ferent matters, and in divers languages.

He had as many ears all over his head and the rest of his body as Argus
formerly had eyes, and was as blind as a beetle, and had the palsy in his
legs.

About him stood an innumerable number of men and women, gaping, listening,
and hearing very intensely. Among 'em I observed some who strutted like
crows in a gutter, and principally a very handsome bodied man in the face,
who held then a map of the world, and with little aphorisms compendiously
explained everything to 'em; so that those men of happy memories grew
learned in a trice, and would most fluently talk with you of a world of
prodigious things, the hundredth part of which would take up a man's whole
life to be fully known.

Among the rest they descanted with great prolixity on the pyramids and
hieroglyphics of Egypt, of the Nile, of Babylon, of the Troglodytes, the
Hymantopodes, or crump-footed nation, the Blemiae, people that wear their
heads in the middle of their breasts, the Pigmies, the Cannibals, the
Hyperborei and their mountains, the Egypanes with their goat's feet, and
the devil and all of others; every individual word of it by hearsay.

I am much mistaken if I did not see among them Herodotus, Pliny, Solinus,
Berosus, Philostratus, Pomponius Mela, Strabo, and God knows how many other
antiquaries.

Then Albert, the great Jacobin friar, Peter Tesmoin, alias Witness, Pope
Pius the Second, Volaterranus, Paulus Jovius the valiant, Jemmy Cartier,
Chaton the Armenian, Marco Polo the Venetian, Ludovico Romano, Pedro
Aliares, and forty cartloads of other modern historians, lurking behind a
piece of tapestry, where they were at it ding-dong, privately scribbling
the Lord knows what, and making rare work of it; and all by hearsay.

Behind another piece of tapestry (on which Naboth and Susanna's accusers
were fairly represented), I saw close by Hearsay, good store of men of the
country of Perce and Maine, notable students, and young enough.

I asked what sort of study they applied themselves to; and was told that
from their youth they learned to be evidences, affidavit-men, and vouchers,
and were instructed in the art of swearing; in which they soon became such
proficients, that when they left that country, and went back into their
own, they set up for themselves and very honestly lived by their trade of
evidencing, positively giving their testimony of all things whatsoever to
those who feed them most roundly to do