figures of beasts, plants, and of stones, express the mind, as we do in
A B C; or one that writes under hair, as I have heard of a certain
notary, Histiaesus,[57] who, following Darius in the Persian wars, and
desirous to disclose some secrets of import to his friend Aristagoras,
that dwelt afar off, found out this means. He had a servant, that had
been long sick of a pain in his eyes, whom, under pretence of curing his
malady, he shaved from one side of his head to the other, and with a
soft pencil wrote upon his scalp (as on parchment) the discourse of his
business, the fellow all the while imagining his master had done nothing
but 'noint his head with a feather. After this he kept him secretly in
his tent, till his hair was somewhat grown, and then willed him to go to
Aristagoras into the country, and bid him shave him as he had done, and
he should have perfect remedy. He did so, Aristagoras shaved him with
his own hands, read his friend's letter, and when he had done, washed it
out, that no man should perceive it else, and sent him home to buy him a
nightcap. If I wist there were any such knavery, or Peter Bales's
brachygraphy,[58] under Sol's bushy hair, I would have a barber, my host
of the Murrion's Head, to be his interpreter, who would whet his razor
on his Richmond cap, and give him the terrible cut like himself, but he
would come as near as a quart pot to the construction of it. To be
sententious, not superfluous, Sol should have been beholding to the
barber, and not to the beard-master.[59] Is it pride that is shadowed
under this two-legg'd sun, that never came nearer heaven than Dubber's
hill? That pride is not my sin, Sloven's Hall, where I was born, be my
record. As for covetousness, intemperance, and exaction, I meet with
nothing in a whole year but a cup of wine for such vices to be
conversant in. _Pergite porro_, my good children,[60] and multiply the
sins of your absurdities, till you come to the full measure of the grand
hiss, and you shall hear how we shall purge rheum with censuring your
imperfections.