And if it was not their Hunger that drove them to it, their
Wantonness, it may be, would make them apt enough to rob the _Cranes_
Nests; and if they did so, no doubt but the _Cranes_ would noise enough
about it, and endeavour what they could to beat them off, which a Poet
might easily make a Fight: Tho' _Homer_ only makes use of it as a
_Simile_, in comparing the great Shouts of the _Trojans_ to the Noise of
the _Cranes_, and the Silence of the _Greeks_ to that of the _Pygmies_
when they are going to Engage, which is natural enough, and very just, and
contains nothing, but what may easily be believed; tho' upon this account
he is commonly exposed, and derided, as the Inventor of this Fable; and
that there was nothing of Truth in it, but that 'twas wholly a Fiction of
his own.
Those _Pygmies_ that _Paulus Jovius_[A] describes, tho' they dwell at a
great distance from _Africa_, and he calls them _Men_, yet are so like
_Apes_, that I cannot think them any thing else. I will give you his own
words: _Ultra Lapones_ (saith he) _in Regione inter Corum & Aquilonem
perpetua oppressa Caligine_ Pygmaeos _reperiri, aliqui eximiae fidei testes
retulerunt; qui postquam ad summum adoleverint, nostratis Pueri denum
annorum Mensuram vix excedunt.
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