West Indies, the narration whereof was

brought to the duke of Medina Sidonia, from very faithful hands: that there was a child born there at that time, that, besides the horrible deformity of its mouth, ears and nose, had two horns on the head, like those of a young goat's, long hair on the body, a fleshy girdle about his middle, double, from whence hung a piece of flesh like a purse, and a bell of flesh in his left hand, like those the Indians wear when they dance; white boots of flesh on his legs, doubled down in

::

brief, the whole shape was horrid and diabolical, and conceived to proceed from some fright the mother had taken, from the antic dances of the Indians, amongst whom the devil himself does not fail to appear sometimes.

16. At Boston, in New England, Oc. tober 17, 1637, Mrs. Dyer was delivered of a monster which had no head; the face was on the breast, the ears like an ape's grew upon the shoulders, the eyes and mouth stood far out, the nose hooking upward, the breast and back full of prickles, the navel and belly where the hips should have been; instead of toes, it had on each foot three claws: upon the back it had two great holes like mouths; above the eyes it had four horns; and was of the female sex. The father and mother of it were of great families.

lived to a great age, by the certain return of his wonted disease he died upon his birth-day.

2. Elizabeth, the eldest daughter of king Edward the Fourth, and eighteen years the wife of king Henry the Seventh, died in child-bed, in the tower of London, the eleventh of February, the very day upon which she was born.

3. "I know a man," saith Lusitanus, "who every year, upon that day on which he first entered the world, is seized with a fever; all the rest of the year he enjoys very good health." Thomas a Veiga witnesseth that he observed the same in another; and also, that he hath known a man who every year had a fever for three days, and no longer.

4. Alexander the Great is said to have been born upon the sixth day of the month Targelion, and also to have died on the same; that is to say, on the sixth of February.

5. Caius Julius Caesar was born in the ides of March, and, by a conspiracy of the nobles, was slain in the senatehouse upon the same, although he was forewarned to take care of them.

6. Antonius Caracalla, the emperor, was slain by Macrinus the prætorian prefect at Carris, in Mesopotamia, upon his birth-day, which was the sixth of the ides of April, the twenty-ninth year of his age, and the sixth of his empire.

7. Pope Gregory the Great was born and died upon the same day, to wit, upon the fourth of the ides of March. 8. Garsias, the great grandfather to Petrarch, having lived one hundred and four years, died, as did also Plato, on the very day of his nativity, and in the same chamber wherein he was born.

9. The emperor Charles the Great was buried at Aquisgrave, upon the same day whereon he was born, in the year of our Lord 810.

10. Philip Melancthon died A. D.

1560, in the sixty-third year of his age, and upon the day of his nativity, which was the 13th of the calends of May.

11. The emperor Charles the Fifth was born on the day of Matthias the apostle; on which day also, in the course of his life, was king Francis taken by him in battle, and the victory likewise won at Ciccaque: he was also elected and crowned emperor on the same day, and many other great fortunes befell him still on that day.

12. M. Ofilius Hilarus, an actor of comedies, after he had highly pleased the people upon his birth-day, kept a feast at home in his own house; and when supper was upon the table, he called for a iness of hot broth, and casting his eye upon the visor he had worn that day in the play, he fitted it again to his face, and taking off the garland which he wore upon his bare head, he set it thereupon: in this posture disguised as he sat, he died, and became cold before any person in the company knew any thing of the

matter.

13. Augustus Cæsar had certain anniversary sicknesses, and such as did return at a stated and certain time: he commonly languished about the time of his birth-day, which was the ninth of the calends of October.

14. On the contrary, the birth-days of some men have been fortunate to them, as was that of the great captain Timoleon, general of the Syracusans, who obtained the greatest of his victories upon his birth-day; which thereupon was annually and universally celebrated by the Syracusans, as a day of good and happy fortune to them.

15. It is said of Julius Cæsar, that he had often found the ides of July to be very happy and auspicious to him; at which time he was also born.

16. King Philip, of Macedon used to celebrate the day of his birth with extra

ordinary

17. Ophioneus was one amongst the Messenians who had the gift of prophecy; and Pausanius says of him, that immediately after his birth-day he was annually stricken with blindness:" nor is that less wonderful in the same person, that after a vehement fit of the head-ach he would begin to see, and then presently fall from thence into his former blindness again.

