t the bitter truths set forth in it,
that the author had to flee the country. An English translation,
entitled "_A World of Wonders;_ or, an introduction to a Treatise
tovching the Conformitie of Ancient and Modern Wonders; or, a
Preparative Treatise to the 'Apologie for Herodotus,'" etc., was
published at London in 1607, folio, and at Edinburgh 1608, also folio.
The _Apologie pour Herodote_ was printed at the Hague.

CHAPTER V.

THE SILLY SON.

Among the favourite jests of all peoples, from Iceland to Japan, from
India to England, are the droll adventures and mishaps of the silly son,
who contrives to muddle everything he is set to do. In vain does his
poor mother try to direct him in "the way he should go": she gets him a
wife, as a last resource; but a fool he is still, and a fool he will
always be. His blunders and disasters are chronicled in penny chap-books
and in nursery rhymes, of infinite variety. Who has not heard how

Simple Simon went a-fishing
For to catch a whale,
But all the water he had got
Was in his mother's pail?

an adventure which recalls another nursery rhyme regarding Simon's still
more celebrated prototypes:

Three men of Gotham
Went to sea in a bowl;
If the bowl had been stronger,
My tale had been longer.

Then there is the prose history of _Simple Simon's Misfortunes; or,
his Wife Marjory's Outrageous Cruelty_, which tells (1) of Simon's
wedding, and how his wife Marjory scolded him for putting on his
roast-meat clothes (_i.e.,_ Sunday clothes) the very next morning
after he was married; (2) how she dragged him up the chimney in a
basket, a-smoke-drying, wherein they used to dry bacon, which made him
look like a red herring; (3) how Simon lost a sack of corn as he was
going to the mill to have it ground; (4) how Simon went to market with a
basket of eggs, but broke them by the way: also how he was put into the
stocks; (5) how Simon's wife cudgelled him for not bringing her money
for the eggs; (6) how Simon lost his wife's pail and burnt the bottom of
her kettle; (7) how Simon's wife sent him to buy two pounds of soap, but
going over the bridge, he let his money fall in the river: also how a
ragman ran away with his clothes. No wonder if, after this crowning
misfortune, poor Simon "drank a bottle of sack, to poison himself, as
being weary of his life"!

Again, we have _The Unfortunate Son; or, a Kind Wife is worth Gold,
being full of Mirth and Pastime_, wh