DISSERTATION I.
ON PYGMIES.
The existence of a little nation of diminutive people engaged in, almost, continual wars with the cranes, is an opinion of such high antiquity as to be coeval with the rudiments of the heathen mythology. Homer, who flourished 907 years before the vulgar æra, is, universally, admitted to be the earliest poet whose works remain, and, though totally blind and unable either to read or write (no written characters being known to the Greeks till many centuries after his time), he had recourse to his invention and, with a harp in his hand, went about various countries, singing and playing, as a bard or rhapsodist, and was well rewarded for his poetical effusions, which being fabulous stories, of his own composition, of gods, heroes, wars, battles, sieges, voyages, adventures and miracles, altogether incredible and impossible, and of persons, things, cities and countries, which never existed,
