ority 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 taken in a
while before; because betwixt these two there still hath been a mutual
sympathy and fellow-feeling of an indissolubly knit affection. You shall
eat good Eusebian and Bergamot pears, one apple of the short-shank pippin
kind, a parcel of the little plums of Tours, and some few cherries of the
growth of my orchard. Nor shall you need to fear that thereupon will ensue
doubtful dreams, fallacious, uncertain, and not to be trusted to, as by
some peripatetic philosophers hath been related; for that, say they, men do
more copiously in the season of harvest feed on fruitages than at any other
time. The same is mystically taught us by the ancient prophets and poets,
who allege that all vain and deceitful dreams lie hid and in covert under
the leaves which are spread on the ground--by reason that the leaves fall
from the trees in the autumnal quarter. For the natural fervour which,
abounding in ripe, fresh, recent fruits, cometh by the quickness of its
ebullition to be with ease evaporated into the animal parts of the dreaming
person--the experiment is o