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Mr Olaus Borrow, who is familiar with the Northern Languages, proposes, however, to present these curious reliques of romantic antiquity directly from the Danish and Swedish, and two elegant volumes of them now printing will appear in September.
But for further satisfaction, I also consulted one that had for some years been an Eminent Physician in Russia, who though he rejected some other Traditions that are generally enough believ'd concerning that Countrey, told me nevertheless, that he saw no cause to doubt of this Tradition of Olaus Magnus as to Foxes and Hares, not onely because 'tis the common and uncontroul'd Assertion of the Natives, but also because he himself in the Winter could never that he remember'd see Foxes and Hares of any other Colour than White; And I my self having seen a small White Fox brought out of Russia into England towards the latter end of Winter, foretold those that shew'd him me, that he would change Colour in Summer, and accordingly coming to look upon him again in July, I found that the Back and Sides, together with the upper part of the Head and Tayl were already grown of a Dark Colour, the lower part of the Head and Belly containing as yet a Whiteness.
A similar engagement between great and small ants is recorded by Olaus Magnus, in which the small ones, being victorious, are said to have buried the bodies of their own soldiers, but left those of their giant enemies a prey to the birds. This event happened previous to the expulsion of the tyrant Christiern the Second from Sweden.
It was the writer Olaus Magnus who gave such celebrity to this animal, by telling a very great "story" about the creature which, at a time when people were little studied in natural history, was readily believed.
Sir Richard Phillips was particularly flattering: he used Borrow's article on "Danish Poetry and Ballad Writing" and about six hundred lines of translation from German, Danish, Swedish and Dutch poetry in the first year of the connection, usually with the signature, "George Olaus Borrow."
On another occasion I laughed at a recent nature writer for his credulity in half-believing the story told him by a fisherman, that the fox catches crabs by using his tail as a bait; and yet I read in Romanes that Olaus, in his account of Norway, says he has seen a fox do this very thing among the rocks on the sea-coast. One would like to cross-question Olaus before accepting such a statement.
My neighbor Olaus can't do any more either, even if he builds a place that's ten times as big. Look over there now he's building another house a shed, I'd call it and he's got three grown men working on it so he can get it done by next summer.
But it won't be much bigger than my place at that, and anyhow, the gentry don't want to be bothered walking all that distance to his place when here's my house right at the car stop. And besides it was me that started it, and if I was Olaus I wouldn't have wanted to imitate me like a regular monkey and started keeping boarders which I didn't know the first thing about.
But the subject it portrays is taken from a legend, and you know how to rate legends in matters of natural history! Besides, when it's an issue of monsters, the human imagination always tends to run wild. People not only claimed these devilfish could drag ships under, but a certain Olaus Magnus tells of a cephalopod a mile long that looked more like an island than an animal.
But in the works of Herodotus, who, in spite of the shallow and ungenerous attempts of modem sciolists to verify his history, may justly be called the "Father of Lies"; in the published speeches of Cicero and the biographies of Suetonius; in Tacitus at his best; in Pliny's Natural History; in Hanno's Periplus; in all the early chronicles; in the Lives of the Saints; in Froissart and Sir Thomas Malory; in the travels of Marco Polo; in Olaus Magnus, and Aldrovandus, and Conrad Lycosthenes, with his magnificent Prodigiorum et Ostentorum Chronicon; in the autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini; in the memoirs of Casanova; in Defoe's History of the Plague; in Boswell's Life of Johnson; in Napoleon's despatches, and in the works of our own Carlyle, whose French Revolution is one of the most fascinating historical novels ever written, facts are either kept in their proper subordinate position, or else entirely excluded on the general ground of dulness.
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