The foolish man, that pities all this while
His mourneful plight, is swallowed up unawares,
Forgetfull of his owne, that mindes another’s cares.”
And Shakespeare, from whom we can obtain a quotation on almost anything, makes Othello say (Act iv. sc. 1):—
“O devil, devil!
If that the earth could teem with woman’s tears,
Each drop she falls would prove a crocodile;—
Out of my sight!”
Gesner, and Topsell, in his “Historie of Four-Footed Beastes,” give the accompanying illustration of a hippopotamus eating a crocodile, the original of which, they
say, came from the Coliseum at Rome, and was then in the Vatican.