BOOK VI. SATIRE I' Semel insanivimus. LABEO reserves a long nayle for the nonce3, And makes such faces, that mee seemes I see Threatning her twined snakes at Tantale's ghost; His cheeks change hew like th' ayre-fed vermin's skin, This last Book and Satire is a humorous and ironical recantation of the former Satires: as the author here pretends there can be no just ground for one in such times as his own. In one part he again glances at the sorry poets of his time, and makes some terse allusions to poets of a former day. Afterwards, when enumerating some of the festive tales of our ancestors, he gives a close and spirited imitation from Juvenal: and closes the whole by a few remarks on the prevailing dialect of Poetry, with a vigour of fancy scarcely rivalled by the finest poets of his time. E. 2 Labeo was undoubtedly some contemporary poet, a constant censurer of our author; and who, from pastoral, proceeded to heroic poetry. Warton thought it might be Chapman, though he did not recollect that Chapman wrote any pasto rals. Compare Attius Labeo, in Persius. E. -for the nonce-for the purpose, occasion. Much worse than Aristarchus his blacke pile, The name of Aristarchus had long been used to express a rigid critic. Cic. Orat. in Pisonem. cap. 30. Hor. Ars Poet. 445. Ausonius: Ludus Septem Sapientum, p. 265. E. Pile is probably from the Latin pilum, the head of an arrow. Or the grim visage of some frowning post, &c. &c. A picture from the life of the tremendous Gog and Magog, which have been the terror of every successive generation of citizens when children, and their ridicule when men. Now red, now pale; and, swolne above his eyes, Sith now not one of thousand does amisse. As pure as through-fare channels when it raynes; Seeke over all the world, and tell mee where Is not one pick-thanke stirring in the court, 8 But some one, like a claw-backe parasite, Smiles on his master for a meale or two; With his disguised cote and ringed eare, through-fare channels i. e. kennels in great thorough-fares, through which a great body of water pours when it rains; not through faire, as the Oxford Editor reads, without authority, and to the destruction of all sense. • Mought they but stand him in some beller steed. This line is omitted, by mistake, in the first edition. 10 Tattelius, the new-come traveller, &c. &c. Marston also reprehends, in a character resembling this of our author, the swag |