Unless they banquet on the wretch they flew, Nor held all forts of pulfe for lawful meat ?* Even, of late days, fays Pliny, to go no further than to the other fide of the Alps, there be thofe that kil men for facrifice, after the manner of thofe Scythian people, the Cyclops and Lyftrigones, of which he has been speaking, and that, he ads, wants not much of chewing and eating their flesh.† This unnatural propenfity was not entirely extinct in that country at a very late period: a woman of the city of Chalons in Champagne ate her own fister; another devour'd her husband; and, a third, haveing murder'd her children, falted their bodys, and ate of them every day as a delicious morfel. * Satyra xv. + B. 7, c. 1. Pliny, in his purfuit of these foreign anthropophagi, forgot that even in Rome (as we are told by Tertullian) Bellonas priests regale'd all their votarys with human blood; and that in the Circenfian games, those that had the falling fickness fuck'd the blood of the wounded gladiators: that boars and lions, fatten'd with human flesh, were the daintys on which they fed; and that the entrails of a wild beast that had juft devour'd a man were very acceptable. (Apology for the Christians.) ‡ Man a machine, p. 42. After the fiege of Leyden was raife'd, there were certain Hollanders who found a Spaniard, open'd him, caufe'd his heart to be drefs'd, and ate it.* The ancient Britons, like the other Gauls, thought it criminal to take the life of a hare or a goofe, but would facrifice (as we have seen), and even eat, a man with the utmost compofure. They would have fhudder'd with horrour at the profaneness of a philofopher, who fhould have had the courage to tel them that it was no lefs criminal to kil, for the purpose of food, a man than a goofe pretty much, no doubt, as their more humane and polish'd fuccesfors would do, at prefent, on hearing it feriously maintain'd that they had an equal right by nature to kil both. *Scaligerana, p. 236. + Diodorus Siculus relates, that the Britons who inhabited Iris (now Ireland) devour'd human flesh (B. 5); which is corroborateed by Strabo (B. 4). The Gauls conducted by Brennus into Greece did the fame. (Paufanias, Phocicks.) St. Jerome fays that he himself, when a boy, in Gaul, saw the Scots, a Eritish nation (i. e. in prefent Ireland), eat human flesh, and that when they found herds of fwine, or other cattle, they ufe'd to cut off the buttocks of the herdsmen, and breafts of the wornen, which they esteem'd the onely daintys. (Adverfus Jovinianum, C. 2.) These Irish Scots, transported into the north of Britain, are fay'd to have been anthropophagi even in the reign of William There is a recent inftance of cannibalifın in Engleland. At the Lent asfizeës for Chester, the conqueror, who punish'd them for it, (Monasticon Anglicinum, I, p. 72): nor was the race quite extinct, for fome centurys lateer, as we are inform'd by two of their own historians. Thus Andrew of Wyntown, under the year 1339 : "A karle, thai say'd, wes nere thare by, That wald fet fettys comownaly Chyldyr and women for to fla, And fwanys, that he mycht oure-ta, Qwhil' waft but folk wes the cuntre." Thus, alfo, Robert Lindsay of Pitfcottie :-" About this time, under the year 1460, there was apprehended and taken, for a moft abominable and cruel abufe, a brigand, who haunted and dwelt, with his whole family and houshold, out of all mens company, in a place of Angus, called The fiends den. This mifchievous man had an execrable fashion, to take all young men and children, that either he could fteal quietly, or take away by any other moyen, without the knowledge of the people, and bring them home and eat them; and, the more young they were, he held them the more tender, and the greater delicate. For the which damnable abuse he was burnt, with his wife, bairns and family, except a young lafs of one year old, which was fave'd and brought to Dundee, where. fhe was foster'd and brought up: but, when he came to wo mans years, he was condemn'd and burnt quick, for the fame crime her father and mother were convicted of. It is fay'd, That, when this young woman was comeing forth to the in 1777, one Samuel Thorley, A BU CHERS FOLLOWER, was try'd for the murder of Ann place of execution, that there gather'd a great multitude of people about her, and specially of women, curfeing and warying that he was fo unhapy [i. e. mischievous] to commit fuch damnable deeds: to whom the turn'd about, with a wood [i. e. mad] and furious countenance, faying, Wherefore chide ye with me, as i had commited an unworthy crime? Give me credit, and trow [i.e. believe] me, if ye had experience of eating mans and womans flesh, ye would think the fame fo delicious, that ye would never forbear it again." (History of Scoland, p. 65.) This young woman was by no means fingular in the preference fhe gave to human flesh: the cannibals, according to doctor Moffet, praifeing it above all other, as Oforius writeeth: "and Cambletes king of Lydia, haveing eaten of his own wife, fay'd he was forry to have been ignorant fo long of fo good a difh." (Healths improvement, p. 160-1.) "Dureing a dreadful famine in India," fays J. de Lonseiro, "which deftroy'd more than a hundred thousand perfons, when the roads and ftreets were cover'd with dead bodys, i saw several have the resolution to preserve their lives by this disgusting food [human fleh]; but fome of them, though not many, found it fo delicious, that, when the famine was at an end, they retain'd fuch an irresistible propenfity to human flesh, that they lay in wait for the liveing, in order to devour them :" ading, in particular, two inftanceës, of a mountaineer and a woman. (Obfervations on the inducements to eating human flesh, Philofophical magazine, for Auguft 1799.) In 1768 the ravages of famine were fo great at Patna, a large city in the kingdom of Bahar, that hundreds of Indians perish'd dayly for want of food. The furviveërs began even 5 Smith, a ballad-finger, about twenty-two years He decoy'd her, lay with her, murder'd of age. to attempt fatisfying their craveing hunger with the flesh of the dead, in order to preferve their own exiftence. Stavorinus, Voyages to the E. Indies, I, 152. (This dreadful calamity, he observes, may chiefly be attributed to the monopoly which the Engleish had made of the rice.) Moryfon, haveing made mention of the Engleifh army in Ireland, "deftroying the rebels corn, and useing," as he says, "all meanes to famish them," proceeds, by two or three examples, to fhew the miferable estate to which they were reduce'd. "Sir Arthur Chichester, sir Rich. Moryfon, and the other commanders of the forceës, fent against Brian Macart, in their return homeward, saw a most horrible fpectacle of three children (whereof the eldest was not above ten years old), all eating and gnawing with their teeth the entrails of their dead mother, upon whofe flesh they had fed twenty days paft.... Captain Trevor, and many honeft gentlemen, lying in the Newry, can witness, that fome old women of those parts use'd to make a fier in the fields, and divers little children driveing out the cattel in the cold mornings, and comming thither to warm them, were by them furprife'd, kil'd, and eaten." (Itinerary, Part 2, page 271.) "About the year 1652 and 1653 the plague and famine had so swept away whole countrys, that a man might travel twenty or thirty miles, and not fee a liveing creature, either man, beast, or bird;" they being all dead, or haveing quited thefe defolate placeës..." I have feen," fays the writeër, "thofe miferable creatures [ageed men, women, and children] plucking ftinking carrion out of a ditch, black and rotten; and have been credibly inform'd, that they digged corpfes out of the grave to eat. But the moft tragical ftory i ever heard |