[122] Ripamonte, book i. If the reader can consult the original, he will see that the description is not overcharged. The Monatti, he continued, practised all sorts of insult towards living and dead, and dragged bodies along as rudely as a butcher drives his calves to the shambles.
[123] Origine e Giornale successi della Gran Peste. Milan, 1648.
[124] Ripamonte does not tell us whether any body went up into the belfry to ascertain this.
[125] Alchemist, act ii. scene 3.
[126] Loimologia: a consolatory advice and some brief observations concerning the present art. By George Thomson, Dr. of Physick, 1665.
[127] Loimologia, or an Historical Account of the Plague in London. By Nath. Hodges, M.D.
[128] Defoe, pp. 24, 25.
[129] This is a remarkable instance of that air of minute attention to fidelity which gives such a remarkable air of reality even to those works of Defoe which are altogether fictitious. Though aware that the history of the plague is not to be taken as the record of his own adventures during it, it is hardly possible not to believe that he had been a hearer of the denunciation, which he is so careful not to report inaccurately.
[130] Defoe, pp. 28-32.
[131] Pp. 78, 85.