t
To prey on nothing that doth seem as dead."

[435] "Natural History," bk. viii. c. 19.

It was also supposed that the lion would not injure a royal prince.
Hence, in "1 Henry IV." (ii. 4) the Prince says: "You are lions too, you
ran away upon instinct, you will not touch the true prince; no, fie!"
The same notion is alluded to by Beaumont and Fletcher in "The Mad
Lover" (iv. 5):

"Fetch the Numidian lion I brought over;
If she be sprung from royal blood, the lion
He'll do you reverence, else--

* * * * *

He'll tear her all to pieces."

According to some commentators there is an allusion in "3 Henry VI." (i.
3) to the practice of confining lions and keeping them without food that
they may devour criminals exposed to them:

"So looks the pent-up lion o'er the wretch
That trembles under his devouring paws."

_Mole._ The eyes of the mole are so extremely minute, and so perfectly
hid in its hair, that our ancestors considered it blind--a vulgar error,
to which reference is made by Caliban in "The Tempest" (iv. 1):

"Pray you, tread softly, that the blind mole may not
Hear a foot fall."

And again by Pericles (i. 1):

"The blind mole casts
Copp'd hills towards heaven."

Hence the expression "blind as a mole." Alexander Ross[436] absurdly
speaks of the mole's eyes as only the "forms of eyes," given by nature
"rather for ornament than for use; as wings are given to the ostrich,
which never flies, and a long tail to the rat, which serves for no other
purpose but to be catched sometimes by it." Sir Thomas Browne, however,
in his "Vulgar Errors" (bk. iii. c. xviii.),[437] has, with his usual
minuteness, disproved this idea, remarking "that they have eyes in their
head is manifested unto any that wants them not in his own." A popular
term for the mole was the "moldwarp" or "mouldiwarp,"[438] so called
from the Anglo-Saxon, denoting turning the mould. Thus, in "1 Henry IV."
(iii. 1) Hotspur says:

"sometime he angers me
With telling me of the moldwarp and the ant."

[436] "Arcana Microcosmi," p. 151.

[437] 1852, vol. i. pp. 312-315.

[438] See Nares's "Glossary," vol. ii. p. 577; Singer's
"Shakespeare," vol. v. p. 77.

_Mouse._ This word was formerly used as a term of endearment, from
either sex to the other. In this sense it is used by Rosaline in "Love's
Labour's Lost"