further flight, and was to be heard of at "the
Court of the most Mighty Monarch, the Great Mogul," whence he wrote
to, among other people, the High Seneschal of the "Right Worshipful
Fraternity of Sireniacal Gentlemen that meet the first Friday of
every month at the Signe of the Mere-maide in Bread-Streete." In this
particular letter he greets by name Mr. John Donne, "the author of two
most elegant Latine Bookes," Master Benjamin Jonson, the poet, at his
chamber in the Blacke Friars, Mr. Samuel Purkas, and Mr. Inigo
Jones, and signs himself "the Hierosolymitan--Syrian--Mesopotamian
--Armenian--Median--Parthian--Persian--Indian--Leggestretcher
of Odcomb in Somerset." The news he gives of "the most famigerated
Region of all the East, the ample and large India," is various and
occasionally incredible, but none the worse perhaps for that. You
must allow the leg-stretcher to be something also of a leg-puller. The
Great Mogul had elephant-fights twice a week, we learn. He might well
do so if we could believe that he maintained three thousand of them
"at an unmeasurable charge." Proceeding, nevertheless, to measure it,
Coryat finds it works out at L10,000 a day, which is pretty good even
for the Mogul. He also had a thousand wives, "whereof the chiefest
(which is his Queene) is called Normal." I like her name. Coryat
rode on an elephant, "determining one day (by God's leave) to have my
picture expressed in my next book, sitting upon an elephant." But the
voyage to the East was one too many for "the ingenious perambulator,"
and he died of a flux at Surat in December, 1617. Certain English
merchants offered him refreshments. "Sack, sack, is there any such
thing as sack? I pray you give me some sack." They did; the dysentery
was upon him at the time. Even as Sir John might have done did he, and
was buried "under a little monument." _Sic exit Coryatus_, says his
biographer.

No sooner was he dead than his fellow Sireniacks fell upon his
reputation and tore it to shreds.

He was the imp, whilst he on earth surviv'd,
From whom this West-World's pastimes were deriv'd;
He was in city, country, field and court
The well of dry-trimm'd jests, the pump of sport.

So writes the Water Poet. Another wag trounces his Crudities:

Tom Coriat, I have seen thy Crudities,
And methinks very strangely brewed it is,
With piece and patch together glued it is;
And now (like thee) ill-favour'd hued it is.
In many a line I see th