(Vol. ii., p. 262.)
The quotation from Heylin is good; "the amusing anecdote from Munchausen"
may be better; but the personal testimony of Sir John Mandeville is best of
all, and, if I am not mistaken, as true a traveller's lie as ever was told.
Many years ago I met with an extract from his antiquated volume, of which,
having preserved no copy, I cannot give the admirable verbiage of the
fourteenth century, but must submit for it the following tame translation
in the flat English of our degenerate days.
He testifies that once, on his voyage through the Arctic regions, lat. ***,
long. ***, the cold was so intense, that for a while whatever was spoken on
board the vessel became frost-bound, and remained so, till, after certain
days, there came a sudden thaw, which let loose the whole rabblement of
sounds and syllables that had been accumulating during the suspense of
audible speech; but now fell clattering down like hailstones about the ears
of the crew, not less to their annoyance than the embargo had been to their
dismay. Among the unlucky revelations at this denouement, the author
gravely states that a rude fellow (the boatswain, I think), having cursed
the knight himself in a fit of passion, his sin then found him out, and was
promptly visited by retributive justice, in the form of a sound flogging.
If this salutary moral of the fable be not proof sufficient to authenticate
both the fact in natural history, and the veracity of the narrator, I know
nothing in the world of evidence that could do so. It may be added, that
the author of _Hudibras_, in his significant manner, alludes to the popular
belief of such an atmospheric phenomenon in the following couplet:
"Where Truth in person doth appear,
Like words congeal'd in northern air."
_Hudibras_, Book i. Canto i.
It is possible that Zachary Grey, in his copiously illustrated edition of
the poem, may have quoted Sir John Mandeville's account of this notable
adventure, in his wanderings, like a true knight-errant, through Scythia,
Armenia, Egypt, Arabia, Syria, Media, Persia, Chaldea, Greece, Dalmatia,
Belgium, &c. He wrote an Itinerary of his travels in English, French, and
Latin. In these he occupied nearly forty years, and was long supposed to
have died in the course of them, but (as if his person had been "congealed
in northern air" and suddenly thawed into warm life again) when he
re-appeared, his friends with difficulty recognised him.