your slander but the talk of Jean Bernier, a scurrilous, starveling
apothecary, who put forth his fables in 1697, a century and a half after
Mai'tre Francoys died. Bayle quoted this fellow in a note, and ye all steal
the tattle one from another in your dull manner, and know not whence it comes,
nor even that Bayle would none of it and mocked its author. With so little
knowledge is history written, and thus doth each chattering brook of a 'Life'
swell with its tribute 'that great Mississippi of falsehood,' Biography.




IV.

To Herodotus.



To Herodotus of Halicarnassus, greeting. --Concerning the matters set forth in
your histories, and the tales you tell about both Greeks and barbarians,
whether they be true, or whether they be false, men dispute not little but a
great deal. Wherefore I, being concerned to know the verity, did set forth to
make search in every manner, and came in my quest even unto the ends of the
earth. For there is an island of the Cimmerians beyond the Straits of
Heracles, some three days' voyage to a ship that hath a fair following wind in
her sails; and there it is said that men know many things from of old:
thither, then, I came in my inquiry. Now, the island is not small, but large,
greater than the whole of Hellas; and they call it Britain. In that island the
east wind blows for ten parts of the year, and the people know not how to
cover themselves from the cold. But for the other two months of the year the
sun shines fiercely, so that some of them die thereof, and others die of the