"Effugiet tamen haec sceleratus vincula Proteus." {151a}


It is good, therefore, to read the maxims of our ancestors with
great allowances to times and persons; for if we look into primitive
records we shall find that no revolutions have been so great or so
frequent as those of human ears. In former days there was a curious
invention to catch and keep them, which I think we may justly reckon
among the artes perditae; and how can it be otherwise, when in these
latter centuries the very species is not only diminished to a very
lamentable degree, but the poor remainder is also degenerated so far
as to mock our skilfullest tenure? For if only the slitting of one
ear in a stag hath been found sufficient to propagate the defect
through a whole forest, why should we wonder at the greatest
consequences, from so many loppings and mutilations to which the
ears of our fathers and our own have been of late so much exposed?
It is true, indeed, that while this island of ours was under the
dominion of grace, many endeavours were made to improve the growth
of ears once more among us. The proportion of largeness was not
only looked upon as an ornament of the outward man, but as a type of
grace in the inward. Besides, it is held by naturalists that if
there be a protuberancy of parts in the superior region of the body,
as in the ears and nose, there must be a parity also in the
inferior; and therefore in that truly pious age the males in every
assembly, according as they were gifted, appeared very forward in
exposing their ears to view, and the regions about them; because
Hippocrates {151b} tells us that when the vein behind the ear
happens to be cut, a man becomes a eunuch, and the females were