the mother: if she be over-dull, heavy, angry, peevish, discontented, and
melancholy, not only at the time of conception, but even all the while she
carries the child in her womb (saith Fernelius, _path. l. 1, 11_) her son
will be so likewise affected, and worse, as [1339]Lemnius adds, _l. 4. c.
7_, if she grieve overmuch, be disquieted, or by any casualty be affrighted
and terrified by some fearful object, heard or seen, she endangers her
child, and spoils the temperature of it; for the strange imagination of a
woman works effectually upon her infant, that as Baptista Porta proves,
_Physiog. caelestis l. 5. c. 2_, she leaves a mark upon it, which is most
especially seen in such as prodigiously long for such and such meats, the
child will love those meats, saith Fernelius, and be addicted to like
humours: [1340]"if a great-bellied woman see a hare, her child will often
have a harelip," as we call it. Garcaeus, _de Judiciis geniturarum, cap.
33_, hath a memorable example of one Thomas Nickell, born in the city of
Brandeburg, 1551, [1341]"that went reeling and staggering all the days of
his life, as if he would fall to the ground, because his mother being great
with child saw a drunken man reeling in the street." Such another I find in
Martin Wenrichius, _com. de ortu monstrorum, c. 17_, I saw (saith he) at
Wittenberg, in Germany, a citizen that looked like a carcass; I asked him
the cause, he replied, [1342]"His mother, when she bore him in her womb,
saw a carcass by chance, and was so sore affrighted with it, that _ex eo
foetus ei assimilatus_, from a ghastly impression the child was like it."

So many several ways are we plagued and punished for our father's defaults;
insomuch that as Fernelius truly saith, [1343]"It is the greatest part of
our felicity to be well born, and it were happy for human kind, if only
such parents as are sound of body and mind should be suffered to marry." An
husbandman will sow none but the best and choicest seed upon his land, he
will not rear a bull or a horse, except he be right shapen in all parts, or
permit him to cover a mare, except he be well assured of his breed; we make