sight, appeared exactly the same with what is in common service for beef, and butter, and herrings, and has been often that way applied with great success, but, for its many sovereign virtues, was a quite different thing. For Peter would put in a certain quantity of his powder pimperlimpimp[1], after which it never failed of success. The operation was performed by spargefaction[2], in a proper time of the moon. The patient, who was to be pickled, if it were a house, would infallibly be preserved from all spiders, rats, and weazels; if the party affected were a dog, he should be exempt from mange, and madness, and hunger. It also infallibly took away all scabs, and lice, and scalled heads from children, never hindering the patient from any duty, either at bed or board.
But of all Peter's rarities, he most valued a certain set of bulls[3], whose race was by great fortune preserved in a lineal descent from those, that guarded the golden fleece. Though some who pretended to observe them curiously, doubted the breed had not been kept intirely chaste; because they had degenerated from their ancestors in some qualities, and
- ↑ And because holy water differs only in consecration from common water, therefore he tells us that his pickle by the powder of pimperlimpimp receives new virtues, though it differs not in sight nor smell from the common pickles, which preserve beef, and butter, and herrings. W. Wotton.
- ↑ Sprinkling.
- ↑ The papal bulls are ridiculed by name, so that here we are at no loss for the author's meaning. W. Wotton.
Ibid. Here the author has kept the name, and means the pope's bulls, or rather his fulminations, and excommunications of heretical princes, all signed with lead and the seal of the fisherman, and therefore said to have leaden feet and fishes tails.