18. It is a note worthy to be remembered, that Thursday was observed to be a day fatal to king Henry the Eighth, and to all his posterity; for he himself died on Thursday the twenty-eighth of January, king Edward the Sixth, on Thursday the sixth of July, queen Mary on Thursday the seventeenth of November, and queen Elizabeth on Thursday the twenty-fourth day of March.

19. Franciscus Baudinus, an abbot, a citizen of Florence, and well known in the court of Rome, died upon the anniversary return of his birth-day, which was upon the nineteenth day of December, and was buried in the church of St. Silvester in Rome; and it was the observation of him that made his funeral elegy, that the number nine did four times happen remarkably in his affairs: he was born on the nineteenth day, and died on the same, being aged twentynine, and the year of our Lord being at that time 1579.

20. Wednesday is said to have been fortunate to pope Sixtus the Fifth; for on that day he was born, on the same day made a monk, on that day created general of his order, on the same made cardinal, then chosen pope, and finally, on the same inaugurated.

21. Friday was observed to be very

(16.) Alex. ab. Alex. Dies Gen. 1. 4. c. 20. p. 498, 499.-(18.) Stowe's Annals, p. 812. (20.) Heyl. Geog. p. 734. (21.) Heyl. Cosm. (23.) History of England, by Rapin.

lucky to the great captain Gonsalvo, on that day having given the French many hotable overthrows: Saturday was as fortunate to Henry the Seventh, king of England.

22. Raphael da Urbino, who, by the consent of mankind, is acknowledged to be the prince of modern painters, and often styled the "Divine Raphael," as well for the grandeur of his conceptions, as the inimitable graces of his pencil, was born on Good Friday, anno 1483. As a reward for his consummate merit, he had hopes of receiving a cardinal's cap; but falling ill of a fever, death de prived him of the expected honour, on Good Friday, 1520.

23. The third of September was a remarkable day in the history of Oliver Cromwell. On that day, 1650, he gave the Scots, whom he hated and despised, a total overthrow at the battle of Dunbar; on that day twelvemonth he defeated Charles the Second at Worcester; and on that day, in the year 1658, he gave up the ghost, in the midst of one of the greatest storms that was ever known in England.

CHAP. VII.

1. Marius

1. Marius Barletius reports of Scanderbeg, prince of Epirus (that most terrible enemy of the Turks), that from is mother's womb he brought with him into the world a notable mark of warlike glory; for he had upon his right arm, a sword so well set on, as if it had been drawn with the pencil of the most curious and skilful painter in the world. 2. Among the people called the Dakes, the children usually have the moles and marks of them from whom they are descended imprinted upon them, even to the fourth generation.

3. Laodice, the wife of Antiochus, dreamed that she received a ring from Apollo, with an anchor engraven upon it: Seleucus, the child that she then went with (who afterwards was remarkable for his famous exploits), was born with an anchor impressed upon his thigh; and so also his sons and grand-children carried the same mark upon the same place from the time of their birth.

4. It is observed by Plutarch, that the resemblance of the natural properties, or corporeal marks of some parents, are continued in their families for many descents; and sometimes not appearing in the second or third generation, do nevertheless shew themselves in the fourth or fifth ensuing; whereof he brings an example of one in his time, called Python, who being descended of the Spartiatæ, the founders of Thebes, and being the last of that race, was born with the figure of a lance upon his body; which had been in former ages a natural mark of those of that family, and discontinued in them for many years.

5. "I have heard," saith Camerarius, "when I was young, and it is at this day the common report and public fame (although I have not met with it in any author) that the counts of Hapsburg (the ancestors of the house of Austria) have each of them from the womb a golden cross upon the back; that is to say, certain white hairs, after a wonderful

P. 475.

manner formed into the figure of a cross.' It is equally remarkable, that the house of Austria have for many generations been famous for thick lips. The heiress of Burgundy, who married Maximilian the First, brought this mark of distinction into that family, according to Brantome, who had this information from Eleanor, queen of France, sister to Charles the Fifth.

