enness: Before a man begins to
drink, he is meek and innocent as a lamb, and as a sheep in the hand of
the shearer is dumb; when he has drank enough, he is fearless as a lion,
and says there is no one like him in the world; in the next stage, he is
like an ape, and dances, jests, and talks nonsense, knowing not what he
is doing and saying; when thoroughly drunken, he wallows in the mire
like a sow.[63] To this legend Chaucer evidently alludes in the Prologue
to the Maniciple's Tale:

I trow that ye have dronken _wine of ape_,
And that is when men plaien at a strawe.

[63] A garbled version of this legend is found in the Latin
_Gesta Romanorum_ (it does not occur in the Anglican
versions edited by Sir F. Madden for the Roxburghe Club,
and by Mr. S. J. Herrtage for the Early English Text
Society), Tale 179, as follows: "Josephus, in his work
on 'The Causes of Things,' says that Noah discovered the
vine in a wood, and because it was bitter he took the
blood of four animals, viz., of a lion, a lamb, a pig,
and a monkey. This mixture he united with earth and made
a kind of manure, which he deposited at the roots of the
trees. Thus the blood sweetened the fruit, with the
juice of which he afterwards intoxicated himself, and
lying naked was derided by his youngest son."

_Luminous Jewels._

Readers of that most fascinating collection of Eastern tales, commonly
but improperly called the _Arabian Nights' Entertainments_, must be
familiar with the remarkable property there ascribed to certain gems, of
furnishing light in the absence of the sun. Possibly the Arabians
adopted this notion from the Rabbis, in whose legends jewels are
frequently represented as possessing the light-giving property. For
example, we learn that Noah and his family, while in the ark, had no
light besides what was obtained from diamonds and other precious stones.
And Abraham, who, it appears, was extremely jealous of his wives, built
for them an enchanted city, of which the walls were so high as to shut
out the light of the sun; an inconvenience which he easily remedied by
means of a large basin full of rubies and other jewels, which shed forth
a flood of light equal in brilliancy to that of the sun itself.[64]

[64] Luminous jewels figure frequently in Eastern tales, and
within recent years, from experiments and observations,
t