ng of cormorants, cigling of locusts, charming of
beagles, guarring of puppies, snarling of messens, rantling of rats,
guerieting of apes, snuttering of monkeys, pioling of pelicans, quacking of
ducks, yelling of wolves, roaring of lions, neighing of horses, crying of
elephants, hissing of serpents, and wailing of turtles, that he was much
more troubled than if he had been in the middle of the crowd at the fair of
Fontenay or Niort. Just so is it with those who are tormented with the
grievous pangs of hunger. The stomach begins to gnaw, and bark, as it were,
the eyes to look dim, and the veins, by greedily sucking some refection to
themselves from the proper substance of all the members of a fleshy
consistence, violently pull down and draw back that vagrant, roaming spirit,
careless and neglecting of his nurse and natural host, which is the body; as
when a hawk upon the fist, willing to take her flight by a soaring aloft in
the open spacious air, is on a sudden drawn back by a leash tied to her
feet.

To this purpose also did he allege unto us the authority of Homer, the
father of all philosophy, who said that the Grecians did not put an end to
their mournful mood for the death of Patroclus, the most intimate friend of
Achilles, till hunger in a rage declared herself, and their bellies
protested to furnish no more tears unto their grief. For from bodies
emptied and macerated by long fasting there could not be such supply of
moisture and brackish drops as might be proper on that occasion.

Mediocrity at all times is commendable; nor in this case are you to abandon
it. You may take a little supper, but thereat must you not eat of a hare,
nor of any other flesh. You are likewise to abstain from beans, from the
preak, by some called the polyp, as also from coleworts, cabbage, and all
other such like windy victuals, which may endanger the troubling of your
brains and the dimming or casting a kind of mist over your animal spirits.
For, as a looking-glass cannot exhibit the semblance or representation of
the object set before it, and exposed to have its image to the life
expressed, if that the polished sleekedness thereof be darkened by gross
breathings, dampish vapours, and foggy, thick, infectious exhalations, even
so the fancy cannot well receive the impression of the likeness of those
things which divination doth afford by dreams, if any way the body be
annoyed or troubled with the fumish steam of meat which it had tak