unterfeited both the gesture and countenance
of a gouty person; till in the end, Fortune did him the kindness to make
him one indeed:

"Quantum curs potest et ars doloris
Desiit fingere Caelius podagram."

["How great is the power of counterfeiting pain: Caelius has ceased
to feign the gout; he has got it."--Martial, Ep., vii. 39, 8.]

I think I have read somewhere in Appian a story like this, of one who to
escape the proscriptions of the triumvirs of Rome, and the better to be
concealed from the discovery of those who pursued him, having hidden
himself in a disguise, would yet add this invention, to counterfeit
having but one eye; but when he came to have a little more liberty, and
went to take off the plaster he had a great while worn over his eye, he
found he had totally lost the sight of it indeed, and that it was
absolutely gone. 'Tis possible that the action of sight was dulled from
having been so long without exercise, and that the optic power was wholly
retired into the other eye: for we evidently perceive that the eye we
keep shut sends some part of its virtue to its fellow, so that it will
swell and grow bigger; and so inaction, with the heat of ligatures and,
plasters, might very well have brought some gouty humour upon the
counterfeiter in Martial.

Reading in Froissart the vow of a troop of young English gentlemen, to
keep their left eyes bound up till they had arrived in France and
performed some notable exploit upon us, I have often been tickled with
this thought, that it might have befallen them as it did those others,
and they might have returned with but an eye a-piece to their mistresses,
for whose sakes they had made this ridiculous vow.

Mothers have reason to rebuke their children when they counterfeit having
but one eye, squinting, lameness, or any other personal defect; for,
besides that their bodies being then so tender, may be subject to take an
ill bent, fortune, I know not how, sometimes seems to delight in taking
us at our word; and I have heard several examples related of people who
have become really sick, by only feigning to be so. I have always used,
whether on horseback or on foot, to carry a stick in my hand, and even to
affect doing it with an elegant air; many have threatened that this fancy
would one day be turned into necessity: if so, I should be the first of
my family to have the gout.

But let us a little lengthen this chapter, and