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Updated: June 17, 2025
So she took the poor professor in hand: and because he was not content with things as they are, she filled his head with things as they are not, to try if he would like them better; and because he did not choose to believe in a water-baby when he saw it, she made him believe in worse things than water-babies in unicorns, fire- drakes, manticoras, basilisks, amphisbaenas, griffins, phoenixes, rocs, orcs, dog-headed men, three-headed dogs, three-bodied geryons, and other pleasant creatures, which folks think never existed yet, and which folks hope never will exist, though they know nothing about the matter, and never will; and these creatures so upset, terrified, flustered, aggravated, confused, astounded, horrified, and totally flabbergasted the poor professor that the doctors said that he was out of his wits for three months; and perhaps they were right, as they are now and then.
It was easier to dawdle than to fight or even do duty in camp: it was more pleasant to bask in the admiring smiles of silly girls who should have turned their eyes into basilisks to blast the indolent and miserable cowards than to dare the July sun on the banks of the James, or run the risk of a flash from the enemy's cannon.
As we pass from picture to picture, we wish we had known this Carpaccio, for he must have been a splendid teller of stories; and how he would have made us shiver with his dragons and his basilisks, and laugh over the antics of his little boys and girls, his scarlet parrots and green lizards.
In the Epistle Dedicatory to the second edition of his Dictionary, we find him engaged morsu et unguibus with a swarm of literary hornets, against whom he inveighs as "sea-dogs, land-critics, monsters of men, if not beasts rather than men, whose teeth are cannibals', their tongues adders' forks, their lips asps' poison, their eyes basilisks', their breath the breath of a grave, their words like swords of Turks, which strive which shall dive deepest into the Christian lying before them."
She stood above him, with her arms folded grandly; her cheek, so swarthy and ruddy, was now pale, and her black eyes glittered like basilisks at him and his bride. The whole woman seemed lifted out of her low condition, and dignified by wrong. He had to sustain her look for a few seconds, while the gate was being opened, and it seemed an age.
"You are very curious: it is rather late in the day; but, if I am to speak about my brother, it must be at home, and not in an open shop. I can't trust my feelings." "Are you going home, Miss Dodd?" "Yes." "Shall I come with you?" "If you like: it is close by." Lucy's heart quaked. Eve was so stern, and her eyes like basilisks'.
'One would think we were basilisks to slay the good folk of London with our eyes. The Drummond following, with fresh thyme sprays, beginning to turn brown, were drawn up in the outer court, all with black scarves across the breast George Douglas among them, of course and they presently united with the long train of clerks who belonged to the household of the Cardinal of Winchester.
The identical monsters Cerberus, Hydras, and Chimseras are found in their respective abodes, but Salandra does not content himself with these three; his list includes such a mixed assemblage of creatures as owls, basilisks, dragons, tigers, bears, crocodiles, sphynxes, harpies, and panthers.
What his science was like may be imagined when we learn that he seriously speaks of animals who conceive through the mouth of basilisks whose glance is deadly, of petrified storks changed into snakes, of the stillborn young of the lion which are afterwards brought to life by the roar of their sire, of frogs falling in a shower of rain, of ducks transformed into frogs, and of men born from beasts; the menstruation of women he regarded as a venom whence proceeded flies, spiders, earwigs, and all sorts of loathsome vermin; night was caused, not by the absence of the sun, but by the presence of the stars, which were the positive cause of the darkness.
Beasts of draught, and driven by the fear of death, they were yet implicitly trusted with their sovereign's life; they were still wives and queens, and it was supposed that no man should behold their faces. They killed by the sight like basilisks; a chance view of one of those boatwomen was a crime to be wiped out with blood.
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