a little
light, corresponding with their eyes, and certain small chinks about
their nostrils, through which they, with great difficulty, breathed,"

"Flexilis inductis animatur lamina membris,
Horribilis visu; credas simulacra moveri
Ferrea, cognatoque viros spirare metallo.
Par vestitus equis: ferrata fronte minantur,
Ferratosque movent, securi vulneris, armos."

["Plates of steel are placed over the body, so flexible that,
dreadful to be seen, you would think these not living men, but
moving images. The horses are similarly armed, and, secured from
wounds, move their iron shoulders."--Claud, In Ruf., ii. 358.]

'Tis a description drawing very near resembling the equipage of the
men-at-arms in France, with their barded horses. Plutarch says, that
Demetrius caused two complete suits of armour to be made for himself and
for Alcimus, a captain of the greatest note and authority about him, of
six score pounds weight each, whereas the ordinary suits weighed but half
as much.

CHAPTER X

OF BOOKS

I make no doubt but that I often happen to speak of things that are much
better and more truly handled by those who are masters of the trade. You
have here purely an essay of my natural parts, and not of those acquired:
and whoever shall catch me tripping in ignorance, will not in any sort
get the better of me; for I should be very unwilling to become
responsible to another for my writings, who am not so to myself, nor
satisfied with them. Whoever goes in quest of knowledge, let him fish
for it where it is to be found; there is nothing I so little profess.
These are fancies of my own, by which I do not pretend to discover things
but to lay open myself; they may, peradventure, one day be known to me,
or have formerly been, according as fortune has been able to bring me in
place where they have been explained; but I have utterly forgotten it;
and if I am a man of some reading, I am a man of no retention; so that I
can promise no certainty, more than to make known to what point the
knowledge I now have has risen. Therefore, let none lay stress upon the
matter I write, but upon my method in writing it. Let them observe, in
what I borrow, if I have known how to choose what is proper to raise or
help the invention, which is always my own. For I make others say for
me, not before but after me, what, either for want of language