the enraged secretary accused his adversary of bartering the honour of his wife for the most vicious gratifications, and concluded his invective by proposing to ornament his brows—not with a wreath of laurel, but with a crown more befitting the filthiness of his conversation.[235] This scurrility, as it might have been naturally expected, served only to inflame the hostile passions which had so long rankled in the breast of Filelfo, and to direct his fury against his new assailant. The exiled professor, accordingly, once more dipping his pen in gall, traduced the morals, and vilified the talents of Poggio, in a bitter satire of one hundred verses in length; of the virulence of which the reader may form some idea from the following translation of its commencement. Poggio! ere long thy babbling tongue shall feel The keen impression of the trenchant steel; That tongue, the herald of malicious lies, That sheds its venom on the good and wise. What mighty master in detraction’s school, Thus into knavery has matured a fool? Has Niccolo—that scandal of the times, Taught thee to dare the last extreme of crimes? Yes! taught by Niccolo, thou spreadst thy rage O’er the wide area of thy feeble page. Fain wouldst thou pour the torrent of thine ire From lips that glow with all a Tully’s fire; But, thy weak nerves by stale debauch unstrung, Thy half-formed accents tremble on thy tongue. Of filth enamoured, like a hideous swine, Daily thou wallowest in a sea of wine. Earth, air, and ocean, join their ample store, To cram thy maw, that ceaseless craves for more; And, worse than beast! to raise thy deaden’d gust, In nature’s spite thou satest thy monstrous lust. Black list of crimes! but not enough to fill Poggio, thy ample register of ill. Like some black viper, whose pestiferous breath Spreads through the ambient air the seeds of death, Obscure and still thou wind’st thy crooked way, And unsuspecting virtue falls thy prey.[236]