6. Marcus Venetus, who for fortyfive years travelled up and down in the countries of Asia, reports in his Itinerary, "that he came into the kingdom of the Corzani: the kings of which place (though subject to the Tartars) boast themselves of a nobility beyond that of all other kings of the earth; and, upon this account, that they are born into the world with the impression of a black eagle upon their shoulder, which continues with them to the last day of their lives.

7. "A sister of mine," saith Gaffarel, "has the figure of a fish upon her left leg, caused by the desire my mother had to eat fish when she was big with child; and it is represented with so much perfection and rarity, that you would take it to be drawn by some excellent master: and the wonder is, that whenever the girl eats any fish, that upon her legs puts her to a sensible pain."

8. That which I now relate to the same purpose, is very well known to all Paris. The hostess of the inn in the suburbs of Saint Michael, at Bois de Vincenne (who died about two years since) had a mulberry growing upon her nether lip, which was smooth and plain all the year long, till the time that the mulberries began to ripen; at which time hers also began to be red, and to swell more and more, observing exactly the season and nature of other mulberries, and to come at length to the just bigness and redness of other ripe mulberries.

9. A woman, in the seventh month of her being with child, longed to eat rosebuds at a time when they were difficult

to be procured. She had passed two days thus, when, after much search, there was a bough of them found in a private garden: she greedily devoured the green buds of two roses, and kept the rest in her bosom. In the ninth month she was happily delivered of a fair babe; upon the ribs of which there appeared the representations of three roses very red: upon his forehead and on either cheek he had also depainted three other exact resemblances of a red rose; so that he was commonly called the Rosy Boy. .

10. Octavius Augustus, the emperor, was all spotted on his body, his moles being dispersed upon his breast and belly, in the manner, order, and number, with the stars of the celestial bear.

CHAP. VIII.

Of Dreams, and what hath been revealed

to some Persons therein.

ALTHOUGH it is too great a vanity to give over-much credit to our dreams, and to distress and distract ourselves about the significations and successes of them; yet they are not altogether unuseful to us. Zeno Eleates was wont to say, "that any of his scholars might judge of their proficiency in philosophy by their dreams: for if they neither did nor suffered any thing therein but what was virtuous, they had made some good progress in philosophy." By the same way we may discover much of our own natural inclinations and the constitution we are of.

Besides this, there hath been so much of highest concernment revealed to some in their sleep, that it is enough to make us believe there is not altogether so much of vanity in dreams as some men are of opinion.

1. Astyages, the last king of the Medes, saw in his dream a vine to spring forth from the womb of his only daughter, and at last so to flourish, and spread out itself, that it seemed to over

shadow all Asia with its very fruitful branches. He consults with the soothsayers upon this dream; who an swered him, "that of his daughter should be born a son, who should seize on the empire of Asia, and divest him of his throne." Terrified with this prediction, he forthwith bestowed his daughter upon Cambyses, a foreigner, and then an obscure person. When his daughter drew near the time of her delivery, he sends for her to himself, that whatsoever should be born of her should perish by his own command. The infant therefore is delivered to Harpagus, to be slain; a man of known fidelity, and with whom he had long communicated his greatest secrets. But he fearing that, upon the death of Astyages, Mandaue his daughter would succeed in the empire, since the king had no issue male, and that then he should be sure to be paid home for his obedience, doth not kill the royal babe, but delivers it to the king's chief herdsman, to be exposed to the wide world. It fell out that the wife of this man was newly brought to bed; and having heard of the whole affair, she earnestly importunes her husband to bring the child home to her, that she might see it. The husband is overcome, goes to the wood where he had left him: he finds there a bitch, that at once saved the babe, and kept off the beasts and birds from it, and also suckled it herself. Affected with this miracle, and thus instructed by a brute in humanity, he takes up the child, carrries it to his wife: she sees and loves it; breeds him up, till he grew first to a man, and then to a king. This was the great Cyrus, who overcame Astyages his grandfather, and translated the sceptre from the Medes to the Persians.

2. Alexander the Great, in the long and difficult siege of Tyrus, bordering upon Judea, sent to the Jews for assistance; but was by them rejected, as hav ing a more ancient league with Darius. When therefore he had taken the city, full of indignation, he led his army against the Jews, resolved upon revenge,

and