Alison Croggon
In everything suitable to one born free and educated liberally, he was so trained from boyhood that among the leading young men of his age he was considered by no means the last. He played ball, hurled the javelin, ran, leaped, wrestled, and above all delighted in the steep ascent of mountains. As a youth he excelled in warlike games. Whatever was done by man with genius and with a certain grace, he held to be almost divine. Then, as he was no tall man, so was he no notably low or little man; all the parts of his body were in as good proportion and congruence as a man could wish. The line on his palm was short, while the line called Saturn's was extended and deep. His left hand, on the contrary, was truly beautiful, with long, tapering, well-formed finers and shining nails. His feet were short, wide near the toes and rather too high at the heels, so he could scarcely find well-fitting shoes. When he had begun to mature in years, neglecting everything else, he devoted himself entirely to the study of letters and spent some years of labour on canon and civil law. He gave up dissection because it turned his stomach so that he could neither eat nor drink with benefit. Being a young man, he used and delighted much in drinking of water. He used very small ale, and as for wine, he did not sip of it only for company's sake and pledging of his friends. He loved very well milk and fruit and especially eggs. For supper he ordered a dish of beets, a little rice, a salad of endive; but he liked even better the wide-leafed spiny sow-thistle or the root fo white endive. And as he took little food, so he took little sleep, which, as he says, rarely did him any good; sleeping almost always made his head ache, and too much sleep made his stomach bad. When he was more robust he often slept in his clothes and with his buskins on. The sight of gems, flowers and especially pleasant places more than once restored him from illness to good health. Although he was affable, gentle and harmful to no one, nevertheless he felt the animosity of many evil men; in particular the harsh and injurious insults from his own relatives. He wholly despised the pursuit of material gain. He rarely stayed at home out of the public eye without deliberating on something and also pondered at dinner between courses. At times he was tormented by a tragic passion so heroic that he planned to commit suicide. He was by nature afraid of high places, even though they are extensive; also of places where there was any report of mad dogs having been seen. And as he greatly delighted in the conversation of the learned, so he took pleasure in the study of the writers of both prose and poetry. For myself I do not know what Plato says of Love, but I know well that I, who have known him so long and so intimately, have never heard issue from his mouth any but the most honest of words which had the power to extinguish in youth every ill-regulated and unbridled desire which might arise. At length, on the order of his doctors, he desisted from those studies which were most fatiguing to the memory. When his favourite dog died he wrote a funeral oration on him. Who will then not wonder at this chameleon of ours, or who could wonder more greatly at anything else? For it was man who, on the ground of his mutability and of his ability to transform his oan nature, was said by Asclepius of Athens to be symbolised by Prometheus in the mysteries.
Apologies: Leon Battista Alberti, Nicholas Harpsfield, Ascanio Condivi, Girolamo Cardano, Pico della Mirandola
